The best things in life are free… well yeah, but for the rest we need dosh. So today’s theme, yes you guessed it, is money and the economy.
Economists have a sense of humour? Who knew? Here’s the hilarious Yoram Bauman, who describes himself as “the world’s first and only stand-up economist”:
That economists apparently have a sense of absurdity does explain an awful lot about the state we’re in….
We’ve all got vastly different attitudes to money – some people have an almost visceral attachment to it, like Eric Idle in Monty Python’s’ classic “Money Programme’ sketch:
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Some people will do anything, and I mean anything, to get their grubby mitts on it. Do not watch what happens when a guy agrees to drink a bottle of ipecac on camera for money if you are at all of a delicate disposition.
Bleurgh. I need something to take my mind, or should I say stomach, off that image. What better than a selection of the stupidities people commit hen trying to get at other people’s money?
D’oh!
Oops, butterfingers…
Ooh, I so want this robber’s incredible shoes…
Or maybe not. Some people, though, just don’t have the gumption to be good bad guys. This may just be the most pathetic armed robbery ever:
But let’s look away from the seedier side of money for a moment, and towards the more profligate side of cash.
Some people have no regard for money at all. This young British guy gambled his entire life savings, about a hundred thousand pounds, on one single spin of a Las Vegas roulette wheel. Gulp.
Then there are those people who wager respectably on the stock markets, thinking that if it’s made complicated-sounding enough that we won’t cotton on to the fact that what’s known as international high finance is just gambling.
Eric Idle once again sums it up best:
Yeah, that’s pretty much how it sound to me too. High or low income, money may be the international language, but in the end isn’t it just more bloody trouble than it’s worth? Look at the rancour it causes:
Oy. But that’s life under capitalism for you.
Bonus clips:
Just one today but it’s a doozy – to get you in the right frame of mind for Hallowe’en, here’s Look Around You Module 4, ‘Ghosts’:
UPDATE:
* Alan Coren, the doyen of British satire, the former editor of Punch and mainstay of the BBC’s News Quiz, Cricklewoood’s most famous literary auteur, died this morning. Both Linda Smith and Alan Coren gone. Damn.
Here’s Alan in the 1992 HIGNFY election special.
RIP.
