Good reason then for abandoning the practice of publishing minutes It only induces constipation among the committee members An

Good reason then for abandoning the practice of publishing minutes It only induces constipation among the committee members An even better reason for hastening to join the euro. Eddie George in his banking hall may see only the figures before him. Out there in the real world it makes no sense that British business has to pay double that of its European competitors.. THE POLITICS of a devolved Scotland have not turned out as anyone expected, but no one can deny the vigour of the campaign for elections to the first parliament to sit north of the border since 1707.

In the end the European Bank has decided that economic considerations of the wider world should outweigh the narrower remit of monetary targets. The Bank of England reached the same conclusion about relative risk but felt that anything more than a quarter per cent might over-excite the markets and fan the ever present flames of inflation.It may be only a difference of tactic but it is also a difference of strategy. Cynics say it all has to do with the departure of Germany’s finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine. The cut he so aggressively sought was only possible when he was no longer in the post and the ECB could not be accused of giving in to political pressure.
The more sensible reason is probably that the European Bank, having decided that the risks of renewed recession in Europe were greater than the risks of resurgent inflation, decided a dramatic move was the only way to wrong foot the market and re-establish a secure position for the coming months. To no one’s surprise, the Bank of England inched its rates down a quarter per cent to 5.25 per cent. Why the difference in approach? Why, indeed, the difference in interest rates. The Liberal Democrats have been playing far too much footsie with the nationalists for comfort.There are only two choices in this hugely important election in Scotland Vote for the Union.

This means voting Labour – or if you can’t bring yourself to do that – vote Conservative.. TO EVERYONE’S surprise, the normally ultra-cautious European Central Bank yesterday lopped a whole half-per cent off euro interest rates to take them down to 2.5 per cent. But when the hideous deformity which prevented Tito’s Yugoslavia from turning seamlessly into a democratic unitary state which might now be in the EU was precisely Slobodan Milosevic’s decision to play the nationalist card in Kosovo in 1987 and 1989, it seems a mighty off time to revert to the politics of nationalism and separation. And no, you don’t have to compare Salmond, an astute, open, and impeccably democratic politician, with a Serbian nationalist to make it. True it smacks, like his tax pledge, a little of the desperate act he didn’t need to commit Whether it was electorally wise is not the point He was perfectly entitled to make it But there is, oddly, a Balkan connection. It works not at all if we lose the British and retreat into our Scottishness, or God help us, Englishness. Which is just what the independence freaks on both sides of the border want.Forget about the huffing and puffing about Alex Salmond’s condemnation about the war in Serbia as “unpardonable folly”.