"I was lying. Your cuticles are terrible", barked Tracey Barlow, bristling at Gail Potter-Tilsley-Platt-Hillman-McIntyre's insistence that she is an innocent woman. This despite the fact that Corrie's answer to Zsa Zsa Gabor was sporting a very professional French manicure. Clear evidence of the Lib Dems' soft sentencing policy having made it into the coalition agreement maybe?
Some coalitions, however, are destined to create havoc on the fingernails. Angela Merkel's are putting Gordon Brown's to shame at the moment. Hardly surprising, with the Germans coming over all fretful about Mutti bailing out reckless adoptive Mediterranean children. All she did was warn her euro-brother and sisters that they were all in this together (I know those words from somewhere...?). Isn't that what families are for?
New York, London and Japan had a fun morning sticking pins in the euro. France wagged its immaculately groomed finger and the markets wobbled for a bit.
Both France and Germany are asking for a further - but not the same - transfer of national powers to the EU. Merkel wants new rules to deal with members' insolvency: Sarkozy is after a centralised "economic government" and a eurozone council which would sideline the UK. Yet neither seems to believe the other is willing to yield the element of sovreignty required by either plan. So what will happen?
In the meantime, the UK's non-euro status will have many Brits mopping their brows with relief. UKIP enthusiasts are basking in the glow of high-grade schadenfreude - or would be if it weren't so damned European. The ConDems are going with "Yah! Phew!", and hoping that that Frau Pandora won't really open the box marked Lisbon Treaty.
The near-parity of the euro and the pound has been a godsend for Welsh farmers, but if the euro is as wobbly as it is, what does the similarity say about the stability of sterling?
With Sarkozy's financial best friend offering a stereotype's shrug at our triple-A rating, and stage-whispering "IMF" at every turn, we must hope that tomorrow's ConDem austerity measures are real not fake.
It matters, because we can't hang on by our fingernails much longer.
Sunday, 23 May 2010
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