Spit and Polish

I know there's a credit crunch. I know there's a food crisis. Is there also a shoe polish crisis?

Occasionally my commute takes me past the main financial employment centres in London, via London Bridge and Canary Wharf. And only occasionally do I see someone wearing properly polished shoes. And I don't just mean that most are wearing suede or other fabric which doesn't shine. I mean proper shoes, worn with a proper business suit, in some cases expensive business suits, rounded off with dull, or even worse, dirty, footwear. What happened to taking pride in one's appearance, and, for that matter, attention to detail.

Is this a trivial concern? I don't think so. It demonstrates the continuing descent of our country into the gutter, the abandonment of once cherished consensual norms for a one-size fits all, we're all chavs now conformity to the lowest common denominator. I mean, why bother polishing your shoes? For one thing, they'll only get dirty again; for another, that twenty minutes spent polishing you could be concentrating on Big
Brother/Strictly Come Dancing/Celebrity Shoe Salesman(delete as appropriate).