4397 days ago
The Daily Mail today runs with a story headlined “Now Brussels takes aim at the Famous Five! Books portraying ‘traditional’ families could be barred.” Some folks go “More madness from the Evil Empire, if they can try to ban bendy bananas and WI jam nothing is safe”. Other folks say “It is the Daily Mail telling lies with scare stories to sell papers to Middle England again.” So is the Daily Mail lying or is the evidence that the Evil Empire is run by the criminally insane just that bit stronger? Or both?
4398 days ago
Britain is one of the four largest contributors to the European Investment Bank, a bank owned by the EU itself which lends money to promote jobs and growth in EU countries and, bizarrely, to those just outside the EU borders as well. Those who think that increasing the amount the UK hands over to the Evil Empire each year need to read on as this tale is a disgrace.
4401 days ago
The winner of October’s Deluded Guardian Journalist of the Month was by universal acclaim David Leigh who argued that all internet users should pay a poll tax to subsidise loss making newspapers like, er…The Guardian. I am not waiting another 27 days to call November’s winner. Unless Polly Toynbee comes up with a real corker, the prize has to go to John Palmer who argues that the 6.8% budget increase for the EU is not enough. It needs to be more.. Saints preserve us.
4409 days ago
My half hour taste of the BBC yesterday, via the Today programme, still hurts. The episode in question concerns the EU’s plan to increase its budget by 6.8% this year, David Cameron’s faux outrage, the lies told by an EU spokesman on the show and the dismal lack of balance provided by a biased BBC. I have discussed the matter with Christopher Booker and the whole business is a disgrace.
4410 days ago
Hell’s teeth. By accident I find myself listening to the BBC for 30 minutes and I already deeply regret it. It was a mistake that I shall not repeat. My encounter is with the Today programme and first up was the Reverend John Bell from the Iona community who is just absolutely ghastly. He makes me dream once again of Scottish independence in the hope that this dreadful man would not then pollute the airwaves of a free Britain. Scottish independence or shutting down the BBC. Bell needs to come off air.
4412 days ago
EU commissioners will this week debate proposals that would force quotas for women on corporate boards. The “Justice Commissioner” of the Evil Empire Viviane Reding (an ugly old trout with zero business experience hailing from that hotbed of tax evasion Luxembourg) wants to make it mandatory for companies to reserve 40% of seats for women. Assuming that this bunch of losers agree to the plan (they will) then another bunch of losers (the MEPs) will then push this law forward across all member states. Where do you start on this insanity?
4414 days ago
What do elected mayors, the Welsh assembly and the UK voting system have in common? Two things: The people got to have their say via referenda and no-one outside the Westminster bubble gave a gnats arse about the result. But there are a couple of issues which are far more important and which folks do care about but the Westminster bubble crowd will just not let us have our say.
First up is Scotland. Let the welfare-junkies vote on their future – I am all for it. But how about we also allow the English a chance to vote on whether we are happy with the current arrangements whereby we pay the tax and the welfare junkies spend it. Me: I am all for Scottish independence. It would be good for the Scots to have to stand on their own two feet and it would be great for the English not to have to pick up the tab for Scottish self-indulgence and fecklessness. So how about we get a say too?
Okay that is perhaps a pipedream. But there is a more important issue: should the UK stay inside the EU.
4416 days ago
And so President Obama apparently won the second Presidential debate. The polls look close. My money is still on Obama winning and Mitt Romney getting to spend more time with his $77,000 a year taxpayer subsidised horse. But all will become clear on November 6th.
The great issue should be the US economy. It is the economy stupid. Read my lips. As far as I can see President Obama wishes to bankrupt America within four years while Mitt’s policies will leave him needing at least two terms to achieve the same goal. Slow death or quick death – it’s America’s call.
And so, part one of this week’s caption contest is in honour of hopeychange himself
4417 days ago
There is a new opinion poll out in Greece today which is a bombshell. It shows how the established political order, set in stone since the return to Democracy has been destroyed, thanks to the efforts of the Nobel Peace Prize winner. It is really quite amazing.
