It is with glee that I report that the high-powered diplomacy displayed by the European Central Bank has led it to stage an exhibition entitled New Face of the Euro - and it has chosen Madrid to host it.
Glee, only because this hob-nailed insensitivity on the part of the bureaucrats positively asks to be held up to incredulity and to have fun poked at it. Otherwise, there is nothing funny for the Spaniards, many of whom I count among my personal friends and many of them, not surprisingly, in the games and gaming industry.
They are suffering unbearably as the country struggles to keep its head above water in these financially straitened times. Machine income is down around 30 per cent I am told – and that’s in the AWPs, which tend to do better than the amusement equipment. No surprise, then, that we had to search for non-gambling machines at the FER show earlier this month.
And it isn’t just Spain that’s suffering. What the amusement industry is going through in Cyprus doesn’t bear thinking about as that country desperately tries to stay in the eurozone. No doubt most have seen the joke going around depicting someone attempting to withdraw money from a Cypriot ATM to be greeted by a screenshot of Angela Merkel making an uncomplimentary gesture, the whole surmounted by the title: “Love from Mrs Merkel”.
The problems facing other Mediterranean countries in the eurozone will mean that operators in Italy and Greece, as well as Spain, will be sympathetic towards their colleagues in Cyprus. My many German friends, I know are somewhat uncomfortable at the image being presented of their country and its leaders in the European press.
As if the German industry isn’t having problems of its own, with its Länder - the semi-autonomous states of Germany - imposing their own regulations on the AWP business which are transparently illegal. They get away with it simply because it takes too long to overturn what they are doing. Yes, the industry will win eventually, but the collateral damage to the gaming industry in the interim will be catastrophic.
Getting back to the eurozone – and in an attempt to inject a little levity into the situation – it is noticeable how the pro-euro campaigners of a couple of years ago have ducked behind the parapet in the UK. Far from talking up the single currency, the political drift has swung completely the other way and the current government may have problems unless it permits a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU!
It is not InterGame’s job to be political, or even to be seen to be suggestive, but personally, I well remember getting a vote on EU membership – 1974 or thereabouts, I think – and at that time I voted against, a decision based upon the very scholarly view that “I’m not having a load of Frenchmen tramping through my house…” One might reasonably question my suitability to influence such earth-moving decisions as EU membership, based upon that academic evaluation nearly 40 years ago.
Trouble is, I don’t really feel that much different now, which suggests that, intellectually, I haven’t moved on much. The philosophy remains the same: Welsh first, a reluctant British second and European isn’t even on the same racecourse.
Rant over.
