Money Games

January 9, 2012

In these times of penny-pinching, belt-tightening and hatch batten-downing we’re all suddenly obsessed with the price of things. Moreover, we’re turning into a population of individual price comparison services and I fear the day when we’re all Pseudo-Russian rodents may soon be upon us. My wife will automatically quote, and compare, the price of diesel at every petrol station we drive by like she’s got oil-based Tourette’s.

Eventually we all end up drawing the same conclusion- it’s too much. We state, categorically, that everything is too much like we’re some kind of global procurement guru. It’s not worth that much! We say as we roll everything from a chocolate orange to a mobile phone around in our searching little grasp.

My father-in-law just happens to be a global procurement guru. Now retired, he was the global head of procurement for some of the biggest companies in the world as well as our very own treasury. He’s had to establish the actual worth of everything from office-sized mining machines to tiny electrical components so that when he signed off on a couple of million quids worth, he knew he was getting value for money.

His view on ‘value’ is the same as mine, which was forged from a lifetime of selling shit to anyone that will stand still for ten seconds: Something is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it.

That iPad you just bought. Do you care that it cost a few pence to manufacture? No. It’s cost you several hundred pounds because somebody else was willing to pay that much for it. If they weren’t… it wouldn’t.

Our professional footballers are always in for a world of grief because they get paid more in a week than I get paid in… my own dreams. The loudest and most agreed-upon chant from the terraces is always, “he’s not worth twenty million!”, or, “He’s not worth two hundred grand a week!” Well he is, because that’s what somebody is paying him. If he wasn’t… they wouldn’t.

Here’s the biggie: Damien Hirst spent fifty grand putting a shark in a tank and sold it for eight million dollars. His diamond-encrusted platinum skull had fifteen million pounds worth of diamonds on it and went on the market for fifty million. It was titled, “for the love of God” and it is, to my mind, the most aptly named piece of art since “bowl of fruit with wine glass.”

Hopefully, by now, you’re not shouting, “How can a shark in a tank be worth eight million?” because you’ve got my point. If there’s someone out there willing to pay that much for it, then that’s how much it’s worth.

People with a lot of money aren’t in the business of throwing it away and those paying footballers’ wages, organizing parking spaces for dead sharks and even, dare I say it, buying iPads are doing it because, for them, it’s worth the money. It’s their money and they will almost always get more out than they spend, either in direct profits or the benefits of use.

The problem comes when it’s not their money they’re spending. It gets even worse when it’s your money- our money.

For me it becomes about as painful as space-hopper hemorrhoids when the decisions to spend the money you were about to fork out on that iPad or, say, a new school, is thrown at two weeks of spot-light sports partying and it costs seven and a quarter BILLION pounds.

This isn’t the folly of some mega-rich Oligarch and it’s certainly not good business sense. Anybody spending their own money or that of the company they worked for wouldn’t entertain such a suggestion longer than the time it would take to guffaw loudly and call security.

The public money being spent on the Olympics will NOT make a profit in any real sense even though the money being spent on it is as real as it gets, regardless of projections of associated benefits to business and local economy. In 2006 Ken Livingstone predicted that the games would make a profit, after ten years, and that they would cost less than five billion and that the resale of the land would generate seven hundred million back. Well the games has come in at fifty percent more than that, the price of land has plummeted, and we don’t have ten prosperous years to frolic in, waiting for pay day.

As for the sheer benefits of use? How many speed cyclists do you think will be paying to hurtle round that Velodrome once the dust has settled? Enough to cover the cost of building it?  There’s one in Manchester they built for the Commonwealth games and it’s just a big, empty, curvy-topped warehouse most of the time.

Like I said, something is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it and, in spite of the inevitable feel-good factor that 17 days of international attention will give us, the Olympics will never be worth seven and a quarter billion pounds to me. Simples!

 

Too Short and not very funny- That's Life.

December 16, 2011

I really don’t want to do this. It feels like telling your kids you just don’t love them any more, or stabbing a Labrador in the nose with a cocktail stick… yeah, well maybe not, that but it’s pretty gut-wrenching in any case.

There’s a sketch in ‘Kentucky Fried Movie’ called ‘Rex Kramer- Danger Seeker!’ We see Rex, a weedy white guy, put a crash helmet on and, after a brave ‘I’m going in’ wave to the camera he stands amongst a gang of big black gu...


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A Very Grim Fairy Tale

December 7, 2011

“Is it a good song? Well of course it is- don’t be stupid!”

That was me and me having our annual Christmas argument about  a song that is both rousing and poetically written, and that takes a different look at a holiday that’s normally so delicious, wobbly and sugar-coated it could pass for an M&S crème brulee.

I realize that the story of the less fortunate is one we all love at this time of year and it’s been wrung dry by every Christmas movie from ‘It’s ...


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Susan Boyle- the Emperor's got Talent

December 1, 2011

I was right about The Darkness. Sorry, but while you were all hailing them as the new ‘Queen’ I was shaking my head and thinking, ‘That lad’s a ‘top C’ and a bag of chips away from disaster.’

I still feel I’m right about button flies. I stand there by the exit of public toilets, fiddling with myself and thinking, ‘This is how they came up with ‘The Cube’!’

I was wrong about Uggs- fair enough. I was wrong about Mark Wright- seems like a decent lad,...


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No Offence- I Swear!

December 1, 2011

There’s been a lot of talk lately, mainly by comics, about the right to be offended. Think about that, it’s important: The right to be offended. What it means is that just because you think swinging cats by their tails is so ‘ hil-freakin-arious!’ You’re sure to be shortlisted for the Academy awards presenter’s job once Billy Crystal’s face has gone into spasm and he’s been rushed to hospital whispering in his own ears, I don’t have to. In fact I can be g...


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What did you call me?

December 1, 2011

I’m not black. It’s something I’ve come to terms with over the years. Many hours huddled over an old tape machine working out what James Brown was saying haven’t altered the hue of my dermis one iota. I have, however, been the victim of racial abuse. My time living amongst the Catalans of Eastern Spain was spent mainly pouring drinks and waiting tables and, to a small degree, ducking flying dog pooh and watching my underwear burn on the washing line. The locals wer...


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There's no need to be afraid

December 1, 2011

I’ve just seen an ad for Littlewoods, or copses as they should be known. It’s your usual fare. Loads of cute kids on stage at a school and the proud parents beaming from the fold-up chairs below. It’s not a nativity of course, god forbid, it’s a singing tribute to how wonderful mums are. Nice? Well not really no, because the song- and there’s even a rap in there to keep it ‘street’, is all about how mum is wonderful for buying just about every consumer electr...


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Yeah I know what I said Infidel but come on... play fair

December 1, 2011

Carlos the Jackal, the notorious terrorist and assassin of the latter part of the last century hasn’t got a nail clipper and he’s peeved. It’s mainly because he’s doing a lot of press and he wants to be presentable, after all, it’s a basic human right to have as much chance of meeting Louis Theroux as anyone else, right?

It always amazed me when people who have taken an oath to destroy an entire society or bring down a government that represents, to them, pure ...


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