Since 1974 Greece has effectively had a two party state. It is a bit like Britain 1945-79 when the Parliamentary Liberal party was able to hold its meetings in the back of a taxi. Labour and the Tories agreed on most things and took it in turns to manage Britain’s decline. In Greece
4417 days ago
Over the summer I flagged up to you here the rise of Greece’s Nazi Golden Dawn party. They really are a horrible bunch of folks who “make the BNP look like Julie Andrews” according to one academic quoted in today’s papers. Belatedly the deadwood press has picked up on what is happening. In a while it will work out who is to blame – the answer being the winner of the Nobel Peace prize, the Evil Empire itself.
In case you have forgotten who the fetching bird in this article is, she is Voula Papachristou, a triple jumper who was booted out of the Greek Olympic team this summer for making a racist joke on twitter. She should count her lucky stars. Had she made the tweet while at the Olympics in Britain 2012 she would have been arrested and banged up in Holloway for three months. Voula is perhaps not the brightest spark in the solar system but she is a supporter of Golden Dawn and after that incident became a pin-up girl across Greece.
And so I should spring to the defence of the Evil Empire (in part)
4419 days ago
It has been a long but enjoyable week. This week’s video looks back on some of the highlights, notably the Evil Empire winning the Nobel Peace Prize and my battle with AIM listed penny dreadful Sefton Resources (SER) on Tuesday. But I look forward too.
4420 days ago
Vince Cable somehow gained a reputation (out of Government) for predicting everything. He did that by (after the event) saying that he had predicted it beforehand. And for a while it worked and it was St Vince this and St Vince that. Until a bit of fact checking rather knocked the spots of that story. And since joining Government he has been an unmitigated disasters getting almost every big call wrong and appearing to be intent on nothing more than scheming his way to the top when Nick Clegg finally gets the order of the boot. So he is not exactly an idol of mine. But today the horrid little man sank to new depths.
Cable has always been a prize Euro loon
4420 days ago
I am calling the result of the Friday caption contest early. Jon Pickles, finance director of ILX Group is officially a genius and his entry is unbeatable. A T-shirt will be sent to Mr P in due course for his winning entry and for showing that accountants can have a sense of humour.
The picture is of Reichsfuhrer Merkel meeting Greek PM Samaras in Athens on Friday, the day the Evil Empire was awarded the Nobel Price for Peace. Stop laughing at the back. It really did win.
4423 days ago
This is not a hoax but it is a joke. The Nobel peace prize has just been awarded to the Evil Empire. Thorbjørn Jagland, head of the Oslo-based Nobel Committee, justified the award by stressing the EU’s role in bringing France and Germany closer together, and by helping strengthen democracy in southern as well as central and Eastern Europe.
Er….where do you start other than saying that Jagland should get back to butchering whales or whatever he did before as he is obviously a prize loon, or at best someone who has not watched TV in a couple of years.
In case he has missed it:
4423 days ago
As you may have gathered German leader Angela Merkel has been visiting Greece this week where she has met up with Greek PM Samaras to discuss how the EU austerity programme is bringing health, wealth and happiness to his country. Naturally the people of Athens have been delighted by their complete loss of sovereignty and greeted Merkel with undiminished love and admiration. Or I think that is what the press release from the Evil Empire’s press office will have said.
Anyhow in honour of this happy occasion in the brotherhood of man that is the
European Union I bring you a photo of Merkel and Samaras as they prepare to address adoring crowds in Athens.
4425 days ago
It seems that scrumptious pouting hackette Anna White of the Telegraph City Diary is absent on maternity leave until August 2013. How she will be missed. But her successor, Ms Harriet Denys seems to follow in Anna’s ways and also cannot stop herself from writing about me. She seems to have picked up on yesterday’s More Jam Vicar piece and today posts:
4426 days ago
There was a long debate a few years ago about whether the Evil Empire had banned bananas that were too bendy. The Guardian and its broadcasting arm (the BBC) said this was just a scare story put about by loony Eurosceptics. Until one such loon (my uncle, Christopher Booker) just pointed out the exact EU directive which did indeed seek to ban bendy bananas. Having swept away the curse of bendy bananas from the shores on Europe the EU is now intent on saving us from another dire threat – home made jam. No doubt Polly Toynbee is at this very moment penning a piece from her Tuscan retreat about how this is all another myth from the xenophobes. But oh no. It is true.
