I’ve Got That Sinking Feeling

There is a scene in the blockbuster Titanic, (oh, don’t pretend you didn’t see it) when the stately and supposedly “unsinkable” liner, launched amid maximum pomp in Belfast in 1912, slams into an iceberg while the well dressed guests are in the middle of a jolly party.

As only the faintest of jolts causes a tremor around the superbly furnished dining room, waiters rush around, assuring puzzled diners in tiaras and dinner jackets that there is no cause for alarm. Everything is in good hands. A little local difficulty…

Minutes later in the film we see Kate Winslet swimming for dear life, still in her ball gown as the freezing seawater pours in from all sides. Meanwhile, up in the dining room people are now screaming hysterically as they slide from one side of the room to the other and as the ship lurches up in the ocean at a crazy 45-degree angle.

Welcome to the supposedly unsinkable luxury liner Great Britain, where life is starting to resemble the script of Titanic in host of ways. First, of course, we hit a rather sharp iceberg called “credit crunch” while the general public was busy enjoying itself at the equivalent of a gala dinner.

Then we had the chief waiter, in this instance Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hurrying around and assuring everyone that there was no need to stop eating, drinking and merry-making (or borrowing money, for that matter). There was a little local difficulty below deck but his reliable team of assistants was busy fixing the small “hole” that had opened up in the public finances.

But then, quite suddenly - oops! Our “unsinkable” liner has gone lurching up right out of the ocean and into the air at a crazy angle, while the economic equivalent of freezing salt water pours in on all sides.

Last night – to briefly set aside the use of nautical metaphors – we heard from the IMF that not only was the world in recession – I guess we knew that – but that the UK recession was gong to be harder, deeper and generally more miserable than that of any other developed economy.

Figures and statistics confirm this frightening prognosis. Not a day goes by without news of a major factory or retail concern going under at the loss of thousands of extra jobs. Invariably, however, these scary reports of new “holes” in the economy are followed by a government announcement that we should remain calm; it is “pumping” stratospheric sums of money into this or that sector, one day the banks, next day the car industry, then the banks again, the first banking “pump” having failed to have any effect.

Where all this money is coming from and how it is going to be repaid no one seems to have a clue or even dares to ask, though some say it could take at least 20 years to pay back through higher taxes and massive cuts to services.

That makes me, as a decidedly second-class passenger on the Great Britain, feel rather queasy, because the Great Britain really does (or rather, did) resemble the Titanic in the sense that the luxury fittings were always reserved for those traveling First Class.

However the mass of passengers on the Great Britain are more like those Irish emigrants that were stuffed onto the lower decks of the Titanic. They haven’t seen much sign of luxury as it is. How our somewhat – by European standards - third-rate “services” – the dingy hospitals, run-down state schools and abominable transport network will be able to withstand year after year of spending cuts makes one gasp.

We are, indeed, I feel, at that stage in the film when all pretence that the ship isn’t going down has gone. Surely the only question now is whether one can bail out and squeeze onto a lifeboat.

But no, apparently on our liner, there aren’t lifeboats because they’re not needed. That’s the big difference between Great Britain and the Titanic. By this stage of the disaster, when most people were starting to drown, the waiters on the Titanic had long ago stopped pretending that the ship wasn’t finished and were running round screaming like everyone else. On our liner, on the other hand, chief waiter Brown is still obstinately telling us to “remain calm”. I do hope he knows something we don’t.