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"Easier and cheaper" Published in Herald Newspapers. Sir, Twenty months into the euro, Eire's experience of interest rates set for Germany's economy refutes Mr. Booker's claim of "easier and cheaper" trade within the euro (letter, 18 Aug) Inflation just rocketed through 6.2%, unions tear up wage agreements overtaken by inflation, savings earn negative real returns even before tax, house prices double in four years and the Treasury (likened by the Irish press to firemen with no water in their hoses) impose statutory controls (come back Heath!) on alcohol prices as they cannot raise interest rates to the 9% needed by their runaway economy. The Irish Times stated in April. "We can't stay out, but maybe we can GET out before the other high-unemployment, high-inflation economies of Eastern Europe scramble onto SS EURO, turning it into a winos' club, barely floating and drifting towards the iron-shores of insolvency...this sort of nonsense can't continue, with an ailing currency being dragged all over the place by the social and economic myopia of political cultures over which we have no control." In mid-August The Daily Telegraph stated that, "Inflation in Ireland soared to 6.2pc last month, the highest rate for nearly 15 years, triggering fears that prices in the booming economy could spiral dramatically. The rate was much worse than expected and prices are now rising at nearly three times the rate they are in Britain, which continues to have the lowest inflation in Europe." As the Irish experience shows, our currency is not just the symbol Mr. Booker sees but the very embodiment of our economic and therefore political independence, and we give it up at our peril. As for the unmitigated nonsense of the EU keeping the peace in Europe, perhaps Mr. Booker would tell us which EU countries would have gone to war in its absence? Germany, disarmed for most of those years and effectively occupied by the Allies? France, with its track record? Britain, pursuing territorial conquest? Or perhaps Luxembourg and whose army? Pull the other one Mr. Booker! Instead, forcing together unwilling disparate peoples brings a sharp deterioration in relations between peoples and a worrying rise in extremism. All recorded history shows that forced unions collapse, often violently - a fate we must avoid at all costs. The Britain in Europe article planted in "Your Mortgage" is indeed wrong, and in any case only part of the story. Eurozone mortgages (limited to ten or so varieties of fixed rate schemes, compared to five thousand varied "products" in our much more competitive market) offer only marginal savings, difficult to identify when one's eyes are watering from paying 6, 8 or 9% stamp duty on house prices inflated by VAT, all out of income taxed at eurozone rates, all of which would be inevitable within EMU. While no one would pretend that our Westminster system can not be improved, Mr. Booker's proposition that government could be made "more responsive to the needs of the people it represents" by taking away the powers of our elected Government answerable to 60m people and giving them to Mr. Prodi's self-styled and unelected "Government of Europe", answerable to no one yet interfering in every minute detail of the lives of 350m (planned soon to be 500m) people is just another example of the Europhile syndrome - a preference for hope over experience, or indeed common sense. Yours faithfully, Idris R. Francis Top |
