Where did my £2.35 billion go?

Today I shall give you an insight into the minutiae of life in Weasel's world. When I last looked out (just like that King in the carol) it was snowing; just like a Pizza - deep pan, crisp and even. (Just like the carol)

This means that the MGF is about as useful as a chocolate chastity belt and not as tasty. Proper drivers will know that, although it retains excellent stability under normal conditions, having its engine in the centre of the car, being a rear wheel drive and very torquey, it slithers all over the place on ice. Which is fun if you are in Lidl car park when it is empty, but slightly unnerving if you are on a public road. So it was with dismay that last night, I discovered that the MOT on the Volkswagen was about to expire. This required Mrs Weasel to change her plans over what was going to be an already fraught drive into work. Now, I am unlucky, one of the unluckiest people you will ever meet. I have never won anything and am always in the wrong place at the wrong time, so it is ten to one on that if I had sent Mrs Weasel out in the VW this morning, she would have had a prang and then found that, due to my negligence (the car being registered to me) the insurance was invalid.

And so it was that we gingerly made our way to the local railway station, whereupon Dr Weasel got a train, and then a bus, to the workhouse. By the Grace of God, my local garage was able to squeeze me in for an MOT and due to my diligence over the brakes last month, it passed without so much as the wash wipe reservoir needing to be filled up.

Icy? We apparently have not had the last of it. Which brings me to my £2.35 billion. Apparently, this is what Iceland owes the United Kingdom, after the collapse of Landsbanki left its British investors out of pocket. It is a debt which it does not intend to repay, after the President, Noggbad the Nogg, vetoed a bill in the Icelandic Parliament that was the instrument of repayment. Not only that, it will go to a referendum. Now, given that every man woman and child in Iceland will have to pay £20,000 to repay this debt, I believe I can safely predict which way the referendum will go. This leaves me, oh and you, with yet another hole in the public purse. Never mind that Iceland will be vetoed if they try and join the EU (lucky bastards), the credit rating of the country, this land of Sagas, rotten shark and Bjork, is now on a par with Kerry Katona's, also of Iceland fame. I don't blame Icelanders. After all, Gordon's reaction was to freeze all of Iceland's UK assets using  anti-terrorist legislation. Icelanders themselves must be wondering where all that money went. To be honest, I don't know. Somebody somewhere is getting very fat on it, thank you. It must be grand theft. Either it never existed in the first place - or it has been stolen. Which is it? Ideas please. What we do know is that many of our local authorities have lost a lot of money - funds which they will have to find elsewhere, which probably means that as a result of the Lansbanki fiasco, your council tax will rise.

So, the weather has been crap. Tell me if you have had same. My tip: don't eat the yellow snow and stock up on pemmican.

5 comments:

kerry katona said...

I wouldn't worry about the £2.35Bn WW. Tis but a trifingly insignificant amount in the overall scheme of things ( UK £1.4tr in debt by 2011)
Gorgon should never have bailed out all the savers. He covered all the debt and said he would get it back from Iceland when we only had to guarantee £15K to each investor.
Iceland has decided not to pay the money back and gorgon has threatened to stop Iceland entering the EU. So even now he is helping them.
Oh by the way the money went to some Russian oligarchs according to most experts so Lord Ringpiece should be able to help.( if we knew where he was )

banned said...

The snow has finally arrived in this sheltered neck of the woods (not that the Met Office predicted it) just in time for all the schools to close the day after they re-opened.
I don't blame the Icelanders for probably voting not to repay their debt, they did not incur it as individuals but perhaps we should invade Iceland, a declared "Terrorist State" and sell off its inhabitants as indentured serfs until the debt is repaid.

How long before local councils start telling us "If we had not lost £5,000,000 in the Iceland scandal we would have been in a position to buy X,000 tons of road salt and your granny would not have slipped on the ice and broken her hip.

winston said...

Our council has stopped gritting footpaths 'in case they are sued'.
If they don't touch the footpaths then they can't be sued for not gritting them properly if someone slips and hurts themselves. It kinda makes sense in this Orwellian nightmare we are living in I suppose.

Jim Baxter said...

My guess is that it's all been nicked by some dwarf. Treasure in Iceland always gets nicked by some dwarf, possibly a gnome of Zurich. The men of the Northlands tell such tales as they sit at their great log fires 'neath the curtaining aurorae.

Remind me to relate, one of these arctic nights, the saga of Sigurdon the Brown Bottomed who sold his tribe's gold for beans.

Ayrdale said...

" Never mind that Iceland will be vetoed if they try and join the EU (lucky bastards), the credit rating of the country, this land of Sagas, rotten shark and Bjork, is now on a par with Kerry Katona's, also of Iceland fame."

Leading to the very interesting question of economic survival. I don't know anything about Iceland's politicians, but it seems that a period of national austerity and inflation avoidance will be mandatory. Not a bad idea for the rest of the world.

Should be worth watching.