I was down in our local “big” town this morning having the final fitment of my implants bridge. I’ll blog about the total experience (for those who want to give it a go) at a future juncture when I have more time: suffice to say it was a marathon, and I’m through the tape at last.

While down there – having unpacked all my CDs, tapes and vinyl over the last 48 hours – I popped into a local espace culturel hyper (whopping big leisure & comms centre) to buy a simple cassette/CD player….I already have a vintage B&O deck.

They cost threepence these days, and are pretty good. But being tight as usual, I asked the assistant which expo (display) version might have money off, and he gave me the French equivalent of “Dunno Squire”. So I suggested he might find out. With a slight roll of the eyes, he wandered off – and after ten minutes, I asked his colleague if he had phone-connection to the bloke. Yes, he said…but doing nothing. Could you phone him, I prompted. “If I must” was the message on his face.

The news from the Front was yes, he’d found a box for the item. What’s the price, I enquired gently. “Dunno Squire” came the reply. Can you find out, and yes, you must. The offer was €14 off a €79 item. It was in near-perfect nick, so I agreed: could he come straight back with the box?

Well no, he couldn’t….because to give money off an expo,it was necessary to change the barcode: and under the shop’s fab new barcode system, that would take 20 minutes. So I thanked him through the medium of a terse smile, and left.

However, while I was hanging around waiting for the knuckle-dragger to return, I watched several enormous TV screens (‘Now in ultra-upate HD’) playing out the contents of three channels and three movie DVDs. All six were showing US films. Two were gratuitous special-effect horror rubbish, and the other four were American Hero saves the world gratuitously violent special-effect war films. In two cases, not a single actor – male or female – was unarmed. In one film, to my dismay, Robert Redford had a cameo role. What TF was he doing appearing in such an utterly sh*t production?

Three words sum up the output: nasty, aggressive, and mindless.

So from these events, I extrapolated the following conclusions:

1. Large businesses and their technology suppliers have completely lost the plot.

2. French sales assistants in such companies are profoundly unaware there ever was a plot, and that French retailers are getting closer every week to bankruptcy.

3. Hollywood’s output has almost entirely lost any subtlety, enlightenment, plot nuance and creativity it ever had. It is nonstop neoliberal bread and circuses lowest common denominator vomit, there to put bums on seats and regurgitate dishonest plot-remakes of the once finer fare offered by Greats like Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman, Jimmy Stewart, Tim Robbins, Sterling Hayden, Bogdanavich, Capra, Spielberg and Huston.

4. If ‘western’ audiences – especially males – are being exposed to this kind of pornography almost 24/7, is it any wonder that their discernment tackle has been vapourised, and their ability to believe any old propaganda bollocks augmented to a frightening degree?

So that was all a bit depressing; but it did serve to remind me that the problem is not political, it is econo-cultural and constitutional: until the moneylenders’ closed shop of bought politicians – and the thus inevitable neoliberal garbage continues to be both spouted and believed – we will never get back to a communal society in which local goods and first class education can rebuild the ethical values our ‘civilisation’ so clearly lacks….on so many dimensions.

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Ultimately, we are all curate’s eggs. The last seven months have seen the realisation of a dream I simply couldn’t sell to my second wife. It wasn’t the reason we parted, but in a way it was part of the problem.

Earlier, she found it hard to sell me the idea of a proper, grown-up slate roof here as opposed to the dysfunctional chestnut-wood slats we had. I’m eternally grateful to her for succeeding in that endeavour.

My first wife didn’t want to sell our London house at the 1989 peak. Doing so would’ve made us another £150,000 – a lot of money in those days. (She didn’t want to buy the house in the first place – but we did treble our money).

On the other hand, when I was almost persuaded to stay at ad agency JWT in 1974, she persuaded me to move to smaller, upcoming agency CDP. It changed my life, and added huge value to my professional career.

I’m sure all exes of all shapes sizes and genders can find lots of reasons why they were always right, and their partners always wrong. On the other hand, my two marriages lasted nearly forty years between them, and to those who dismiss them as “failed”, I say “bollocks”. Everything is a learning curve: if we listen to the opposing view, we learn exponentially more. If we try to censor or deny it, we learn nothing and continue to make simple mistakes.

NB all Islamists, neoliberalists, Marxists, fascists, feminists etc etc.

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There was a wonderful Nazi-Soviet clash moment in the wider world today. Top Tory Nasty Shocker Francis Maude wants to curtail use of Trade Union contributions for political ends, whereas his Coalition ‘partners’ haha the Liberal Democrats want them to stay in place.

Maude wants to starve the Labour Party of funds, but leave the Tories free to take donations and support from such lovely people as Bovis, the City of London, and Lord Ashcroft.

The LibDems want to condemn the Tories’ censorious approach by demanding an equal right to attract similarly unpleasant unelected power seekers, for example and for the sake of argument, Scottish convicted fraudster Michael Brown, who between 10 February and 30 March 2005 donated £2.4 million to the Liberal Democrats.

As we saw yet again recently, Radical Reformer and somewhat fishy Ukipper Nigel Farage is happy to take munneeee from anyone who’ll give it: no names no pack drill eh, Squire – saves on the paperwork.

Well clearly then, all these people have the greatest contentment of the greatest number of ordinary citizens in mind. Of course they do, my dears – of course they do.

Related: Why are we in the Middle East when we should be in the Midlands?