The credit crunch

I'm working more than I was before it all kicked off.

People are spending too. I took the missus to Bluewater today, and it was

Mike P

Note how many people are wandering around aimlessly without carrying bags, though.

That'll be because the Poles are going home.

There is NO credit crunch. People are just sending a message that they will no longer be ripped off and if prices continue to go up they will just not buy. That's why all the shops went in to a panic. People are spending more than ever, shops and businesses have the same amount of customers. It's just one big game the media is playing.

What credit crunch?

That's what I expected, but people were buying. Lots of queues at the tills, all the eateries packed too. Probably all on credit though ;-)

Mike P

It was the Credit Lunch :-)

There was only ever 3000 odd that drove lorries.

Indeed. And once all the people who were loaned money they never should have been have gone bankrupt, they'll have even more to spend.

That many?

The 'crunch' has done me a big favour as the Czech economy was one of the fastest growing in Europe and it was beginning to look less tempting to move there as the £ - CzK exchange rate was going mental. 18 months ago £1 = 55 CzK, 3 months ago £1 = 26 CzK. Now it's at 32 CzK which I can live with, if it'd got to 20 then it would have been a lot harder to get on my feet there.

A lot of the Czechs and Poles I know have gone back as they can't abide the crime levels in the UK and they can now make the same money at home as here now anyway.

Fair play to them for that. It's cool that a country that used to be behind the iron curtain has it seems, a 'nicer' society than ours heh!

Everywhere I've been in Europe has a nicer society than the UK.

That'll be me when I go clothes shopping, then.

I needed a new suit recently and I did both Lakeside *and* Bluewater before settling on one in Canterbury... and that was the first one I looked at, which I then didn't buy until I'd been to every other shop that sold suits.

Buying shoes is even worse. :-)

The thing that I keep hearing from my European friends is how disgusted they are that there seems to be a serious problem in the UK with "Celeb culture" and kids leaving school almost being proud of being thick. Things like spelling don't seem to be even slightly important to a lot of English kids "It doesn't matter, it's only spelling", Maths is done almost entirely with a calculator, UK kids seem to be the laziest in Europe and from what I can gather their entire 'lifeplan' seems to be "Audition for X-Factor", "Be famous" or "Sell drugs".

Now, whilst I know this isn't just a UK thing, it does seem to be a lot more prevalent here than in other European places I've spent (with the possible exception of Belgium, just to keep TdM happy), yet there is also a constant grumbling about Poles, Czechs etc coming to the UK to work. Of course they come here to work, they actually know how to work, they don't mind working, they work for a lower hourly rate for more hours, they tend to do a better job, don't complain as much, don't throw as many 'sickies' and don't spend their money on s**te junk food the same way we do - so they tend to be healthier...

Doooooomed, I tells ya.... Doooooooomed!

I didn't like France purely because everyone, without exception, seemed to chain-smoke constantly heh! And of course it was legal everywhere, although our room was 'No Smoking' - it had quite obviously been a smoking room in the past. I know this is just a me thing, and not really a 'nicer society' thing, but it put me off heh :-) Also, there was too many French people for my liking hehe ;-)

Heh. I'm not normally one for credit, but House of Fraser are giving out storecards with 0% interest until Feb and 20% off until the 12th of December the other day. And a lot of the stock is on sale prices...

No, the media is doing its best to report on some of the underlying issues to a dumbed down society (as PeteM said elsewhere in this thread). It's more of a credit freeze than a crunch but some bright spark somewhere down the line figured people wouldn't be so scared by the term "crunch" than "freeze."

Plus the economy is broken. And the Government are meddling with so many aspects at the moment. I saw on X-Idol-Factor thingie last night that the Prime Minister had given a charity record a tax break. Oh and didn't the PM comment on this Radio 2 issue over the last week? Dude, like, don't you have some prudent economy management tosh to be getting on with..?

Aye. I've heard many a tale of it having to be explained to Poles that you can't leave anything unattended or it will walk...

Things are slightly quieter at work, but not drastically so. And the M+S Simply Food at one of the BP garages on my delivery round is always packed at lunchtimes.