On Thu, 27 May 2010 11:55:59 -0700 (PDT), allantracy
wrote:

And, to add insult to injury, Ireland had to pay some of the bill to
bail out Greece!

The joys of Euro membership ...

The Euro must now surely collapse.

Maggie’s economist of choice, that arch monetarist, Milton Friedman
predicted it would be so.

He always argued that a single currency with a central bank could
never succeed alone without centralised fiscal responsibility across
the whole of Europe.

His advice was for Europe to adopt the best practice of the
Deutschmark and the Deutsche Bank to set Europe wide interest rates
and Europe wide spending levels.

Pity now also the poor Germans who must be appalled to be once again
experiencing fiscal irresponsibility of a sort they must have thought
they had so carefully left behind.


But the proposed Treaty changes will do just what you say. Every EU
country would have to submit its draft annual fiscal budget to the
European Commission who may demand modifications before returning the
proposals to national parliaments to be voted into law.

Of course there is no reason for EU countries outside the Euro zone to
do this, which is why David Cameron quite justifiably threatened to
use the UK's veto if the UK was going to be compelled to take part.


Credit where it’s due to Gordon as well who effectively overruled Tony
to delay our entry further into the Euro, not a difficult choice
though when you consider the mess the Tories had got themselves into
previously with the Euro.


Yes, that was one of Gordon's better decisions, made in the era when
he was known as the "Iron Chancellor" and before he began to play fast
and loose with public spending and taxation. He went rapidly downhill
after that.


I don’t know why we bother with Europe, the whole thing is flawed, we
would be much better off with the dollar and become the 51st state and
we could go back to Imperial measurements far better than all this
foreign muck that no one wants.


Until that paragraph you were making a lot of sense, then you went and
spoiled it.

The US doesn't want us. The "Special Relationship" died years ago.
There is no way that a US Administration would tolerate our high taxes
and dedication to services delivered by the public sector. Equally,
there is no way that the British people would tolerate the US attitude
to welfare and healthcare.

Britain's political ideology, even under a Conservative government,
has never been closer to American than mainland European ideology. So
being the 51st state would be unworkable. The US realises this, and
wants us to be part of a united Europe.

The only possible way to extricate the UK from the EU is for the UK to
revert to being a member of EFTA/EEA as we were before 1973. However,
in order to gain access to EU markets, we would need to comply with
almost as many EU directives as we do now.

I read an article which included a comment from Norway's Prime
Minister in which he said that he received a fax every Monday morning
from the European Commission in Brussels. He said that it contained a
list of the laws that the Norwegian parliament needed to enact that
week.

It was a tongue in cheek comment, but one that made a serious point:
If we want to trade with the EU while only being a member of EFTA/EEA
then we must comply with regulations over which we have no control. At
least as a member of the EU we do have some influence over those
regulations, although exactly how much is a moot point.