Quantitative Tightening: The KLF, The Million, Cousins, Piering

In the course of expounding Paul's Law under which reference to Robert Mugabe or ZaNuPF as an analogue for opponents automatically loses an argument - cf Godwin's Law referencing Nazis/Hitler - LOL referred to the KLF and their exceedingly famous Quantitative Tightening measures of 23 August 1994.

It seems only right to feature the AV record of that great moment in the history of economics.

Have never quite worked out where exactly the conceit(s) were in this art work. Was this real money? Yes, almost certainly. Was it however "scrap money" already destined for destruction? Destroyed in close liaison with the Bank of England? Therefore really not at the artist's expense? Or was it "non scrap money" that actually belonged to Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond?

TRIVIA: One of the artists that I managed way back in the mists of time were known as Distant Cousins and had very considerable Radio success in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, including incredibly strong play on Radio 1 for a band that didn't ever chart in the top 75 never mind the top 40. This included a Radio One single of the week for our single You Used To (1989), almost repeating the feat on a non-Indy re-release by Virgin (1991). Our national radio plugger was Scott Piering - the Voice of the Mu - and this led us to be in the same stable as the Smiths and the KLF as his proteges.

Scott eventually died in 2000, of the fairly non-Rock-n-Roll on the face of it cause of cancer. Though there had been rather frequent and obviously, as it turned out, untrue stories of his death throughout the 1990s.

Sadly Scott (nor Mariella, nor Mike) never got us to Number 1, and even Number 47 eluded us, but we did have a great time whenever Scott was with us on promotional tours. We even taught him several word games that he in turn taught many of his charges. A very strange TV gig in Belfast, where we appeared, bizarrely alongside Mrs Victoria Gillick, also involving a midnight flit to Dublin for a too early connection to Manchester to indulge a band member, springs to mind.

Another time perhaps.