Forsooth!
Actually I keep using that word without properly understanding it's etymology. Allow me to quickly peruse my "Collins Concise" and "Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable" <short but weighty pause>. Aha. Of Old English origin, 'Forsoth' meaning 'In truth' or 'Indeed'. Art!
That's 'Forsooth' run through the AI art generator, with the 'Cyberpunk' skin.
ANYWAY I had to stop playing a video of Mark Galeotti, doing his analysis of Modern Day Mordor, as it's too interesting and I'll lose the thread if trying also create words of wit, wisdom and wonder. Although we in this Intro will also be dealing with MDM, just a different source, that being 'Joe Blogs' and one of the last economic analyses he did before his Youtube channel got hacked. Art!
Mark Mark's dad
This punditry dates from 28/03/2024, because I have now started to date all my annotations, for completeness. Let the sorry saga commence!
Setting The Scene: Things are now coming to a pretty pass in Ruffia, after over 2 years of sanctions, and this is reflected in four key areas: inflation; interest rates; the ruble; and the Ruffian standard of living.
Sanctions: As an additional bit of background, Joe pointed out that Ruffia is still a net importer, because they don't make finished products and simply buy them in. This means rising prices. In a move that beggars belief, Ruffia is now an importer of petrol. Yes, one of the biggest oil producers in the world has to import petrol from Belarus to make ends meet, because their own production has been so hard hit by those very same sanctions. Art!
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| Ukrainian explodey sanctions at work |
Inflation: The Ruffians struggled with their inflation rate, which hit 17.8% in April of 2022, thanks to the ruble collapsing and a shortage of goods. Then Gandalf came in and waved his wand, or similar, because SOMEHOW their inflation rate dropped by 10% almost overnight. Art!
The current rate is sticking at 7.5% and refuses to come down, despite the interest rates - of which more anon. In fact, Ruffia is Number Three in the G20 for high interest rates, where even an economic basket case like South Africa is doing better. Art!
Oooops
Interest Rates: As mentioned above, these have been used to try and control the rate of inflation, by being pitched successively higher until they now stand at a whopping 16%, which seems to be as high as the Ruffian Central Bank dares let them go. Increasing them further would damage the economy more than the inflation rate. Rates like these haven't been seen in the West since 1980. Joe made the very apt point that the interest rate still stands at 16% when, supposedly, inflation is down to 7.7%. Conrad suggests that, to get a closer and more accurate value, we add 10% to the official inflation figures.
The Ruble: Normally in an economy the currency benefits if the interest rate rises. We are talking about Ruffia here, mind. Despite mucking around with interest rates the ₽ has lost 40% of it's value versus the dollar. Art!
It's not doing well. You can see the trend over the past three weeks in that small graph, and the longer-term prospects are not good.
Standard Of Living: Or, perhaps, thanks to the nation being Modern Day Mordor, "Standard Of Existence". 7 years after Peter The Average declared he would eradicate it, poverty in Ruffia is measured at 9.3%, although one wonders what criteria they use to judge 'poverty' in a country when one in five households don't have an indoor toilet. Art!
No comments needed
Another metric to measure how well a nation is doing is life expectancy. The longer your citizens live, the better that country's SOL is. Come on down Australia! at 84 years LE. Then we have Canada - another Commonwealth nation! - with 83 years LE. This Sceptred Isle has a respectable 81.9 years LE and even South Canada, with all that over-sugared, hormone-addled, high fructose corn syrup diet, manages 79.3.
Ruffia? 72.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, hmmm Dimya?
A Little Citric Venom
Reading the Comments on the BBC's Sports page about ballfoot teams is hilarious, as the Beeb's policy forbids swearing, so people have to be either creative or bland, when they'd plainly love to post a ranting curse-laden diatribe. Let us savour the flavour of salty tears. Art!
Conrad has no idea what 'sportswashing' is, except that one sincerely doubts it's anything to do with washing machines like our Bosch. Which I used again yesteryon. Just to keep you informed.
Wait, What?
If it came to a battle of wits between a bag of potatoes and Donald Judas Trump, Conrad would give the tubers odds-on to win. I have to lift this section from "The Daily Beast" because it's so bat-excrement stupid. They were explaining how DJ Tango hates wind turbines, which in his simple seven-year old mind are 'Windmills'.
Trump has complained that wind turbines are killing whales, claiming that only one dead whale washed ashore in the U.S. over the past 50 years—but last year there were 12. He claims that the sound from the turbines is causing mental illness in whales, leading them to die prematurely.
Matey ought to be careful, then, oughtn't he? because he resembles nothing more than a land-travelling whale himself. Art!
Stand by with the harpoon, lads!
"City In The Sky"
We shall take a comfort break away from satire and stupidity, and instead plonk down squarely in what's left of New Orleans after the Big Crash.
Ace had realised, finally, why the different buildings of Arcology One
merely used a hanging drape instead of a rigid door. No weather to shut out. No theft, since any vanishing possessions
would surely be detected instantly aboard the overcrowded sphere. No noise pollution to keep out. And a simple drape consumed a lot less
resources than a big heavy door would.
Noise pollution? She sneered.
That would have been interesting.
Any noise at all was unusual. There
were no motor vehicles, no broadcast stereo systems, no aircraft, no crowds of
passers-by with an ambient conversation level.
She lay back on the wicker bed and contemplated the low-lit ceiling
overhead, patterned with interlacing, interlocking shadows from multiple lights
cast from the other cubicles. Tired and
grubby after an eight-hour stint in the rice fields, she had earlier
anticipated a hot shower.
‘Water shower is a privilege only granted once a week,’ the supervisor
had chirped. Instead Ace got an
ultrasonic booth that used a total of fifty millilitres of water and a
broadcast pulse that gave her an appalling headache; no towels, either, only a
giant air vent that directed warmed air tapped from the sphere’s general
circulation, directed downwards and which draped her hair unflatteringly over
her shoulders.
Or not.
Don't complain, it's not as if you have to pay to read this scrivel.
Another From The Depths
Conrad thinks there may be an unpleasantly large and sinister Something cruising in the depths of his mind, because yet another long-ago memory came to the surface of that flotsam stew. Art!
I read it once in the mid-Eighties and then couldn't remember the title or author. Well, thanks to the Large And Sinister Something, now we all know. It's about Polish pilots flying into the jaws of death with the RAF, during the Second Unpleasantness, and now I've found it - yes, wallet, did you have something to say?
Finally -
Time to sort out my tea. That's as exciting as it gets around here.
