Monday 15 February 2010

Always beware the Spanish Inquisition

This story today is hilarious. Apparently the Anglo-Saxon media are in cahoots to talk Spain down for their  own benefit.

This is a great example of many games Government like to play:

- Start by shooting the messenger
- When that fails; tell everybody the messenger is a horrible foreigner anyway.
- Keep distraction going by whipping up Xenophobia and not discussing 45% youth unemployment in your own Country and said causes.
- Try and get a facebook campaign going too, to show your are modern, with it and therefore not incompetent.
- Get the security servcies involved and start threatening your critics with....

The sad thing is, the UK's Time-in-the-Sun of the Bond markets may not be far away, so I will use this post as a memo to check of Peter Mandelson's statements at that time.

Please delete your cache on Internet Explorer or Firefox now, I don't want the Spanish Secret service calling round to your houses.

15 comments:

Monevator said...

True, but it were ever thus. Minus the groovy social networking, admittedly.

(In the old days you went rabble rousing with a soap box. Soap box networking!)

Old BE said...

All to do with media speculation and nothing to do with a massive housing bust made worse by the inflexibility of using the German currency!

roym said...

we had the same housing bust, but no german currency. surely the way ahead is sign posted for the idiots in govt?

Demetrius said...

Back in the 1960's when Harold Wilson told us that the Gnomes of Zurich were out to get us, I hid behind the sofa. I had to kick the kids out who were frit that he meant the Blue Peter presenters.

Steven_L said...

None of this Euro debt thing looks good to me.

If I was in power I'd be stockpiling ecstacy tablets to distribute en masse and placate the masses when the proverbial hits the fan.

Old BE said...

Roym, Spain's housing bust is far worse because during the boom they actually built some new houses. Millions of 'em.

Budgie said...

Whenever a politician has home trouble he goes on a foreign adventure (vide Tony Blair's foreign wars when he could not get past the intransigent McDoom).

All Zapatero has to do is moan about Gibraltar and he is onto a winner with his one-tapas-short-of-a-picnic followers.

CityUnslicker said...

Agree with all the comments; I note the Greeks and Germans are falling out rapidly too!

Anonymous said...

Whats youth unemployment like in this country then? Acceptable levels at 25 - 30 %?

Anonymous said...

Tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of our pensioners have decamped to Club Med and southern fringes of Eastern Europe.

I thought from the very beginning of this exodus, 20 or 30 years ago, that as long as geopolitics remained hunky dory they were in for a pleasant retirement. I also thought, and this is the reason I emigrated to north UK when I retired, that should things cease to be hunky dory, then our expats might be in for a very unpleasant time.

What has amazed me over the years is that the possibility of hard times, persecution, scape goating etc. never occured to any of these retirees.

It's early days in this depression, and things could get a lot worse in paradise. I wonder if a future socialist government would welcomed all these old Brits (mostly Tories) back to Blighty with the same enthusiasm they reserve for today's immigrants from the Middle East (mostly Labour)?

Steven_L said...

My insomnia struck again tonight, so I've been reading about something called a power reverse dual currency note .

What? Apparently this is what the Europeans have been masking their debt with, sounds like it was named by a 10 year old! What next?

Can these things explode like CDO/CDS? I think we should be told!

James said...

You've answered your own question 'masking their debt'.

If you have a debt, and you can't pay it back kablewy.

If you have a debt, and you need to mask it you're probably not in the best of positions.

Letters From A Tory said...

Spain must be crapping themselves after what happened / is happening is Greece.

The Spanish public surely won't put up with the situation much longer, will they?

CityUnslicker said...

The only real solution is to devalue the Euro and France/Germany ain't up for it.

the UK's turn will come, but with a floating currency the Pound may take the strain. Europe today is very, very messy. But I feel little sympathy for countries, including our own, that have lived beyond their means and are now wailing.

Budgie said...

CU said: "I feel little sympathy for countries, including our own, that have lived beyond their means and are now wailing."

I agree entirely. But there is one mitigating factor for the ordinary UK joe: he is not an expert on finance and he has been systematically misled by the politicians, Tory as well as Labour, but especially 'no-more-boom-and-bust' Brown.