5punk

I certainly think it's a cultural thing rather than any practical reason. But culture is important to everyone, as is national pride and identity.

friznit wrote:So what have we discovered so far?
We'd secretly prefer to use Euros, but paying with the same currency as the French makes us feel dirty.

this is far too true, when i was in school and they first started talking about changing the pound to the euro i remember most of the students where horified that they would be using the same money as the french

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I think we only get less out of it because we're not fully engaged. It's like paying full price for a pantomime but standing in the entry aisle watching over the shoulder of smelly fat bloke. If we want value for money, we need to embrace Europe and all it can offer, and perhaps then earn the right to influence things a bit more. Alternatively bin the whole idea and spend the money on nukes and the Army so we can impress the yanks some, cos we'll need them even more if we don't have Europe to lean on.

I don't think it's as clear cut as 'this many billion spent on paperwork', 'this many trillion on signposts' or whatever, the extent to which this superstate could and does help is hard to judge to my mind.

Two digressions to illustrate - Npower spent 290 million pounds on email storage last year. A massive waste of money and with no real benefit, they archive instead of delete. A five year old email about productivity is not something that needs keeping.

As for the long term and ephemeral nature of the relationships we have as nations - my dad recently met an old friend who's left GCHQ, the friend was lunching with others who with him have set up a defence procurement company with an ex-group captain, an ex-admiral and a guy who didn't say what he did but in my dads words 'looked a mean bugger', they're using their connections to buy coastal defence platforms for Nordic countries.

If I put a purely cost effective slant on things then my answer would be no and it would probably be the same for every country in the EU.

But I know I'm seeing just the tip of the money flows and I couldn't give you a definite yes or no based on the minuscule amount of information we see as the general public.

Undoubtedly you want a yes or no however. So I'm going to say no, purely because of the mess of inclusive/exclusive ideas we hold as a nation and the fractious nature of the EU parliament. If all nations can put aside the mild xenophobia from years of fighting it might work very well.

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I had two different leaflets through my door from UKIP today. Apparently my UKIP candidate's local issues are:

a. He will rent a flat near Westminster rather than gain a second home courtesy of the tax-payer; and

b. He will endeavour to reduce bureaucracy in the NHS, get rid of quangos and pointless expenditure from the public purse.

Good locally-specific issues there. Twunt.