A looming low point in the long history of the Greek empire
It seems the EU is considering whether to bail out Greece, in danger of defaulting on its loans, so high is its debt.
Athens
A spokesman has been quoted as saying “it is unthinkable” that Greece should default and that “something would have to be done.”
I imagine the rest of the EU countries (their citizens at least, those who actually pay the taxes) are not exactly slavering over the prospect of their money being used to bail out yet another organism living beyond its means.
And this is the point, we ALL have to start living within our means: individuals, countries, the planet. ANY other course leads to doom. And as an EU taxpayer I feel very hesitant about bailing out ANY country. Not though lack of fellow-feeling (it could be us next time) but because IF you bail them out then they WON’T change their habits. We bailed out the banks; have you seen THEM change their habits? I certainly haven’t, except that they won’t lend small businesses (the TOTALLY INNOCENT VICTIMS of all this) any money. The obscene fat-cat “bonuses” are starting up all over again like mushrooms in the meadow. No, let them go bust; only that will concentrate their minds.
And let us not forget that Greece LIED about its finances in order to qualify for the EU in the first place! An end to lies! An end to the easy option. An end to my taxes bailing out an indisciplined over-spender!
Given the plethora of comments on banking bonuses recently our intrepid reporter has managed to get access to a bankers’ board meeting to establish exactly how targets and bonuses are planned. His transcript is highly revealing of a complex system tightly geared to the bank’s activities and designed to give maximum incentive to those at the highest level.
So here you have it …..
Board Meeting at FatGreedyBankers, Limited (extremely)
Hello chaps. We’re here to set the targets for this year’s bonuses.
Jolly good, Sir Tosser. What did you have in mind?
Well, if the bank doesn’t actually go bankrupt we all get £1,000,000 quid. This is our baseline. Got to have a baseline ….. Then we get an extra £1,000,000 bonus for every £10 profit we make. What do you think?
I must say these are pretty stiff targets, Sir. As you know, the chances of going bankrupt are very high.
Yes, but then we get bailout money so we don’t have to worry about that.
No Sir. Well, I’m sure we all relish a challenge, don’t we chaps? Let’s go for it!
Track inspector for CSX railroad Gary McLean found this puppy frozen to the tracks in last weekend's cold snap. The puppy, now named Track, has found a home with a dog lover in Bessemer.
One near victim of the cold is now happy and warm and residing in Bessemer.
Last Saturday, Gary McLean, a track inspector for CSX Railroad, found and rescued a tiny shivering puppy who’d become frozen to the train tracks.
It was 7:30 a.m. and the temperature was about 14 degrees. McClean, a resident of the Trussville-Argo area, was riding in a rail mounted truck near Caro lina Avenue looking for any obstacles in advance of a train that would be headed down that track about an hour later. He heard something go bump on the track, stopped and looked back, but saw nothing. He turned forward and, ahead of him, he saw a tiny ball of fur on the tracks.
McLean is accustomed to encountering dead dogs along the tracks, but as he got closer, he saw the little ball of fur moving.”It was big timeshivering,” he said. “I felt so sorry for him.”
Apparently, the 5-inch-tall mutt had gotten wet in a nearby ditch. When he tried to jump the 7-inch-tall rail, he got stuck and his icy fur froze to the track. McLean tried applying warm water and lifting him off. That didn’t work. So he took a knife and carefully cut him off the track.
If the train had come, the dog would never have been able to set himself free, McLean said. McLean took pictures of the puppy and sent them to his wife, Lois.
The McLean’s already have three dogs and couldn’t adopt another. So they turned to the Internet to find the dog a home.
She posted the picture on Facebook and the story found its way to the blog of ABC 33/40 meteorologist James Spann. The e-mails started pouring in.
Sorting through the of fers, the McLeans decided to give the dog to Terry Walls of Bessemer.
“He is doing great,” Walls said as the puppy she’s named Track chewed on her slipper.
“Track had a manly ring to it,” she said.
Walls estimated the puppy is 7 or 8 weeks old. It has a full set of sharp teeth and has German Shepherd and possibly some husky in his ancestry.
