{"id":445,"date":"2009-01-21T21:24:20","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T21:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/01\/21\/beyond_the_black_stump\/"},"modified":"2009-01-21T21:24:20","modified_gmt":"2009-01-21T21:24:20","slug":"beyond_the_black_stump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/01\/21\/beyond_the_black_stump\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Black Stump"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I’ve told people here that I’m moving back to the UK, some of them have said words to the effect,<\/p>\n

\n“In the middle of a recession? Are you mad<\/em>?”<\/p>\n

\nto which the answer is,<\/p>\n

\n“Quite probably; yes.”<\/p>\n

\nOne of the things you notice after living here for a while is that Australians are terribly, terribly insular and parochial. Things that happen in the big, wide world do not matter to them unless Australians are involved. Now this is true for just about any other country in the word: we’re all familiar with the <\/p>\n

\nEarthquake in Limpopo: Briton scratched
\n(Oh, and thousands of foreigners died)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\ntype of news report.<\/p>\n

\nBut this is also the lucky country, and bad things do not happen here. The ‘G’ in ‘GFC’ passes most Australians by. When I point out that the crisis will<\/em> hit Australia too, even if not just yet, I’m usually ignored if not laughed at. So like a good prophet of doom I’m not at all pleased to see that the Financial Times<\/em> notes<\/a> that Canberra is reckoning on spending a shedload of taxpayer cash on bailing out private companies.<\/p>\n

\nKevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, on Wednesday promised to address any potential funding shortfall, after a recent estimate from Merrill Lynch, the US investment bank, that foreign banks accounted for more than half of the A$285bn in syndicated loans issued to Australian companies since 2006. International banks are expected to cut the size of their loan portfolios in Australia in response to tough credit conditions.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nRather depressing.<\/p>\n

\nBut all the above is just an excuse, really, for me to post this picture<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

\nfrom yesterday’s Telegraph<\/a> (not to be confused with the Telegraph<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\nOnly in Australia.<\/p>\n

\n(Tip ‘o the Guinness to Mad Dog<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I’ve told people here that I’m moving back to the UK, some of them have said words to the effect, “In the middle of a recession? Are you mad?” to which the answer is, “Quite probably; yes.” One of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}