Recently, a friend sent me this link to Jim Jubak’s advice on how to survive a zombie economy. I’ll admit that initially I dismissed it. I mean, seriously, Triffids? Pod-people? These aren’t zombies: you can’t just make a variety of horror film references to back up your rather flimsy association between the zombie apocalypse and the current economic climate. And please, who lies awake at night worrying about an outbreak of giant worms? That’s just silly. Honestly.
But then I looked at the examples he gives of potential economic “zombies” – the U.S. debt, a global demographic wave of ageing that will soak up savings, currency issues, and global water wars, to be specific – and I started to think about the kind of effect that any one of these catastrophes would have on our society. Personally, I like to believe that maybe it would serve as the kind of crisitunity by which we could undertake the restructuring of the very fabric of our society, creating a blissful paradise without debts so large they lose entirely any meaning; a world where the concept of value actually holds some degree of relevance and there is a 77% chance that I could ride a goat without being charged for disturbing the peace.
Well, at least the economic zombies will be sharply dressed.
At the moment, it doesn’t seem like that is the case. Initially it seemed as though the signs were restricted to the UK, but recent events have made it quite clear that the symptoms are spreading to the US, and even to my beloved Canadia. There has been an outbreak in mental zombieism more terrifying and deadly than that time I unknowingly stumbled onto a local zombie walk on my way to return a chainsaw to the hardware shop up the road.
It started in May with the UK’s disturbing 2010 Elections results, but, to my deep regret, I failed to recognise the tragedy for what it truly was. I bemoaned the situation, I insulted the parties (and the party leaders, and the voters that voted for them, and the system that let such a horrific mess develop), but in my folly I looked no further. The UK public was doing exactly what Jim Jubak, in his infinite wisdom, warns against: panicking. In the aftermath of the first of what I am sure will be many global economic tremors, the country was, to quote Jubak, “run[ning] hither when yon would have been safer.”
I wish I could assume a position of self-righteous superiority, but in truth I, too, failed to follow Jubak’s advice; I simply denied my fears. Sure, I can give you a line or two about how I couldn’t have known, couldn’t have seen it coming, but the truth is that I suspected the election was the first sign of the socio-political zombieism that was upon us and I ignored those fears. And, as Jubak predicted, I am amongst the first to die a horrible, horrible death.
Jubak saw this coming...
Not literally, of course, but a figurative disembowelment is no less excruciating I can assure you. Am I being melodramatic? Perhaps. But last month – over a week before George Osborne announced the Coalition government’s economic equivalent of a nation-wide slaughter to a nauseating wave of Conservative cheers – the not-entirely-honourable Lord Browne, Baron of Madingley and former CE of the now-infamous BP, published his Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance.
If you think he wouldn't gnaw on your clavicle, you've got another thing coming.
If ever there was proof that an infection was seething in the brains of certain UK citizens that reduced their mental faculties to a state equal to drooling, shuffling zombie hordes, the Browne Review was it. Some of my favourite highlights include the removal of the £3290 tuition fees cap in England (allowing for tuition fees of up to £9000 per year, a completely reasonable astronomical sum which should naturally be affordable by students from all backgrounds), the raising of loans from £2,900 to £3,250 – giving students an additional £350 which I am sure will be a great comfort to them in the face of tuition fees which may be nearly triple their maximum loan amount, and the not-explicitly-stated-but-very-real-threat to funding for Arts and the Humanities research (Martin McQuillan suggests a 100% cut, and while other interpretations are more vague, they’re in no way reassuring).
I don't think there was ever any doubt in anyone's mind that these two would feast on a baby. I mean even before their minds melted into zombie-fied goo.
Just in case you thought this cannibalistic pestilence was limited to a single review council, as I mentioned above, not a week later the oh-so-magnanimous Chancellor Osborne stood before the nation and confirmed that it had spread throughout the Conservative party at the very least. This is the only logical explanation for why any human being would possibly cheer at cuts totalling £81bn, the large majority of which seek to suck the very life out of the most vulnerable members of the population: getting rid of wheelchairs and turning the poor and the elderly out onto the streets means a veritable feast for the ever-growing, ever-rotting Conservative party.
Furthermore, it would seem as though the zombie disease can be transmitted sexually; if Nick Clegg’s fervent defence of the cuts is any indicator, the Liberal Democrats have joined the rising hordes.
Of course, as much as one might want to believe that the zombie invasion was limited to the Eastern side of the Atlantic, that particular illusion was shattered earlier this week by the US Mid-term Elections, which saw the biggest swing in Senate seats since 1948 – and at least that swing was somewhat towards reason. If the Browne review didn’t convince you that an unknown pathogen was liquifying people’s brains, driving them to claw blindly at the innards of their children and neighbours, to tear into the fleshy backsides of their local grocers, to rend muscle from bone and drink the very marrow of their significant others, then surely the Tea Party Movement will provide you with the incontrovertible proof that you need.
There's a new mindless horde in town, and they're not interested in tea with their sweetbreads.
“Such a trend must surely not go unmarked!” I hear you cry. “The media – that bastion of truth, fortress of liberty – would direct our innocent eyes to such carnage!” I would wonder if you had considered the latest run of films that have been given pride of place on BBC iPlayer: Dawn of the Dead (1978) – no longer available; Night of the Living Dead (1968); and most recently Day of the Dead, which was broadcast nearly a full week after Hallowe’en.
Someone in the BBC has certainly given some consideration to the infection plaguing both political parties and electorates, and specifically to its proliferation. They are sending out a message, but a message only those with enough of a brain to recognise it will see. To broadcast the truth from the rooftops is to spark the Zombie Apocalypse which is already brewing under our noses. Watch the news carefully…
And don’t sleep with a Conservative… just in case.
