DCW – this thread just gets better and better!!:D

CD – I really don’t see how you can separate the two. Greece’s debt crisis is inextricably bound to its EU membership. And trying to stick to the central point, I believe that the long term viability of both the Euro and the EU will be affected. As indeed it should be.

Sky High

Mark and David Miller’s beautiful Rapide G-AGJG, based at Duxford, is ex-Island Air Services. Not available for public flying, but often to be seen in the air over Duxford.

So might that have flown the joy rides from London Airport along with the two already mentioned?

I accept that my phrasing could have been better in the first paragraph. But we will have to agree to differ about your final conclusion, with which I profoundly disagree.

In answer to Linc – I was speaking from personal experience about the way EU largesse was being spent in one of its poorer fringe members. I was not talking about UK money being wasted here – that’s another debate.

Interflug/JB – are you able to name any other grouping of nation states which have ceded power to a centrally unelected bureaucracy to manage their affairs? There are dozens of examples of nations alone or in loose trading alliances managing very well. I do not see the need for the EU.

I am open to be proved incorrect but I think that about 50% of the laws and regulations under which we operate are no longer made by our sovereign parliament. Is that not specific enough?

:):)

At the height of the Euro-madness when the fringe countries were benefitting from Brussels’ largesse, I visited a company in Ireland which, along with most of the others tempted there by extravagant EU grants, was rapidly expanding its premises.

A huge warehouse had appeared since my previous visit and as we had been discussing stockholding of products I was intrigued by the scale of the building. “Ah, yes” came the reply. “We were making an application for our second 3 year grant, but had not spent all of the first so we had to commit and spend that money before we could get anymore”.

Just about sums it all up, doesn’t it?

And of course we are being obliged to lob money we do not have, courtesy of our membership of the EU.

Time will tell and there are differing opinions on the vulnerability of the US, but, as you say, the sound of rubbing hands from the Far East is distinctly audible.