11 April 2011 (Monday) - Money

I think that between Saturday’s sleeping at the fishing pond and yesterday’s working in the garden I must have caught the sun. I felt my face glowing all day today. Being “follicularly challenged”, if the weather is to continue like this I must remember to have a bandana to tie round my head just in case – I don’t want sunstroke.

The news wound me up today. In the past I’ve blogged about the obvious solution to the UK’s crippling debt crisis. The answer is patently obvious. Simply don’t pay it. Find whoever it is that we as a nation (supposedly) owe over a squilion pounds to, and tell them to get bent. Job done.

In today’s news I heard that the Icelandic people have done exactly that. When their bank went belly-up, European investors lost four billion Euros. The Icelandics have now said that the investors can go whistle – they ain’t paying up. I don’t blame them, and must admit to a sneaking admiration of them.

Interestingly the Government is looking at reforming the UK banking system so that those who make a career out of high finance and living fast at other people’s expense can still go bankrupt without taking us decent hard-working people with them. It’s not quite the final collapse of the capitalist system. But it speaks volumes that the Government has seen that allowing people to play fast and loose with millions of pounds of investors money is a recipe for disaster.

On Saturday I mentioned (ranted) about how much it costs to buy a fishing licence. I must apologize to HM Government. The price of a rod licence has not gone up at all in the last year. What has happened is that I got conned. Not quite knowing the exact website for renewing my rod licence, I had a quick search on Google and I came up with http://www.fishingrodlicence.com/. I naievely thought that they sold fishing licences. They don’t.

What they do is (and I quote from their website) “…will check over your application, ensuring there are no errors (for example forename switched with surname, lack of capitalisation in your name, and any obvious spelling errors). We charge a small fee for this on top of the Rod Licence Fee levied by the Environmental Agency. If you do not need your application checking in this way you will save a small amount of money by applying directly with the Rod Licence Issuing Body.”

I suppose when compared to what the Icelandics are doing, fourteen quid isn’t much at all. And to be honest I’m not going to go broke either for the sake of fourteen quid. But in my opinion the thing is a con. I feel I’ve been swindled out of fourteen quid. And I’ve told my bank, who say they agree with me. They are getting on to their fraud department who will phone me back tomorrow.

Meanwhile several miles away, next door’s mog is making advances at “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” ‘s mog. Shocking….