The effect of devaluation
The pound has been falling against the euro throughout the millennium.
This means that it’s becoming less and less attractive for foreigners to work here, and more and more attractive for British people to emigrate to the continent.
To show the effect, I’ve taken a hypothetical worker, earning £21k in the UK eight years ago, and the equivalent, €35k in the Eurozone. I’ve then increased the salary by 3% each year:
| Year | Exch. rate | Worker in the UK | Worker in Eurozone | Percentage | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 0.60 | £21000 | €35000 | £21000 | €35000 | 100% |
| 2001 | 0.62 | £21630 | €34887 | £22351 | €36050 | 97% |
| 2002 | 0.64 | £22279 | €34811 | £23764 | €37132 | 94% |
| 2003 | 0.70 | £22947 | €32782 | £26772 | €38245 | 86% |
| 2004 | 0.70 | £23636 | €33765 | £27575 | €39393 | 86% |
| 2005 | 0.69 | £24345 | €35282 | £27996 | €40575 | 87% |
| 2006 | 0.68 | £25075 | €36875 | £28418 | €41792 | 88% |
| 2007 | 0.71 | £25827 | €36377 | £30562 | €43046 | 85% |
| 2008 | 0.84 | £26602 | €31669 | £37243 | €44337 | 71% |
This is a dramatic change. In other words, seen from the continent, British people are now earning only 71% of what they did eight years ago.
The five tests have been met
It made me happy today to see that Duff of the LibDems has pointed out that the UK should join the euro:
In 1997 Mr Brown set five so-called economic tests to judge sterling’s accession to the eurozone. Suddenly, all these criteria are met. The pound has fallen to a competitive exchange rate level. The City risks being pushed aside as supervision and regulation is strengthened inside the eurozone. And the economic cycles of Britain and the eurozone are cow completely in sync as they both plunge into recession together. [...] But unless he now changes the terms of the British debate about EMU, the pound will be the ping pong ball bouncing beyond control between the giant footballs of the dollar and the euro.
Two annoying blogs
As I hinted to in this blog posting, I’ve had problems with two RSS feeds that I process in the What Others Are Saying box on the right.
I had fixed them once, but I then upgraded to a new version a bit too quickly and lost my modifications. 
So now I’ll post my changes here, so that they’re saved for posterity.
First of all, my beloved Phyllis insists on writing her titles in all-caps, which looks crap when mixed with other postings. This code takes care of this:
if (stristr($url, 'phylsblog'))
$title = ucwords(strtolower($title));
Secondly, John Wells’s blog stores the date in the title field in a non-standard format, and the title in the description field:
if (stristr($url, 'phon.ucl.ac.uk')):
$day = substr($title, 0, strpos($title, ' '));
if (strlen($day) < 2)
$day = '0' . $day;
$month = substr($title, strpos($title, ' ')+1, 3);
$month = $months[$month];
$year = substr($title, strpos($title, ' ', 4)+1, 4);
$issued = $year."-".$month."-".$day." 00:30:00";
$title = $item['description'];
endif;
Is devaluation good or bad?
As I blogged recently, I learnt at school that devaluation in the longer term is bad for you.
However, if you read Government-supporting media, such as The Guardian or The Times, you might now get the impression that devaluation is the best thing since sliced bread. See for instance this one by Anatole Kaletsky.
For a more orthodox view, see this one by Stephen King.
Don’t read the first article without getting the antidote from the second one!
Devaluation
Today the pound fell below 9 Danish crowns, and below $1.50.
The fall against the crown (which follows the euro) has been gradual – when I moved here in 2002, the exchange rate was around DKK 12 to the pound, but it soon fell a bit, and it stayed between 10 and 11 for quite some time. However, since Brown was made Prime Minister, it’s been falling and falling, but this is a new low. I’m sure it hasn’t been that low since the early 1990s.
The fall against the dollar is much more recent – just a few months ago, the pound was worth more than $2.
For some reason, people in the UK don’t seem overly worried. Perhaps they didn’t learn at school like I did that devaluing your currency is like peeing in your trousers on a winter day – it feels good at first but soon makes you feel much colder than before!
Famous for the wrong books
I forgot to blog last week that Michael Crichton has died.
Most people probably know him for Jurassic Park
However, his first work that made an impression on me was The First Great Train Robbery
His ideas got progressively worse, I’m sorry to say.
Timeline
In spite of this, his books were always a good read.
Is torture better for kids than naked breasts?
I don’t get the UK ratings system.
A movie like Coming to America, which is entirely harmless but contains a few naked boobs and sexual references, is rated 15.
On the other hand, Casino Royale, which contains graphical scenes of a naked man getting his testicles whipped, is rated 12A (which means that no kid is too young if accompanied by an adult).
I think I prefer Spanish ratings for violence (Casino Royale: 18) and Swedish ones for nudity (Coming to America: 7).
Qongqothwane
I’ve come home from a long weekend in Denmark to the news that Miriam Makeba has died.
When I was a linguistics undergraduate, it was claimed that she made click sounds famous through her click song:
I had never heard about her before, nor about the click song, but I borrowed it from the library and enjoyed the clicks.
Ohio
Fox News have just called Ohio for Obama. Given that Pennsylvania has already gone blue, this means Obama is now certain to become president. Good stuff!
I’m off to bed now.
Election night
I’ve found two good British guides to tomorrow’s US election night: The Times and Spectator Americano. And here’s an excellent American one on Newsweek
The first results will come in shortly after midnight UK time (1am Danish time).
As for which states to watch, FiveThirtyEight has this to say: “Also, there are some states that truly do appear to be “must-wins” for McCain. In each and every one of the 624 victory scenarios that the simulation found for him this afternoon, McCain won Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Indiana and Montana. He also picked up Ohio in 621 out of the 624 simulations, and North Carolina in 622 out of 624. If McCain drops any of those states, it’s pretty much over.”