We have to make hard decisions on debt. Why can’t the Government? By Gerard Howlin

BACK then, red ink was the new red carpet.

The more slavered over your bank statement was the more important you were. Only wimps were “in the black”. Debt, and lots of it, was macho. You didn’t have balls unless you were up for it. It was a lad’s thing but a lot of women were into it too. “Flipping”, “rolling” and “leveraging” were the rules of the game. If you weren’t in, you couldn’t win.

Now the same know-alls, all thin lips and crossed legs, who told you to jump in are tut-tutting when you get pulled under. You can’t open a newspaper or turn on the telly without some armchair-general banging on about the madness of it. Worse still are the wans being preachy and angry about the badness of it. You can’t even sin in peace and private.