WHAT PRICE THE EURO NOW, AY?

If I had but known how to spell it, I'd have titled the piece "schadenfreude" but for some reason my Mac has decided to stop doing a spell-check and I don't have time to sort through the settings right now, as we'd be late for dinner.

This is the emotion I felt recently, while listening to someone or other talking about the current economic situation. The UK, which was blessed with a Labour government at the onset of the recession, hasn't come out of it. At the beginning of the troubles, you could detect a pretty smug smile on the face of most Brits, and you could see them pointing at Greece and having a right old giggle.

Well, to be sure, Greece, and Spain and Italy for that matter, are something of a basket case, economically speaking, but the funny thing is, dear Old Blighty seems to be heading very much in the same general direction, what with double-dip recessions looming an'all (you have to like the phrase "double-dip", sounds like an ice-cream cone) In the meantime, Germany is getting on OK, danke and France, for all of their lurch to the left, but away from the proto-racism that was raising its ugly head, so that's all right, seems to be avoiding terminal economic malaise.

So what price the euro now, ay, Cameron and your posh buddies? Still hell-bent on staying away from all that funny foreign money, keeping the Queen's head on notes that are risking rapidly becoming less valuable than the paper on which it's printed?

True, Cameron has a good excuse, the economy was dumped into the effluent by the grouch Brown and his predecessor, Bambi, with their typical Labour "image is all, sod the details" (that sounds familiar) but I bet there's a bit of him that wishes he didn't have to pander to "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells".