Saturday 3 December 2011

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'.

19 comments:

Ralph Musgrave said...

“Cameron is pretending anyone cares what he thinks…” You think there is anything resembling “thought” going on in Cameron’s head when it comes to economics? Oh dear, oh dear.

I suggest you read an article in the Independent by Johann Hari entitled “Why are we silent as Cameron preaches Voodoo economics?”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-why-are-we-silent-as-cameron-preaches-voodoo-economics-1691107.html

The article seemed to be unavailable when I tried a few minutes ago: presumably a temporary problem with the Independent server.

JuliaM said...

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

Heh! ;)

dave h said...

Even if you get paid in € try to reclaim expenses in ALT+156.

Anonymous said...

But ... but ... but ... I thought that "cast iron" Dave promised us a referendum on any new treaties or on any treaty changes ... How can this be? Pleeese don't tell me that he was (gasp!) lying??? Before an election? No! Surely not!

Ah no, they're calling it an Emergency Stability Pact, not a "treaty" or a change to any of the ones we've got.

So that's OK, then.

Oldrightie said...

They do understand the nightmare hence giving themselves a fig leaf of immunity.

http://bit.ly/oraGcF

david "the jackdaw" cameron said...

no worries, i have contingency plans to locate the deepest most secure bank-vault and lock myself inside...no-one's going to bother looking in there - for anything.

Dioclese said...

The Krauts want the currency to collapse so they can buy up the countries concerned for next to nothing.

banned said...

So how do you do "€" without copy and paste?

Likewise, I remember being skint, though not so skint as you. Skint meant not being able to drink as much as I wanted to of an evening.

Never mind, for many years Mr Barclaycard kindly bailed me out and when he ran out of funds up stepped Mastercard and then some outfit from the Cayman Isles or somewhere with yet more Rescue.

Strangely the more deficit that I ran up the more begging letters I got offering to fund my wayward lifestyle. Then the penny dropped and I paid the bastards back in full and with much interest. They didn't like that for some reason.

Hari's gone said...

Ralph..

"I suggest you read an article in the Independent by Johann Hari entitled “Why are we silent as Cameron preaches Voodoo economics?”."

You obviously missed the big hooha Ralph.
Hari is in 're education' in South America somewhere for plagiarism and telling lies about other journalists.
He's been deleted by the lefties.

Ripper said...

"So how do you do "€" without copy and paste?"

ALT+0128

Tony said...

Fantastic blog post mate, nailed it in one!

Beware of Geeks bearing GIFs said...



Press ALT key followed by 0128

Use it now while it has some value!

Microsoft will be reserving it for the Weimar Republic currency shortly.

Maturecheese said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Maturecheese said...

Dam, that was supposed to be an upside down pyramid as in ponzi and I can't delete it

Pat Nurse MA said...

ALT 0128 doesn't work for me. Think copy and paste will suffice if I write about the € before it's gone :>)

I concur about skintness having lived similarly on the cold chip and half eaten breadline LI

Maturecheese said...

I see it has delweted after all. It was an attempt at a pyramid out of €'s

Leg-iron said...

Ctrl-Alt-4 works for me, even though it's not printed on the keyboard it must be in the system somewhere.

€ Yes, holding ALT while typing 0128 works too. It appears when I let go of ALT.

So now I have two ways to make the symbol appear. Let's hope it's around long enough for me to make some use of this new-found skill!

Al said...

So now I have two ways to make the symbol appear. Let's hope it's around long enough for me to make some use of this new-found skill!

Let's hope it's not though.

Amusing Bunni said...

Hopefully the wretched symbol will crash & burn, and the only time you need to use it, Leggy, is when you write about it's demise!

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