Money puzzle

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not very good with money – I don’t respect it. The reason for this is that I simply do not understand it. What I really don’t understand is inflation. Why do prices and wages constantly have to increase? Have you ever found yourself in a situation like this…? You are in a pub with some friends and you have just got a round in. You carry your beer back to the table and say ‘By ‘eck, I remember when I were a lad – pint were 25p. How come it’s now £2.80!?’ A good question I think and one I ask often. Now here’s my question to try and resolve what’s puzzling me about this money lark – Why can’t the pint stay at 25p???

‘Don’t be crazy’, they say in return – ‘after all, you were earning far less back then’. Very true, but that’s also part of my question. Why can’t things stay at the same price and why can’t wages stay about the same too? After all, if prices didn’t rise, wages wouldn’t have to either. It’s like some kind of self delusion. You feel that you have somehow moved on, climbed the ladder, because you are earning 4 times what you earned way back then. However, way back then, you could get 4 pints of beer for a pound, now you need £3 just to buy one! That’s probably a huge decrease in actual value of your earnings, is it not? It certainly would be if you lived on nothing but beer

It largely seems to me that this happens simply because everyone does it – all the money markets around the World play the game, but I really have absolutely no idea why, apart from the fact that this game allows certain parties to make crock-loads of cash. As we know, the money markets have become increasingly crazy anyway. You can sell shares that you don’t own, just borrowed, using them to bet on another share’s position rising or falling, then buy them back at a profit. You can bet on the value of a share at a certain date in the future and make money from that. It’s not a stock exchange, it’s a bloody bookies! If all these stock values were not going up and down like a tart’s drawers, all these crazy practices would surely vanish overnight.

Maybe to an economist I am the worst kind of Luddite, but the logic of this constant growth in prices and wages simply escapes me.

Puzzled and skint of Brighton. I’m off for a pint…

Humbuggery

Come on, I can’t be the only one who feels their hackles rising at this time of year? So it’s Christmas again soon, well, actually not that soon – it’s still a month away. Despite this fact, I already feel like I have been through several Xmas’s. It should be a nice family holiday – nip out after work on Xmas eve, buy the tree and a bag of satsumas, a bunch of flowers for the Mrs and some sweets and comics for the kids. Sorted! Get home, the family gathers around and helps to decorate the tree, stockings are pinned up, the lights are turned on, a carrot and a sherry left for Santa and off to bed. Next day, presents are opened, the crappy dinner is eaten, snooze is had, shit film is watched and – thank god that’s all over for another year! If only.

The fact that we have been brainwashed into spending wheelbarrow-loads of money by commercial crap mongerers means that the Xmas described above is gone forever. Xmas now starts in August and is something that must be planned to perfection in every detail like a military campaign. Lists are drawn up, cards are chosen, meals are planned and then the madness begins. It’s very interesting that many heart attacks occur over the Xmas period, not to mention the marriage breakups and suicides! It’s supposed to be a celebration and a warm, family time. How has it turned into such a nightmare? And God help you if you’ve just been reincarnated as a turkey!

From about September onward, the advertising starts – the Xmas compilation albums, the perfumes and after-shaves, the celebrity books, the toys, the TV’s, the special offers that will make your Xmas great. The only thing they all have in common is they are all, without exception, a huge crock of shit. Of course, the kids all expect presents at Xmas and will have been watching TV for months gathering information on all the really crap things they have been brainwashed into ‘needing’. Please take a short time to have a look at some of the things that are being targeted at your children and the way they are being sold. Some of the toys are so ludicrous, that you know the only certainty (as you pay over the £65 for a Cowabunga X-Factor Adventure set) is that, after about 30 minutes, the box will be twice as interesting to your little capitalist than the toy itself, because, once again, it is shit! These toys are designed by adults or just plain imbeciles, and are designed not to be fun to play, or to educate. They are designed solely to appeal visually on TV in a flashy (ridiculous) advert, or piled high in their flashy (ridiculous) boxes. And that’s where they should stay. Or maybe, just cut to the chase and sell the boxes only – with free scissors and sticky-back plastic.

