It seems all that has been on anyone's mind the last few months has been the "recession". Oh yes, I did just use little rabbit ears to visually convey sarcasm to those of you reading - ten thousand people are going to get cranky at me now!

So some bad shit happened over in the US and their economy goes all wonky and for some stupid reason the rest of us plebs around the world somehow end up with a "Global Financial Crisis" and twenty bajillion news outlets predicting doom and gloom for the foreseeable future. Whatever. I don't really care about the fine details of how it all started, I'm sure it makes for some scintillating reading when I desperately need something to send me to sleep. The fact is that shit happens. The other fact is that we are NOT in a recession.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have relatives, friends and acquaintences who are actually old enough to have experienced a real recession - you know, like in the Great Depression and the aftermath of the two world wars earlier last century. People would have to queue up to get their daily rations of bread, butter or flour, not nip down to the shop and pay an extra 30 cents.

So far as I know we here in Australia are not lacking the availability of anything (except maybe common sense) and even if the US economy did decide to shrivel up and die like a spider that came into contact with extra potent Mortein, we're a goddamn agricultural nation for heaven's sake, it's not like we can't just sell our stuff off to some other twit who lacks the skills to grow their own apples. The only thing we don't have freely available within the confines of this fat island is petrol.

And besides that, how come because things go tits up in the US it has to go tits up in the rest of the world? Since when does the US finance the entire globe? (I have a feeling some conspiracy theorist is going to give me an incredibly detailed answer to my rhetorical question).

"Industries are seeing an economic downturn across the country"... because dickbrained journalists are creating the bloody hype and people are stupid enough to believe it.

"Oh but it's so incredibly apparent in the construction industry". Well you know what, we live on a fucking ISLAND people, most of which is DESERT and stuff all people live here. It's not like there's going to be continual and constant demand for expansion unless we decide we all want to go and live in the Outback with the creepy critters designed to kill you in all manner of painful way and piss off the Aborigines while we're at it.

The day I can't walk down to the shops and buy bread and milk freely and everyone I know has lost their jobs is the day I concede we're in a "recession".

On the plus side, all this hype has driven property prices WAAAAY down. I see a quick way to make my fortune when people stop being retarded.