Just a tincture of the Hannan Blog of Euroscepticism. I am a Europhile so figure? However, it is important to read alternatives. It keeps dementia at bay!
Daniel Hannan
Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the European Union is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free.
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November 29th, 2010 12:51
Britain is making a HIGHER contribution to the bail-out than the euro-zone members
The figures for the Irish bail-out are now available in full.
The euro-zone countries are contributing €17.5 billion – which is fair enough, I suppose, if they see the survival of the single currency as being in their own interests. But the EU as a whole, including non-euro states, is contributing a further €22.5 billion. Despite having kept the pound, Britain is liable for nearly €3 billion (£2.5 billion) as part of a contingency reserve that was supposedly set up to deal with natural disasters, such as floods and earthquakes.
The three original countries which have rejected the euro, Britain, Denmark and Sweden, are all additionally making bilateral contributions equivalent to what they would have paid as members of the euro-zone fund. Indeed, the United Kingdom is paying slightly more than its share: an additional loan of €3.8 billion (£3.2 billion). As Douglas Carswell keeps telling anyone… Read More
‘Yes to Lisbon, Yes to Jobs!’ So, Taoiseach, how’s that recovery coming along?
Here’s a little reminder of why Fianna Fáil asked people to vote for the Lisbon Treaty:
Fine Gael, by contrast, preferred this message:
Nor was it just the two old parties. All Ireland’s Pro-Treaty Forces had the same message:
Well, guys, here we are a year on. How’s the recovery working out for you?
The euro isn’t finished: that’s precisely the problem
No return to the Deutsche Mark
I’ve just been talking to a brilliant man, perhaps the most financially successful of all my contemporaries, an investor whose advice I’d follow unhesitatingly if I had anything to invest.
He is confident that the euro will endure its present travails, for one reason above all: its survival suits Germany. The cost of bailing out the peripheral members is more than outweighed, he believes, by the benefits to German industry of an artificially low exchange rate. The ideal outcome for Germany is for the euro to limp on, battered and cheapened, and for the European Central Bank to be pushed into quantitative easing. Never mind the German public’s atavistic attachment to a strong currency, he says; German exporters know a good thing when they see one.
Not that German politicians are… Read More
Ireland! Forget the bail-out, go for the bale out!
Ireland will recover when it leaves the euro
All The Experts agree that Britain needs to bail out Ireland. Then again All The Experts are generally wrong. In the 1920s, they were for returning to gold at the pre-war rate. In the 1930s, they were for appeasement. In the 1940s, they were for nationalisation. In the 1950s they were for state planning. In the 1960s, they were for child-centred teaching. In the 1970s, they were for price controls. In the 1980s, they were for the ERM. In the 1990s they were for the euro.
As for those Irish politicians and Eurocrats who refuse to countenance an alternative to the single currency, why should anyone now listen to a word they say?
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop trusting the people who got us into… Read More