The game and corporations. Not everyone played, or enjoyed monopoly the board game in their childhood. The game that could last for days, needed strategy and a want for money and property, a proper primer for the ‘game of life’ you would have to play in later years. A banker in charge of all the money, they get to be the controller, the one who holds it all. How many of you liked being the banker? Did you also make a play for the high-end properties? Mayfair and Park Lane were the rich and luxury purples in the UK version. Bringing in the most revenue if you were then lucky enough to be able to build your houses and hotels. But what the game doesn’t teach you, obviously, is any shred of reality about how it actually works in the real world. And why should it, it’s just a game after all.

Maybe it would help people to understand how strange it gets in the real world though if it was closer to the truth. When at first it seems like a normal set up, with normal rules, like in the game. But if the banker half way through the game suddenly decided you owed loads in interest and they could decide the rate of that interest, it would change the game a bit wouldn’t it. And that they were going to charge you for just passing their coloured square, not even landing on it, you wouldn’t want to play, would you? Because it would become obvious that the banker, or your opponent was in fact doing everything they could think of to make sure they take more from you than you can make. In real life, the systems in place are just obstacles that your opponent has placed there to hold you up, slow you down, and side-track you altogether. As we are seeing now in the economic landscape, they found a way to do a power move. I’ll explain the chain as I see it, as I believe it’s been with us for a while, but stepped up a gear when the ‘pandemic’ rolled out. The first lockdown targeted small and family businesses, allowing franchises and corporation chains to remain open. Then dishing out loads of money in loans, which would be payable, with interest, that would help later when they need to move things along, either to tie people into new rules, or to take them out of the equation. Changes in other local and national rules within the lockdown also screwed many. Having to prepare for business, then be told at the last minute the rules had changed, allowing more cost and expenditure before they pulled the plug. Coming down heavy handed on those who tried to take a stand, imposing fees and fines.

So much money being made from the misery of the country, and being funnelled where? Not back into the country, by any means. It would seem to have been a grand money laundering scheme, to take out as much wealth, savings, stability, community and future prospects that they can. And still it continues. Travel being disrupted still while they drag the Brexit drama along still, adding more time and money to processes that have been mastered for as long as we could trade, but clogged up now with red tape, and opportunists forever trying to get their piece, rather than make it work for all. And within the travel industry, we have a completely failing tourist industry, by design too of course. Although most of the hotels who were bought in the early days by government, whether they were just worried because they thought they would go down, and took the bait, or they want the country to fail, who knows for sure. But they are just there for current purpose, as I believe there will be no need for hotels with the future plan they have for this island. So it won’t save them, just temporarily give them an income, while allowing the drain of the country’s finances to continue. People shouldn’t understate how important the hotels have been in this, as they have facilitated the rather large daily bill the government is covering. Putting the debt further onto the people they are bleeding dry.

The utility companies stepped up next to play their part. In a stunning display of greed, we get our household utilities increased at a stupid rate for no good reason. Cue the desperate business owners with bills higher than their entire turnover. Next wave of small businesses started to close shop, with stress after stress and with no end in sight, I can see why some threw in the towel.

Then we get to the interest rates, a deliberate and steady increase in those too, helping anyone with savings, and damaging those with interest-based loans and variable mortgages on the ground. Now after years of uncertainty, possibly grief and loss, losing your business and being unemployed, you then have to contend with losing your home, or at least having the thought of that being thrust at you constantly. And in case you might have had a few spare pounds still, no fear, they increased all the other bills too, and fuel to really make you feel the squeeze.

Supermarkets came forth next to show it was going to be a coordinated effort. Price gouging and taking advantage of people when they are at a weak point economically, being quite the opportunist. All of them from what I can gather. Still sort of competing with each other, but really it seems more about how much they can add to the label before people stop buying the product. They also have played a key role in this, being able to dictate and control people in the early days of this, stickers on the floor, plastic screens, washing down trollies, heavy handed security, counting people in and restricting access. And even now they quietly install their barriers, monitors, self-service tills and screens to watch you while you do your shopping, and to help be a part of the digital lives they want us all to lead. So, you can scan into the supermarket, just like all the other products in there.

And politicians. Who could overlook their role in all this. It is now out there for everyone to see how self-serving they really are. Athough having an allegiance to something, it is not the country they purport to serve. We have all been terribly misled over the years, and duped into believing the set-up, in democracy and the rule of law. It’s become starkly obvious that the set-up was there to make them rich, democracy was a cover to pretend they would agree to order, and the rule of law serves them and if it turns out there is a way to turn one to our advantage, they make efforts to change it. Again to be in their favour. How can you get justice when they own the courts and the judges and write the laws?

What we are subject to is a stunning display of grotesque corporate obesity, where they have gourged themselves on us for so long, that they have lost sight of their toes and what is even real. No longer able to function properly, or move, instead trying to consume more and more to sustain the morbid overload that is out of control. Each department of it acting as a distorted limb that can’t hold up anymore under its own weight, grabbing at anything it can as a crutch, which too ends up being crushed under its enormous greedy mass. We would do well to try and remove ourselves from its reach or grasp, and stop feeding it as best we can. I get the feeling it’s reaching a critical mass at this point, for their greed, and our awareness, so it will be an interesting time ahead…

(c) K Wicks