Evidence of the endangered Celtic Tiger

Ireland has been one of the worst affected nations by the economic downturn. It was one of the success stories of the EU, an economy that, in not much over 20 years, went from one of the poorest nations in Western Europe to Dublin becoming the most expensive city for accommodation in the whole of the EU.

But its economy is shrinking fast and the jobs are disappearing quickly.

However, there is still evidence of the money, and credit, which poured into the economy.

I had a 30 minute wait for the bus from Cashel back to Cork, and as there was nothing else to do I kept looking at all the cars going past.

In Ireland all the number plates show not only the county but also the year of registration. In all that time, excluding trucks, the oldest date that went past was 94.

There was an older car, but that had British plates.

Given how many old bangers there are running around where I live, I was quite amazed that there were none in Cashel, and it made me realise that I don’t think I’ve seen any old cars since I left Derry.

It could just be that Ireland has a very successful old car scrapage scheme.

It could be that I’ve just missed them all.

Holidaying in Britain, it’s all the rage

So as the pound nears parity with the Euro the whole concept of popping across to the continent for a short break starts to look fiendishly expensive.

So it is with great joy that I was up early this morning joining the hundreds of others taking part in the sales. Except, I wasn’t buying DVDs, or the fixtures and fittings from a bankrupt Woolworths store.

No, today I had my cyber elbows sharpened as I dived into the melee of the Travelodge Christmas sale.

Whilst I have several objections to Travelodge, my experience with their London City hotel being my main negative against them, you have to agree that a £9 a night for a hotel room your principles can become a little looser than normal.

Given the number of times I got the “Server Busy” message and had to repeatedly hit reload, it would appear that they were doing pretty brisk business.

But still, I managed to walk away with some stunning bargains.

Consequently I’m going to be spending a little more time exploring my own country this year (or until such time as I get a 100% pay rise [impossible], the pound surges to record highs against the Euro [almost impossible], or just recovers so it’s back around the 1.20 mark [still highly unlikely]).

Credit Crunchies

Back in July, in my second post, I bemoaned the fact that my trip to Poland was getting more and more expensive as the credit crunch bit and the pound fell.

Perhaps I should have kept my gob shut at the time, as it’s getting worse.

I should be off to Brugge in a couple of weeks, but every day it gets more and more expensive.
I did not pay for the hotel when I booked it, just reserved it. At the time the Euro was at about 1.27 to the pound. Over the last couple of days the pound has sunk to new lows against the currency and it currently stands at 1.17, adding nearly £20 to the cost of my hotel in a little over three months, with the worst slumps happening in the last few weeks its probably only going to get worse.

Perhaps now I should be looking at the possibility of cancelling, but if I do that, I loose the cost of my Eurostar ticket. Unless of course Eurostar were unable to run the train, in which case they would have to refund me.

Eurostar managers recently voted for strike action over the run-up to Christmas (and let’s face it you can get more run-uppery than the last weekend before Christmas!). Perhaps, for once, I should be secretly hoping that the strike and inevitable chaos it brings takes place.

Obviously for people who want to get home to loved ones for Christmas it would be devastating, but for me…

It just keeps on getting expensive

The current credit crunch has finally started to hit home. I reserved a seat on the Goldenpass train from Interlaken last night for my journey in early August, and the exchange rate was less than two Swiss Francs to the Pound.

I was kind of basing my finance on 2.5 to the pound (it was that last year, why can't it stay the same!)

Oh well, don't think I'll be paying too much attention to my Bank Statement in August, it ain't going to make pleasant reading!