Lunar

I usually see my friend Hugo for a drink about once a month but last week we got onto a really interesting topic of conversation just as it was time to leave, so we met up again today to carry on.

The topic was money, one which I have always thought I understood well enough, and then a couple of years ago I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 that asserted that paper money - money that was a promise to pay rather than having intrinsic value - was invented in China, when border territories switched from gold coins to iron so that carrying cash became impractical.

The notion was, the programme went on to say, brought back to the west by Marco Polo who wrote about it in one of his books*. So far, so good. And it's not a big leap from there to bank notes and the gold standard, where one always had to have the gold to back up the value of the notes issued.

Where it all comes off the rails, for me at least, is the abandoning of the gold standard and the appearance of 'fiat money', cash that is simply printed by the government. Suddenly, the question 'what is money?" becomes a lot harder to answer. 

Remember how Teresa May used to ridicule Jeremy Corbyn with notion of his "magic money tree" yet Rishi Sunak has now pulled £330B out of the air to deal with Coronavirus (and, I suspect, Brexit). 

The rest of the evening was less intellectually tiring as I spent it sat outside with Dan, Abi, and the Minx. Just as we were about to go in, we saw the moon cruising low along the skyline of Kirkby Lonsdale. Given my less than steady hands, I was quite pleased with how this shot turned out.

*I should point out that my friend Ross, who is well read and, I think, generally better informed than me, disputes this version of history.

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-10.4 kgs