A Trillion Pounds and the Inner Magpie

I'm sure the combination of short days, dark nights, expensive heating, and...wait for it...shiny, sparkly, dazzling shop window displays have something to do with my tendency to breed Visa cards (and bills). I can't help it.

Despite all best intentions of frugality, despite drawing up a precise Christmas budget every November, somehow my Januarys are always spent in a fog of bank statements containing red numbers.

My inner magpie simply likes sparkly things, and is therefore lured into Fenwicks, Debenhams, every online shop that screams 'free shipping!'. My inner magpie ousts my inner miser, telling her that fifty quid for a toddler's T-shirt at Fenwicks is perfectly reasonable. OK, not reasonable, but it's such a shiny T-shirt....

I wonder how many of us have an inner magpie? Has this ominously-hued (figurative) bird had anything to do with our national debt which, apparently, by the time my daughter reaches the tender age of nine, will be to the tune of a trillion pounds? How many zeros is that? More importantly (I hear you scream), what affect will this have on the future generation? Will Christmas always be shiny?

I think not. But turtledoves are on the horizon; maybe, this Christmas, the (fiscally weak) United Kingdom will eschew it's 'buy now, pay in 2015' mentality and appreciate sparkly things of a 0% nature: ownership, accountability, peace on earth. Hopefully.