Merry Christmas and other festive stuff. I have returned from my little stay in Moscow and was saddened to find England in a worse state than I had left it. So it turns out that whilst I’ve been out of the loop, our economy is – frankly – fucked. And I mean seriously fucked. Now I know that you are thinking, “Yes, but the U.S. is also fucked – haven’t you heard?”, to which I agree. What needs to be understood is that there are levels of fucked and we’ve hit a new one. Consider for a moment if you will that the exchange rate in August/September let me buy $1.86 for every £1 spent. I came back from the UK to find that now we’re looking at only $1.42 per £1… This isn’t good at all. All my expenses from Russia get paid back in Russian Rubles which are then converted to US Dollars and then into English Sterling once it hits my account. If you can imagine the cost of a pint in Russia is about $40 you can see how quickly this change in exchange rate is going to rape me.

So the question is why is our economy so shafted? For starters, this year is the first year that we as a country stopped paying the debt for Europe being charged by the U.S. Government for the last 50 years. Yes that’s right, we’ve been paying the U.S. Government for all costs incurred from joining the 2^nd World War for 50 years. That said, we have now finished paying, so this year in particular should be rolling in cash with no issues. So again I ask, what is the reason for this? Seems like some of the banks have screwed up. However, it worries me that when a bank screws up the people have to pay lots of money to fix the situation. Seriously, this seems to be happening everywhere too. Banks are businesses, and as such they shouldn’t be given free run to do anything they want with no consequence. What I’d like to see is that the high salary earners in these banks have to submit 80% of their income back. These are the folk making loads of money, bad calls and costing the average Joe on the street money to pay back in taxes. I was shocked on return to see that pretty much every form of bill has gone up since I left, making the cost of living almost impossible.

Oh and if I hear any more people use the term “current climate” I’ll beat them to death with a really angry Honey Badger. Please make sure you Wikipedia or YouTube to find out what a Honey Badger is. They are frankly the single greatest animal that ever lived.

So how would I fix the situation? Now that’s the big question and naturally, being the opinionated bastard that I am, I actually have an answer. Thing is, people won’t like it.

Number one, we as a country pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq. If there is still a good reason to be there the U.N. shall see fit to bring in whoever needed. I personally don’t think they would.

Number two, we charge the US Government for all costs incurred during the war on these two countries.

Number three, we ship out our criminal population to some other place (maybe Australia again…?)

Number four, we rehabilitate the not so bad criminals that don’t need to be shipped out by making them run in giant Hamster Wheels hooked up to the national grid. This will not only resolve the remaining crime issues but will also allow a great discount to power bills as well as provide more eco friendly power to the country.

Number five, pull the hell out of Europe and stop giving them lots and lots of lots of money each year for almost nothing in return.

Also, I’d make sure that everyone gets a free Crunchie on a Friday and that we only work a 4 day week. Now who would vote me in?

Love, Philthy

Mark sent us a link to a story that is simply too horrible to contemplate. In this day and age of economic trouble, where businesses are falling apart and the bottom line is falling out from underneath us all, certain things suffer.

RetroBlast.com has a post saying that Stern Pinball has laid off many of it’s line workers and a few designers as well. I guess with money being tight, the rich collectors and celebrities who buy their tables just had to make some cuts to their budget.

Stern Pinball is near and dear to our hearts here at Robot Panic and you can find a story we did on them here. Suffice it to say that Stern is the last bastion of true pinball in the world and that it’s loss would truly mean the end of pinball as we know it. And I mean the end.

My hope is that the company can see it’s way through this crisis. They’ve done it before when the videogame market crashed back in the 80′s. With plenty of market savy, Stern rose from those ashes. So let’s hope they can hang on.

You can find the story in it’s original form here.