It is already doing damage

It is already doing damage.Italy has had to impose a special Euro tax to prepare for the new currency. France has had to undertake unacceptable budget cuts in a hurry instead of going in for longer-term welfare reform against a background of rising prosperity Germany has had to follow a policy of retrenchment. This is driving a wedge between the peoples of Western Europe and their governments.Britain's economic interests lie in global trade and modern industries. We should warn that a single currency born of fudge will create havoc. Wrong interest rates and exchange rates will damage parts of the Union in a way which may prove impossible to correct.We should offer a more positive alternative, based on removing regulation, opening markets, encouraging competition and reducing the size of government. Why is it that amidst all the budget misery, where national governments have to cut Brussels never proposes cutting its own less desirable expenditure? Do we really want those who designed and ran the common fishing policy running a common economic policy as well? It is time to offer something better: a Europe which works.The writer is Conservative MP for Wokingham..

"Did you remember the soup?" asks Seth. "When you get to my age," I reply, "you start to worry about False Memory Syndrome. Was I actually abused by the au pair, or do I just wish that I had been? Did you really ask me to buy bouillabaisse because it looks like vomit, or am I going crazy?" "Dad," cries my exasperated son, "did you or didn't you?" I did. I went to the nearest supermarket and, having checked out the wholesome illustrations on the labels, and shaken the cans to ascertain consistency (can't be too runny), selected Tesco's own-brand vegetable soup as being most like the real thing. And so my son begins his acting career (as the legless groom in the St Albans Youth Theatre's sparky production of Stags and Hens) by spewing the aforementioned potage all down a fellow actor's trouser leg. "Dad," he asks on the way home, "did you have a stag night before your wedding?" "Certainly not," I reply.

"As a matter of fact, I have participated in only one such event It was the penultimate night of our undergraduate careers So we all got a bit merry. Except for the husband-to-be who, as tradition demands, got blind drunk, threw up, and passed out Next morning, he recalled that he didn't own a tie. Nevertheless, we got him, correctly attired, to the church on time. Fran was there, of course, though in those days she was neither your mother, nor even my girlfriend." At the end of that summer (the last of the 1960s), we travelled to the Isle of Wight together, to hear Bob Dylan and The Band. After that, we went our separate ways: Fran to St Vincent, to do good deeds, me to Santa Cruz, to further my education (and catch the Stones at Altamont).