We cannot go on forever about the euro. Like the poor it looks as if it will be with us always but, as with poverty, its effects are set to be with us for some time; certainly up to election day and the in the aftermath of that event. The Leader of the Opposition continues to see the euro's introduction as a 'prestigious gamble'. Once he traps a phrase into his head, wild horses, let alone calm reason, will not remove it from that location.

He has since repeated his strange belief that the Maltese lira should have been devalued, a fiscal decision that would have diminished the value of our lira by 10 per cent and set in motion price rises of the same amount. His reiteration of this nonsense endorses criticism of his inability to spot a full-blown error even after it has burst in his face.

A recent obiter dictum employed by Dr Sant on the subject of the lira/euro rate informed us that, "Reportedly, the European Commission went as far as to pressurise the IMF heavily to force them to shut their 'mouth' and not publish the lira/euro estimates they had derived from data". Reportedly? Heavily? Here are adverbs urgently in need of clarification. Reported by who? Where? When?

For if the impression given by Dr Sant's source, mystery or otherwise, is that the IMF can be 'pressurised' by the European Commission to keep its mouth shut, then we are in the presence of an IMF that is putty in the Commission's startlingly muscled hands. Perhaps one of our MEPs or, better still, the Government, should seek out a reaction to this astonishing report from both bodies.

Point is that no sooner does Malta achieve anything - and joining the eurozone has been generally regarded by civil society as an enormous achievement - than Sant lectures us on how it should have been done and what needs to be done now.

Thus, we have to 'assemble' a plan (another one) 'on an integrated basis to promote higher levels of private investment, to enhance the scope of public investment and make it more efficient and to simulate exports of goods and services and local consumption'. Where has Sant been all this time? Most people are under the strong impression that all of this is already being done and done effectively.

Point is the National Euro Changeover Committee made a magnificent job of our conversion and I am putting it up for canonisation. St NECC does not sound promising, I grant you. What if we stretch out a pile of euro coins atop the edge of a sword and tap its senior representative before asking him to 'Arise, Sir Necc'. That's not too hot, either, and given Labour's innate hostility, I fear a republican backlash.

Don't moan, don't whine, report

What is worrisome for those of us who have experienced Labour's plans for this and that (remember its egregious seven-year plan drawn up in 1973, its five-year follow-up and after that a three-year version) is that the lesson from so many plans has been lost on the present lot. Give them the chance of drawing one up and they're at it before you can say 'botched'. Months in real time are meanwhile wasted. Vide VAT, CET and match to the Labour Party's opponents.

Dr Sant sees doom lying in wait for us unless he is returned to power. He regards himself as some deus ex machina, one that will rise from some floorboard to survey the ruins of the euro. These will rise again not by 'setting up the game for another prestigious gamble but through a serious and structured plan' (what else?) 'known to all' (naturally) 'that will be driven by a wide coalition of the able and the willing' (quite) "among whom the government would be a leading player," (uh-oh) "yet not the only one" (but in the lead nonetheless).

Yesterday was not a happy day for Labour. Its grudging acceptance of the euro is in stark contrast to the general enthusiasm that greeted our entry into the eurozone at home and abroad. Abroad came to Malta yesterday in the shape and form of many bodies that belonged to the President of the European Commission, the EU Commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, our own EU Commissioner for fisheries Joe Borg, the President of the European Central Bank, prime ministers from Italy, Slovenia, Belgium, Slovakia, Ireland, more than 60 journalists from you name it and, to delight us and our guests, Malta's Philharmonic Orchestra in concert and, the icing on the euro's introduction, Miriam Gauci and Joseph Calleja.

While we celebrate with friends, Labour pouts and sulks, it's only refrain an unending moan about prices rocketing upwards. Prices, its media declare, are out of control. If true, and I have not come across the phenomenon yet, the remedy is in the hands of the consumer. I made a point over the past week of buying items the price of which, in Maltese currency, I am familiar with. Yesterday I bought myself a delicious, calorie-raising cheese-cake to find out whether I would be charged the proper euro equivalent of 10 Maltese cents. I half expected to be asked for 25 euro cents, but 23 cents it was - and very tasty, too.

