Plenty of reasons to raise a glass

SADLY, I think we are starting to get used to hearing about it.

"It" being the mounting financial woes of countries in the European Union.

I guess most of us know what it's like to be short a few bob now and then, or what it's like to have to borrow money to put a roof over the head, and wheels beneath it.

But most of us have a sort of financial plan in place.

It's about living within means, going short for a time maybe while the ledger is running in the red so that you get it back in black as soon as possible.

Because when it is, you can borrow some more and buy a big motorbike! Yay!

No ... it doesn't work that way, although by the look of things the entire populations of Italy and Greece appear on paper to have been encouraged to go down that path.

At the close of yesterday, Italy was officially $329 billion in debt - which led one economist to declare "Rome is burning".

Well if Rome is burning then Athens must be ashes.

Greece has a debt of $1.9 trillion ... that's a one followed by 12 zeros.

How you get into that state is anyone's guess, but it is very clear that it is far from a walk in the park to get out of it.

Faceless but apparently powerful officials within the governments of France and Germany have begun investigating moves to make it possible for countries to leave the European Zone, which Italy and Greece are part of.

Many countries are owed money, and in the way this whole commercial jigsaw operates they need some of that money back to counter the money they too are borrowing to stay afloat.

The world may have evolved rapidly over the past centuries but in financial terms it has simply just pedalled backwards.

Used to be a time, before the age of the plastic card and the offer of easy money, that things like stock, food, silver and gold were used as currency.

Few got rich, but nothing collapsed.

Now the world is on the financial brink, the economist boffins are grimly predicting.

Which leads me to suggest that New Zealand, an isolated little bunch of islands far from everything, is (in relation to most of the big European and American players) doing pretty good.

Compared with Greece and Italy we appear to be Lotto winners ... our debts are relatively modest, although at the mercy of the rest of the global fraternity of course.

So I was buoyed to hear a couple of days ago that once again, Hawke's Bay wines, particularly the reds, had brought home another string of awards.

And that exports from the Bay had surged nearly 50 per cent over the past five years.

We aren't in bad shape, and that sort of news does wonders for the collective soul.

I think I'll open a bottle.