Mostly Bollogs, I'm afraid

But occasionally, a glimmer of truth.
If you find one, please let me know.



Wednesday 22 September 2010

Spiv

Look up Spiv on t'internetz. Google it. It will tell all.

Then I'll tell you what one is, and why Vince doesn't want one.

A Spiv is not someone who doesn't work. A spiv is someone who works bloody hard, actually. DelBoy Trotter would be a Spiv. Private Walker in "Dad's Army" was one.

What they do is to see market opportunities that for some reason or another other people fail to exploit. That may be because they're seen to be immoral (such as selling Jew's teeth), because they're illegal (such as selling cannabis), because they're not available (such as selling parachute silk in the war) or simply because you didn't think of it first.

Vince describes bankers as Spivs. Maybe so. But they're not. The reason is that the common factor with all Spivs is that they don't "engage with society", which is a polite way of saying that they may deal mainly in cash and therefore may not declare everything that changes hands to Messrs Revenue and Customs.

And why, the fuck, should they, I ask in all seriousness?

If I have a job, and I earn a pound, the government gets some. They may get as much as 50p. I then have a window cleaner, because I don't like heights. And he charges me money. If he charges me a pound, I have to pay him two of the pounds I earned, leaving me fuckall, and the government gets another (as much as) 50p. The window cleaner now has 50p, I have the square root of jack shit, and the government has £1.50. Explain why that's right. Go on.

So, ladies and gentlemen, become a Spiv. You know it makes sense.

NOW do you see why Vince doesn't like them? Because the don't pay his wages.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They’re not spivs they’re shysters.
Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel, created by Groucho Marx was funny, but Marxism is not in tier vocabulary.
Even George W Bush didn’t like them. At the outset of the Haiti earthquake he said “One of my concerns is shysters show up and take advantage of people's good will and generosity".
I never thought I would agree Bush baby unfortunately his words nail it on the head though he did miss out the word trust.
People grumbled but in general had a degree of trust in the banks and the term fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me springs to mind but even Alasdair darling has now said that the bankers fooled/hid/disguise/got around the caveats he put in and the bonuses still roll in.
The high level bankers knew the score, the drones following orders and on the whole wouldn’t have had a clue about the debt parcels and the banks betting on themselves failing.
They sold to the poor and the gullible, they betted on failure and were bailed out by the taxpayers, yeah, Bush nailed it, they are taking advantage and they are laughing all the way to the bank paid for by the majority of the overworked, overlooked and over regulated British taxpayer.

Whizzo Eureka