Has the death knell sounded for the Euro?

Peter Oborne makes a bold prediction in today's Mail: that the Euro - ten years old yesterday - won't live to see its twentieth anniversary.  Whether or not you agree with that prognosis, Oborne's case is compelling:

"Indeed, far from being the staggering success its supporters claim, the euro-zone is already inflicting huge damage on the nations within it. Many currency market experts believe that some of these struggling members may be forced to peel away from the euro - with devastating consequences for the rest of the world.

The greatest problems,

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Is this worth it?

I know that just about anything is justified these days by the phrase "think of the children" but can we take a rather hard headed (substitute black hearted if you prefer) look at this particular scheme?

The £84million ISA scheme was recommended as a way to avoid a repeat of the Soham murders, by requiring anyone who wants to work or volunteer with children or vulnerable adults to have their backgrounds checked by officials first.

An estimated 11.3 million adults in England will have to register their details, at a cost of £64, and even children's authors who...

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Clearing the Augean Stable

This new Civitas report, I can see why the reports are talking more about the marriage (actually, the cohabitation) penalty. But that isn't the part that leaps out at me. That is this:

On average each household with a total income of £25,000 paid taxes of £10,362 and received state benefits of £10,503, it found.

Looking at the actual report (OK, well, the press release, whow much of these things do you think journalists actually read?) that's not quite what they say.

The original statement indicates that we're simply churning the money to and from the same...

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The sterling turning point?

I'm fairly pessimistic about the prospects for sterling - or the GBPeso as some CoffeeHousers have dubbed it. But as a counterbalance to the stuff I've been posting recently, here is a forecast from Royal Bank of Scotland which reckons sterling has been oversold, the turning point has arrived and that we will be able to afford to go on holiday after all. Our pounds will be buying €1.20 by next Christmas and €1.30 by Christmas 2010, but we can forget about those $2 pounds. Here is its graph (below). RBS inverts things, and asks how many pence a Euro will buy. RBS reckons the BoE will cut rates to 1% by Easter and keep them there - but nonetheless argues sterling is "cheap by historic standards" and "eventually, this should tempt foreign investors to move back into sterling". Here's hoping.

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Lies, damned lies and.....

Well, yes, we all know how Disraeli's dictum ends, with "statistics". A very nice little piece in The Times today.

The rate of cervical cancer in teenagers has been rising by 6.8 per cent a year for the past 25 years - up five times overall - a conference on teenage health was told. Teen promiscuity was promptly presumed and condemned. So it was almost disappointing that 6.8 per cent turned out to equal about 0.1 to 0.2 cases a year (one extra case every five or ten years), leaving a total figure so small, and so little changed,...

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