Quotes of the day

On serious note, keep eye out for the Finns to be the first to leave the EU. They are fit to be tied and will go gulching soon. They are more furious than the Germans for supporting all the leeches.

Schadenfreude on July 22, 2012 at 12:36 AM

You aren’t kidding. Believe it or not, I actually have a lot of Finnish readers (at the beginning, the Poles, Russians, and Finns — other than the Brits — comprised most of my readership. Don’t ask. I haven’t a clue as to how it happened. Anyhoo, you’ll occasionally see shout-outs to the Finns in my posts, especially if the M2RB is either Black Sabbath or Ozzy solo. They LOVE Ozzy Osbourne. The things you learn once you strike up friendships with people online.)

You can add the Dutch to the list, too. I think the best thing would be for Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, the Czech Republic, and, perhaps, Estonia and Latvia to withdraw from the euro rather than kick out the SoMeds. Keeping the two groups together will require a permanent wealth transference from the North to the South and the people are just not going to do it.

Think about this:

In Greece, the retirement age for men is 55. For women, it is 50. If you work in a “dangerous” profession like hairdressing, television presenting, or radio announcing, you can retire as early as 45. Retirees are (well, were) guaranteed a pension based on 94% of their final year’s income.

In Germany, the retirement age for both men and women is 67. Pensions are 46% of the retiree’s final annual salary.

Yeah, that’s going to work out well, especially when the Greeks are hurling the Nazi slurs at the Germans for not giving them even more money.

Resist We Much on July 22, 2012 at 1:07 AM

That was wrong, and made me laugh!

KCB on July 22, 2012 at 12:22 AM

I should have stopped at the cat.

Axe on July 22, 2012 at 12:25 AM

Oh yeah! But nooooo! I had to scroll..

KCB on July 22, 2012 at 12:29 AM

But admit it, you’ve missed Allah’s Saturday might “Dude?” posts.

I’m just trying to ease the DTs and give you guys a “Dude?” fix.

Resist We Much on July 22, 2012 at 1:12 AM

working link:

http://twitchy.com/2012/07/22/reports-police-seek-second-person-of-interest-in-aurora-theater-shooting/

Resist We Much on July 22, 2012 at 1:31 AM

Secret political figure crush: Daniel Hannan. :D

cynccook on July 22, 2012 at 1:29 AM

Me, too. One of his finest moments:

Prime Minister, I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of the European politician, namely the ability to say one thing in this chamber and a very different thing to your home electorate. You’ve spoken here about free trade, and amen to that. Who would have guessed, listening to you just now, that you were the author of the phrase ‘British jobs for British workers’ and that you have subsidised, where you have not nationalised outright, swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks? Perhaps you would have more moral authority in this house if your actions matched your words? Perhaps you would have more legitimacy in the councils of the world if the United Kingdom were not going into this recession in the worst condition of any G20 country?

The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around £20,000. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child. Now, once again today you try to spread the blame around; you spoke about an international recession, international crisis. Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squalls. But not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear their rigging; in other words – to pay off debt. But you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line under the accumulated weight of your debt We are now running a deficit that touches 10% of GDP, an almost unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan, more than Hungary; countries where the IMF have already been called in. Now, it’s not that you’re not apologising; like everyone else I have long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things. It’s that you’re carrying on, wilfully worsening our situation, wantonly spending what little we have left. Last year – in the last twelve months – a hundred thousand private sector jobs have been lost and yet you created thirty thousand public sector jobs.

Prime Minister, you cannot carry on for ever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re ‘well-placed to weather the storm’, I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it’s nonsense! Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard times. The IMF has said so; the European Commission has said so; the markets have said so – which is why our currency has devalued by thirty percent. And soon the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.

- Daniel Hannan, MEP

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

Another fave:

“Another one bites the dust. Country number four, Spain, gets bailed out and we all of course know that it won’t be the last. Though I wondered over the weekend whether perhaps I was missing something, because when the Spanish prime minister Mr Rajoy got up, he said that this bailout shows what a success the eurozone has been.

And I thought, well, having listened to him over the previous couple of weeks telling us that there would not be a bailout, I got the feeling after all his twists and turns he’s just about the most incompetent leader in the whole of Europe, and that’s saying something, because there is pretty stiff competition.

Indeed, every single prediction of yours, Mr Barroso, has been wrong, and dear old Herman Van Rompuy, well he’s done a runner hasn’t he. Because the last time he was here, he told us we had turned the corner, that the euro crisis was over and he hasn’t bothered to come back and see us.

I remember being here ten years ago, hearing the launch of the Lisbon Agenda. We were told that with the euro, by 2010 we would have full employment and indeed that Europe would be the competitive and dynamic powerhouse of the world. By any objective criteria the Euro has failed, and in fact there is a looming, impending disaster.

You know, this deal makes things worse not better. A hundred billion [euro] is put up for the Spanish banking system, and 20 per cent of that money has to come from Italy. And under the deal the Italians have to lend to the Spanish banks at 3 per cent but to get that money they have to borrow on the markets at 7 per cent. It’s genius isn’t it. It really is brilliant.

So what we are doing with this package is we are actually driving countries like Italy towards needing to be bailed out themselves.

In addition to that, we put a further 10 per cent on Spanish national debt and I tell you, any banking analyst will tell you, 100 billion does not solve the Spanish banking problem, it would need to be more like 400 billion.

And with Greece teetering on the edge of Euro withdrawal, the real elephant in the room is that once Greece leaves, the ECB, the European Central Bank is bust. It’s gone.

It has 444 billion euros worth of exposure to the bailed-out countries and to rectify that you’ll need to have a cash call from Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy. You couldn’t make it up could you! It is total and utter failure. This ship, the euro Titanic has now hit the iceberg and sadly there simply aren’t enough life boats.”

- Nigel Farage MEP, Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, 13 June 2012

Here’s the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TN_1mF-3JTI

Both are awesomely awesome!

Resist We Much on July 22, 2012 at 2:06 AM

G’Nite all!

Resist We Much on July 22, 2012 at 2:09 AM