EC Regulations 1935/2004 and 2023/2006
4427 days ago
The leader of the Scottish Tories, the feisty Ruth Davidson, has set the cat among the pigeons with a claim today that 88% of Scots are net takers from the State. The reaction is predictable. But this is not a Scottish issue. She articulates THE defining issue for the whole of the West, not just for the crackpot Socialist economic basket case North of Hadrian’s wall. How we react determines our fate. I fear for the worst.
4436 days ago
Hooray. Not headless and filmed in good light. I am getting the hang of this video malarkey. Filmed at Real man Pizza Company with the waiters looking on wondering what I am babbling on about, this is fun.
4437 days ago
Across Europe we have witnessed a week of riots. From Madrid to Athens and into France the police have battled protesters. I phoned through to the EU information office and after congratulating them on the Evil Empire’s contribution to world democracy day I asked if this wholesale civil disorder driven by youth unemployment of 60% (and rising) and general unemployment of 30% (and rising) was a legitimate protest against austerity and the abject failure of the Euro.
It seems that I could not have got it more wrong. I need to pay more attention to what Lord Mandelson says about how the Euro is on the mend and that in a decade Britain will be part of it. And as for the riots? It seems that we have all got the wrong end of the stick here. The people are protesting yes. But their demand is for more austerity and the free people of Europe also wish to vent their anger about the wicked lies told by right wing Britons and the evil British press in suggesting that the Euro is somehow a failure when it has brought peace and prosperity across the continent.
Those effigies you can see being burned are of Nigel Farage, Chris Booker and Ambrose Evans Pritchard.
4447 days ago
The European Court has today ruled that the UK has breached the human rights of prisoners by handing out “Indeterminate” sentences – i.e. ones where the crim is not actually released until he is shown to be reformed. The legislation was daft ( it was a Labour Act) since it created a bureaucratic nightmare and it does seem unfair not to tell a crim when he is going to be set free. For once Europe has got it right. Well done the Evil Empire. Busted clocks, twice a day and all that.
But as it happens the UK was going to scrap this legislation anyway.
And it is when you get to the detail of this case that your blood starts to boil. The Telegraph reports:
4461 days ago
Regularly, we are told that Greece will get another bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union bailout if it agrees to dramatically reform every aspect of its government operations. A few months later we are told that more time is needed to “fully implement” the reforms and another bailout is needed. As these games continue, the misery of the Greek population intensifies to levels we in America or Britain cannot imagine.
4466 days ago
Amid the blind rush to combat global warming, solar energy was seen as a slam dunk growth industry. Investors rushed to risk speculative capital. Governments rushed to spunk taxpayers’ cash up against the wall. And now it is all ending in tears. The only way to make money from solar now is to look for stocks to short before the situation becomes near terminal. In that vein, I offer up LDK Solar (LDK) at $1.38 and JA Solar (JASO) at $0.96. In both cases, my target price is more or less nothing. I am sure that there are other shorts out there in this sector, and I will move onto others at a later point.
4474 days ago
The crooked pie-eaters who run Greece have served up the usual offering once again today: “Give us the money we need but just a little bit more time to implement the cuts/reforms demanded.” This should ring a bell or two since we have heard this numerous times before. And each time the Greeks have got their dosh, so becoming more indebted, and then found excuses not to implement the reforms fully. At some stage someone must call their bluff.
Ever helpful Eurosceptic MEP Dan Hannan is again offering helpful advice to the Greeks, viz get out of the Euro.
4489 days ago
I knew this tweet would come. I was waiting for it. The EU is a predictable body. And so here goers, an offering from some cretinous apparatchik of the Evil Empire. Here we go:
EU_London2012 @EU_London2012
Remember Beijing 2008 EU 87 Gold medals!! Will EU break this record? #london2012 Rank (19:10 LDN): EU 61, CHINA 34, USA 30 #EU #teamEU
Er yes.. In the streets of Paris they are cheering the success of TeamGB, right? Has Germany won any medals today? Dunno. I better go and ask some of the Greeks watching the games, I bet they are cheering the krauts on enthusiastically. Remember it is your taxes that pay some the wages of the moron who tweeted this and indeed who was paid to set up the twitter name @EU_London2012.
Does he or she actually think the citizens of Europe give a damn about this? While we are on the subject, I wonder how many EU Officials are in London right now “working” on our behalf of games related business.
