Playing Footsie - With People's Lives!

Buy, buy, buy - bye, bye!

When I was alive, many years ago, the Financial Times Ordinary Share Index - the FTSE, or "Footsie" as it is known colloquially - was only ever mentioned, incredibly briefly, at the end of a newscast. A meaningless figure which was either up, down, or unchanged. That was that. No further mention. Who cared? We imagined it must be of some interest to a handful of bowler-hatted, pinstripe-suited pillocks in Esher or somewhere similar but it did not trouble the rest of us.
That other colloqialsim, "The City", only got an airing in Ealing-style comedy films where an army of said bowler-hatted and pinstripe-suited clones were portrayed, marching in line to their train to get into central London, a la The Rebel. They were there to be parodied, after all, and so they were.
My God, how that has changed. Every other bloody programme is either a "business" one or contains more "business" information than a female virgin should contain semen. That is bad enough but how do these "business" types react to news which actually concerns the rest of us? In exactly the opposite way to the way we do, that's how. For instance, you often hear exchanges on these programmes along the lines of "Well, Nigel, good news for ArcherNazi Inc. They've just made 48,398 work clones redundant, on the scrapheap, penniless, without the prospect of a decent future for either themselves or their families, so the stock has soared. Up 9.45609872 points by the close of play today. Great, super, wonderful." Similarly, you might hear "Bad news for Upthestackyougoshithead PLC. They've just lost an industrial tribunal against a 4-year-old urchin who claimed constructive dismissal because be died after being forcibly rammed up a chimney in Bolton and starved to death. Their value is down 9.45609872 points on the 'Footsie' today."
What is going on? This parallel universe seems to be accepted. This bloody Blue Peter-style appealprogress-ometer goes up and down like Michael Jackson's bottom in a creche. Misery for the masses = "Up ya' go, index." Piffling but totally justified gain for the work clones and customers = "See ya' in Hell, nomarks."
This "Footsie" business is just a gigantic bloody boardgame for those all-too-many wankers out there whose only interest in life is money. You know, the types who say "I left school at 3 with only a green swimming badge as a qualification but was a 'miwionairre' by the time I was 8. No, as it happens, I haven't got 2 fucking braincells to rub together and I do know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, as it 'appens, but who cares? Sod the rest of you"?
This "game" costs people their livelihoods, their happiness, their security, sometimes their lives - and that is all it is, A FUCKING GAME!!! When you get onto top table you can up the stakes by buying things which don't exist or by betting on whether people will feel "confident" about something in three years' time. You end up with the obscenity of some braindead kid from some Home Counties grief hole playing with millions of millions of pounds in the Far East as though it was a fruit machine and then "tilt" flashes up, he loses the lot and the whole thing comes tumbling down.
I want Grantham to be listed on the Stock Exchange. When residents joyously celebrate the birth of offspring the future of the whole town is thrown into jeopardy and the prospect of a take-over and asset strip looms large by those venture capitalists in Boston. When there is a mass cull of the populace and everyone is thrown on the dole then the future of the place is safeguarded.