Paying price for folly of Euro dream

WHILE the banking collapse precipitated the financial meltdown four years ago, it also coincided with derailing the irresponsible spending that so many European governments had been following for many years.

When the European Union was first conceived it was portrayed as a trading agreement between member nations. Over the years the rules and framework changed and gradually the concept of a European superstate took shape. More and more power and control was transferred to Brussels and the next stage of the evolution heralded the single currency.

When the bubble burst, realisation slowly dawned that the Eurocrats had no plausible solution to the problem.

Renegotiating the terms of the last Greek bail-out package effectively meant that banks and pension companies in Europe had to write off part of their own debt.

That had an effect in the UK and more widely meant that investors, and most of them are investors, would see a reduction in return on dividends and the value of our funds.

We all will carry the pain of the bail-out, but perhaps in the years to come rather than immediately. Any further renegotiated bail-out will only cause further pain. As the deteriorating situation grows and grows without any semblance of strategy from the Eurocrats, our own stock market haemorrhages and our pension funds, ISAs, PEPS, Unit Trusts and Endowments lose value.

Millions of people in the UK are already facing hardship and yet their will be more to come when they realise the value of their assets has fallen dramatically. Retirement dreams will be shattered and many will have to work beyond the age when they thought they could finally relax and live comfortably.

Most of the blame for the current crisis should be laid squarely at the doors of politicians whose arrogance, conceit and inflated egos have caused economies to tremble on the brink of destruction. We lack statesmen and women who have the courage to put the national need above personal greed.

From: Dick Lindley, Altofts, Normanton, West Yorkshire.

HOW very pleasant it is to observe the spectacle of the imminent demise of the euro in the birthplace of democracy that is Greece.

At last the many of the peoples of the new Europa are beginning to realise the terrible price which will be exacted from them for joining an artificial currency dreamt up by those politicians in Germany and France whose final goal is the creation of a United States of Europe dominated by those two nations but principally by the all-powerful German nation.

If there are any doubts about who runs Europe now it is worth remembering the old adage “he who pays the piper also calls the tune”.

I have a terrible feeling of déjà vu and for that reason I hope that the collapsing euro is the forerunner of the destruction of the whole EU edifice which is in very grave danger of turning into the Fourth Reich, heaven forbid.

From: CD Round, Lee Lane East, Horsforth, Leeds.

THE new President of France is summoned to Berlin the day he is inaugurated. The German Chancellor dictates the policy. Déjà vu? 1938 all over again only this time economically instead of militarily. Germany wants to dominate Europe if we allow them to get away with it.

From: Jim Pike, Nursery Close, Leeds.

FURTHER to a snippet in Tom Richmond’s column (Yorkshire Post, May 12), it seems to me that the French electorate did not elect Francois Hollande to the presidency. No, they voted Nicolas Sarkozy out. And that’s quite a difference.

From: John Wilson, Wilsons Solicitors, New Road Side, Horsforth.

THIS single European currency business doesn’t seem to be working out very well does it?

I suggest the problem is a lack of ambition. We should not have a single european currency, we should have one for the entire world. Since I have come up with the idea, I believe it is customary to let me name it. So we shall call it the ‘pound’ and we will divide it into one hundred ‘pence’.

I think this could work extremely well. Now we can all live happily ever after.

Leaks? Blame the drips...

From: Terry Morrell, Prunus Avenue, Willerby, East Yorkshire.

THE end of the drought is nigh but another one can’t be too far away. When it comes will we be any better prepared next time?

For 90 per cent of the time, the many leaks simply do not bother the water companies but give them an opportunity to ask for a rise in fees and they don’t hesitate.

Those covering the South East, East Midlands and East Anglia could all benefit from the building a barrage across the Wash, draining it of salt water and letting the rivers, including a diversion of the Trent fill it for their major resource. They could then sell off many of their small reservoirs for new building land.

Government infrastructure investment in such a scheme would be a much better bet than a North-South pipeline or even the HS2 and bear fruit much quicker.