Epitaph for a currency.

€

Heh. It works. Thanks for all the tips on how to get that wretched symbol to show up. It does feel a little like learning Latin - all very interesting but likely to be of limited use in the future.

Might as well do it again while there's still a currency with that symbol.   €

There is much hoo-hah in the €urozone because they're skint. I'm skint too, but skint is a relative term. Currently, 'skint' means I can't buy single malts and have to reserve money to be sure the bills are paid. That's not the 'absolute skint' I've experienced before. There was a time when I had nowhere to live and would follow drunks at a safe distance in the hope they would abandon their fish and chips unfinished and I didn't care if they'd gone cold.

It would be awful to live like that now. Hardly anyone puts salt on them any more.

So my current level of 'skint' still has a roof over my head and no immediate prospect of losing it. Why? Well, I learned something from my youthful homeless period. I learned that I didn't like it one bit. It was, to put it gently, a period of such utter shittiness that I will eat my neighbour's children before I submit to it again. And we are talking about some non-Halal and possibly toxic children here. Even Tesco wouldn't stock the meat from them.

When I was new to the world of earnings I would watch my bank balance fall to zero and then below and think 'I should get around to doing something about that one day'. That was the attitude than led me to the absolute zero on the Kelvin scale of skintiness. It was a stupid attitude.

As I recovered I started worrying when the money approached zero. Then I started to worry when the balance went below a hundred. Then a thousand. It has never reached ten thousand and isn't likely to so the below-1000 concern is probably my limit. It's good enough. I rein in spending, ease off the malts and the gadgets and turn from buying crap on eBay to selling it there before the balance gets dangerously low. It keeps me warm and fed and alive and out of debt. The mortgage is still my only debt so although I don't have much money, I don't owe much either. There's no point having very much of it anyway, it's getting more worthless by the day. Once we hit Weimar levels I'll be able to pay off the mortgage with the proceeds of one book.

All those politicians, all the EU officials, seem to still be at that 'borrow it, spend it, bugger it' stage that landed me on the streets all those years ago. I learned from those mistakes. It seems they have not.

The Eurozone is falling apart. There is no more money but still they spend. They can't borrow any more so they're likely to just print some.

Cameron is pretending anyone cares what he thinks and is in talks that will end up with us handing over money to prop up Hitler's dream of a Germany-controlled Europe. Repatriation of powers? Won't happen. A referendum on the inevitable new treaty to allow Angela Merkin to control every country's budget whether they use the €uro or not? No chance. The Forehead will decide for us because he knows that nobody intelligent will agree. Fortunately for him he has ensured that nobody intelligent is in government.

When I had that attitude I ended up homeless. When Cameron and his EU cronies have that attitude we all end up homeless. Except them.

The Euro will probably collapse and that won't be good for us either. This mess makes the Brown Gorgon's fiscal policy look almost sane. The EU has never had its accounts in order. If my accounts were in that kind of shambles the taxman would prosecute but Cameron is happy to do business with, and kowtow to, an organisation that makes Al Capone's look legitimate.

What the hell is he thinking? Let's have a Romulus Crowe quote - 'Do I know what you think? I'm still wondering whether'.

It's all been a twenty-year-old's first taste of independence and income that he thought would go on forever. That rude awakening when the income stopped has simply not happened to the Eurospenders. They went below zero a long time ago and they have suffered no consequences so they just keep on borrowing and spending.

As an individual, the opportunity to keep borrowing dried up pretty fast. As for the government, they kept borrowing until they owed more money than exists and are only now finding that the lenders are saying 'no'.

It came as a shock to me, so I can see that it's come as  a shock to them too.

I owed levels that could be paid back, and were. I became, and remain, free of debt (mortgage excepted but I'm working on it) They now owe levels that can never be repaid because there isn't enough actual value on the planet to repay it.

So they think we'll pay it for them.

No.

Time for Cameron to learn how to play 'chase the chip bag'.