Where has all the money gone?

A good question. Some one must be making eye watering amounts of money out there. Enough to make the rest of us poor for the rest of eternity. I was listening to an American banker this morning on the radio, Radio Four that is, not Radio Stagecoach. He was being quizzed at a Congressional hearing about how much money he had made last year while the Good Old US of A headed for a rerun of the world famous year of 1929. The Congressman was asking him was it true he had made half a billion dollars. The wanker denied that he had made anything like that much money. That was a ridiculous amount of money for anyone to make in a year. “Well,” the congressman asked, “Would you mind telling us how much you did make if it wasn’t $500 million?”
A short pause. “Only $250 Million.”

A Fat Cow. Sorry, I don't have a picture of a Fat Cat.

An other note worthy item surfaced a day or two ago when it was announced that assets of Iceland’s bank had been frozen. I bet I wasn’t the only one who had a little laugh at that. Then it began to emerge exactly how much British money happened to be it The Bank of Iceland (now defunct?). I case you missed it. £4 billion. Then a bit later several local councils admitted that they had money in The Bank of Iceland (defunct?) Torbay, my local council, have not so far appeared on that list. Could be the council don’t want to admit that next weeks wages are missing and the only way the workers would get paid was if they took their wages in cod. Or maybe they just never had any spare money to hide away in some far flung country. Or could be our beloved council looking at the very attractive rates offered by the Bank of Iceland (Broke) remember the saying, ‘If it looks like it’s too good to be true then it almost certainly is too good to be true.’
On a different note an item appeared in the Local Paper, on the front page no less with Brian’s smiling face beaming at us. I doubt he nipped down from Perth just to get his photo in the Herald Express. But the high speed cat which swam between Torquay and Brixham every daylight hour in a September trial run carried enough passengers to tempt Brian to run it permanently. A war of words has broken out. The council are denying that the million quid need to improve the landing stage at Brixham is coming from them. The existing ferry operators, Western Lady say they were here first, it’s not fair, lots of foot stamping here. Later they claimed they carried just as many passengers as Stagecoach so there!
Then the Mayor stuck his nose in and boasted that the cat had been like a cruise ship coming in everyday. Business had boomed and the town had made a killing and wanted the cat back as soon as possible. Hadn’t he been out side at all for the last 3 months? A new season called WWM, wet, windy, miserable will have to be invented to describe July and August this year. September on the other hand was SDG, sunny, dry, glorious. Maybe that was why the town did so well Mr Mayor, not because you could cross the Bay in 17 minutes.
The trip I took, took 16 minutes 54 seconds, not the 15 minutes claimed by Stagecoach. And this 16 minutes 54 seconds was from the time the boat started moving in Brixham to the time it hit the quayside at Torquay. Add 5 minutes getting on the boat in Brixham and 5 minutes to get off once it has dented the quay plus an other 5 minutes for the shuttle bus to load up and head for the Strand and it doesn’t add up to 15 minutes any more. I should add it is, for all that a better way of getting to Brixham than the bus which could stop up to 30 times, and that isn’t counting to 3 or 4 sets of road works and other traffic delays. But not much use if you don’t want to got to Brixham. And unlike the Western Lady you can’t sit on the deck and admire the view.