4490 days ago
Throughout my travels in Greece during the past six weeks one thing has become apparent: the Greeks are completely deluded about their fate. They just simply do not get it. There is a large swathe of opinion that wishes to keep the Euro and believes that this can be done merely by slashing public sector jobs and Government waste. They do not think that austerity and the need to be competitive applies to them. Why they are so attached to the Euro which has brought them such misery baffles me. I think some associate it with the vast grants Greece used to get and think those days will come again (dream on).
Others see being part of the Euro club as a matter of national pride. So let me get this straight, Germany is telling your politicians how to run your country stripping you of independence, will soon send over “observers” to oversee the state, you have been bankrupted and humiliated – in all thoroughly buggered by Berlin. When this happened 1943-45 it was not a source of pride, what is different now?
4491 days ago
I am back in Greece, a country I adore and which my family have been writing about for 130 years (See AC Bradley Aristotle’s Conception of the State 1880 – a book that I have yet to get around to myself). But here is the bad news for a country that depends on tourism for its survival. You are just not competitive. Albania is a better place to go. And, god forgive me for saying this, so too is Turkey.
My last few days have been spent in Saranda in Southern Albania and then walking south from there to Greece. Sarandra and its environs offer me sun, sea, beaches, nightclubs if I want them, peace if I want it and a pretty decent food and drink selection. Most Greek resorts offer pretty much the same. Sarandra offers me culture via Buthrint – a world heritage site (pictures coming later) which is a 40 minute and 70 Euro cents bus ride away. Most Greek resorts are far further away from Hellenic glories.
So why does Albania win?
4502 days ago
I see that Greece is set to run out of money and go bust on August 20th. That is unless it gets more international cash to repay loans due in less than a month. And since it is not sticking to the austerity programme in a meaningful way it may not get the cash. Hmmm what to do?
Of course this is insanity. Greece is borrowing money to repay money. A sort of payday loan. The condition is implementing measures that will send unemployment from 27% to well over 30% so cutting tax receipts and prompting even more civil disorder which is a) costly to control and b) scares off the tourists at the peak of the season so slashing tax receipts even more/ creating more unemployment with associated costs so pushing the country further into the merde. It is sheer insanity.
Clearly there will be chaos and disorder as the deadline approaches. I am your man on the spot. It is a hard life but I feel obliged to spend another 25 days on the beaches before trundling down to Athens for D Day. That is D for default, debt, destruction, damage, deranged, disaster, doom, despair, deliverance (from the Euro), death (of democracy?), drachma (return of), demise Day. Meanwhile I think I shall be converting the £20 pound notes I carry with me in only small batches.
4503 days ago
This is a farce. Spain is bust. So too is Italy. France will be next. We have already forgotten about Greece and Cyprus. They are buster than bust. Yet the leaders of the Evil Empire and the IMF just arse about pretending it is all under control. “Don’t panic” shouts Corporal Jones. Das is Gut says Frau Merkel as she announces that she is off on holiday for a month. The Spanish are relaxed. Just ban short selling for 3 months and if we remove the evil speculators everything will come up smelling of roses. Well at least not like the streets of 10 Italian Cities where the trash is 10 foot high and the schools will not re-open in September because there is no money. But that in no way implies that Italy itself is bust, says whichever bloke is leading Italia this week. Yeah right. Of course not. So there you have it. It is all about dealing with evil speculators and we can rest easily. Bollocks.
4504 days ago
It is all happening. Or rather it will happen. One minute, from the comfort of a sun bed by the swimming pool, diet coke in hand I am sitting here trying to think how I can advance a long article on the Bombay property market. The next minute it appears that there is another book to be written with a contract winging its way to me from France. Meanwhile I amuse myself with a video recording using a neat little gadget some Welsh bloke gave me before I left London. Recording is a piece of cake. Transmitting is a horror. But at last the video now plays smoothly for all to enjoy.
On the agenda:
Greece
Spain
The Euro Crisis
The Impending Dollar Crisis
Gold
The Middle East and the Oil Price
Avanti Communications, Northern Petroleum, 1Spatial
Cash shells, investment companies
Speculative oil stocks
Risk & reward
The equity markets generally
Lots of cheap jokes
4513 days ago
I gather that ADVFN has a large presence in France and a growing readership in a country I adore. So before I offend all you froggies out there may I wish you a very happy Bastille Day. Now for the offending. There is always stiff competition for the title of the worst and maddest leader in the EU. Like Eurovision, the Greeks traditionally make a strong showing as do those chaps from the former Yugoslav Republics. However, before your recent Presidential poll, I sensed that Francois Hollande would be a very strong contender indeed for this title and since his election he has not disappointed me. As each week has gone by he has shown himself to be even madder and stupider than anyone could have dreamed of. His reaction to news that Peugeot is to fire 8,000 employees was a master-class in self delusion.
