- Let’s be honest. There’s a clear link with Islam (£) by David Aaronovitch, The Times
- Intellectual property is an innovation killer by Joshua Lachkovic , KernalMag
- Dumb Idea Hall of Fame by Aaron David Miller, Foreign Policy
- Nadine Dorries threatens Cameron's Party Leadership by Nadine Dorries, Daily Mail
- Boris set for party leadership? by Traci Watson, USAToday
- Anti-Israel students deface Star of David at student conference by Jonny Paul, Jerusalem Post
- Jihadist Videos on University Facebook by Rupert Sutton, Huffington Post UK
- Skintland: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose by Alex Massie, Spectator UK
- Green tax on conservatories by James Slack and Tamara Cohen, Daily Mail
- Saudi princess: What I'd change about my country by Staff writers, BBC
The Euro Delusion
A darkly comedic video illustrates how eurocrats and British politicians are deluding themselves about the last ten years of the Euro
In December 2008, Lee Rotherham produced an in-depth study for Open Europe looking at how the European Union spent at least €2.4 billion that year promoting itself, more than Coca Cola spends on advertising.
That budget goes on everything from the visitor centre - relaunched in October as the glorious Parliamentarium; to funding for trade unions to £5.5 million in funding for European Year of Equal Opportunities for All in 2007; to grants to environmentalist organisations like Friends of the Earth so they can lobby for more draconian climate targets and regulations.
Sally McNamara at the Heritage Foundation has argued that the United States Congress needs to investigate the money the EU spends there on ideological causes and promoting itself.
The latest example is this incredible video. It features a Greek woman who manifests herself from an urn and appears to be gloriously happy with the state of her country and Europe. Wait till she reads a newspaper and finds out what has become of the birthplace of democracy.
At one point in the video Mario Draghi - President of the European Central Bank - tells us "the single currency has become a symbol of integration and cooperation".
It is a symbol of integration pursued to the point of disaster and cooperation between politicians who have locked their countries into a currency that is - as Sajid Javid MP put it - a "bankruptcy machine".
Their best idea of what to do next is unsurprisingly more integration, but fiscal union won't fix the euro's long-term problems. As I wrote for the TPA website recently: "It is a convenient answer for politicians deeply committed to political integration in Europe but it raises some pretty difficult questions. If one of the problems is that the Greeks evade their taxes, will German tax collectors be dispatched? If the challenge for Italy is a combination of high debt and low expected growth, will the Estonians take on that massive debt or be let loose to impose supply-side reforms?"
Or, as economist John Kay put it in an article for Financial Times: "The Eurozone’s difficulties result not from the absence of strong central institutions but the absence of strong local institutions."
The euro is continually referred to throughout the video as "our money". Thankfully it is only their money, not ours, despite the efforts of politicians like Nick Clegg who were promoting the currency as late as 2009.
But we are still living with the consequences as economic growth here is depressed by uncertainty over the Eurozone’s future, so the video is pretty dark comedy.
Matthew Sinclair is the Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a free-market pressure group based in London. You can follow him on Twitter at: @MJHSinclair
Print
Somebody at the ECB film making unit has a wonderful sense of comic timing!
Maybe this film should be entered into David Wilkinson's European film clip competition hosted by the Campaign for an Independent Britain (in the comedy section) Trouble is it would probably win.
We have to face the issue of currency from a grown up cocept , It is unreasonable to expect that any one currency will fit all participants . What has to be be understood is that the "club" of political elite politicians see the one only currency as another control system for them . Consider this . It is also a way of viewing prices of commodities easily for them also another form of control . The Pound has always been a respected currency, which has stood the test of time .
Next they'll be saying that we need language union, and that we'll all have to speak Esperanto, and all business legal contracts cannot have a local country's law jurisdiction, but the EU's, and must be in Esperanto!!
you get the feeling that the fiscal union is going to happen. exactly what sort of europe is left once they've implemented it is anyones guess ... third world is my guess.
Surely the EU official language should be Arseperanto, seeing as EU officials only ever talk out of their rears?
Simon C-S, They've sort of done that already, only the language is "human rights". It's the same sort of gobbledy-gook, it rules our business contracts and it's settled by the European Court...
I do wish Simon C-S and others would leave Esperanto out of this. Esperanto is simply an auxiliary language with a voluntary speech community. It implies no commitment to the euro, to the EEU or even to Europe. I've just come back from Argentina where I had no difficulty in finding Esperanto-speakers.
It would be hilarious if things weren't so dreadfully serious!