The Prize for “Understatement of the Century” has just been awarded to the following statement, even though the century has barely begun. The Awarding Committee decided that no other comment could ever possibly be made that could come close to beating this one from the leader of North Korea.
Kim Jong II
That being said, there was one other entry that had the judges briefly interested: “Gordon Brown is the worst Prime Minister in British History”, but in the end the NK leader won out, since the committee felt that Ethelred the Unready was worse, even if he was usually more ready than Gordon Brown.
Last month Mr Kim said: “We have already reached the status of a strong country in the military field, let alone politics and ideology, but there are still quite a number of things lacking in people’s lives.“
The ways we remember those close to us that have died.
I saw our neighbour at school today, and was surprised the she was wearing an old faded jacket which was torn at the back, and the feathers from the lining were coming out.
One of the other Mums was also a little surprised perhaps because the lady is the wife of a Barrister.
Yes she said “It used to belong to my cousin that died. Every time a feather falls out I think of him!”
I thought that was lovely, but we all laughed when the other parent quickly retorted.
“You must think of him a lot” – as another feather fell out.
Well done, Sarko. If France and the US, those progenitors of freedom and democracy, cannot get on then what hope is there for us?
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, praised the “essential role” of the US, moving to defuse tension between the US and other countries in the confusing scramble to co-ordinate the enormous relief effort. Sarkozy said France was “fully satisfied” by the co-operation between the US and France, and acknowledged the “exceptional mobilisation of the United States on Haiti’s behalf.”
Harriet Harman in the Commons last month: 'The retirement age is arbitary,' she told the Daily Mail today; 'it bears no relation to people's ability.' Photograph: PA
And in this vein of bonhomie credit also goes to Harriet Harman, British “Equality Minister”. Even if I think she is generally potty she was right on the nail this time in saying that older people should work on if they wished and could be an invaluable part of the workforce.
Too right … there is too much ageism, especially in France, where your chances of getting a job after 50 are pretty remote (except for politicians of course).
Some of the greatest thinkers and artists have been over 70, even centuries ago. We should always judge people by what they DO, not who they ARE, how PRETTY they are or how OLD they are ….
Our American friends may not all be aware that momentous events are taking place in London. Momentous for us, I mean ….. nothing much of what happens over here is momentous for you of course, though interesting perhaps!
We have an enquiry going on into the 2nd Gulf War , an enquiry which Premier Gordon Brown set up in an untypical
Sir John Chilcott
and in fact reckless fit of statesmanship but which looks is as if it might be the final nail in his coffin. For a whole series of witnesses are parading in front of Lord Chilcot to give their five penn’worth about the reasons for the invasion.
Now the British public is a magnificent beast, but not particularly famed for long-term memory and just when Iraq was beginning to fade a bit from the radar here it is all surging up again and reminding us what a divisive business it was and how the then government – so it is said – blatantly lied about the reasons for sending our young men to die.
Well, that it all very interesting but here is not the place to go into this enquiry in depth. I did wonder, though, how George Bush seems to have escaped any threat of an enquiry!! You folks sure do things differently over there!
No, what particularly interests me is all the talk about the “legality” of the war, but nobody has explained to me how it can be illegal to attack a mass-murdering gangster, which is all SH was. The “law” only works if ALL are involved. If someone murders our fellow-humans and sets himself up as leader then he or she can’t have recourse to “the law”, can they? You cannot hide behind legality when you murder all your opponents and hundreds of thousands of others, can you?
Now we Anglo-Saxons – and even the French – profess to believe in “democracy”, even if this sometimes throws up complete idiots as leaders (but I won’t mention any names ….) Yet we trade with despots, we take them seriously, we even kow-tow to them on occasion.
But they are just gangsters, aren’t they? Where is their legitimacy? Nobody voted them in, did they? In Sadaam Hussein’s case, there was a party conference at which his rivals were pulled out of the audience and taken away to be summarily shot. Yet this mass-murderer was supposed to be given the respect of a “leader”? We even had a British MP going out to Iraq to shake him by the hand! It is of course surreal.
