Valley of the Trolley Dollies

I enter my office via the basement. No, that’s not done in order to avoid the waiting Paparazzi, to shield the world from the hideousness that is me at 07:20 most mornings, or to escape the ire of the Merchant Banker-hating throng of generic, Torch-wielding, Bloodlust-Crazed Village Yokels that would doubtless be thronging Canary Wharf looking for a financier - any financier - to string up, if the Wharf weren’t a Fascist state - I mean private Estate, with it’s own stormtroopers, I mean private security guards.

The reason I come in that way is because there’s a direct link from Canary Wharf Underground Station into the sub-level reception (complete with Airport-style X-Ray machine in case any of those blasted Jihadist suicide Bombers every try to get a bag of oh, I don’t know, Plastique, say, Or C4 - are they the same thing? - into the building. Honestly, what with Torch-wielding, Bloodlust-Crazed Village Yokels, Insane self-immolating Jihadists and the risk from Suicidal Bankers Landing on you as they fling themselves bodily from the upper floors of increasingly empty office blocks, the life of a low - to mid-level functionary in Investment Banking is an exciting and dangerous one, right now).

But that - the fact that a pointless Financial Cog like myself is fast approaching Bruce-Willis-in-the-Die-Hard-Quadrilogy Levels of stress - is not the point of this post.

At the top of the escalator that takes you to the main - Grandiose, and with it’s own Bombe* detector / X-Ray machine as well as, on average, ten grands worth of cut flowers - is a vast, glossy black wall. And on this wall are three questions:

What’s Important to You?

What Inspries You?

What Do You Value?

 Well? Let me know….

*I know: It should be Bomb; but I so love the idea of something on the posh level that’s less concerned with identifying Dynamite and more with finding Donuts.

You know, cynicism aside, (and I know I can be a little cynic at times), yesterday felt like a good day.

And the speech - words that had the potential to have more power in their speaking than their actual meaning - was really rather moving.

Particularly:

Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again, these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

Is Never Enough

As a Ferocious Fianna Fail-er once said.