This is the counting system of choice in the Scobi household. It works well for most people under the age of ten, or over thirty five, but not for those who enjoy an afternoon nap, for whom the counting system seems to double the speed of time passing, a bit like dog years*.
Another counting system of which I have become recently aware of is the PM. This is the counting system used by City Bankers (sorry for the obscenity Mrs Trellis) to size their bonus. The unit is the annual salary of the PM, around £150k, so a bonus of 5 PMs would equate to seven hundred and fifty thousand of our finest, tax-payer pound notes.
This was learnt during an episode** of Panarama, which looked at City bonuses, whether banks had learnt anything from the crash and whether the regulations the present and previous governments have attempted to put in place to teach them a lesson, or rein them in, or something like that, actually made any difference. The conclusion of the show** was that pretty much nothing had changed. Some of the more sensitive souls didn't actually slap the reporter about the chops with a bundle of Ayrton Sennas***, but mostly the talk was of the taxes they pay, the money they make for the country and the great rate of return for the tax billions invested in their businesses. With such selfless souls running our banking system we should all feel a little more comfortable in our beds tonight. To be honest, the worst aspect of this was the acceptance that all things are cyclical, including stupidity and greed. This recession is so deep that it will take a generation to get out of it, and those in the know know that the unit of recessionary cycle is the generation, in that it takes the next generation of chinless wonders to reach the upper echelons before we can be guaranteed that the same mistakes are made again.
Sorry for pinning my colours so firmly to the mast. It could put a chap off his sherry. Normal service will resume tomorrow****.
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* Before Mrs Trellis writes in again, I do realise that dog years are seven times human years, not double, so in fact sleeps are nothing like dog years.
** Is that the right term?
** Is that the right term?
*** tenners, as if you didn't know you closet cockney
**** i.e. vacuous, empty, void-ridden vacuums with not a trace of any interest or content.
1 comment:
Interesting to see how many American billionaires are pledging away half their fortunes to philanthropic and charitable concerns. This seems to have been started by Bill Gates and George Soros and the pressure they are putting on their rich friends.
Not sure this would catch on over here!
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