It’s All Greek To Me!
I like Greece and the Greek people for that matter, even if they do smoke too much!
I also like the euro and on the whole think it is a good thing and we should have joined, just like we should have joined Schengen.
The trouble with Greece is that they don’t like rules and especially those imposed by others on their economy. One Greek told me that’s why they all smoke in restaurants despite it being against the law.
So perhaps their economy wasn’t strong enough for Greece to join the single currency, but for a few years it gave them a lot of cheap money, just as it did Ireland. So now that the lenders want it back, there’s problems all round. Robert Peston of the BBC analyses it all here.
I’m no economist, so where it will all end, I do not know. But I am a qualified control engineer and I do know that the Greek economy has all the stability of a bicycle with the handles stuck either turning to the left or right.
Just like the bicycle, the Greek economy will have an awful crash.
The villians really are not the Greeks here, but the politicians who wanted a single currency and didn’t really think through about how to make it work properly. If the right rules had been in place from the first day, then there would have been no need for a bailout of Greece, Ireland or Portugal.
I suspect now, that if it was that stable, then we would have joined the euro. Or we would have at least tried to!
Would Anybody Ever Use Western Union?
I had four spam e-mails this morning with a title of “You have $250,000.00 Lodged in our Western Union” and a body of “RESPOND FOR DETAILS”
I like the fact that they call it our Western Union!
Does it mean they own it or there’s another one, we don’t know about? The e-mails came from a supposedly Peruvian .pe e-mail address.
Western Union’s name is now so discredited that I and I suspect any serious person, who uses the Internet, would ever use it. I have never used the company in the past and probably never will in the future.
Although looking at the financial results of the company, they seem to be doing quite well.
A Thought About Pensions
Are the Unions attacking the wrong target in the Government over pensions?
If I look at my pension, it’s not as big as it could be and that is probably because the advice I’ve received over the years about it could have been much better in places. It has been managed by three or four providers, a couple of whom have been taken over. It is now being managed by a friend, who works for a respected institution, but getting it there involved large amounts of paperwork and slowness on the part of the previous company.
But I’ve been lucky compared to some of my friends, who have suffered downright incompetence, or were unlucky enough to have chosen the likes of Equitable Life.
So is the problems with paltry pensions, not so much the rules, but the management by the companies and individuals involved? I know this doesn’t apply to pensions provided by the government, but poor private pensions, must mean that there is pressure for everybody to come in line.
Remember too, that when pensions came in, it was expected that those receiving them would only live a couple of years at most. Now most live a lot longer.
But if you think the problems are bad here, then just look at some European companies, where pensions are funded totally from taxation.
Am I About to Pay for my Olympic Tickets?
When I log in to my Visa account, transactions don’t appear immediately. I do find this a bit strange, but it is the way it happens. After all if I draw money out of a cashpoint and then look at my account on-line, you can see the transaction virtually immediately.
So this morning, it would appear that there are some transactions to be processed on my Visa account for about £800. I did order about £3,300 of Olympic tickets, which may seem a lot, but I’ll never see another one and I knew I’d only get a percentage. So it looks like I may get about a quarter!
Strauss-Kahn is a Disgrace
The Times today carries an article under the title of Love bomb that failed to go off, which describes in detail how he pursued a French reporter working in London. I’m not quoting from the article, as it is copyright and although it is in a respectable newspaper, it might not be 100% true. I’m no lawyer, but I would feel that Strauss Kahn did enough to fall foul of The Harassment Act.
If I or any other person, behaved like the article alleges, I would certainly have had the police at my door.
If he is that desperate for women, then he can always phone up and get one delivered on a plate wrapped to whatever taste he prefers.
Type “Strauss Kahn escort” into Google and you find this.
On a positive side perhaps Strauss Kahn and Fred Goodwin should form themselves a bank called the Wunch Bank. They deserve each other.
Those That Live By The Shredder Die By The Shredder
It is often said that everything comes to him who waits. The partial lifting of the so-called banker’s, Fred Goodwin‘s super-injunction, shows that no matter how tight you jam the lid on a can of beans, eventually the pressure builds and it blows up in your face.
There are some choice headlines.
- Daily Mail – Sir Fred, adultery and the public interest.
- Independent – Goodwin’s affair at bank exposed after peer breaks gagging order
- Daily Mirror – No good in these gags
- The Sun – Fred the Bed
There’s a lot more.
The tone is set by this from the Daily Mail.
While RBS was undergoing the biggest collapse in British corporate history, he was busy carrying out an extra-marital affair with a senior colleague involved in the strategic direction of the bank.
Truly, there can be no doubting the public interest in disclosing Sir Fred’s conduct. The collapse of RBS, under his control, led to a £45billion bailout by taxpayers.
Thousands upon thousands lost their jobs and businesses in the financial devastation which followed.
