Money to padres

Tonight after tea, J and I had one of those conversations where afterwards you have to work hard to remember where you started, given where you ended up. We haven’t had one for a long time, so I’m entering it here before I forget.

I think it all started when Katy called the price of something through from the other room as “85 quid”. K asked what quid meant, and I said it was the same as pound. He said something a bit confused about dollars, and I said there were pounds and pence, dollars and cents, and Euros and cents and so on.

J then said that you could use Euros in Turkey. I said I didn’t think so as it wasn’t even in the EU, but that it was trying to join. If it did join that would be a big thing, because it would be the only mostly Muslim country in the EU, and one that’s mostly in Asia. Countries like France have places like Germany and Belgium as neighbours, but Turkey has places like Iran and Iraq – suddenly the EU goes all the way up to the Middle East. J asked about what would change in Turkey if it’s in the EU, and I said things like people can work anywhere in the EU without much trouble.

Then we talked about the UK not using the Euro, but first I had to say a bit about interest, how banks make their money by it, how they set their interest rate relative to what the central bank decides, inflation, and central banks changing interest rates to control it. Then because things like many people in France rent rather than having a mortgage changing interest rates across Europe together would have different effects in different countries, so if we joined at the wrong time it would hurt our economy. So at the moment it’s been left that when our economy fits well enough with the rest of the Euro countries we’d think about joining.

Then we talked about how some people don’t want to get rid of the pound at all, how they think it’s part of what makes us British, with the Queen’s head on it and so on. This is true, but we’re also European, so some people want to use the Euro as it would make us more European. Plus it makes it easier to buy and sell across Europe. I also said that Granddad wants us to join, as he survived a war in Europe and he wants to avoid there being another one and he thinks a common currency would help.

J was quiet for a bit, then asked “If Britain went to war, would your company have to write computer programs for controlling tanks and things?” I said that during the war there was conscription, because there weren’t enough soldiers and so on without everyone joining in. We’re at war at the minute in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there are enough soldiers (simplifying quite a bit 🙁 ) so there is no conscription. Fortunately a war that would need conscription is very unlikely at the minute. But even if there were conscription there would be protected professions, where you’re even more useful to the country doing your normal job than being in the army etc. Or there would be people who joined the army but didn’t fight – like doctors. “Oh yes,” said J, “I remember from Going Solo when a cosmetic surgeon joined the hospital at Alexandria and Roald Dahl went there.” One of the increasing number of books that J has read and I haven’t, so I just accepted it.

I said the vicars go in the army do, that they’re often called padre. “So they can go to church wherever they are?” Yes. “Would they lug a huge pipe organ around with them?” No, they’d probably sing without any instruments :).

It’s like one of those word puzzles where you have to go from a start word to an end word via other words, changing only one letter at a time. We went from money to padres, via economics and geo-politics. 🙂