The Last Of England
I was in our local bank today and there was a queue. Being lunchtime, and in the time honoured custom of British service standards, all the tills were closed bar one.
Being lunchtime, and in the time honoured way of British shopkeepers, this is the best time to cash up the forty two bags of farthings that they want to deposit.
I don’t do queues, it is a waste of my allotted time on earth, so I decided to come back later after a coffee etc. etc.
On my return, the queue had abated to one person and his wife with a collection of Tesco shopping bags, but still no more staff.
Then bundles of twenties started tumbling out of the plastic Tesco bags, some £140,000. The couple started chatting, they had just cashed in their ISAs and were emigrating to Australia on Sunday. They were ‘cashing in their chips’ in England for a new life, and having the chips sent to pastures new.
The queue started to get longer and longer, at which point the putative emigrant looked round and saw the queue.
At the top of his voice he then said: –
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I can only apologise for causing this queue, but we are off, leaving England and I hope the last queue I ever have to stand in. I have been an electrical contractor for thirty years, employed twenty staff all of whom I have recently made redundant because I am sick and tired of working for the Government and with the whining and complaining of the work-shy and feckless. Give me two minutes and I will be gone, before Clegg, Cameron and Miliband steal this nest egg as well”.
I was amazed! People started saying, “you carry on”, “I wish I was going with you”, “I don’t blame you”, “every thing is going to the dogs”, etc.
As he left , he and his wife got a round of applause.
True life drama !
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January 21, 2011 at 15:39 -
January 21, 2011 at 15:43 -
I would have asked to be adopted and taken with them!
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January 21, 2011 at 15:44 -
Australia? They have all kinds of venomous creatures like funnel-web spiders there. And that’s just the government…
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January 21, 2011 at 16:16 -
What a heartwarming story! For once.
I was afraid it was going to conclude with the couple reported to the police for having large sums of money in cash…
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January 21, 2011 at 23:49 -
“I was afraid it was going to conclude with the couple reported to the police for having large sums of money in cash…”
Anything over 15,000 euro cash in the ‘local’ currency is automatically reported to the police. So they have been.
If you perform an ‘unusual’ transaction below that amount, your bank clerk is legally obliged to report you and it is illegal for him to tell you he has done so. Same applies to your solicitor. And your accountant. And other ‘professionals’.
Welcome to the European Union of Stasiland.
Winston
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January 21, 2011 at 16:31 -
Hope they’ve invested in a decent pair of wellies each.
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January 21, 2011 at 17:21 -
They’re gonna need all that dosh just for the flood insurance.
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January 21, 2011 at 17:24 -
Well, I hate to piss on his parade but the Cleggeron and Milli Vanilliband aren’t going to steal his nest egg unfortunately they and Milli Vanilliband’s predecessor – actually mostly him in fact – have already damaged it. There’s a mining boom here which doesn’t help but they’d have got nearly A$3 to a pound ten years ago, and even 2-3 years back it was close to $2.50. Now it’s about $1.60.
And if he thinks he’ll never have to queue again he’s never been in any Australian government offices. I’ve had waits in VicRoads (the DVLA for this part of Oz) take the best part of an hour, and it’s no good calling for an appointment because it can take them nearly that long to pick up the phone, at which point they’ll tell you you can’t make an appointment for that and have to come in.
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January 21, 2011 at 17:55 -
Don’t blame them at all. Bit of a low ebb here at the moment with a seemingly endless winter, constant power cost increases and a never ending supply of lying politicans gurning on the TV.
Anyone see QT last night? God, that was depressing. -
January 21, 2011 at 18:44 -
And Unite- Ed’s favourite Union are orchestrating political strikes, BA are out again as from 6pm, ambulance workers are being balloted, and lorry drivers.
Ed is never going to be PM, Balls I can see as the new Brown but far more decisive and ruthless in despatching his enemies.
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January 22, 2011 at 11:47 -
It’s not Ed, it’s his brother that you have to watch.( I aint talkin’ Balls neither!)
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January 21, 2011 at 19:02 -
At least ‘our’ government hasn’t been foolish enough to listen to Climate Warmists’ predictions of impending drought, & invested heavily in desalination plants. So much for now-redundant drought-proofing.
