How about Bromley?

The suburban drudgery of the zombie commuters that was captured so well by Atilla the Stockbroker has always made Bromley poopy. It is an in-betweener place between somewhere amazing (London) and somewhere so bad that it has an appeal only to those with melancholy leanings or a sick sense of humour (Kent).

But for me, Bromley was confirmed as chief gruff nut to South-London last year when the small-minded residents turned out in droves to vote in the bigoted buffoon who we now call Mayor.

In 2009, it is high time that London wiped its arse clean.

And consumers are still consuming. They are, however, making the move from the ‘finest’ to the ‘basic’ ranges. Times may be hard and getting harder, but the nation is tucking into continental meats from Lidl and will soon be dousing itself – or drinking – ‘Eruption’, the store’s quality after-shave. Shopping is still the nation’s favourite past-time.

This week in the West Midlands – that most grim of England’s regions that has not one but at least three of the worst cities in the country on many of the measures available – 3,000 people queued overnight to be the first in line for the opening of a new Currys megastore with promises of a half-price sat nav system that would help guide them around the traffic jam they had created.

Had this been a city-centre store rather than an out of town store, those queuing may have had to listen to one of the many preachers who tell shoppers of their sins through megaphones, coaxing them out of Woolworths and into the preachers’ own deluded worlds. Scientologists try this more quietly by whisking shoppers away with the promise of a stress test, a cup of tea and a stranger kind of salvation.

But does shopping need the kind of religious salvation that these preachers promise? Would it not be better if those who knew about the economic order of the world got out their megaphones and preached Stiglitz?

Instead of ‘God’, ‘Jesus is Lord’ or ‘Be More Cause in Life’ sewn over the go-faster stripes of their tracksuit bottoms, these preachers could have ‘Tiny little prices = tiny little fingers’ instead. ‘It is not just the mushroom factory lighting in TK Maxx that makes it hard to see,’ they could shout. ‘Free yourself and the rest of the high street will follow.’

We need some Stiglitz preachers.

Every headline seems to have the phrase ‘in the credit crunch’ added to it. Chocolate in the credit crunch. Funerals and corpse donation in the credit crunch. Fat children in the credit crunch. Fried chicken and burgers in the credit crunch. Indeed, this has become so commonplace that when reading them, I inadvertantly add those four words to the end of every headline I read.  Everything must be seen in light of the credit crunch.  Even Guildford.

But there are two questions that all this commentary and analysis have failed to shed any light on.

Firstly, why has Cadbury’s not brought out a limited edition credit crunchie? Not only would this be fun, tasty and trend-setting but it would also help to restore consumer confidence. Going into their local budgens or lidl to buy a couple of credit crunchies to sell on ebay or to stockpile when the future food crisis bites, consumers would be reminded of the things that they have neglected to buy over the last few months, though many have still been ‘truffling around for bargains’. Confidence would be restored, retailers would no longer see such devasting cuts to their billlions of profit and fat cats would keep their weight up.

Secondly, admist all the talk of whether the latest victims of the credit crunch – Lehman Brothers employees – will get refunded for the money they have put on their canteen cards, not one commentator asked whether crunchies had been the first chocolate bar to sell out.

Perhaps the FAQs that have appeared in most newspapers and sites need to take on a lighter tone and educate us about the role of the crunchie in the credit crunch.  This might be more digestable – depending on how much you like honeycomb - than what the top 1% are doing with most of the world’s bish.