It's past time for the UK to adopt the Euro

The Euro, like the metric system, is seen by many as part of a sinister plot for Brussels to take over Britain. These two things have many things in common, not least their regular misuse in order to sell tabloids and the fact that both would most likely be of more benefit to the country than the press and Europhobes would have you believe.

I recall back when the Euro was first introduced in the rest of the EU there were many who spouted scare stories that the economies of Europe would quickly collapse, this has yet to happen. There were many who said that the metals used in the coins would make people's hands drop off, what they didn't tell you is that British coins were more likely to do that. The fact that the Queen's head wouldn't appear on the paper money and that the new Euro notes and coins would be easier to forge were also used by the anti-Euro brigade.

So, what do we hear now? It seems that 1 in 50 British £1 coins are thought to be forgeries (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7628930.stm). That's 2%, compared with 0.1% for Euro coins which are seemingly much harder to forge. We see the differences in exchange rates too, having enjoyed a period of good exchange rates against the Dollar and the Euro (the pound buying over $2 and over €1.50 in recent years) we're now suffering against our Continental and European neighbours (the pound today only buys $1.84 and €1.25). Sure, the Euro has fluctuated against other currencies too, but it has, for most of it's life, grown against the US dollar and even now has maintained most of it's value! The British people who regularly travel abroad are effected... in fact we all are. Europe is our largest trading partner and hence it costs us more to buy from them and makes us less to sell to them. The same is the case with the USA... and oil is, of course, traded using the mighty Dollar and everybody uses oil in some form so we're all suffering.

Who's to say that if Britain had joined the Euro we wouldn't have brought the rest of Europe down with us though? Well, I'm no economist and so that's hard for me to say but it doesn't take a brain surgeon to know that you do get strength in numbers. Regardless of what the doomsayers might tell us, Britain is not the power it once was and even before the Euro there were economies in Europe who were comparable if not stronger than our own. If Britain had joined the Euro it would certainly have made it much stronger in global terms than it already is and that would have benefited everybody in Britain from the man on the street buying baked beans to the tabloid-funded-booze-cruiser to the Ibeza party crowd. Business and the general public would have saved a small fortune on exchange rate fluctuations (and don't forget the comission - and those who say they buy comission free, no you don't - they hide it in the price!).

I've said it before, those who would lose out if we switched to the Euro would be those who invest their money in tax havens like the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man who, if the mainland went into the Euro, would have to either float their currency or peg it to the Euro. The former could be disasterous, the latter would require compliance to strict monetary policy. On the whole though, the country would benefit.

So, it's time to put the Euro back on the agenda. It's time for change!