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Daily Mail Comment
Last updated at 11:02 PM on 8th February 2012
One country has been doing very nicely out of the anti-democratic, economic madness of the one-size-fits-all euro.
For while the currency is hugely over-valued for inefficient nations such as Italy and Greece, making their products ever harder to sell abroad, mighty Germany has been enjoying a trade bonanza.
Indeed, its exporters sold goods and services worth a record £888billion last year, giving Berlin a trade surplus of an astonishing £132billion. And all thanks to a currency dragged down by the troubles of its poorest members, making German goods artificially cheap.
Stingy: German Chancellor Angela Merkel expects other to put up the hard cash to save the Euro, but wont deplete her own reserves
Yet even now, while the Greeks and Italians suffer deep austerity and civil unrest (under unelected governments imposed to suit Berlin), Angela Merkel refuses to dig deeper into her country’s bulging reserves to shore up the euro.
Instead, she has the effrontery to expect non-member nations, including the UK, to contribute to a rescue through the International Monetary Fund.
True, there are encouraging signs that the European Central Bank, under its new president Mario Draghi, is at last accepting its responsibility to do what it can to reassure the markets over the euro’s viability.
But there are severe limits to what the ECB can achieve without greater access to Berlin’s funds.
Germany was a leading advocate of the euro. German exporters have been its principle beneficiaries. And if Germany wants the currency to survive, it has the clear duty as well as the wherewithal to bail it out.
When Mrs Merkel comes round with the IMF begging bowl, George Osborne must answer an emphatic Nein!
Majority values
Abu Qatada is wanted on terrorism charges in eight countries. He has been described by a British court as a ‘truly dangerous individual’. He has preached that it is lawful to kill the wives and children of Muslims who reject Islam.
But he is not an ‘extremist’ – oh, no. At least, not in the eyes of the BBC.
In official guidance that will leave millions speechless, the Corporation has told its staff they must refer to Qatada as a ‘radical’, since the word extremist implies a ‘value judgment’.
An extremist? No, and make sure he doesn’t look fat
The Mail is the first to acknowledge that the BBC struggles to be fair – as Director General Mark Thompson shows on this page, where he laudably promises to tackle prejudice against older female presenters.
But when will his staff realise that, without even noticing, they make dozens of value judgments every day – whether they’re attacking the Coalition’s cuts, defending the EU or singing the praises of multiculturalism?
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if, a little more often, they espoused the values of the majority of their licence fee payers?
Vince’s wrong choice
The Mail congratulates the committee of MPs which has refused to endorse Vince Cable’s favourite candidate to become the new university access czar.
For Professor Les Ebdon – who has said he would impose huge financial penalties on institutions that fail to recruit enough students from poor backgrounds – would be a disaster in the job.
Indeed, the risk is that he would sabotage the good work of Education Secretary Michael Gove, who is fighting to switch policy away from Labour’s obsession with social engineering.
David Cameron should heed the MPs – which will mean defying Mr Cable and Universities Minister David Willetts, who is also said to favour Prof Ebdon.
For all our children’s sake, the battle to restore absolute standards is one that Mr Gove must be allowed to win.
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If I built a house, designed by myself, and i had people who would become my live in tenants help me build it, but who lied about their building qualifications. And the roof collapsed…..I would not expect my neighbours to pay the repair bill.
I built it, I expected to profit from it. Therefore I should repair it.
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Your comments:Germany booming and is in the Euro and refuses to support any more. We are not in and in debt and yet we are supposed to support it?
These people live in Wonderland with Alice.
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