Polski in the Park

I’ve spent much of this week clearing out the old shop I grew up over. Some bad people are going to knock it down and build flats that I could never dream of affording on the site

Boo

One of the treasures we uncovered whilst emptying the place was a pound coin that had fallen, or more likely been tossed, behind a cupboard...




The thing is it isn’t actually a pound coin. The weight isn’t quite right and it’s made from a soft, shiny, lead-based alloy.

There used to be quite a few of them in circulation.

I strongly suspect the reason why there aren’t so many of them about these days is because the raw materials and effort required to make them are now worth a lot more than a quid.

Forged pound coins are a thing of the past

…unless someone can find material which has less inherent worth than a real £1 coin to make them with

which is no small task

You could make £1 coins with Rice Crispies and old chewing gum wrappers and they would still have more inherent worth and retain their value better than the real thing

As veteran Conspiraloons™ know full well one of the biggest conspiracies in the world today is the money supply racket...

For years now our money supply has been increased faster than the official rate of inflation, faster than any growth in productivity and certainly faster than the majority of ordinary people’s wages

All other things being equal if you increase the amount of money in circulation by 10% every year prices will go up by 10% every year

If you keep ordinary people’s wage rises down to less than that 10%, say 5%, you’re managing to fuck them pretty comprehensively on a massive scale. The impact is cumulative, compounds every year and is the neatest method ever devised to cut people's real incomes and extend economic inequality

A lot of people sacrificed much in the past to create a fairer and more equitable society and little by little, as with our basic freedoms, it's all gradually being taken back, a few per cent at a time.

And anyone who thinks that any of the mainstream political parties are going to do anything to stop the claw-back of wealth and liberty back to the Select Few is a fucking Muppet...

Grass roots Labour/ Conservative/ Lib-Dem (delete as appropriate) supporters in action

Somebody I met taking pictures outside the Houses of Parliament once pointed out to me that throughout the entire span of Human history the proportion of people who have had access to the kind of prosperity and civil liberties we in the UK have taken for granted is precariously tiny. It is not the norm. Given the slightest chance, the unscrupulous few have always found ways to dominate the many.

He was right

And why anyone should think any of that has changed eludes me totally

Of course, to pull the inflation-theft trick off without people noticing too quickly it helps if you can fudge money supply and inflation statistics.

And five minutes spent trying to get a handle on reliable money supply and inflation figures will leave the intrepid researcher knee-deep in yummy sweetness.

And the most profitable way to inflate a country’s economy with bullshit money is to lend lots of it out at low interest rates and then, later on, you can fuck people even more by yanking those interest rates up

And, as my own mortgage statement reminded me this morning, we appear to heading into the ‘fuck people even more’ stage of the completely unplanned, totally equitable boom-fuck cycle

In the last twelve months the cost of money, as set by a completely independent (from whom exactly?) committee of bankers, has risen by 28% to 5.75%

Those of us cursed, and I mean cursed, with a slightly deeper understanding of the banking system than our fellow citizens run a serious risk of becoming obsessed with this issue. It really is a colossal con and a system that underpins so much of what is wrong in the world – wars, third world debt, obscene levels of inequality and exploitation, the works

(and that's why some of us go absolutely batshit when a name like Rothschild crops up in the context of what passes for contemporary environmentalism)

Hopefully, the UK government’s recently announced initiative to educate school children about real world financial issues will cover ground such as inflation, money supply, fractional reserve banking and how the banking system makes trillions by ripping people's faces off, rather than just focusing the 'education' on how to be 'better' consumers of financial services

/ pops outside to look for some wind to whistle at

Questions about money supply issues are rarely, if ever, subject to critical discussion in the media. Some Conspiraloons™ maintain, not without some supporting evidence, that’s because bankers control the newspapers. On the other hand, also not without some supporting evidence, it could simply be because the majority of financial journalists are plain thick

House prices certainly are subject to a lot of discussion and, in the absence of addressing money supply issues, journalists have to come up with ever-inventive ways of explaining what's going on. The 'answers' always swing on the supply of housing, never the supply of money, and virtually all pundits predict, on God only knows what basis, a steady leveling-off of house price inflation

Because, of course, as everyone knows, house prices always do that - go up really, really quickly then level off without dropping...




That's not to say that housing supply is not a factor in house pricing but on its own it doesn't explain where all the unfunny money is coming from to make the current insane pricing levels possible

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And whilst on the subject of housing supply and the economics of inequality, now's a good time to mention London's annual Polski in the Park Summer festival - currently being celebrated in open spaces across the length and breadth of this great city

When you're a migrant earning five quid an hour and sharing a bedroom with four or five other people you'd like to get out of the place and socialise a bit but can't really afford London pub prices. The answer is, of course, to buy a few cans and drink them in the nearest park, demolition site or pavement with your mates, particularly if the weather's nice.

The same thing used to go on (still does?) in the bad old days (pre Putin) in Moscow - with the bars and clubs filled with foreigners and Mafiosi and everyone else sitting around outside drinking on the street. When the weather was really shitty people would sup their beverages underground in the metro stations and sometimes take along some snacks as well

All very festive but also just a teensy wee bit sad and squalid

Well, there's a lot of that going on in London now. I'm not knocking the guys doing it and they bother no-one but I'm not sure that it's a sign of progress and I wonder if any of the people who can afford a night-out (indoors) in London ever notice them or would give a toss if they did.

It’s all a bit too third world for my tastes and I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a price to be paid down the line.

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edit: Thanks to anon for posting a link to this clip of Ron Paul speaking on the subject of 'Dollar Hegemony'. It's spot on IMHO (Paul takes the podium 2 minutes into the video)...



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