The longest week of two years

It's Friday and it's the day after Christmas and the day before the weekend. Most shops are open with all the nervous mood of a fire-sale after the credit-crunch hit pre-Christmas spending, stemming cash-flow and squeezing profits. My local department store launched its winter sale in several departments back on December 15th and the big retailers launched their January Sales on the internet yesterday - on Christmas Day.

If you're not out buying stuff then there's another weekend coming up, so there'll be entertaining and parties a-plenty. Many businesses across Britain will stay closed right through next week, cushioning the further hang-overs of New Year, and building up to traffic chaos on the following weekend as thousands return home to go back to work on Monday 5th. Or not. How many jobs will there be to return to? How many companies will be counting the cost and taking the difficult decisions?

Is there anyone out there who can make sense of this crazy world we're living in? Businesses are collapsing because nobody's spending and nobody's spending because businesses are collapsing. The banks are paying next to nothing to borrow money centrally and between each other, but they're not lending so nobody can buy or sell their home. Is it capitalism that's failing society, or society that's failing capitalism? How can we live the utopian egalitarian dream when a greedy few can seriously damage all the economies of the world in a matter of weeks?

Then there's global warming and the irony of well-meaning pleas not to leave the TV or computer in standby mode, not to fill the car right up with petrol because that reduces fuel efficiency, and not to boil a full kettle if you only need a cupful. All very worthy, I'm sure, but did anyone dare to suggest that Christmas decorations might be a profligate extravagance? One person did, but it does sound something of a kill-joy voice in the wilderness.

So where next? My pre-resolution prediction is that the only choice we have if we are to maintain our sanity and move forward is by adopting the powerful mixture of creativity blended with optimism. The next decade is going to be very different from the Noughties. We'll be less focused on quantity and more concerned about quality in many aspects of our lives, and in all areas of consumption. There will be a hunger for values, because so many have been lost since the global egotism that was born in the 80's. The alternative is the descent into a totally self-centred material jingoism that defies any concept of humanist values.

09 must be radical. Or else...