Kirk hits out at ‘fleeting joy’ of sales

IT MAY not be what you want to hear as you head out to the January sales but the bargain that sets your heart racing is unlikely to bring you long-term happiness.

That’s the message from a leading figure in the Church of Scotland who claims the ritual post-Christmas stampede to the shops suggests the nation is failing to learn the lessons of the recession and will only bring a “fleeting moment of joy”.

The Rev Ian Galloway, convener of the Kirk’s influential Church and Society Council, said the emphasis on shopping suggests that the “ambition” for everyone seems to be “to get back to business as usual – until the next crisis comes along. This is despite the fact that there are clear signs that the rich have already recovered from the crisis, but middle income families are struggling and the poor are becoming poorer.”

Whatever was happening to our economics after the crash, it was not about reducing inequalities or getting a fairer share for everyone, he added.

“Part of the problem is that our economics is built on persuading all of us, me included, to buy things we do not need because they will allegedly change our lives for the better.

“An economics built on false hope of a better life is consumption that we do not need. We may enjoy a Boxing Day bargain but it is a fleeting moment of joy. Consumption can never bring the life we desire for that lies not in any external things but in things of the heart.”

A better use of time, he said, would be to lobby politicians on the need for the so-called “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions as a means of levying huge sums for community projects and a move towards buying Fair Trade goods.

“As this New Year begins, my great concern is that at the very top there seems little appetite for major change,” Galloway said. “For that one per cent [the percentage which owns more money than the rest of the global population combined], elected and unelected, who hold the power over the rest of us, the new year does not seem to be bringing a desire for a ‘New Economics’. ”