Cash in hand
I can't keep up with all this bank and economics stuff any more. Ships/icebergs/Iceland/lifeboats. Have you noticed how everyone is an expert in finance all of a sudden, wandering around quoting J. K. Galbraith at every opportunity?
Last night at a Royal Society for the Arts dinner the conversation on both sides of my plate was all about the banking crisis. The man on my left used to work for the Bank of England and he didn't know what was going on.
On my right was a lawyer who kept poodles and drove a Mercedes. And she didn't know either. "Well of course, we need banks. We're not going to be taking our cash out in a suitcase are we?" I said to her.
"I'm thinking of doing just that," she said. "I have a big safe at home and I'm going to put my money there for a while."
What does this mean? If lawyers who keep poodles and drive Mercs are panicking perhaps there's going to be a rush to stuff the nation's mattresses and tea caddies with freshly minted notes. I wonder how house-safe sales are going? If this carries on, burglary is going to get interesting again.
Burgling prospects have been so poor in recent years with one or two exceptions. But not everyone is sitting on an £80m plus art collection as Harry Hyams was. Most burglars have to settle for the video recorder and an X-Box 360.
But if people are stashing cash again there could be new openings for the old-style safe crackers who thought their days were over. Burglary may become trendy again. M&S could launch a range of black-and-white hooped jumpers (cashmere naturally) and silk masks for long dormant tea-leaves who, as I write, are rummaging in their cupboards for dusty swag bags and ageing stethoscopes.
Last night at a Royal Society for the Arts dinner the conversation on both sides of my plate was all about the banking crisis. The man on my left used to work for the Bank of England and he didn't know what was going on.
On my right was a lawyer who kept poodles and drove a Mercedes. And she didn't know either. "Well of course, we need banks. We're not going to be taking our cash out in a suitcase are we?" I said to her.
"I'm thinking of doing just that," she said. "I have a big safe at home and I'm going to put my money there for a while."
What does this mean? If lawyers who keep poodles and drive Mercs are panicking perhaps there's going to be a rush to stuff the nation's mattresses and tea caddies with freshly minted notes. I wonder how house-safe sales are going? If this carries on, burglary is going to get interesting again.
Burgling prospects have been so poor in recent years with one or two exceptions. But not everyone is sitting on an £80m plus art collection as Harry Hyams was. Most burglars have to settle for the video recorder and an X-Box 360.
But if people are stashing cash again there could be new openings for the old-style safe crackers who thought their days were over. Burglary may become trendy again. M&S could launch a range of black-and-white hooped jumpers (cashmere naturally) and silk masks for long dormant tea-leaves who, as I write, are rummaging in their cupboards for dusty swag bags and ageing stethoscopes.
Labels: burglars, cashmere, Harry Hyams, Iceland, J K Galbraith, Marks and Spencer, Mercedes-Benz, X-Box 360
posted by Richard Donkin at
2:37 PM
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