The UN Charter – which all members sign up to – has clauses on human rights, freedom of speech, of assembly and all that stuff, yet a large proportion of members are dictatorships! What a humungous LIE to base the government of the world on! Yet the UN is the body that is supposed to make “international law”!! You couldn’t make it up.
So while the case for the invasion of Iraq is extremely complex and controversial, I for one will certainly dismiss any claptrap about it being “illegal”. How can it be illegal to bring down a man responsible for the deaths of over ONE MILLION of our fellow-humans, including the use of gas to destroy a whole village of 5,000 in Kurdistan?
It is often said that “the law is an ass”. Well, in this case I cannot but agree.
What’s more common in business could/ought to apply to us.
I was very pleased to call by and have a chat with a very good friend and his wife recently because they are facing financial difficulties.
Slightly unusual in that he is a qualified Doctor and has a share in the practice and his wife is a music teacher. Why should they have problems?
They bought their house three years ago and, like so many others, took out a large mortgage. Probably not the best deal available at the time but it allowed them to secure the house they wanted. Since they purchased the property, house prices have fallen so they have fallen straight into negative equity!
The house needed some work and they also carried out a loft conversion. To make this possible they arranged another loan, not at a very good rate, but at least they are working on the property, and the bits they have done look great.
Working hours and the need to keep up to date with patient notes and write appraisals means that there is almost no time for relaxation; to fall into bed at night is a welcome relief! But what of the financial situation?
To keep the show on the road there has been no time to review the arrangement of ‘bricks’ on which the financial blocks are built. Now they facing a large tax bill, so another large loan is being proposed, just to keep the tax man quiet and keep the show on the road.
How many of us find ourselves in a similar situation? Yet industry has a business practice that can help us. Analyse, diagnose, correct – sort of based on the mantra that ‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure‘.
Review our situation and diagnose the problems.
Look at our options.
Decide what to do.
Action our decision
And lastly REVIEW progress.
How often are we likely to review our situation like this at home or even make basic changes. Well perhaps we need to review more often than we think. Make it a regular weekly practice.
Look at being tax efficient, and in the case I am describing this was the major problem, so the cycle of worry is now being broken, and a new firm financial arrangement of blocks being put in place rather than the little boxes, which were piled high, and about to fall down.
Yes it takes time. No we don’t want to face it, but hey its like banging your head against a wall.
“Gordon Brown was ‘marginalised’ by Tony Blair in the build-up to the Iraq war”, former International Development Secretary Clare Short has said.
“The then chancellor neither opposed nor supported the invasion but was ‘preoccupied’ by other concerns,” she told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
Frankly, it is surreally ludicrous. Is she really saying that while the country was preparing to go to war in extraordinarily-controversial circumstances, with hundreds of thousands marching in protest and all the rest, that
Clare Short
Brown had “other concerns”? And during the whole process these “other concerns” prevented him from AT ANY TIME having an input or indeed an opinion?
Is this some sort of attempt to disassociate him from responsibility? Whatever one thinks about the rights or wrongs of the invasion it was in the end a COLLECTIVE DECISION. Blair could NOT have done it without the support of the British Cabinet, especially Brown and Straw. If they had felt strongly enough about it, they could have resigned, or more likely have told Blair they WOULD resign if he pressed on, and thereby thwarted him. Now, it isn’t easy to resign, or even threaten to – your bluff could always be called and your career go down the spout – but if you can’t do it when it is a matter of your country going to war when the hell CAN you do it?
Gordon Brown
As for “neither supported nor opposed” the invasion, what a PATHETIC verdict on someone who went on (without an election) to “lead” the country.
“Well, I’m neither supporting nor opposing it since that way I can take either position later depending on how it pans out.”
I can’t recall having seen a more pathetic, fumbling, cowardly shambles. You may love or – more likely – hate Tony Blair, but as with Margaret Thatcher, you certainly knew where he stood.
During a recent PASSWORD AUDIT at the Bank of Ireland it was found that Paddy O’Toole was using the following password:
Learning from Dogs 