At­til­lah Sp­inger

Queen Eliz­a­beth a gi wi mon­ey

Barack Oba­ma yes dem a gi wi mon­ey

Flankers to Gaza wi a spen mon­ey

Gi wi mon­ey wi waan mon­ey

Laugh wi laugh an spen mon­ey

-My Mon­ey Ha ha, Mer­i­tal

I've nev­er had a cred­it card, hav­ing al­ways been too poor to af­ford one. Banks be­ing the kind of place that make you prove that you don't need mon­ey in or­der to qual­i­fy to get it. I've nev­er had a cred­it card so I don't know the rush to the head one gets from hav­ing spend­ing pow­er in one's purse.

If you be­lieve the ads, you can own the world. Use­less trin­kets, shiny baubles, back-break­ing shoes. These are the things one needs to be ef­fec­tu­al in the world. To be some­body. Every­body is spend­ing mon­ey they don't have to buy things they don't need. You can own the world with your very own cred­it card. I guess.

The day some un­for­tu­nate bank gives me a cred­it card I would prob­a­bly for­get fru­gal­i­ty. I would prob­a­bly buy my­self a round-the- world tick­et, a re­al­ly ex­pen­sive pair of hik­ing boots and a good knap­sack and take off on a world of ad­ven­tures. I would prob­a­bly spend too much mon­ey on maps and mu­sic and oth­er bor­ing nerdy things and max out my cred­it with one trip to some di­vey lit­tle book­store.

I would then be filled with re­morse and be back to be­ing broke again. It wouldn't be out of any mal­ice on my part. Just a kind of feel­ing called I nev­er thought that would take over me and make me tem­porar­i­ly crazy with the prospect of be­ing able to buy things that I re­al­ly want but don't re­al­ly need.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly the peo­ple who make us feel the de­sire to buy things haven't quite fig­ured out a way to make us feel good about our­selves with­out ma­te­r­i­al dis­trac­tions. So you put some­body in pow­er and giv­en them a cred­it card and ex­pect them to know what to do. You ex­pect them to know how to be­have. How to be with peo­ple and how to be with the peo­ple's mon­ey.

You imag­ine that you get in­to the of­fice and hey presto you know what to do. A cred­it card can't buy you cred­i­bil­i­ty. It can­not buy you hu­mil­i­ty or the trust of the peo­ple you have been charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of lead­ing. A cred­it card will not make you in­tel­li­gent. It will not give you the con­vic­tion that is need­ed to make your coun­try bet­ter.

A cred­it card can't solve any prob­lems, not even fi­nan­cial ones. I of­ten won­der what kind of train­ing politi­cians get for the jobs that they are get­ting. Do they get psy­cho­me­t­ric eval­u­a­tions to see how they will han­dle pow­er? Do they have any train­ing to do, like ath­letes or lawyers or priests? Does any­body ask them what mo­ti­vates their de­sire for pow­er?

You can't just hand peo­ple pow­er. In the same way you can't just hand some peo­ple a cred­it card, a pimped out ride, a coun­try to run. If you're not ready for it you run up big bills, you make promis­es you know you can't keep. You con­vince your­self that some­how you're right and every­body else is wrong.

I think about all the com­mu­ni­ty work­ers and or­gan­i­sa­tions I know who would make good use of the mon­ey be­ing frit­tered away on friv­o­li­ties. I think about all the par­ents who would give their right arm to have a cred­it card so that their chil­dren can get the kind of health­care that they need, that they de­serve as cit­i­zens of this coun­try.

I think about all the teach­ers spend­ing their own mon­ey to en­sure the chil­dren they teach are hav­ing a holis­tic learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. I won­der if min­is­ters think about these peo­ple when they're shop­ping for trin­kets and baubles. I won­der if peo­ple in gov­ern­ment re­mem­ber what it is like to look at your ac­count bal­ance and mar­vel at the amount of ze­ros.

I'm guess­ing not. I'm guess­ing too that no amount of apol­o­gis­ing for a maxed-out cred­it card will con­vince the rest of us that peo­ple in gov­ern­ment aren't in of­fice seek­ing their own in­ter­ests, mak­ing their own lives more com­fort­able. I'm guess­ing that this Gov­ern­ment has now maxed out the tol­er­ance peo­ple had for its tata.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like gov­ern­ment is the biggest farce ever per­pe­trat­ed against peo­ple. So that some of us can feel more spe­cial than oth­ers. Maybe one day they'll make some kind of de­vice that makes peo­ple in pub­lic of­fice care more in­stead of less about the peo­ple they're sup­posed to be serv­ing. To sell com­mit­ment to caus­es. To sell fo­cus and ded­i­ca­tion and in­tegri­ty.

It might not be a cred­it card but you can earn good kar­ma points from it and the re­spect of your con­stituents. Not shiny at all, I know, but sure­ly the good feel­ing you get from help­ing peo­ple is wealth enough.