There is another reason... The UK speaks English... Or at least something approximating to English. If there is a common second language on a world wide basis and certainly on a European basis it is English..
Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
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Now we know for sure who else is a headline grabber. To suggest George G as honest would have many fae Dundee, rolling on the floor. I mean the ones fae Lochee where he claims to have grown up in a slum. Perhaps he should have done, but he certainly didn't and is alleged to have light fingers by some in the Labour Party.
What on earth are you twittering on about now - who mentioned a book? I get the impression, on here, that you are just a twisted old man. Hopefully, not outside in the real world somebody might trip over you and do themselves harm.
We'll never know of course - which has this in the 'Fake News' category? Would seem unlikely though with most commentators suggesting that for whatever reason the fact that we didn't join the Euro was a good thing?
I'm sure Oldtom will feel mortally wounded, he hates being savaged by dead sheep
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I understand that, I've been in the print business for more than a few years and have watched prices tumble year on year. It used to be that we had hundreds of small print shops making a reasonable margin 70% thereabouts. Then along came automation, removed the traditional skills, that was swiftly followed by white van man and Amazon who between then made it possible to move a box, of paper, from one end of the UK to the other overnight for less than a fiver. Most print is done a large factories now - it was painful. Print is a bit different in that there are high capital costs which is probably not the case, so much, in your business?
Yet again, not the point I made, which was that combining the pound into the euro when the oppportunity arose would have resulted in a stronger euro. That would have been inevitable.
There's no doubt that the UK not joining the euro undermined the euro's status, thus weakening it.
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Try this (Huffington Post) it seems to encapsulate just about every other commentary I've read. In one sense I guess you are right to say that had the pound joined the Euro would have been stronger but, that doesn't mean the outcome would have been any different.
Should Britain Have Joined the Euro?
It’s been over ten years since the UK failed Gordon Brown’s five economic tests for adopting the Euro and the whole idea lost momentum. Now when politicians talk of the EU it’s about whether the country will remain a part of it or withdraw. If the Tories win outright come May, we’ll have a referendum on our hands. But were we right to pass on joining the single currency?
We should look to the biggest economic of recent events to find our answer. The 2008 crash and following recession is still shaping the economic situation across Europe. The Euro is struggling against the sterling, so does that mean we made the right choice?
The big issue with joining the single currency isn’t just that we’ll no longer have the pound, but that we lose control over own on fiscal policy. This isn’t unusual of course, it’s essentially what happens on a country to country basis. Kent and Yorkshire share the same currency and that’s controlled by Westminster. Joining the Euro would just mean a larger scale version of this.
Of course, if you were to look at the differing economic situations between the north and south of England, we can start to see a problem. Regions do not all perform in the same way, while their industries can vary wildly. Meanwhile, London tries to choose policies that benefit the country as a whole, but which can disproportionately damage or help on a regional level. This problem could only be exacerbated when applied across a whole continent.
One of the major things we’d lose control over would be our ability to set our own interest rates. Having flexibility over this means you can better fend off unexpected events, like a recession for example. Had we joined the Euro, this decision would have been out of our hands which would have been a disaster.
It’s true that the EU is growing again, so you might think that we would have enjoyed that success, but the recovery is unbalanced. It goes back to the previous point about regions not being all the same. As we can see in the graph below, the economic fortunes of European countries has been a mixed bag.
Germany and France have been the only countries to significantly recover and improve past their 2008 peaks. Portugal, Italy and Spain are about where they started, while Ireland and especially Greece aren’t even close. The UK has just about passed their 2008 levels.
What does this tell us? It tells us that Europe saw mixed fortunes and that while Germany may have done well, Greece has not. You might point out that the UK has only just done better than Spain or Portugal, but there is another side to this picture.
The economic strife that hit Spain and Portugal was much worse than in the UK. For example, at one point Spain saw over 26% of its population unemployed. The highest it got in the UK was 8.4%. Our recovery may have not been much faster than our Iberian friends, but the ride was much smoother.
Of course you could point to Germany and suggest that’s what would have happened to us, but that would have unlikely been the case.
