2.19 pm: When I started working as a parliamentary reporter almost twelve years ago I had to learn shorthand. Not because it was needed to do the job, but because parliamentary reporters had been using shorthand for 150 years and it was considered a sacrilege not to learn it. Of course it has been abolished since, but to maintain this useless skill I sometimes use it just for the heck of it.
The euro coin isn't real: it's made of chocolate, a leftover of the Saint Nicholas festivities earlier this month. Give or take a few months and the real euro will be worth as little as this fake one ;)
