Experience Counts

I have posted nothing for six weeks.  I can say that I have been busy — which is partly true — but more than anything I have felt overwhelmed by the chaos.  Most of what goes on around us cannot be made up.  The world's economy is in a mess and primarily it is in a mess because of the EU.  The EU is governed by politicians of little ability.  They are all children of the system.  They discussed politics at university; they became political assistants to other politicians; they became representatives in parliament; and finally, they became ministers, rambling around the world meeting other politicians.  Consequently every daft idea dreamed up in every capital in the world becomes the next government policy that will, somehow, be the answer to all our problems.  It never is, of course.  Politicians rarely learn from their mistakes; our burden these days is that many are incapable of learning from their mistakes.  
Around the world, governments are printing money in order, they say, to stimulate the economy.  In fact, it does no such thing; it puts more money into the hands of the bankers who were responsible for much of the mess in the first place.  Printing money is wrong.  It devalues the currency.  If our currencies were supported by a gold standard, they would not be able to get away with printing money.  In Europe, the euro is doomed.  The right thing to do is to get rid of it; not to insist on more economic integration.  The EU is one of those organisations that, if it did not exist, we would not need to invent it.  It spent Eu126,000,000,000 in 2011 and, in spite of the economic mess they have presided over and which we have to live with, they are already angling for a substantial increase in their budget.  Of the Eu126 billion, Britain contributes Eu12.9 billion.  Were it not for our rebate, this figure would be Eu3 billion higher and second only to Germany.  In the last eighteen months, there has been meeting after meeting after meeting in this or that city to discuss the next application of sticking plaster to hold the euro together. It may be that they can carry on doing this for years, while the rest of teh world picks itself up and carries on without the EU.  The politicians and ex-politicians in Europe like the euro and the idea of economic integration.  It gives them lots of opportunities for jollies and they can govern for the most part without the interference of the electorates.
At present Britain is governed by a collection of rich, posh boys, none of whom has had any proper job, nor even any previous ministerial experience.  When did we last have a government where no senior minister had previously held a job in government?  We will exclude Kenneth Clarke.  He enjoys his politics and he has had many cabinet jobs — and he was a reasonably successful chancellor of the exchequer — because he now has no more than a watching brief. Britain should remain in the EU — on balance — but only if they get rid of the euro and get back to a trading union of independent states.  We do not need a single currency.  It is in no one's interest to continue — not even Germany.  Greece should be allowed to go her own sweet way and a devalued drachma.  And if Greece, also Spain and Italy.  In no country in Western Europe is there any longer any enthusiasm for the EU.  The new members from the east have a different viewpoint.  They see the EU as a protection against intrusion by Russia.  This is a justified and reasonable attitude but it does not need a common currency.
It has been suggested that the British government can escape its problems by allowing the Bank of England to continue printing money to buy government debt, which never gets paid back.  This scheme lies on the road to madness.  This is the thinking of the Weimar Republic, destruction of the currency and hyper-inflation.  This way madness lies but will anyone realize it?
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