The € crisis in perspective
As the longest day of the year crawls past sunset, I am wearing my sceptical financial analyst’s – as opposed to my idealistic proof-reader’s – hat. Today’s unsurprising news that the Spanish banks may need yet another €62bn (and that still won’t be enough, playmates) reminded me of this exchange:
Sir Godber Evans: Don’t you find this a little indulgent? Particularly in the present economic circumstances.
The Dean: Oh, we never bother with “present economic circumstances”.
The Senior Tutor: We find that they tend to go away after fifty years or so.
[Tom Sharpe. Porterhouse Blue (1987)]
The political rascals have been ignoring the inherent absurdities of the long, slow train-crash that is the € for the last 12 years. Perhaps this ^ really does amount to what we must laughingly call their policy: to put their fingers in their ears and shout “We can’t hear you” for the next fifty years.
Apart from William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, arguably our only real political orator – who doesn’t sound like a speak-your-weight machine on Mogadon – is Nigel Farage. He’s a Euro MP and leader of the UK Independence Party. He is a very unusual kind of politician, for he says precisely what he thinks. He also knows what he’s talking about, as he was previously a currency trader. Here, last week in the European Parliament, he was on fire.
