Banking Crisis: The Irish Question
Ever since Cromwell and many others knocked it about a bit (quite murderously and a lot in reality) Ireland has been a bit of a thorny question for mainland Brits.
Now, it’s getting very serious. Where the IRA may have failed to kill, bomb, terrorise and generally drive out absentee British landowners, investors, soldiers and those loutish Brit tourists…the Euro may do just that.
The Dublin Boat Show is running this week. There is deep despondency and resentment on the trade stands as the truth bites. Sterling has slipped so far down against the Euro (Ireland dropped the punt Éireannach in favour of the Euro in 1999) that four caffeine and tonnes of sugar-based soft drinks almost bankrupted one stand staffer. He reports he hasn’t had a drink all week since his mortgage company will not give him a further advance to buy a pint of Guinness.
Dark days indeed. A prominent British Marine Trades official was heard to mutter something about the “bogtroters” punching above their fiscal weight. Old prejudices die hard.
Meanwhile, back in the Toy Town which was once known as The City of London comes confirmation of the news Anorak gave you 18 long, terrifying, months ago as Northern Rock started its inexorable slide into the oil-flecked, cold and grey Northumbria sea, eventually crashing to join Dogger Bank on the coal-stained bed.
WE told you then and the Anorak alarm bells were shrilling… There were whispers Anorak was alarmist…
Too right–
Britain’s national debt will rise by £1 trillion – to levels equivalent to immediately after the Second World War – once the monstrous debts of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group (that’s while skipping over Northern Millstone) are included.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says it will list the liabilities of both reeling part-nationalised banks on the UK’s balance sheet, adding between £1 trillion – one thousand billion – and £1.5 trillion to public-sector net debt.
..and still no prosecutions?
Time to bring back the Gallows Gate tradition at the entrance to all City finance sectors?
Will Gordon Brown’s official departure portrait set to hang in No !0 Downing Street show him dancing wildly to the skirl of the pipes as London’s banking elite continue to give the taxpayer the finger while burning £50 notes and shredding the paper trail?
Posted: 20th, February 2009 | In: Money Comments (10) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
- SoDak-GhostDog on India Castrates Slumdogs
- SoDak-GhostDog on Sarkozy And Brown: A Love Story
- SoDak-GhostDog on Interview With Survior Of James Arthur Ray’s Sedona Sweat Lodge
- Cheryl on US Forced Fort Hood Murderer Nidal Hasan To Join The Army
- Cheryl on US Forced Fort Hood Murderer Nidal Hasan To Join The Army
February 24th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Sounds like bliss! I might fly over and see how you’re getting on
February 24th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Africa, FSBFP, starting with a stopover in Mombasa of unknown length, 36 hours in Cape Town and then sailing back to England via not many ports, presumably because west Africa is not yet big on the tourist development front.
Though of course, Namibia is now fashionable, Ghana looks interesting, Cape Verde weird, Tenerife is Tenerife and I’ve never been to Lisbon before.
They call it an old fashioned line voyage, and I thought it would be a good place to breathe a lot of air whuch hasn’t been breathed by several thousand Londoners before me, though yellow fever would undoubtedly be a downside. The being waited on hand and foot is a definite upside…
February 24th, 2009 at 10:45 am
where are you going? Africa or the Americas?
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
If I had a drive, the job would be yours, FSBFP!
Make that, ‘If I had a drive and some money the job would be yours, FSBFP!!’
Alas, all I have to save the world with is plastic, so I have just acquired another credit card, which isn’t terribly difficult since I’ve banked with the same lot since I went to University. I can thus get the holiday interest free for the next year, and now all I have to do is find a swimsuit to fit my slowly shrinking self into, and threaten to murder the offspring if she takes any pictures of me before I revert to not wholly spherical.
Oh, and get a yellow fever vaccination, which I am not looking forward to…
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 am
I’ve ditched plastic for good ol cash just like the tried and tested irish tinkers. Do you want your drive done?
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Good for you, FSBFP! I’m glad somebody is; I think I’ve forgotten what real money looks like. Judging from the sepulchral gloom at the health club everyone else in the City is subsisting on a diet of plastic as well…
February 22nd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I’ve just sold my car for £50 on ebay - i’m rich i tell ya rich!
February 22nd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Crisis? What crisis?
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
And, still on the same continent, the loonie continues to dwindle as Canadian consumer prices fell for a fourth consecutive month in January, the longest stretch since the Great Depression, even though Stephen ‘We don’t need no stinkin’ economic stimulus’ Harper’s clone bit the bullet and offered up to $5.6 billion to General Motors to prevent Barack ‘Yes We Do’ Obama invading Ontario, whilst simultaneously fixedly ignoring the fact that Canada has gone into trade deficit for the first time since 1976.
All in all, not a good week for a man who claimed that Canada was simultaneously perfectly plugged into the global markets but perfectly protected from any downturn in the global markets, so it’s just as well it’s only the clone who gets to be humiliated…
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Probably not.
On the other hand he will be delighted to have read the reports on George Soros’ observation that ‘the current economic crisis has its roots in the financial deregulation of the 1980s and marks the end of a free-market model that has since dominated capitalist countries.’
Blame it on Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ay0FPxGdth_k&refer=home