Anyone fancy joining in a whip round to bale out the United Arab Emirates?
They must be feeling the pinch, as the UAE owes the thick end of £43,000 in parking fines etc incurred by its diplomats last year.
I've been fooling around with the figures for fines and comparing them with population, GDP per head etc etc, and it looks the Foreign Office might need to send the goons round, as the Emiratis owe almost 1/100th of a penny each. A pretty poor show from the Saudis too - almost 1/1000th of a penny. The Chinese can be fairly sanguine with a national debt of 1/100000th of a penny.
Looked at another way, the villainous Afghans have managed to run up parking fines equivalent to 71 times GDP per head, and the wicked Sudanese a multiplier of 39. The Germans manage near parity of fines to GDP per head at 1.1, and the French are comparatively virtuous at a mere 0.7.
Finally, the Afghans face the greatest risk of an economic catastrophe if the baillifs call, as the fines amount to 1/500,000th of GNP.
(Minor footnote - opinions differ as to whether one 'bails' or 'bales'. Bales is used in English English but not American English, so I've used that).
I've been fooling around with the figures for fines and comparing them with population, GDP per head etc etc, and it looks the Foreign Office might need to send the goons round, as the Emiratis owe almost 1/100th of a penny each. A pretty poor show from the Saudis too - almost 1/1000th of a penny. The Chinese can be fairly sanguine with a national debt of 1/100000th of a penny.
Looked at another way, the villainous Afghans have managed to run up parking fines equivalent to 71 times GDP per head, and the wicked Sudanese a multiplier of 39. The Germans manage near parity of fines to GDP per head at 1.1, and the French are comparatively virtuous at a mere 0.7.
Finally, the Afghans face the greatest risk of an economic catastrophe if the baillifs call, as the fines amount to 1/500,000th of GNP.
(Minor footnote - opinions differ as to whether one 'bails' or 'bales'. Bales is used in English English but not American English, so I've used that).
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No- Not really
I imagine you have snout like an ant-eater for this sort of thing C which is diverting on this occasion
. Saw the film of the Munich Bombing and ensuing mossad revenge killings yesterday . A missed opportunity I thought. What do you as a Zionista think ? Wimped out for me .
Sorry to change the subject but as you are an expert I would be very interested to know how you answer the charge that giving the Jews Palestine was like giving the Celts England on the basis of some old book they had. I have always been pro Israel because I hate most of the people who are pro PLO , IRA , ETA and other international “revolutionaries”, As Palestinian nationalists though haven they got a point ? I loved you post the other day related to this subject and by the way you are mentioned again today.
( Mathew Wright comes from Corydon , right wing media celebrities carpet the place)
G - It does rather fail to tug at the heart strings, doesn't it?
N - Way back lost in the mists of time, the now absent / morphed Phone Cam Foolery challenged me to rationalise my position on matters Israeli, and I gave it a go. Check the comments here.
Am I woefully out of the loop for not having a clue who Matthew Wright is?
N - And thanks for the comment chez vous. That's gone straight into the 'blowing my own trumpet' section....
Ref: UAE - nor me. Mind you I am surprised to learn that, for unpaid parking fines, etc, they have overtaken the Nigerians. Do you suppose they are having a competition.
Ref bale/bail: now I am really confused. I thought I would bail(v) out a debtor or a prisoner on remand & bale(v) out a boat.
Probably got it wrong, somewhere.
Seduced, again, by the amusing confusion that is English grammar.
"The Wright stuff"? . My poor health has introduced me to day time telly.I am about to follow your link .
Nigeria only manages a feeble 15th, with a sum of £6,440 due.
I can just see some jobsworth bailif from westminster council turning up and knocking on the door of some pathans mud house
"hello ahmed , I have come about the outstanding parking fines you owe"
Somehow I think he would johhny pathan would give him the kind of response we would like to give such folk ,courtesy of a hand ak47
Can't see the bailiffs having much joy out in the Hindu Kush. A mate of mine is an expert on bailiff avoidance and the laws governing them, so maybe the UAE should put him on a retainer.
Bale,bail, bailiff, baillie and bailliwick all derive from the same root.
My guess would be that bail is the original common usage as Americans have preserved many spellings and usages that have morphed over the last 300 years in England.
I was going to use 'bail' first off, but decided to check elsewhere, and found this lengthy examination of bale / bail
C many years ago i got into difficulties and my car was repoed , I considered hiding it.
chatting with the guy from the finance comany later he told me how somebody had done a bunk with a ferari they financed--- to Iran!
they still got it back
I know of somebody else who shipped his vehicle to Chile and was caught over there.
I bet chilean and Iranian Bailiffs are made of pretty stern stuff.
Blimey. Wasn't a car of Beckham's traced to Macedonia the other week? I expect they don't try that hard to find Golfs, Mondeos etc if they leave the country.
Ever seen 'Repo Man'?
'Repo Man' was hysterical.
C, you have lessons to teach on truffling through the search engines. There's a worthy post. Respect, man. How do you do it?
When I visited Bulgaria a few years back, I was told that a decent percentage of the cars were hot. There was a large trade in cars stolen from Germany.
Pete - kind of you to say so. I'm feeling vaguely saintly for having just used my google skills to help my sister's nephew find something for his thesis.
Serf - Interesting point. Meanwhile, the NZ second hand car market is, or certainly was, dominated by legal Japanese imports.
Maybe the Nigerians are less likely to be given tickets in the first place...
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