Jim Hopkins: Best to keep calm and carry on breeding

Never mind talk of a double-dip recession, we need to right the population pyramid. Photo / Kenny Rodger.

It's like having the biggest piece of luggage in the world fall out of the locker and on to your head. Except there's no one to abuse, no emergency slide to activate, no beers to grab and no boyfriend to go home to.

And that, boys and girls, is a double-dip recession. (Well, it isn't, really. It's actually a tortured metaphor but let's press on.)

Just when you thought the bumpy flight was over and the turbulence was done, just when you thought the terminal was close and everything would soon be back to normal, Thud, Kerplunk, Whammo, the flamin' global financial crisis baggage scones us on the noggin again.

Alas, because we're in an economy and not on a plane (Eeek! that metaphor again) we don't become Steven Slaters, feted as folk heroes on Facebook by 30,000 fanatical fans.

We don't get adoring fan messages or a phone call from the bank saying we've won a $2 million no-repayment loan. We just become gloomy all over again. Our mood double-dips. Down the slide we go, not to the safety of the tarmac but into another morass. If we could afford a sword, we'd fall on it.

Because we're doomed. Stuffed. Done for. It's as simple as that. China's cooled, America's croaked, the Poms are dog tucker, we're Greeks who haven't realised it yet - and that's just this week.

Heck, even Paul Holmes thinks we're down the gurgler, up the creek, in the pooh and over the hill, so it must be true. The fat lady has sung - though no one was listening. Oh, well, c'est la vie. Turn off the life support, nurse. Let us go quietly.

No. Let's not go quietly. Let's rage against the dying of the light. Let's swim against the tide.

Let's stiffen our lips, straighten our backs, pop in our ill-fitting dentures and whistle our cares away.

There is a way through this. And remember, you heard it here first - quite possibly because it's a total load of bollocks but if it's not and the serious wallies start saying the same thing in a few years' time, you can smile and declare, "I knew that."

See, the world fiscal meltdown thingee is a symptom as well as a cause. There are forces afoot beyond mere money.

Yes, we can map the stark raving gibbering loony decisions, political and financial, that got us into this pickle. But something more fundamental has also played its part, something that money - especially credit - has helped to mitigate.

For the first time in human history, our population pyramid is upside down. The thick bit's at the top, the pointy bit's at the bottom. Don't tell the feminists this, they'll garrotte you, but we're running out of babies.

That's what "an ageing population" really means - too many old geezers, not enough rug rats.

Enter money, our saviour, hurrah! For years, no, decades, easy credit has been a proxy for extra people. It's bridged the gap, taken up slack, primed the pump, fuelled the furnace, revved the economic engine. To keep factories going and economies growing, you need customers.

If you've got three customers, they can each buy one widget. If you've got one customer, they have to buy three.

That's where credit comes in. Or has, till now. But, with the credit spiggot well and truly off, with the dollar gusher plugged, we must find another way out of this fine mess.

Happily, there is one.

Together we can do it - provided we do it together. When the going gets tough, the tough get ... bonking. Yes, bonking. Breed, baby, breed. Stop slacking, get cracking. Let the babies boom.

Let there be showers of sprogs to fertilise the arid soil of an ageing population. Or there'll be no one to pay for the walking frames all those drooling hippies will very shortly need.

That's right. Us. The drooling hippies. We've run out of money right when we need it most. And it's happening around the world. Just when the boomers are ready for the pension, the well's run dry.

A fine and fitting irony, some would say, but irony won't pay for the incontinence pads. First world governments have no choice.

Sooner or later - some are doing it already - they will have to buy babies. Getting the population pyramid the right way up is the only effective long-term solution.

Pump priming, public works, budget cuts, will help. But if we want a permanent fix, the structural remedy is more people.

So, to the boudoir, dear friends. With our backs to the mattress and our faces on the pillow, let's show the politicians we're ready to do our bit.

Ask not what the economy can do for you ... Onward and upward, my hearties. Let us be the breeders the future requires. To hell with those who squeal, "No new oil and no coal" and probably, "No new people too." They can lug their own Luddite luggage into oblivion.

There are babies to make. And only we can make them!