The backdrop shows the city skyline, not that you can see it as clearly as I'd like. I may have been able to pull it off with a DSLR but handy as the Olympus is... yes, perhaps a bit optimistic. In the foreground we see the end of a block of wood (a seating block in a park near the waterfront), crazed and splitting. Perhaps it's just to do with my place of work at the moment but it had a metaphorical resonance for me.

The city is of course glittering and golden, the skyline suggesting wealth and prosperity. But beneath it, so many of the middle classes, the true generators of wealth within a community by simply earning a decent income and re-spending it, are getting squeezed. The upper echelons of management cut, and outsource, and bring in projects of "transformation" (which is of course generally a euphemism for the aforementioned cutting and outsourcing) and convince themselves that they have done well because the quarterly profit results look slightly better than they would have been, with the same revenue but lower costs. Except that it's an unstable equilibrium. As other businesses "transform" as well, previously well paid employees will start having to tighten their belts. The businesses will get less revenue, and therefore engage in yet more "transformations". And those lucky remaining few who are doing the "transformations", ah yes, indeed they reward themselves well for it.

Letters will be written to newspapers saying that it's all the fault of those horrible shareholders. But the letter writers often forget that they're shareholders themselves through their compulsory superannuation holdings but more to the point... I'm a shareholder in many companies. And we, the retail shareholders, get just as screwed as the employees. Boards feel that they have the right to nominate themselves and with the boards and the fundmanagers scratching each other's back, it matters not one iota what the retail shareholders think. We get the crumbs as the directors and senior managers take care of themselves through generously allocating themselves bonuses and shares. And so, as statistics show, the wealth of the nation is being re-gathered into fewer and fewer hands; not through merit, but through patronage and rent seeking.

You can get away with this for a time. The 50 somethings and 60 somethings who go from above average incomes to genteel poverty will be concealed. The pool of people with insecure, part time positions will swell, but below the surface. The cracks at the centre will be hidden from view, but will eventually spread through the wood and split it open. And I for one don't want a re-run of the Weimar Republic.