Euro - united we sink to the bottom?

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Come on out with it, who thinks it's a laugh (hear the UK posters agree in unison) or classic (*sound of crickets*).

― nathalie (nathalie), Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh it's a laugh all right. You Europeans are hilarious. But that's a good thing. Count me in!

― Nick, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Not quite sure what this question is about, but I'm all about European integration. The only sane solution to the Northern Irish problem as far as I can see.

― Pete, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The new currency. I would like to pretend it ain't happening but alas the cash machine has already displayed my balance in Euro. So there's no escaping.

― nathalie (nathalie), Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

hmmm, I'm not for it. all the old people will be confused. france is running out of loose change. we want our gold back. what if it all goes horribly wrong? who will get the blame?

― jel, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"All the old people will be confused": everyone said that at decimalisation in 1971 and it happened as quietly as you could have imagined ...

I know nothing about the economics, but I support Britain joining the euro for the same reason that I support the banning of foxhunting: because the people who will regard it as a betrayal etc. are *precisely* the sort of people I want to piss off at every opportunity.

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yeah, but this time around the old people will be deliberately confused!

― jel, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

All the old people WERE confused in 1971! It was fantastic!! Urchin: "Gran, gran, can I have a penny for sweeties? No, that's an old penny, which is the same as 2.4 new pence, which is 2/6. So I need two of those and one of those. That's it."
Urchin goes and buys 70p of cocaine.

― mark s, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"But in 1971, the word 'cocaine' was scientifically proven to be unknown in Shropshire." - Daily Mail Reporter

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Robin C: at one level I profoundly sympathize with the position (the anti-Tory position, roughly) that you outline above. BUT isn't there a danger that you then make judgements on the wrong basis?

Heretical-sounding thought: what if it happened to be the case that - from a left / liberal position, let's say - the UK 'should not join Euro', EVEN THOUGH that's what the Mail / Telegraph / Hague / Thatcher think??

― the pinefox, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's one of those rare things that make me glad to be American.

― Lyra, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This is a monstrous question that I am certainly not able to answer due to my lack of knowledge in the field of economics. My dad says Euro=bad, but then I think he only says that cos he doesn't like the Germans - that's what happens if you grew up in the 50s reading the Eagle, apparently.

― DG, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Anything that makes it easier to convert to dollars: classic.

― Kris, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But currency is so much more interesting when it's local and unique.

― Lyra, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Lyra = v. funny!

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Lyra almost=lira. Funny.

― turner, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

not the eagle, DG: that was specifically founded (by Rev.Marcus something) to sidestep "Achtung! Die Englisher pigdog!" type stories...: if you read the Eagle in the 50s, you grew up hating the Mekon and his Treens.

― mark s, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Euro = great, because going to Europe will involve less swingeing commission charges at bureaux de change. Had 20k lire and got back chump change due to ridiculous £2.50 commission charge levied by BANK I ALREADY PAY THROUGH NOSE TO USE.

Way to sell it to Mondeo Man and Pebbledash People here would be to promote the preceding argument.

― suzy, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Fair enough Mark, it was only the first example of 50s comics I could think of, and when I read it 10 years ago they had a strip called Charley's War, lots of Boche-bashing in the first world war. That's my excuse!

― DG, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The 80s Eagle is a very different- and very GRATE - proposition, at least when it ran photo-stories. But Charley's War was a reprint from a comic called BATTLE - actually CW originally was the first grittily realistic war story Brit comics ran, Charley is a private and sees his friends die, cusses out the brass, etc. etc.

― Tom, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Pinefox has a point: the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend and all that ...

I do indeed know little about the euro and all that surrounds it, so from an unknowledgeable viewpoint my instant reaction is "it'll piss off Moore, Hague, Dacre and Thatcher: classic". But equally I'm sympathetic to arguments from the left that it is not the fairest system (as expressed by the Green Party, hence, I imagine, Dave Q's rather crude and bogus "pounds and shillings" jibe some time ago).

― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

eight years pass...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2010/05/euro_bailout_now_banking_risk.html

― The Clegg Effect (Tracer Hand), Monday, 10 May 2010 14:29 (fifteen years ago)

one year passes...

there was one of those campaign tables at the shops today. i assumed it was anti-vivisection or the german equivalent of SWP or something, but it was apparently part of a campaign to leave the euro and bring back the DM. lol.

― caek, Tuesday, 16 August 2011 11:25 (fourteen years ago)

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