Why? Because the UK economy was, and arguably still is, heavily reliant on the financial and housing markets, both of which crashed dramatically - just like in Spain and Greece. That means we would have seen a situation much more similar to theirs, and that would have led to us knocking on the doors of the IMF and ECB for loans as they did.
Had we received these loans we would have seen the UK committing to austerity far beyond what we’ve experienced under the Coalition government along with even less financial sovereignty. By being able to keep our interest rates low and the sterling’s value with it, we were able to keep our manufacturing sector competitive and help alleviate some of our financial burden.
In the end, joining the Euro way back when, might not have been so bad an idea overall. But with hindsight, but it’s clear the right choice was made. For the time being, we can be sure that while our recovery has been tough, it could have been far, far worse. It might not have even happened yet.
I don't know why you bothered to post this, once again an article rendered useless by biased rabbiting on about the weaker, chiefly southern, EU members without a mention of the northern members other than Germany. Just like some in here do.
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Its fairly well accepted UK not joining Euro was better for UK..I view it as one of few things Gordon Brown did right. Imagine position we would now be in had we joined, so I understand why flecc sees it as a mistake...perhaps was for EU...not UK.
Flecc is an EU federalist, not just against Brexit but pro USE...which is where we were going..which we never voted on...ever.
Flecc is an EU federalist, not just against Brexit but pro USE...which is where we were going..which we never voted on...ever.
Try this then, you get the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France added this time
https://reaction.life/brexit-look-like-britain-joined-euro/
Don't you remember stating this in your post #21900?
I didn't imagine that you included that remark in your post.
Tom
Hate is an emotion..a human emition. they don't hate . Of course they seek out weakness and attempt to manipulate situations.. just like sharks will circle smaller fry punching them together and then taking turns to feed the concentrated fish...
Perhaps you did imagine it? You are indeed a silly old man. I was quoting directly from this report
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/uk...o-sell-1-million-fewer-bikes-this-year/022040
which was in the previous post, which I was responding to. Had you read it you would have realised rather than make a fool (old) of yourself!
On the back of this, do I assume that all I need to do is throw a list of characters on the page, then simply let you rearrange them to suit (your agenda)?
Flatliners
Still trying to avoid any real signs of success. There's 28 countries in the EU, not just the very few struggling, often with self inflicted harm not in any way caused by the EU.
I could just as easily select a group of northern members to claim how successful the EU is. But there's no point in my doing that, just as there is no point in you doing the opposite. It doesn't convince anyone.
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How many times must I make it clear? I am not commenting on how they normally trade, or the way they feel about that and I'm not disagreeing witn you on that. I am commenting on their active opposition to the reduction in the number of currencies they can trade due to the euro. They hate/dislike/are annoyed by that, choose your own expression, but please don't keep answering something I haven't posted.
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Actually Grandfather came back disillusioned after losing all his friends at the Battle of "Oppy Wood" in the First World War, Father went through Dunkirk and fought at Alamein and came back in the remnants of 12 out of 2000 to find his younger Brother had made it back home and lasted Four Hours before dying of his wounds escaping from a Prisoner of War camp..
It actually records that on his Army Tombstone
As Grandfather said to Father when he volunteered at the start of the Second World war, even though he was 43 years old, you're a fool son, there's no joy in it, you'll live like a dog and die like a rat. Father didn't but his younger Brother did.
And for what?
Not necesssary in your case , they aren't to be taken seriously after all.
Not necesssary in your case , they aren't to be taken seriously after all.
But you did manage to vote for Brexit (maybe) and what comes with that as baggage is not going to meet with your approval.
the strength of the Euro is exactly what the Southern Eurozone countries cannot afford, they need a weak Euro to create more jobs.
Sooner or later, one of the Southern countries will have to leave the Euro or endures ever higher unemployment rate. That may eventually lead to a smaller Eurozone core. The Eurozone will be the pillar of the US of E if the EU ever becomes a superstate. Nobody can predict the future of the EU when the first country (which may be Greece or Italy) decides to go back to their own currency.
As long as we keep a flexible economy, we'll trade successfully with the EU in whichever form.