is the idea of a single european state really so horrifying. the comments on this thread come across as bordering on xenophobic and racist.
this whole thing about sovereignty and 'God save the £' is ridiculuous. exactly why is the pound so important? can somebody explain why the pound gives us a sense of national identity? what excatly is the difference between one piece of metal (the pound) and another piece of metal (the euro)? once the euro has settled and interest rates are aligned, i see no reason why the UK should not adopt the euro.
Tink
I read this last week but didn't have time to reply. So here it is now.
There is a huge problem IMHO in having the Euro, and a little bit of application of common sense and logic is necessary to understand why. A small understanding of basic economics is helpful too.
The whole problem as I see it is this. By giving up the pound we give up control of our economy. I agree that this would not necessarily be a (economic, if not political) problem if all the Eurozone economies were in harmony. However, they are not and probably never will be. By having one currency you must by default have only one interest rate. This means that when a country goes into recession (like Germany, France, Italy etc are at present then it is considered good practice to slacken restrictions on govt borrowing and reduce interest rates to stimulate the economy. However, there are several other countries in the eurozone who's economies are overheating badly i.e Spain Ireland etc and are being too sucessful and therefore inflationary. Ideally, their Govts would like to rein back on borrowing and raise interest rates to put a fiscal squeeze on the ecomomy. However, fiscal control has passed to M. Trichet and the European Central Bank and his job is to try to set a "one size fits all" interest rate. It does not work, as you would know if you have ever tried wearing one size fits all underpants. In the end, no-one is happy. The relative sucess of the British economy over the last ten odd years has largely been as a result of us being able to control and fine tune our interest rates to suit. I cannot see any logic or benefit in giving away this control.
Setting aside the "superstate" argument, clearly it is a pillar of democracy that there should be no taxation without representation. Handing over power to a bunch of un-elected european commissioners, who incidentally would also love to set our direct taxation rates too, cannot be deemed in anyway democratic.
I will forgive your naivety in such matters, you're obviously too young to remember, but I grew up in the seventies when this country was in serious economic decline. The whole place was (mis)ruled by the Unions who wielded massive power undemocratically. The lights used to go out regularly due to somebody being on strike somewhere, we had three day working weeks to conserve electricity and the whole population suffered. It was totally miserable and humiliating and it is why Thatcher was swept to power to sort it all out. Another relatively turbulent decade followed and wasn't much fun either, though I will concede it formed the foundation for our current prosperity. You may even bee too young to remember the ERM debacle in 1992, where my mortgage interest rate went from 10% to 15% overnight, basically because we were stuffed by the German Finance Ministry! We left the ERM and thankfully never got involved in the Euro as a result. The rest, as they say, is history. And a very good one too.
Fianlly, I have re-read this thread and I think your accusations of xzenophobia and racism are totally without foundation. Where is the "fear of foreigners" here? Fear of being ruled by unelected beaurocrats is actually quite admirable IMO. This is a very serious allegation to make of anyone and actually I reckon you probably own a few folk an apology.