Here are the facts. Peugeot is loss making. If it carries on as it has been then it will go bust. Its problem is that its cars are not very good and as such they are over-priced for what they offer. But Peugeot cannot afford to cut its prices because its cost base is too high. And its cost base is too high because it builds cars in France where it must pay high wages to staff who put in s short working week, demand long holidays, have a propensity to go on strike and overall do not have a great work ethic.
4514 days ago
I will give you a clue. The official unemployment rate is 22.5%. Actually that is not a very good clue because like every other economic statistic churned out here in order to obtain/maintain Euro membership it is, ahem… a lie. If I offered you a spread of 25-26 would you buy or sell? Buy you say? You win.
The figures are massaged in a number of ways but here are the main three.
4515 days ago
Appeasing Hitler in the 1930s did not work. We offered concessions and the nasty old Nazi just came back for more. But at least we learned a lesson right? Er no. It appears that the West (the EU actually) is planning to appease Africa’s Hitler, Robert Mugabe by lifting sanctions on Zimbabwe in the hope that this will make old devil less unpleasant. That the opposition MDC has welcomed the move says a lot about them (they are brave but useless) but does not make this right.
Is it fair to term Mugabe Africa’s Hitler? Without a doubt.
4515 days ago
Somewhere I have a 5 trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe which is, apparently, worth quite a bit on ebay although it never had much value in Zim. I now find in my pocket a 1 Eurocent piece minted in Greece which I also intend to treasure as a bit of a currency geek. It will soon be absolutely worthless (right now it is worthless to all intents and purposes) but that might give it a strange value.
It is a pretty little coin about half the size of a 1 penny piece with a picture of an ancient Athenian ship (a trireme) on the reverse.
4516 days ago
I was planning to have another pop today at Louise Mensch MP for being so thick but I shall save that treat for another time. Instead my mind wanders to Spain where the Prime Minister, Mariana Rajoy is implementing austerity measures with vigour in return for another bailout or twenty. This is not going to be fun. It is sheer madness but we are talking about the EU here so I guess that is par for the course.
4522 days ago
I am not sure which is more hapless and hopeless, the ECB or the Bank of England. It is a close run thing and today’s actions by the pair did nothing to clarify the situation.
The Bank of England announced £50 billion more Quantitative Easing. Ok, so QE has not worked to date so let’s try it again but only a small dose. If you think that QE is the answer to the UK’s ills (and for what it is worth I do not) then force the patient to drink gallons of medicine. The strategy seems to be a big gulp, then another big gulp and because that has not worked another sip or two. This latest QE will be regarded as either: another dollop of the wrong medicine (by sceptics like myself) or too little medicine to make a change and thus a counterproductive confidence destroyer (that is the “believer’s view). Either way this is another day in which the Old lady of Threadneedle Street achieves nothing much.
4523 days ago
Greek buses are privately owned (KTEL) and so are far more efficient than the state owned industries such as the ports and railways that this country will be forced to privatize in order to get more bailouts. But a visit to a bus station today demonstrated just why the medicine the EU wishes to apply (and which ideologically I would apply) will be so unpalatable.
4540 days ago
It looks as if New Democracy (yes to the Euro, run by fat old crooks) will win the Greek election if it can form a coalition. But who cares anymore? Reading the wires Pasok ( yes to the Euro run by fat old crooks) has said that it will not join a coalition unless Syriza (no to the Euro, not sure if thin youthful leaders are crooks but as they are Greek politicians I assume so) joins too which it will not. And so quite amazingly Greece might actually need to have another election. Clearly this is the last thing it needs but the nation that gave us democracy is now showing us a variant where nothing ever happens because you keep on having elections. Madness.
It may be that the Pasok and ND crooks can get it together, for once putting the national interest ahead of lining their pockets. There must still be a few things left for a Greek politician to plunder. But this is now a sideshow. Do not get me wrong. I feel sorry for the Greek people but I have believed for eons that it was in their best interest to default on the sovereign debt, go back to the Drachma and rebuild from behind a competitive currency. Now, I suspect that will be forced upon them.
