Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat View Post
If I were EU president, then tomorrow morning at 09:00 I'd send dispatches to all European capitals stating that there must be fiscal restraint, debt curtailing, adjusted retirement ages, harmonised tax rates. I'd simultaneously order the bombers to take off. Then everybody has got until 9:05 to send a return dispatch of compliance.

Bow Europe must and bow Europe will before stern German financial discipline. Like Thatcher restored fiscal sense on Britain, so too the Franco-German alliance shall impose the same on the eurozone.
Whose bombers would that be? French ones, or German ones carrying American nukes? Under what authority will you begin military action? If Europe is one polity that would be akin to Saddam gassing the Kurds, wouldn't it?

Like the miners unions in Thatcher's Britain, the Eurozone periphery has found means to live off the subsidies of the centre. They all want the hard German currency. But when one reminds them just why Germany's currency is so hard, they squeek louder than my two pot bellied piglets.

Despite the fact that Germany and France led the way in treaty-violating deficits?

Britain is not part of the eurozone, so hence escapes the need for discipline yes.

However, Britain's financial discipline record is comparable to that of Ireland or Spain. One of the highest budget deficits. Also, Britain is the world champion sheltering dubious firms and in providing shady, semi or pseudo legal financial services. The City in London is the pirate's lair and playhouse in one for the world's billionaire crooks and mobsters. A Somalia and Dubai combined.
....and now the most rigorous dicipline that the Union hacks are out on their arses and some of them have been convicted of Fraud.

No, that is you insulting Europeans. Of which you are one yourself.

You are European as much as a rabbit is a mammal. You can not escape simple definition.
Europeans live on the European mainland, calling Britain part of Europe is like calling Wales part of England, and will result in a similarly violent reaction. Still, the French in particular have a centuries-old habit of rubbishing British culture and being litterally lynched as a result. So feel free to continue.