A friend sorting an elderly aunt's possessions found a neatly labelled box, full of 'pieces of string now too short to be of use'.
Other stranded assets are worth listing: lard; confessionals; castles; canals; brown coal; South Crofty; 2 years' old computers; local democracy; trades unions; nation states; Paul Wolfowitz; the IMF; the United Nations; Limbo.
An initial list of over valued assets includes: London houses; sterling; the dollar; central bank independence; Gordon Brown; papal infallibility; chastity; Paradise.
It should be noted that Hell holds its value.
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'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free'
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Fallen Angels
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14 comments:
Bless your friend's elderly aunt. I have just turned out my first instamatic camera and a top I bought from Harpers Bizarre which makes me look like Judy Dench years before my time. And a pair of Reboks.
I've been weeding and tidying away, thinking 'better in the garden than doing that office,' and wondering what sort of nettles make soup because I could start a kitchen, and you are reading blogs AGAIN.
Reboks - due for a comeback, get them out of the bin quick.
When we cleared out my dad's effects, I found an old dictaphone tape.
It was a practice recording for a speech he made years ago at some Agricultural Congress.
Seems odd somehow that this is the only voice recording we have!
Very subtle, and how right.
Note that there is an asymmetry between the two sets of values. Stranded assets have a value below their past peak and often below original cost, without the prospect of recovering that value (=they are not under-valued). Overvalued assets may have a value above their past peak and their original cost but anyway they are expected/poised to fall: sooner or later that very expectation will make them fall.
Add castor oil to the list of stranded assets. No longer used, whether as a laxative or a fascist torture (as in Italy in 1921-45); the plant is rarely seen in gardens, only for its dark green-reddish colour and spikey fruit.
It isn't yet usual to retain recordings of someone's voice, is it Scroblene? (unless it's on video , so I suppose it is now).
I will be preserved repeating my German tapes unless I make a start leaving thoughtful and wonderful observations recorded for posterity. Imagine a small section of shelf with labelled offerings: your mother on politeness; your mother on respecting other people's work and leaving your room tidy; ....
Or recipes - there is a video of Mr HG where he demonstrates 'how to prepare and cook bistecca' which begins almost at first catch your chianina, and proceeds steadily through an entire bottle of wine to the dish displayed in charred and bloody glory by a very happy chef.
Ekonom, Nick Drew commenting on Beeching first mention stranded assets and remarked:
I have a feeling this type of terminology will serve excellent analogue duty in various social situations.
He's right, it does doesn't it.
Not sure that castor oil is as passe as you suggest.
Yes, & you've done us proud. I particularly like the abstract items on your list (watch out for plain old obselete, though)
Positional value next ?
Now that Mr Slicker has carelessly given me the car keys, I may do a bit of joyriding around some other financial terms
Being a bear of little brain, I've had to think about some of the eclectic concepts on display here.
So an eight-track player is a stranded asset but a record player isn't? (for we've all kept our vinyl but who still has one of those chunky 8 track cartridges?). Likewise software CDs that once ran on Windows 3.1 in the early '90s.
I still have my first mobile phone - it's about 10"x3"x2" and weighs over a pound. It was advertised as a 'pocket phone' rather than a car phone. You had to pull its little aerial out. But I think this is plain 'obsolete' rather than stranded.
For years I kept a piece of knitting which was my mum's work-in-progress when she died. ball of wool and two needles attached to about a square foot of proto-garment. God only knows why I kept it.
the 8-track isn't stranded, it's condemned to the darkest pit. Remember bracing yourself for when the clunk would come, just in the middle of a good bit?
Eee, tell that to kids today, & they'll not believe you
I bought a leather jacket on Sunday that makes me look like Johny Boy in Mean Streets ..its a vintage 1970s item. Has this been refloated value-wise then ?
This is just normal demand though . Surely stranded value refers to capital investement with an actual productive potential , like a canal or a factory ?
Newmania, 'a factory'
British manufacturing industry was put forward but rejected as
1, unfair
2, surely not true yet.
Surely you will reopen your blog to put a photo of the jacket N?
The electrical and and electronic things are usually obsolete, all agreed, though a morse code transmitting key nearly made the cut, Raedwald; semaphore flags were not allowed as no-one was too sure if they aren't used on boats still?
I only contribute now HG leaving you with the dreadful task of coming up with endless diversions for the insatiable masses.
The Church of England ?
Of course as we allow the culture to degrade and flatten the value of the past contributions to it becomes less. There was great panic about this when people realised that Chaucer was becoming incomprehensible just on a linguistic basis . We are now so insulated from the past that much of what went before is opaque .
...and yet Milton appears as the PULLMAN childrens books .Perhaps nothing good ever dies .
N,
I rejected the Church of England. Not from great respect for many of its participants? practioners? Believers would not be a good choice of word thinking of some of its outstanding modern theologians.
Not because of its lack of pretentiousness.
Not from joy in its glorious music and ceremony.
But crucially because, together with the Church of Rome, it has the responsibility and preparation to teach and advise on social beliefs and arrangements and tell the state to keep its nose out of things that are none of the state's concern.
Ah, semaphore was always a sort of military / naval thing; the mercantile service always got by on a n Aldis lamp at night and signal flags by day if radio was not to be used. Raedwald has both a full set of signal flags and an Aldis lamp, both quite useless as the modern yottie can understand neither (except perhaps the 'A' flag which means 'keep clear I have a diver down').
Still, it allows me a certain pleasure in flying 'F' and 'U' from the starboard shrouds when some impatient turbocharged gin palace is forced to dawdle behind me in a narrow channel.
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