Syrzia Won!

antrobus

jjlandlord wrote: »

Greek characters!

Technically correct.

The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet but is quite different. For one thing, Russian Cyrillic has 33 letters whilst Greek only has 24.

CLAPTON

antrobus wrote: »

Technically correct.

The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet but is quite different. For one thing, Russian Cyrillic has 33 letters whilst Greek only has 24.

typical of the Greek defaulting on a few letters.

TheBlueHorse

i think they should just pay all their public sector staff 50% more, for starters, and increase everyone's pension. Everyone should work for the public sector and no one should pay any tax. Its what they DESERVE after all. They DESERVE an excellent standard of living. How dare anyone suggest they pay for it. Just write off all debts, increase salaries and reduce tax. That is the way forward.

The irony is, if they did, the EU would just have to shut up and accept it. They can't allow Greece to leave and look good, otherwise we'll all want out.

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

The markets don't seem phased in the slightest.

The news was making a big deal of the "carnage" this could create on the markets today. One commentator suggested the Euro would be very volatile.

What happened there?

Words like 'carnage' make for great headlines but in the end are rubbish. The last opinion poll I saw said that Syriza would get exactly the number of seats they got in the end.

This is called 'priced in', that means that people in the markets already reckon that this is a likely outcome so have set asset prices to reflect this outcome.

If UKIP were to win the UK election with polls as they are there would be a day of chaos as assets found new price levels. Most asset pricing each day (e.g. FTSE100 or FX rates) are completely meaningless, just noise.

antrobus

CLAPTON wrote: »

typical of the Greek defaulting on a few letters.

English also has only 26 characters.

Welsh has 28. Or 29 if you count 'j'.

Generali

antrobus wrote: »

English also has only 26 characters.

Welsh has 28. Or 29 if you count 'j'.

It used to have 27 with & being the 27th apparently. I think that English used to use that German double s that looks like a beta symbol.

CLAPTON

antrobus wrote: »

English also has only 26 characters.

Welsh has 28. Or 29 if you count 'j'.

that's different and result of Coalition efficiency savings

mayonnaise

Generali wrote: »

It used to have 27 with & being the 27th apparently. I think that English used to use that German double s that looks like a beta symbol.

tschüß!

...

ruggedtoast

In spite of all the brinkmanship it would be disastrous for the Euro project if Greece defaults. Everything they are working towards is consolidation, federalism and expansion with an eventual 'Super Best Friend' status for Russia and Turkey.

With Germany leading it all of course.

I suspect Merkel will try and keep them in whatever happens. I cant imagine the EU would have turned a blind eye to them barely meeting any of the criteria for entry in the first place, just to let them go back to offering cheap drachma denominated holidays now.

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

It used to have 27 with & being the 27th apparently.....

There used to be only 24. Then they added 'j' and decided that 'u' and 'v' were actually different.

I'm not sure that ' &' was ever actually a letter as such. But there was once a time when children were taught to recite the alphabet and end with the phrase ' and per se and'. (Per se as in the Latin by itself.) Which apparently is where the word 'ampersand' comes from.

And that should be worth some bonus QI points.

Generali wrote: »

... I think that English used to use that German double s that looks like a beta symbol.

There are a number of letters that have died a death over the years; like the thorn and various dipthongs.