The only thing I find more nausea inducing than this huge commercial assault on our collective sanity, is the musical accompaniment that comes with it. The adverts, the high streets, the shops, the malls are all swathed in a constant stream of musical diarrhoea – carols, schmaltzy American crooners, tacky Xmas songs from down the ages, looped and ever-present in a maniacal attempt to drive us all insane by the time that ‘Magical’ day arrives. Me, I can’t wait for New Year… oh, don’t get me started on New year’s eve…. what a pile of…… !!!!!!!

There’s a lot to be said for hibernation.

Word on the (very wet) street

The Argus, as usual, is hot on the trail of all the up-to-the-minute news…

…apparently he also burnt some cakes or something earlier!

So very, very wrong

A recent news article reports the sad, sick tale of a 13 year old girl in Somalia. She was raped by three men and reported this to her father who, naturally outraged, went to the authorities – in this case an Islamist rebel administration known as al-Shabab.  Did these militia vow to hunt down the three rapists and bring them to justice?

No, they arrested the 13 year old girl and then arranged for her to be stoned to death for ‘adultery’ in front of an audience of 1,000 spectators in the local stadium. This is the sort of behaviour that makes me ashamed to be a human being. I can strain my imagination to the limit but cannot find any understanding of why, under any circumstances, a person would find themselves capable of thinking that this was the ‘right’ thing to do. This is something that is so far out of my limits of understanding that I can almost believe that these murdering arseholes must be strange aliens who have taken up residence on this planet.

And, to make it worse, these aliens commit this act in the name of religion. Does a belief in supernatural nonsense make you more susceptible to these acts? Maybe the answer is yes, but I also believe that the percentage of Muslims in this world who would agree with this act, would be very, very few indeed. So we can’t really blame religion here, but what then makes these people think they can justify such a gross,  barbaric act? And a greater mystery still is why 1,000 or more people turn up to watch this ultimate horror show? I certainly have no answers, in fact, I understand this so little that I don’t even know what questions to ask.

Horrified and dumbfounded.

Todays word on the street…

Just because a man only has one arm…

…doesn’t mean he is harmless.

The Daily Fail

Yesterday, that fine, upstanding backbone of intellectual discussion, the Daily Mail, was very pleased with the outcome of a court case. A woman had referred to her Irish neighbour as a ‘fucking leprechaun’ (after also having offered to ‘kick the baby out of your stomach’ when she was pregnant). The court decided that this did not constitute racially aggravated harassment and the DM was so pleased that ‘common sense prevailed’ and that any other decision would have been ‘political correctness gone mad’.

They even provided us with a description of a leprechaun in case we were in any doubt – ‘Small and mischievous, they’re the green-clad little people who are synonymous with the Emerald Isle.’ Well, the woman who so eloquently dissed her Irish neighbour, whilst offering violent baby management techniques also, just happens to be black. Here’s another description of a mythical character – The Golliwog is a rag doll-like, children’s literary character created by Florence Kate Upton in the late 19th century, based upon a black-faced minstrel doll she had as a child.

So what would that stalwart of all that is right (sorry, yes I am facetiously referring to that awful replacement for bog paper that is the Daily Mail) make of it, if the Irish neighbour had retorted with a ‘fucking golliwog’?? This would have been a cause for them to champion – this Irish racist must be taught a lesson!

This is such a fine, clear example of the double-standards that are such an integral part of this ‘news’papers style that I just had to point it out. The Mail from the start adopted an imperialist political stance, taking a strongly patriotic line in the Second Boer War, leading to claims that it was not reporting the issues of the day objectively. Nothing changed there then. In early 1934, the Mail were sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Up until 1939, the Mail was a supporter of Adolf Hitler. During this period, it was the only British newspaper consistently to support the German Nazi Party. On 1 October 1938, Lord Rothermere (then owner of the rag in question) sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany’s invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that ‘Adolf the Great’ would become a popular figure in Britain.

The fact that this lame excuse for a newspaper still sells so many copies daily is very worrying and says little for the collective soul of the British people.

The Word on the Street…

There’s never a dull moment in Brighton…

…but at least they can get two bottles of water for £1