The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership may sound boring, but it could affect everything from your income to the food you eat and the state of the NHS. Here is a beginners’ guide to the controversial trade deal“Sometimes,” says a character in David Foster Wallace’s novel The Pale King, “what’s important is dull. Sometimes it’s work. Sometimes the important things aren’t works of art for your entertainment.” It is worth bearing that in mind as we consider TTIP, the most boring thing we’re supposed to get angry about since – ooh … was it PFI schemes that nobbled hospitals, eviscerated schools and left Britain £222bn in debt? Or was it the asymmetrical constitutional ramifications inherent in the West Lothian question? Or George Osborne’s incomprehensible pension changes involving auto-enrolment annuities, tax wrappers, pots and draw-downs? Christine Lagarde’s last press conference about the Greek debt crisis? Maybe it was your last mobile phone bill.Add up the boredom you experienced on each of those occasions, multiply the result by the international coefficient of tedium (which, as you know, is 27.5) and that’s how bored the international trade deal known as TTIP will make you. Continue reading...
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