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January 21, 2011 at 19:20 -
What prophets of doom, gloom and desolation we’re all becoming — not you Angry Exile. My daughter and her family emigrated to Oz about two years ago, seeking “a better place for the kids to grow up”. This doesn’t exist, except in her — and your — imaginations.
There are plenty of queues to be joined (I checked). Too many people chasing too few jobs. It isn’t cheap to live there. The government is just as awful as governments everywhere, and kissy-kissy with the Americans, just like us. Every day is NOT the first day of Spring. And it’s too far away — twenty-odd flying hours, each one contributing to your DVT.
Of course, Andrew is indulging in our national pasttime — whinging about the country. Fair enough, I do it all the time myself. It’s the only way I can find others to agree with me.
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January 21, 2011 at 20:23 -
He’ll be welcome in Queensland, they’re in need of a serious bail-out.
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January 21, 2011 at 20:50 -
Were they cash ISA’s, then? I mean, I thought if you’d cashed it in they’d send you a cheque, not bag-full of bank notes!
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January 21, 2011 at 23:09 -
I moved to Spain where the corruption does at least reach the working class!
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January 21, 2011 at 23:38 -
Tee Hee.
Want to upset the bankers?
I had occasion to bank about £10,000 from my Natwest account to my Barclays account across the road. I decided the quickest way was to walk over with cash.
As I handed it over, she quietly said to me, “sorry, but we are required to ask where the money comes from, when it is large sums like this. It’s the new money laundering laws.”
I was a little perplexed for a moment, and then inspiration hit me. I stood back and very loudly declared, “IT’S THIS LITTLE MONEY LAUNDERING BUSINESS I RUN!”
The poor girl threw her hands up in horror, and said, “you didn’t have to say that did you?”
I have to admit it was quite hilarious, she didn’t know what to write down on the slip. However they didn’t refuse the money.-
January 22, 2011 at 00:02
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January 22, 2011 at 02:23 -
Strewth, it seems I need my wellies to stamp on a funnel web while stuck in a queue waiting to to be ripped off by an insurance salesman who has this office next to a redundant desalination plant. And that’s just before I marginally escape a snake only to running right into the jaws of a passing croc.
Mind you I can write the amount of the national debt on a piece of paper less than A3 in size.
As for parade pissing Angry Exile. He can just piss off.-
January 22, 2011 at 08:16 -
Just saying it how I see it: they’re going to get a poor rate £/$ rate and if they’re expecting some kind of queue-free utopia they’ll be disappointed. I never said it wasn’t better here, did I? But now and again I do run into expats who really are unhappy and homesick here and I think it might have something to do with wearing rose tinted specs before they left, while I had the advantage of Mrs Exile to stop that happening. It’s not paradise, but it’s much better than Blighty – I believe migrants who come the UK with that attitude will be happier in Oz and find it easier to love the place than those who have dreams of endless sunshine and never having to queue.
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January 22, 2011 at 08:28 -
With a female equivalent of Neil Gordon Kinnock running Australia it is out of the frying pan and into the fire.
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January 22, 2011 at 09:35 -
” Being lunchtime, and in the time honoured custom of British service standards, all the tills were closed bar one.”
One lunchtime in a North Wales coastal resort my wife and I started to cross a road to enter a cafe. The cafe proprietor dashed out to intercept us, heading us off with the words “Sorry, we’re closing for lunch.” And I know he wasn’t joking, because he suited actions to words. -
January 24, 2011 at 05:24 -
Poor bugger clearly doesn’t realise thet Australia is a Socialist Femiocracy. It has a Queen (same one) a Feminist -Socialist Governor General, a militant Feminist Socialist Prime Minister and three of its 6 States have militant Feminist Socialist Premiers. They are all in the bizzo of taking money from men (known in Oz as Perpertrators or Abusers, or Deadbeats, or even Rapists) to spend on women (aka Victims). And blaming men for everything they can dream up during their nightmares.
140k won’t buy a fibro shack in Goonawindi. The budget ‘surplus’ and Sovereign Fund was given away to single mothers so they could buy plasma TVs from China. Due to Multicultural laws these two English folk will be the only ‘ethnics’ that can be called derogatory names.
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