When All Else Fails, Start Again

Will the Euro Sink the EU Ship?

When something goes wrong people can do one or more of a number of things about it: they can walk away; live with it; buy a new one; read the manual or start all over again, reboot it.

In both the political and the real worlds, it should be possible to do the equivalent, without losing sight of history, tradition and the baggage we all carry.  Some things are worth persevering with; some not.

It just becomes necessary, when things seem so unsolvable, to start again. When the nightmare is so bad it overwhelms your sanity, wake up.

European Ship Is All But Lost At Sea

As quite clearly nobody in charge has any real idea what to do to get us all out of the mess we’re in globally, it may just be time to reboot the world economy, and particularly the European part. Global finances are in such a mess, that solving the Eurozone nightmare will only help a small part, but then, it’s something.

And it will help us save ourselves and our grandchildren’s futures. I don’t believe it’s better to hang together than to hang separately. We don’t need to be hanged at all.

Instead of saying: ‘if the Euro fails then the EU fails and that mustn’t happen’, lets’ say: ‘so be it. It has failed. It’s dead’. The EU is a monster of officialdom, bureaucracy and anti-democracy that is out of control. It’s a concept born early in the last century. It is now an outdated solution. It’s a sinking ship; time to read it the death rites before we are sucked down with it. Twentieth Century problems have moved on; a new solution is needed for now and the next few decades.

In their book, The Great Deception (2003), Christopher Booker and Richard North wrote: ‘Sooner perhaps rather than later, the fantasy of the great ‘European project’ would crumble into reality: destroyed by all those contradictions which in its mad ambition it had failed to foresee and which it could never have hoped to resolve’. That reality is arriving now.

The vanity of its chosen currency is the Euro. That is unravelling fast. One size cannot fit all, so let it go. Yes it will be painful for the rest of the world, but what we’re enduring now is hurting, disruptive and dangerous. So end it. Start again. reboot.

Let those countries who want to share a common currency, go ahead. And if they have to merge economic and fiscal policies to make that work, it’s their choice. Let the rest create (go back to) their own currencies, valued against others in the international baskets according to their own debt. GDP, productivity, employment, assets and management.

As the European mountain of smoke, mirrors and mud disintegrates to be washed away on the tide of history, really smart politicians should be setting a new agenda built not on sand but the rock of individual nation states cooperating according to their interests.

Welfare Abuse

Following BBC Panorama revelations (3 Nov 2011) about the thousands of people who scam, lie, deceive to steal housing and housing benefits, Council Tax reliefs, income support, disability allowances and even Blue Badges (welfare criminals), we struggle to pick up our dropped jaws and take in the brazen cheek of people from home and every corner of abroad who have decided they can dip at will into British taxpayers’ largesse.

There is  a solution, at least in part.

Set a date sometime in 2012 and say on that date every single benefit will stop dead. No exceptions.

Then, we can reboot.

• Between now and then, those who think they are eligible can reapply.
• Their dependents can reapply too.
• They will all be photographed and fingerprinted, so there are no more multi-aliases, no more claiming for people who are out of the country, deceased or never existed in the first place.

There will be those who say an ID card will solve all. They are wrong. That will be another source of fraud in many cases.

Rebooting will cause a fuss, of course. There will be a lot of bleating about civil liberties, human rights and indignity. But better to get it over with now and then we can get on and build a welfare support system that helps those who need help, not those who help themselves.

Photo: US Coast Guard