Cash

Anyone who thinks petty corruption isn't worth dealing with because there are more important things to concern officials (and I'm looking at the normally so rational Stephen Fry whose 140 character vignettes I follow so avidly on Twitter), should read this dispatch from Manila http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/manila/1dispatch6.html. Books are something Mr Fry (and all other right thinking people) cares about, and money grabbing officials are keeping them from the people. Is this one of those important things our MP's should be doing something about? Could they perhaps give the Phillipine government some advice about how to deal with corruption?

The furore presently engulfing Westminster over dodgy expense claims might seem bourgoise, but honestly if the majority of people are genuinely angry about something, that's not tyranny, it's democracy and we are seeing a response - knee jerk and piecemeal and without great chagrin, but a response nonetheless. Of course it is very hard to sign a cheque whilst simultaneously wringing your hands. Actually it's quite odd to see chequebooks rematerialising in this electronic payment era. There's something quite bourgoise itself about writing out a cheque for tradespersons and sundries. Did MP's have to fumble around in a dresser drawer before emerging with a folded inkstained tattered chequebook? Did the cheques have the address of the old defunct branch they joined when they were a student, on the promise of a £1,000 overdraft, the gift of a plastic pig moneybox and a 25% railcard discount; the branch that is now a winebar?

One good thing for bankers is that MP's are fielding more flak. They can get back to the markets. And it seems that some of the stimulae the government and the Bank of England engineered are beginning to work. Unemployment is going up but that always lags the other indicators in a recession. But there were 30,000 mortgage approvals last month. that's a bit more like it.

A friend of mine in Australia just busted his gigabeat. That's an MP3 player - or iPod as they are now known. In the way that we all use Hoover as a verb, so most owners of non-Apple MP3 players call them iPods to save having to explain why they bought an iRiver or a Creative Zen. It's a conversation worth avoiding, as Saab owners will know. We might value eccentricity collectively but individually an eccentric is a prophet without honour in England. Anyway, he thought about paying $500 for an iPod touch and that sounded like a lot. Unlike ex-pats, I never know rates of exchange from one day to the next (although I keep an eye on the CAN$ because Mum and Dad live there and I might one day want to visit again). I responded:

If you used it for games and movies it's worth it apparently. If you just want it for music, maybe not worth $500. But then at current rates of exchange AUS$500 is worth about a million pounds. And if I had a million pounds I'd buy two ipod touches and rub them together to make fire so I can heat up some carrots I scavenged growing wild in a layby.

My mate Glen found this quite funny only because every other time we have had a conversation about how much things cost in our respective corners of the world, I have made great play out of the plastic monopoly money they use. For instance, he should be checking to see if it has "Hamleys Bank of Toytown" on it or if the illustration appears to show that the first Governor of ANB was actually Big Ears from the Enid Blyton books. Obviously hilarity ensues.

I'll try not to obsess about money too much (although we'll find out if there will be any performance bonuses in the next day or so; with pay having been frozen and standard bonuses abolished, this is a blue letter day). Although I keep saying the money is not the important factor in the MP Expense Scandal, the fact that they can nonchalantly write cheques for tens of thousands of pounds is indicative of the relative level of remuneration, and the respective wealth, of members of parliament. Did they hive off the expenses received into a separate account in anticipation of the day when they'd be called to pay it back? Surely not. No, these are people who can pay the Inland Revenue the equivalent of an entire years salary for someone on the minimum wage, as soon as they are asked to do so by their chief whip. When I got stung by the Inland Revenue it was because I misread the self assessment form. Trying to be honest, I declared things I had already been taxed once for. The Tax Office cared very little about that (as it happens I should never have been on self-assessment in the first place). The forms were very complicated, and my sarky letter to them about the subject definitely didn't smooth things along. But when a tax bill dropped onto the mat for a couple of grand, I nearly cacked my knickers, cried and punched something hard, all in one smooth (fluid) motion. It was terrifying. I had no option but to protest because I have rarely if ever seen more than £1,000 credit and those occasions were when I took out a personal loan. Where would I produce that kind of lolly except by borrowing it? Maybe that's what MP's are doing. In which case ,I'd like to be the bank manager who gets to approve that one. I'd ask them first what they think about bankers. Do they think bankers are really responsible for the mess everyone is in? I'd watch their face carefully, with my Mont Blanc fountain pen poised delicately above the approval form. Actually that's old fashioned. The pleasure of making bank customers squirm has been all but eradicated. Now bank clerks only joy is to frustrate people by making them memorise ten different sixteen digit numbers for their online bank account, knowing that if they can't bank online, they probably can't bank at all (try looking for a member of staff in your local bank branch. Where are they all hiding?).

I had reason to rue the fact that the UK does not have plastic funny money the other day. I went into my local corner shop to get a four pack of Kronenbourg (to accompany the cricket highlights) and be told my money was no good. The reason the rather bored Asian shop assistant maintained was that it was a fake fiver. I explained that it had just been washed in my jeans and that accounted for the unusual texture and the appearances of little yellow blotchess on the Queens face watermark, but he would not believe me. I can see how racial tensions boil over in situations like this. I was fuming (lager lust). Only afterwards I realised that small retailers don't turn away good money for no reason (actually many small shopkeepers practically rip a note out of your hand when you pay for something these days such is the need for cash), so he had probably been passed false notes recently and lost out. Bad luck that. I also thought about Michael Moore's contention that one always ought to be more frightened by a white man than by any other colour man because the chances are he's done you more harm (and can do you even more harm) than anyone else on the planet; not to single out our predominantly male, white, middle-class, independently wealthy, two-house-owning members of parliament as a example, obviously...