If every country had the same economic condition, the same types and level of industry, the same government philosophy, the same level of taxation, the same level of national expenditure on health, defence, etc, the same welfare state provisions, then maybe it'd work.

But we have: Greece and Italy, who are not particularly industrialised, are quite poor countries, and have high national taxation and expenditure; Germany, which is highly industrialised with low taxes, whose power stations mainly run on fossil fuels; France, which is highly industrialised and who has a majority (IIRC) of nuclear power stations; etc.

As a side-note, the Mediterranean countries generally have an ethos that bribes, kick-backs and expense fiddles are part of a politician's income. This is not a xenophobic opinion, but the considered findings of the recent investigations into EU corruption. So far there's no sign that this supposed "crackdown" is actually stopping corruption amongst Euro-ministers and their entourages.

OK. So since every country in Europe has wildly different economic conditions, there's no way they can "pull together" on this. Particularly consider Italy and Greece; these are so radically behind Germany in economic terms, it's not even funny. So how can countries with such diverse economic interests set common tax and spending targets? It just ain't going to happen. And once tax and spending are fixed, individual countries are out of options if they want to take their own route on unemployment, encouraging industry or whatever, meaning that they can't take these decisions themselves and will have to ask the central committee to step in - if the central committee is chaired by a country who you've just pissed off, then you can forget it. And then add in the endemic corruption.

What about the old pre-metric currency? Well, what about it? Change 240 old pennies into 100 new pennies, and do the sums. Europe was not a factor. Dragging historical irrelevancies such as the original nationality of the King of England in 1720, or the origins of pre-metric British currency, into this is just as irrational as "Up yours Delors" - neither has any bearing at all on what economic union will give us today.

I'm not against joining a single currency bcos it makes us "less British", or bcos of some "giving away rights that ppl died for" jingoism. I'm against it bcos I can't see any benefits for us, and I can see a lot of ways it can hurt us. Maybe Britain's joining the Euro would strengthen the Euro and stop it slipping further, but I'm not sure it'd do much for Britain.

As far as "withering" without the Euro goes, we're certainly not the only ones without it. Denmark recently rejected joining the Euro, and Norway and Switzerland have both prospered despite not even being members of the EU. The UK has in fact recovered from recession rather quicker than the rest of Europe since ties with the ERM were cut sooner. Incidentally, Norway is also a much closer model for the UK than most other countries, since it too has oil and gas reserves in the North Sea (see Skipjack's post above on oil).

Graham.