These are dark days, readers. The world is in economic uproar. A man with no experience in running the world is about to become President of the United States. My forecast is for an electoral college win of about 180 votes for Senator Obama and the required 60:40 Congressional majority for the Democrats, followed by the announcement of John Kerry as Secretary of State and the immediate collapse of civilisation.

Cash is King, which is not a bad thing. I happen to know Cash, who manages the Spot restaurant, and he'll make a good King. But for the rest of us, only gloom appears appropriate. Until the fog clears, it's hard to know what to tell you. Stay calm. Focus. Head down. Chin up. Belt tight. Get on with it.

This appeared to be the week in which we saw the first signs that the financial system might rediscover a degree of confidence in itself. In central London, I can report, shoppers were out in force. Just about everyone was toting giant bags full of merchandise. Even I had one.

It was as if nothing had happened financially. All those purchases were being made, as before, largely on credit.

What I couldn't tell was whether people were saying "What the hell" and lashing out to make themselves feel better, or whether shopping with such driving intensity is just what people do on a Tuesday afternoon.

It was a little scary, to be honest. Many of the consumers tramping along the streets had a glassy look to the eye, as if they had been hypnotised. "You are feeling needy", the swami might have said, and off they went to buy everything they saw.

I first experienced the vapid look and accompanying dogged determination to keep shopping while on a trip to the Edmonton Mall, the world's largest shopping centre (at the time, anyway. Something bigger must surely have been built since elsewhere).

A travelling companion suggested that the glassy-eyed look was caused by tranquillising gas, fed in through the air conditioning system.

In London, however, we were outdoors. This was mid-October, so it wasn't officially Christmas yet, but its shadow loomed across the great avenues of spending. From snippets of conversation and general observation, I was able to gauge that people were not Christmas shopping, more like benefiting from a last chance to do some shopping that wasn't Christmas shopping, before the serious Christmas shopping set in. Shopping people, as you know, are ker-razy.

Consumer spending is an important part of how the global economy works.

Business spending is the other category, and that too looks set to fall as companies draw in their horns and the US Government clampdown on AIG heralds a new age of Puritanism in business behaviour. Curious that a government, the least controlled spending machine ever invented, would somehow have shamed a business, which actually does the work, but then people will buy any old stuff you feed them. (Not you, reader, obviously.) People were certainly buying any old stuff on Oxford Street on Tuesday. Crisis? What crisis?

Since this will be my final visit to the UK before my passport runs out, I set aside a few days for obtaining a new one. My experiences may be of interest to British readers.

Obtaining a passport in Britain is now the most efficient government service in history. Passports can be had in two weeks, one week, or four hours, for differing fees. For Brits living outside the country, or anyone wanting a passport in a hurry, an appointment with a passport officer is required. This can be obtained by phoning the Passport Adviceline, on 0870 521 0410, at any time of the day or night, every day of the year.

Doubtful that it would work — it's Government, why would it? — I called them at 4:30 a.m.

An enormously helpful woman made an appointment for me on the next day that suited me, told me what to bring with me to the office, and how to get there. Her advice and attitude were flawless.

I subsequently had to cancel and rearrange the appointment: no problem. A helpful letter arrived the next day, confirming all the details. Somehow, the Passport Office had made the Post Office work too. Extraordinary.

Came the appointed time, I presented myself and — calamity! — the passport photos I'd had taken in Bermuda were no good. "For one thing, you're smirking," the chap at Passport Control said. "The photo is a little overexposed and you're wearing glasses. Plus, someone has stamped something on the back of the photo, and that's illegal."

You'd think that would mean I couldn't have a passport, but far from it. "Go down the corridor, and have some new photos taken by a machine there," the man said. "Then bring them back here." I did that, paid £123 (about $200) and was able to collect my new 10-year oversized passport just four hours later.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the new passport is biometric. It contains a computer chip and antenna. This requires me to launch into what once was known as commentary, but now falls into the category of an old-guy rant. Won't last too long.

First, a note of warning to Bermuda-resident Brits. With the new chip, the British authorities will have an exact record of your visits to the UK.

Make sure you count your days there and don't exceed the maximum, which is an average of 90 days over the current year and the three before it. I could write volumes on this, but I'll limit myself to one column if anyone asks for it (crombie@northrock.bm).

I will spare you my views on the implications of such population control mechanisms, but I will say that I am appalled and you should be, too.

The reason the Brits have made the passport process so efficient is that they are building a database that will draw information from every other database.

That, plugged into the more than 4,000 observation cameras mounted all over the country and the identity cards to be introduced in the next couple of years, will offer a future British Government total supervisory power over its subjects: their whereabouts, spending habits, associates, political opinions, inside leg measurements, etc.

Britons never, never, never ... forget it. Britain is now the most highly controlled country in the world. The battle for freedom is lost, my friends.

That's right, Grandpa, you fought World War II for nothing.

Like everywhere else in Britain, I am now a No Smirking zone.