Let the EU wind down

In January I published a post called 'Differences' that included my views on why the EU couldn't work at this time. Yestewrday I read a newspaper article that brought that post to mind.

The article was slanted towards breaking up the EU and quoted a...

'Nobel Prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman...in 1997: "Europe exemplifies a situation unfavourable to a common currency. It is composed of separate nations, speaking different languages, with different customs, and having citizens feeling far greater loyalty and attachment to their own country than to a common market or to the idea of Europe". As he hardly needed to point out to his American readers, currency in the US took place after, and not before, political union, the right way round.'

Interesting..so close to my own ideas! At some stage in our lives I expect most of us make discoveries that we think are unique but in fact are common knowledge. I can remember as a young child making the discovery that if I filled the bath too full it overflowed when I got in - I had "displaced" the water. I was a little put out to learn that not only had some long-ago Greek already made the discovery but he'd taken it a step further with some mysteriously clever calculation or other. These days I'm happy to accept that if others are thinking along the same lines then maybe my ideas hold some water after all.

The EU and the single currency are in a woeful state at the moment. However we get out of it it's going to be messy. So, if there's a chance we're right about it being the wrong time for the EU to develop perhaps it would be a good idea for our illustrious leaders to rein in their ambition and work towards a loosening of ties in a considered and careful manner until we're in a situation we can all live with.

It's going to hurt one way or another, let's do it quiety and amicably or at least ensure we end up with a good solid basis on which to build a better arrangement - slowly!