Van Rumpoy annoys Liam Halligan in todays Sunday Telegraph

I was pleased to see Liam Halligan picked up in his ST piece today on the same van Rumpy comment I highlighted in my blog earlier this week.

"We are clearly confronted with a tension within the system. The dilemma of being a monetary union and not a fully fledged economic and political union. The tension has been there since the single currency was created. However, the general public was not really made aware of it"

In plain English we conned the public and now they are starting to realise they have been conned.

The fault lines in the Euro was apparent from its ill starred conception. It was a political project presented as delivering great economic benefits to the people just as our entry negotiations in 1972 was presented as giving us economic benefits. A con but the gullible British public swallowed it hook, line and sinker. They are suffering a bit of indigestion now however.

Anybody who pointed out the Euro's faults, Dennis Healey, Milton Friedman etc were smeared as 'alarmist' and anti-European', just as happened in 1972 to those in the UK who warned about the catastrophic loss of sovereignty we would endure if we entered the then Common Market. (First pointed out by MacMillans law officer Lord Kilmuir in the abortive 1962 negotiations headed by one E Heath.) Friedman also said that rather than the Euro leading to the mythical United States of Europe it would achieve exactly the opposite.

Halligan also points out as I did the horrendous flaws in the EU's bank levy. It will simply create an even bigger Moral Hazard than the present systems. We simply need a re-enactment of the Glass-Steagal Act. If some one would like to finance me I would like to make a film about the EU entitled 'Carry on Cocking it up'. I need a good script. D Bannerman please do not apply.