Basically, I just wanted to write that word, because it has a tang about it. Some words do that - you would never use them in everyday speech, but you wish you could. 'Visceral' is another one; I don't even know how to say it, but I do know exactly what it means. Shibboleth, of course, is the Gileadite testword to distinguish an Ephrainite, who could not pronounce sh. But that's not important now.
The particular sh word I have in mind at the moment is 'Growth'. (Okay, let's assume they couldn't pronounce th either: I couldn't until I was about seven.) The U.K. economy has apparently grown by only 0.2% over the last quarter. This is a bad thing. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't really particularly want to grow any more. I'm quite happy with the size I am; certainly no more vertical, and I'll stick with or even reduce the horizontal. So, given that an economy is, when you get down to it, no more than a bunch of people, why exactly is it a good thing for it to get bigger all the time? Can't we just steady down, live with what we've got and get on with our lives?
And of course, actually there is no such thing as growth. There's only redistribution.
In downtown Gilead they used to say 'redishtribution', especially when referring to DSS soup kitchens, etc., which we'll all need if US and eurozone economies start to float upside down on the surface of the world's liquidity. Sterling may just, just sit pretty for a while...
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Spoken like a chap who's paid off his mortgage!
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