Lies of the caring corporates

By JOE BENNETT

The Dominion Post | Wednesday, 08 October 2008

Iceland is apparently in danger of insolvency. It has binged on debt. It has behaved like an obese American shopper in one of those flannelette romper suits that look just about okay on babies, but terminally saddening on adults.

Iceland has borrowed heaps of dosh from the world's dosh-palaces, and now, with fear stalking their vaults, the dosh-palaces want it back. Iceland can't pay, can't borrow from anyone else because there isn't anyone else, and may go under. Which will be bad news for walruses.

The Icelandic middle classes will have to forsake their newly acquired habits of global excellence — scuba holidays in the Maldives, wine-tasting classes, magnetic mattresses, frappaccinos, gym membership and overnight bags with little wheels — and go back to igloos and subsistence farming. Subsistence farming in Iceland means sitting by a hole in the ice with a club and waiting for a walrus to surface, whereupon whammo, the walrus becomes the lender of last resort, handing over its meat for food, its blubber for fuel, its whiskers for fishing line and its tusks for something to whittle in the 24-hour nights that afflict those parts for half the year.

Now, if Iceland slides into the cold ocean of bankruptcy, can we be far behind? We're about the same size as Iceland and similarly in debt. What's worse, we haven't got walruses. Nor do we any longer have the easy-beat moa, one of whose drumsticks would feed a family of four with something left over for the dog. If we go under we'll be reduced to hunting and eating stoats. But at least I won't get any more letters from Meridian.

"Dear Mr Bennett," it began, which was frankly astonishing. In the light of the rest of the "letter" a more apt opening line would have been "Dear Diddums". Because Meridian chose to address me, an autonomous 51-year-old adult, as if I were six.

"We asked our accounts team to look at your usage and challenged them to see if anything needs changing. Our bean counters got their abacuses out and sharpened their pencils. Based on their calculations it seems you're already on the right plan to suit your usage."

Where do I begin with this tripe? Well, I would like to begin with the slab-faced "executive" who sanctioned it. I'd like to cram his pallid, corrugated flesh into an XXOS perambulator and wheel him through the streets inviting Meridian customers to lean halitotically over him saying, "Who's a bonnie wee boy then?", seizing his jowls between thumb and forefinger to give them a good, painful tug, planting bristly kisses on the burst blood vessels of his cheeks, wondering in a high-pitched voice whether he's had a little accident and jabbing his shrivelled genitalia with nappy pins till he expires from humiliation.

Meridian sells electricity. I buy it. I don't care about them and they don't care about me. I know that. They know that. But they pretend otherwise. And they expect me to fall for it. They expect me to believe that they look out for my interests, that they instruct their — do they have to? — "bean counters" to check that I'm getting the best possible deal, using their — oh, my God and pass the Valium — abacuses. It's about as humorous as tetraplegia and it's all lies.

"Plus," they continue, "have you heard about MyMeridian?"

MyMeridian? My bloody Meridian! Like My Little Pony. Or My First Bicycle. Or the infantilising My Documents folder that comes with My Computer Software and that infuriates me every time it appears on screen yet seems impossible to erase.

"It's a cool web tool for getting your bills delivered online — To have a play just go to . . ."

No. I am not going to "have a play", however "cool" your "tool" may be. Look. I know that a recent survey revealed that 45 per cent of so-called adults play computer games daily, but that still leaves a slim majority of us who choose to make some effort at being grown-ups, who do not demand constant entertaining and who strive to see the world as it is rather than dwelling in a fantasy land of computer-generated bloodbaths or Disney fibs or lifestyle choices or Oprah bloody Winfrey or low-fat gyms or positive thinking or fundamentalist religion or five-plus-a-day or Lotto or advertising lala-land or any of the other infantilising tosh that is spewed out to generate money by encouraging us to remain in nappies.

For Meridian is not alone. The defining quality of 21st century Western consumption is an increasing reluctance to grow up, a reluctance fostered by commerce and media and government for the simple reason that babies are easier to manipulate.

And though I don't fancy a financial implosion and the consequent poverty, there are moments when it seems preferable to the infantile tosh I am subjected to daily. Pass the stoat.