If Fred had had an affair with a Page 3 bimbo, that wouldn’t have mattered so much to the bank and in the end UK taxpayers. The tabloids might have made us laugh as they did years ago with Ron Halpern, a long forgotten businessman in the 1960s or 1970s, but because he had an affair with a senior executive, it meant that his crazy policies were able to get through board and other meetings. I had problems years ago with a company, where I served on a technical committee that had a husband and wife on it. We all had to convince two people who slept together of the correct course of action. It was not easy and the company suffered.
Two people having a relationship in an organisation is rarely a good idea!
Fred Goodwin was knighted in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to banking. So at least we can’t blame that one totally on Prudence, as he wasn’t Prime Minister until four years later. It will be interesting to see in twenty or so years time, when the details of Sir Fred’s knighthood are released, what dicussions took place on his suitability for such an award.
If ever there was a case for a knighthood to be taken away, then Sir Fred is at the top of the list.
Strauss-Kahn Reporting in the United States and France
I have read this enlightening report on Bloomberg about the difference of the reporting of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in New York, in the United States and France.
Here’s a typical couple of paragraphs.
For the U.S., the public’s right to know about an arrest is paramount, while in France the privacy — even of a criminal suspect — takes precedence.
“For the moment, the French media has been very restrained” in avoiding saying or writing anything to imply guilt, said Dominique de Leusse de Syon, a member of Strauss- Kahn’s legal team. “The problem is the images, whether they convey Mr. Strauss-Kahn as guilty.”
In other words anything goes in France, if you are French.
After all, the French published any old tosh they could find about Princess Diana, when at the time several high-profile French politicians were as crooked as a hurling stick.
Strauss-Kahn may indeed be innocent, but then seeing the allegations that have appeared in respected newspapers, he doesn’t appear to hsve been a saint in matters sexual.
Bedbugs In New York
Two stories from New York catch the eye today; Bedbugs bite into the US economy and the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
The latter of course would have like to be a bedbug, but didn’t go about it in the right way. As he was one of the most important of the wunch of the great and good trying to sort out Greece, we’re all going to pay for his indiscretions. I do hope the man gets a sentence in jail, even if it is less than what the prosecutors seem to be demanding, as he seems to be rather a serial whatsit and we don’t want people like him in public life, if all the stories are true. After all, how can he make a proper decious, if all he’s thinking about is the next legover.
But then the French see things differently and the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair could all lead to some serious problems between the United States and France.
What is so stupid about all this, is that several times in my life, when I’ve stayed in top-class hotels alone, I’ve been offered serious ladies by the staff for my pleasure by the concierge or other staff. I’ve never taken them up on their offer, as I’m not that sort of person. I say person, as once in the Copley Plaza hotel in Boston, I was having a late night drink and talking to the barman, as one does, when he discretely fixed-up the lady at the other end of the bar, with someone twenty or so years her junior. All it took was one quick phone call on his part. And this was in a pre-mobile age. That lady incidentally was French and the barman said she was a regular customer.
So the French do do things differently.
Credit Where It is Due!
It is difficult these days to find what you need and when you do I think it should be rewarded by a small plug.
When I needed some pictures framed, an old friend of nearly forty years recommended that I try A + B Glass in Stoke Newington High Street, who do windows, mirrors, tabletops and picture framing. I’ve had quite a few reframed and they have certainly done as good a job as I’ve found and at a price that is very competitive to what I used to pay in Newmarket or Cambridge.
I would point to their web site, but they don’t have one. If you need A + B Glass, they are at 124, Stoke Newington High Street, N16 7NY with a phone number of 020-7254-4541. Here’s a picture.
A + B Glass and Framing, Stoke Newington
Since they have replaced three of my double-glazed panels in my windows, that had been broken when I bought the house. Again, friends said the price was very reasonable. They also came and measured one week, giving me an estimate at the time and then delivered and installed the new panes late the next. It was completely hassle free.
One thing that they do is give you a bill immediately, so you can do a transfer immediately over the Internet. I often think that one of the causes of bad cash flow in small businesses is their tardiness in sending out bills. So if it takes three months to arrive, you feel entitled to wait another three.
As I said in this post, if it’s a direct transfer and it fails, it usually isn’t your fault. Cheques have this amazing habit of getting lost in the post. Thatb is if you can find your cheque-book. But it seems that bank transfers are very difficult to lose on the Internet, unless someone makes a typo and then the system hopefully flags it up.
Greece Melts
I like the Greeks, but it would appear that the rest of Europe will soon lose patience with them.
They had yet another General Strike yesterday and it wasn’t peaceful and quiet.
The Times today says that a Greek default could provoke another banking crisis. Certainly, the amount we’ve lent to Greece borders on the suicidal.
There was also another report last night, where it was said that Greeks were drawing out their money in cash and sending it abroad to safer countries.
I think we should all beware of giving gifts to Greeks.
The Anonymous Widower 