Over the past seven years, the pound has lost over a third of its value against the Euro. History will condemn the Blair government for failing to take us in at the right time. Unfortunately, it was only ever possible for him to have been proved wrong over that issue, as no one would have been able to predict the fate of the pound if it had gone at the right time. The country will be paying the price of pandering to the Daily Mail's opinion polls for many years (just as it will over the failure to decouple foreign policy from the US and drugs policies and many other issues).
I am one of Mudcat's youngsters (at only 54) but I clearly recall what a clumsy, heavy, unnecessarily complex currency the old stuff was. Once OPEC had raised the oil prices early in the seventies, inflation was always going to take off anyway. Thank God we did not have to carry the additional burden of tons of worthless coinage!