Why oh why did Europe ever adopt the single currency? The euro! Even the name’s a joke. It’s not a name at all…it’s a prefix! There’s that little tiny one…the 1 eurocent…so small you need a magnifying glass to read the writing on it. The notes are like Transylvanian Monopoly money. And the pictures they put on them: windows, monuments. No national heroes!...Napoleon, Beethoven, Rembrandt, Caesar. With so many national prides and egos not to damage, better to keep it safe and bland.
Europe is such a fascinating continent with its rich and varied diversity of cultures and traditions and languages…so why is it being reduced to eurosameness? The money is only the tip of the iceberg. That Low-Minded Cabal of Eurobeaurocrats, the European Commission, decreed once that costermongers in the United Kingdom must cease selling their apples and their pears in Imperial measurements and use metric weights instead. The cowardly supermarkets complied at once, but the free spirited market traders gave the eurocrats in Brussels the two-finger salute - the ’get stuffed!' variety - and continued - and still continue! - to sell their produce by the pound. (Ask a market trader in Liverpool for a kilo of onions and he’ll look at you like you’ve just stepped out of a spaceship from Mars.)
Several Eurozone countries now hate the euro and wish they’d never heard of the it. Greece hates it as it is officially bankrupt and being bailed out by Germany. Germany hates it as it is having to bail out bankrupt Greece. Then it was Ireland’s turn with Portugal and Spain waiting in the wings.
So maybe the writing’s on the wall for the euro and it’s about to croak like a eurocrat with a nut in his throat.
Let’s all pray that it is and wish it a fond adieu.
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