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The Banks and Bob

Well, I'm back. Had some time to think, which is always a good thing.

Now I'm here again I see that if you get into too much of a debate in the comments column, it can threaten to overwhelm the actual posts. So this post is actually a reply to Delta Charles' comment somewhere down below. Think of it as drawing the debate out of the smoke-filled room and into the forum where the vultures circle...

Bob Dylan. Oh dear. Sorry, Delta - I didn't mean to suggest that Bob has an answer for everything. From time to time all great writers drop something apposite onto the paper - usually more by accident than design - and that's an old favourite of mine. But I used it mainly for my other correspondant Cyn's benefit, because I knew she'd appreciate a nod back to times when solutions seemed simpler and curly-headed kids from Minnesota appeared to speak for us all.

We're older now. So's Bob. I commend his most recent albums to you: they're about growing old (not a common or popular subject in songwriting) and of course they have nothing to say about Darfur.

Bob's wealth. Now that's a tricky one. I hope he uses it wisely. I hope he gives a lot away. He's got far too much, but I'll forgive him that one because it seems to me he's spent his life enriching the human experience on a personal and collective level. Which is much, much more than you can say for the vast majority of wealthy business oligarchs around the world. Most of their work is subtractive: products we don't need, resources we shouldn't have wasted. Aided and abetted, of course, by the banks that provide the machinery of waste.

It's difficult, this. We all need to earn a living. The world is full of nice people - people not blessed with Bob's talents - who end up doing a job they'd rather not. Because there's a mortgage to pay or a sick relative to tend or a screaming baby to feed. I count myself among them. Here in the UK the government has just clamped down on animal rights campaigners who chose to locate their protests outside the homes of individuals employed by the animal testing labs (specifically Huntingdon Life Sciences). I'm disgusted by the work these labs do. I'm pretty certain most of it is unnecessary. And I admire anyone who gets off their arse to actually stand outside a testing facility in the wind and the rain. But just how dumb was it to target the individual employee's homes? Did they think these people were in a position to dismantle their lives, however imperfect, and walk away? Did they think scaring the employees into submission would make one iota of difference to the people running the facility? Directors and shareholders know they can always get more employees. In any business.

It's not a conspiracy. Most directors and shareholders are nice people too. You'd share a pint with them. But there's something wrong with our cultural substance here. We're wearing blinkers. We can't see round the corner of shareholder value and profitability.

So what do we do about it? Nothing overnight, that's for sure. But times do change, and people do too. In the fourteenth century, our values were dictated by the church. In the eighteenth and nineteenth, they were skewed towards class. In the twentieth, we turned to consumption. These are sweeping generalisations, but you get the point, I hope. We don't have to continue living as we do now.

And that leaves just a glimmer of hope for the Muslim refugees in Darfur. You're right: they don't give a shit about the behaviour of British banks. But we should, because our attitudes towards Darfur are informed by our financial and cultural institutions. Just widen the blinkers a little, and we might yet see more clearly what's happening elsewhere in the world.

And find the will to do something about it.