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Oscar_IHB
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<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article5292547.ece">Vauxhall Insignia review</a>
<blockquote>It?s the same story on this side of the Irish Sea, of course. We?re all still plunging hither and thither, guzzling wine and wondering what preposterously expensive electronic toys the children will want to smash on Christmas morning this year. We can?t see the meteorite coming either.
I think mainly this is because the government is not telling us the truth. It?s painting Gordon Brown as a global economic messiah and fiddling about with Vat, pretending that the coming recession will be bad. But that it can deal with it.
I don?t think it can. I have spoken to a couple of pretty senior bankers in the past couple of weeks and their story is rather different. They don?t refer to the looming problems as being like 1992 or even 1929. They talk about a total financial meltdown. They talk about the End of Days.
Already we are seeing household names disappearing from the high street and with them will go the suppliers whose names have only ever been visible behind the grime on motorway vans. The job losses will mount. And mount. And mount. And as they climb, the bad debt will put even more pressure on the banks until every single one of them stutters and fails.
The European banks took one hell of a battering when things went wrong in America. Imagine, then, how life will be when the crisis arrives on this side of the Atlantic. Small wonder one City figure of my acquaintance ordered three safes for his London house just last week.
Of course, you may imagine the government will simply step in and nationalise everything, but to do that, it will have to borrow. And when every government is doing the same thing, there simply won?t be enough cash in the global pot. You can forget Iceland. From what I gather, Spain has had it. Along with Italy, Ireland and very possibly the UK.
It is impossible for someone who scored a U in his economics A-level to grapple with the consequences of all this but I?m told that in simple terms money will cease to function as a meaningful commodity. The binary dots and dashes that fuel the entire system will flicker and die. And without money there will be no business. No means of selling goods. No means of transporting them. No means of making them in the first place even. That?s why another friend of mine has recently sold his London house and bought somewhere in the country . . . with a kitchen garden.
...
<strong>They?ve got the Insignia even more wrong than usual because the absolutely last thing anyone wants right now, and I?m including in the list consumption, a severed artery and a massive shark bite, is a four-door saloon car with a bargain-basement badge. </strong>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>It?s the same story on this side of the Irish Sea, of course. We?re all still plunging hither and thither, guzzling wine and wondering what preposterously expensive electronic toys the children will want to smash on Christmas morning this year. We can?t see the meteorite coming either.
I think mainly this is because the government is not telling us the truth. It?s painting Gordon Brown as a global economic messiah and fiddling about with Vat, pretending that the coming recession will be bad. But that it can deal with it.
I don?t think it can. I have spoken to a couple of pretty senior bankers in the past couple of weeks and their story is rather different. They don?t refer to the looming problems as being like 1992 or even 1929. They talk about a total financial meltdown. They talk about the End of Days.
Already we are seeing household names disappearing from the high street and with them will go the suppliers whose names have only ever been visible behind the grime on motorway vans. The job losses will mount. And mount. And mount. And as they climb, the bad debt will put even more pressure on the banks until every single one of them stutters and fails.
The European banks took one hell of a battering when things went wrong in America. Imagine, then, how life will be when the crisis arrives on this side of the Atlantic. Small wonder one City figure of my acquaintance ordered three safes for his London house just last week.
Of course, you may imagine the government will simply step in and nationalise everything, but to do that, it will have to borrow. And when every government is doing the same thing, there simply won?t be enough cash in the global pot. You can forget Iceland. From what I gather, Spain has had it. Along with Italy, Ireland and very possibly the UK.
It is impossible for someone who scored a U in his economics A-level to grapple with the consequences of all this but I?m told that in simple terms money will cease to function as a meaningful commodity. The binary dots and dashes that fuel the entire system will flicker and die. And without money there will be no business. No means of selling goods. No means of transporting them. No means of making them in the first place even. That?s why another friend of mine has recently sold his London house and bought somewhere in the country . . . with a kitchen garden.
...
<strong>They?ve got the Insignia even more wrong than usual because the absolutely last thing anyone wants right now, and I?m including in the list consumption, a severed artery and a massive shark bite, is a four-door saloon car with a bargain-basement badge. </strong>
</blockquote>