Almost everything that brings us pleasure is at risk in this financial crisis. And that’s the way a few saddos like it
I thought things could not get any sadder, but that was before I turned on the radio: the crisis industry this morning was zoos. It is not really an industry, in the classic or even the Marxist sense (half the workers are the means of production, yet would you experience that as empowerment, if you were in a cage?), but it’s a thing. Even if you don’t agree with zoos and think bears belong in their natural habitat, I am sure you will still agree that the industry needs to be supported through dark times, that you can’t let the animals perish because no one is visiting them. Likewise, the wedding venues, the fashion houses, the drinking dens that didn’t get lively until 10pm, the clubs, the theatres.
Some industries were much faster than others to bring their crisis to life in the public imagination: there has barely been a peep out of fashion, yet I think about theatres and the rats eating through the velvet most days. The desperate pleas of events managers have surfaced only this week, while restaurateurs have made a case against curfews so solid that it would take a heart of stone (or, failing that, a Conservative government) to ignore them. But when you are all equally screwed, it is not a competition.
