So there’s a big G20 summit coming up in London where politicians are going to try to figure out how to un-break the global economy. It’s important for politics and solving the recession and blah blah blah. To be honest I’m a bit bored of news and analysis about the economy.

The whole thing has had one interesting effect, though, which hasn’t really been reported on that much. Touched on a little, perhaps, but that’s about it. Probably discussed more so by bloggers and suchlike but since I don’t read topical blogs I wouldn’t know. In any case, as the economy has gotten progressively worse I’ve noticed that people have become more and more disillusioned with politics and politicians.

People not being huge fans of politicians is no new thing, of course, but the general outlook has changed.

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It is impossible for me to treat the current economic collapse with anything but a hint of amusement. That’s not to say it doesn’t worry me at all - I was watching the new very carefully whilst waiting for the details of the recent nationalisation and sale of Bradford & Bingley, since I have a savings account with them which contains most of my money. I would not like to lose that, of course.

That said, though, I have for several years treated the very notion of the modern economy and money itself with a great degree of skepticism. A few years ago I wrote a quasi-satirical article for a now defunct website (alas, the way-back-when machine hasn’t catalogued that particular article) giving a brief history of the concept of money and illustrating that it is now, essentially, an un-claimable IOU with no inherent practical value. And that’s in its everyday, physical form, the notes and coins we use (with decreasing frequency). Most money nowdays doesn’t even exist in reality, it’s just represented digitally on some bank’s computers someplace. Which is why the current situation is somewhat entertaining to me.

You see, for the past few months, but with increasing frequency of late, huge figures have been floating around. Figures like $700 billion or £400 billion, and then there’s the collapse of several large investment banks or the fact that certain major UK banks lost almost half of their value in one day. It all sounds very serious, of course. All these massive numbers, sums of money, are almost totally incomprehensible to most people. Actually, the global financial markets and national economies are the only time figures of this scale ever appear (outside of Zimbabwe, where you’ll likely find them in shops again in a few months), and these are things which we in the western world are all convinced are hugely important. But I’m not convinced.

See, although these vast sums of money seem as though they should be incredibly important, and the economic problems will impact everyone by making things marginally more expensive to buy, there’s one simple fact that people overlook. None of this money, these vast sums, actually exists. And even if it did, it would have no inherent practical value. It’s not as though any tangible, useful, physical thing is lost in all of this. Half of your food doesn’t disappear from your cupboard when your bank’s share price halves. So the fact that everyone (that is to say, the media) seems to be treating this as though the very source and sustenance of life on earth is failing seems rather absurd and thus entertaining to me.

I’m not really one to follow sports, the only thing I can bare to watch regularly is NHL Ice Hockey and since that’s on pay-per-view here now I can’t even watch that. Anyhow, apparently the Olympics are on at the moment. I note that we’re beating Australia, but obviously being British I won’t gloat about such things because that would be terribly impolite and improper of me, that sort of thing is for those vulgar colonial types.

Anyhow, the current Olympics are nice and all, but they’ve stirred up the news about London 2012 again. The other day I was reading a BBC news blog post about them, and how they will not be as grand or expensive as Beijing, which was not really news at all, but still attracted the usual BBC website comment thread idiots. I can’t be bothered to find the article now because I’m incredibly lazy, so instead I shall do my best impression of the comments:

The olympics are a waste of money! All the benefits are going to London and the south east! Why should be [Scottish/Northern/Welsh] money go towards them when we don’t get any of the benefits! The government only cares about the south east!

The government will make a total mess of the games and we will be left an international embarrassment! We’re incapable of doing anything like this!

Sebastian Coe is a Tory! I don’t trust Tories! They will ruin our country! Boo Tories! Labour yay!

There were some positive comments as well, but they were generally less stupid. Anyhow, my favourite reason that people don’t think staging the Olympics is a good idea is this whole cost thing. The estimated total cost is about £9billion, which admittedly is a fairly large amount of money. Now, see, I’m not going to contest that there aren’t more worthwhile things that this money could be spent on. For example, at current tuition fee levels, this money could put 750,000 students through a full three year degree course in the UK. It could be spent on environmental measures or space programs or somesuch.

However, I still disagree with cost as an objection to holding the games, because although there are better things the money could be spent on, that is irrelevant. I mean, look at this in context; without the Olympics, the government would have ~£9billion, sans whatever portion of that is lottery money, to spend on whatever they wanted. Which essentially means it would be almost entirely wasted on ill-thought-through reforms to whatever public service is flavour-of-the-month and blowing up foreigners because we disagree with their government.

At least with the Olympics we get something fairly impressive looking for our money, even if you do think it’s a waste.

So, I don’t like Valentine’s day. Valentine’s day is the single least romantic day of the year, since any action which would normally be considered romantic is immediately stripped of that by the forced nature of everything done on Valentine’s day. It’s exactly the same as the ‘generosity’ of Christmas. I think the only reason that most people remain ignorant of this fact is because it gives them an excuse not to do similar stuff for the rest of the year. It does have the singular benefit of providing a day where you’re almost certain not to have to hear anyone pissing and moaning about their relationship, however, which is generally a welcome break.

A particularly curious thing of which I became aware of last year is the fact that single, heterosexual girls send their friends Valentine’s cards. I cannot fathom why anyone would want to do this. It seems like it is openly and deliberately lying to yourself in such a way that will ultimately just make you more depressed than you were in the first place. As far as single people go, Valentine’s day seems to basically be an excuse for gluttony and self-pity. It is possibly my most-loathed of the many overtly commercial festivities we’re forced to endure each year. Although the gluttony helps.

Anyhow, enough of that. Americans (and anyone else, I guess.); I have decided I like Barack Obama. He seems to actually believe the stuff he says, and to give a crap. Being British and having grown up under Tony Blair and the style of politics which have dominated here for as long as I can remember, Obama is the first time I have been aware of a politician who actually inspires people. It’s a nice change. Also, Hillary annoys me, and I’ve yet to figure out why.

I was going to talk about something else as well, but have forgotten what. Nevermind.