4541 days ago
I am asked why am I so fascinated with Greece? In part it is a romantic thing – the idea of brave Hellas reasserting its independence and history – see my great hero pictured here. But it is more a family thing. My father’s family have been Helleno-nuts for 200 years. I shall touch on Lesbians, in that vein, below.
4541 days ago
If I was Scottish I would no doubt have been cheering for Sweden last night. Most polls suggest that most Scots support whoever England is playing even were it to be Germany, Argentina or an all star Rwandan war crimes XI. As an Ireland supporter I hope that I can take a more grown up approach to the former Imperial masters. When it comes to Rugby, I am afraid that my second team is pretty much certain to be whoever is playing the old enemy. With football it is more complex.
4544 days ago
I cannot say that I always agree with Farage and UKIP. They appear to have some rather dodgy views on issues such as immigration and civil liberties which I cannot agree with. But on Europe Farage is always bang on the money. If you do not understand why the Spanish bailout will not solve anything and will just postpone the inevitable watch Farage in full flow today. If you do understand, the man is so funny it is worth watching anyway.
4544 days ago
Cairn Energy (CNE) has today announced an agreed 450p a share cash bid for Nautical Petroleum (NPE). This is a 51% premium to the share price pre-talks but a discount to where some folks value Nautical (Westhouse reckons it is worth 550p and that a higher offer may emerge). What does this tell us about AIM listed oil stocks and also where to hunt for value.
Well firstly, even at $86 oil the bigger producers are chucking off a lot of cash. Exploration is high risk (even with modern technology) and so with AIM small-mid caps pretty bombed out it is probably safer to bulk up reserves by “drilling in the City.” Hence the recent Shell bid for Cove and Dragon’s move on Bowleven and Premier’s bid for Encore. Remember also the Total bid for Wessex which its board ( for reasons I simply cannot fathom) rejected. There will be more bids.
4545 days ago
Well not exactly. Lucian started with a pint of “Village Idiot” – which Evil might think appropriate but is some sort of real ale. I had a pint of cider and then we enjoyed a bottle or two of Rioja. No lager. No kebabs. Just a pleasant night out in Oxford. The Village Idiot is served in the Turf – a pub my paternal grandfather frequented in days when students were not meant to go into pubs – the Turf has 4 potential exits so allowing for rapid escape. One day I shall write a bit more about his student days in the 1920s.
4547 days ago
Yes I love My Fair Lady. A wonderful film and I remember seeing a stage version with Tony Britton and Liz Robertson which was pretty stunning. But this is about PIIGS not Pygmalion. A while back the leaders of the Evil Empire told us that Greece, Eire and Portugal would be bailed out of “local difficulties” and that a line in the sand had been drawn under the Euro crisis. At the time some of us suggested this was a big fat Euro lie and it has not taken long for we sceptics to be vindicated.
In the 3 lead PIIGS the people are rebelling against austerity measures. Let’s see if Greece stays in the Euro and avoids default. I cannot see why or how it can stay inside the single currency but only time will tell. Meanwhile austerity measures implemented elsewhere (Spain) as a result of EU diktat have pushed Spain ( and others) into a mega recession which now shows just how flaky are the balance sheets of most of its banks ( something we sceptics also called correctly a while back). And so the EU ( via the European Financial Stability Facililty – EFSF) is to hand over £80 billion to Spain to allow it to bail out its banks.
4549 days ago
Why is it that most senior Greek politicians seem to be extremely fat? Did they eat all the bailouts? As my beloved Hellas heads for another election next week, heaven knows what will happen. Will there be a coalition which opposes being totally buttfucked (sorry I meant bailed out) by the EU or is will there be one which signs up for national humiliation, more austerity, etc. I do not know.
4551 days ago
The EU has failed to come up with any solution to the crisis yet again. The Germans seem happy to go down in history as the volks who pushed Europe into a re-run of the 1930s (I still think they will blink before midnight) and everyone else is in denial. But prize idiot of the day award goes to French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who is demanding that America sort this out (i.e. US taxpayers ignore their own gravity defying National debt/deficit and write a mega cheque) because:
“The crisis did not start in Europe. Lehman Brothers was not a European bank. We should not shift responsibility.”
