For what we receive

摘要

Notice anything odd about the news lately? Did you, for example, listen to all those prognoses of economic gloom and Mayan doom that pervaded the media around the turn of the year - when the press in general fills up otherwise dead air and empty pages with 'books of the year' and 'what will happen in 2012? Do your eyes well up when you think about having to make do as best you can through what is everywhere confidently expected to be another year of economic collapse, falling sales, slumping pension values and job insecurity? If so, how do you cope? Do you reach for the gin bottle - easy on the tonic, Mabel - and hope to stay gracefully slid on the downslope of another recession? And what about the orphans??