KEY POINTS:
Shame on you if you don't spend every last razoo (and if you could buy Fiji, that would help too)
"Send a gunboat!!!"
"We haven't got one."
"Then send a lifeboat."
"Umm, it's on the gunboat, sir."
"Great Scott! Then send ... ahhh, a sternly worded message.
In a waterproof bottle!!!!"
And such is the pass to which we have come, alas. Ours is an age of insular impotence, a parlous and powerless time when we can't even send a lifeboat - let alone a gunboat - to Fiji.
There's no way we'll ever put the frighteners on that frightful fellow who's frightening our fellows when we've got nothing to rattle more threatening than ... a rattle.
Little wonder, then, in their sabreless shame, that our glorious leaders have decided to use courses at Massey University as a weapon of mass destruction - which they almost certainly are, but that's not the point.
University courses are meant to rot the minds of gullible yoof, not sap the will of the bounders at (illegal) regime HQ in Suva. So denying some scholar access to the mendacities of marketing at Massey simply won't do, Colonel. Something more bellicose is required; a gesture of greater military significance, like sending Sue Bradford in a Bedford (or Sue Bedford in a Bradford).
Not that we will - the Bedfords are probably in America for their annual monthly overhaul.
It's all a far cry from that splendid epoch when Britannia ruled the waves and notions of patriotism and duty ruled our brainwaves too.
Happily, while Fiji may offer no constructive outlet for any residual jingoistic impulses that linger in the collective unconscious, there is one way those of us still stirred by tales of pluck and derring-so can make our Boy's Own Paper fantasies real.
It's an unlikely way, but a way nonetheless. And one we should grasp as a yeoman would a pike or Robin Hood his sturdy bow.
Not that Robin Hood is the sort of chap who should be held up as a role model in this particular context since the opportunity to fly the flag and serve the Empire involves doing precisely what he didn't do - namely, put things on lay-by and spend up a storm.
And that's the clarion call, folks! That's what we've got to do. Spend like there's no tomorrow - or there won't be. It's not "England expects" any more, it's the Economy. That's what's doing the expecting these days and it is our duty - our duty - to heed the Economy's call.
Someone called The Fed in America said so this week when he/she/it slashed interest rates to 0.25 per cent. Damn it, that's free money in any man's army. So get some. Now! And spend the flaming lot!
It behoves us to do this. The Americans have said so. Kevin Rudd has said so. He's giving all the little Aussie battlers a tax cut on the express condition that they squander every last razoo before Christmas.
And so should we. Heck, it's not like it's hard or anything. Sure, there was a time when "doing your duty" generally meant something unpleasant, like "going over the top". But "going over the top" in a shop is a doddle. You just get two of everything - and three for the people you don't like!
"There are no atheists in frock sales" must be our battle cry - and none in fridge sales, food sales nor fire sales neither. There are the barricades we must man and we will find those barricades waiting for us with open arms at our nearest retail outlet.
They don't just need reinforcements, these folk, they need three shillings and four pence. In fact, they need more than three shillings and four pence. They need 3000 and four pence; 3 million and four pence even.
They need every last cent of your money, sunshine, if they are to repulse the global fiscal meltdown now threatening to conquer our confidence and vanquish our hope.
So get cracking, loyal members of the 5th Consumer Corp. It's onward Christmas soldiers as it's never been before! Just forget your Mitre tension, go and join the Caughey-lition, head to your local Warhouse, fight the menace of recession!
We've all got someone special for whom a solar-powered weedeater or 17kg of caviar would be just the ticket. So buy 'em both! To put in the Beemer to go in the garage right next to the en suite beside the ride-on mower.
Buy the lot! For your country, for crying out loud!
Now there will, of course, be a few pallid and wimpish souls in this instinctively puritan land who argue such extravagance isn't what the season's all about. These folk will urge restraint and counsel the giving of intangible gifts, like love. For what it's worth, that doesn't work but, more to the point, it doesn't help the economy either, soldiers.
Which is what we've got to do. It's our duty to enlist in the retail regiment, pack up our troubles in old kit bag and spend, spend, spend.
Cor blimey, Sarge, with a bit of luck we could even buy Fiji - and kill two birds with one loan!