I have no doubt there is the odd retailer out there who will try to cheat the consumer. From all that I have read and heard, such an animal is indeed the odd one out. He can be brought to heel easily. A proactive system of watchdogging by the NECC, the GRTU and UHM is in place. If a customer believes he is being fleeced by a retailer rounding prices upwards, which is illegal, or worse, rounding prices up way beyond the next rung, he will find it more profitable to ring 154 than to wring his hands. Many go around saying they have been done in, but ask them for details - which shop? What item? - and you come up against a blank wall. Not helpful.

Echoes of the Ecu

Journalists, opinion formers and economics advisers tend, on the whole, to be a conceited bunch. No less arrogant than the politicians they chastise, the mote in the eyes of the latter is often insignificant compared with the beam in the eyes of the former, but sssh; don't tell them I said that.

I am riding this particular high horse because while browsing through newspaper cuttings in a bid to discover some pearl of great price among the contributions of various swineherds, I came across a foreign piece that was just the ticket for the europhic times we now live in. Before coming to that one, here is a local example.

I will refrain from naming the author, but I suspect he also inspired a leader he quoted in part - 'Not even the best marketing guru in the world could successfully brand such a flawed product' - then launched into his own tirade. Period? The last quarter of 2006: 'It gives nobody who loves Malta any pleasure to say that the long-predicted meltdown in Malta's tourism industry has begun'. Some meltdown. Some prediction.

Here is another prediction that went awry. It was formulated with all the certainty and authority that is given to certain, authoritative men. There will be a common currency and it is called the deutschmark - thus ran the title of an article that goes back nearly a decade. I remember thinking at the time, well I wonder if the author will be proved right? So I filed it.

The author of the piece was Sir Alan Walters, a high-powered economics guy who served two four-year periods as adviser to the World Bank and was a personal adviser to Lady Thatcher. He was once described as Britain's 'unelected chancellor'. Given those credentials, I thought at the time, it would be interesting to see how well his writ on this deutschmark business would run.

Remember, it was the time of the Ecu and a year after Britain opted out of the European exchange rate mechanism. It was thought at the time that the mechanism would bring inflation down, reduce interest rates and stabilise exchange rates. Sir Alan poured scorn over the enterprise. What he foresaw at the time was "that the core countries and even some outsiders (were) in a position formally to go fixed on the (deutsch) mark...This will give a monetary union with the mark as its currency and the Bundesbank as the central bank of Europe...I believe Deutschmark Europe will be with us for a long time. I cannot see Germany allowing (the mark) to be replaced by the Ecu."

Well, perhaps not the Ecu per se, but somehow he failed to consider that an Ecu by any other name (except the deutschmark) could work and seems to be so doing. The euro was met with similar contempt on the part of eurosceptics in Britain. They saw it sinking to the bottom of the currency league before you could say futures. Leader and opinion writers in the Telegraph hee-hawed in anticipation of this Icarian tragedy. But look at it now. Yet the British for the most part continue to harbour a great dislike for the euro and everything its stands for. This antipathy colours their approach to the currency and, indeed, towards the EU itself.

Still, there is as much chance of the euro disappearing from the world's financial scene as I have of becoming the first President of the European Union. Even as I tapped that, it crossed my mind that Sir Alan was just as certain when he predicted the rise and rise of the deutschmark. Today it is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere along the line to an "ever-closer union", a voice in Brussels, or thereabouts, called out: "Countries of Europe, unite! You have nothing to lose but your not so forte franc and your gilder, your peseta and your lira, your deutschmark and your zloty or whatever".

Malta and Cyprus were but the latest members of the EU to discard theirs and to enter, in Malta's case, into the fifth phase of what Joseph C. Sammut called its 'numismatic culture' in his book From Scudo to Sterling, which now needs an update.

Meanwhile, no more exchange rates within the bloc, no more devaluation, pace Sant, except by agreement across the bloc, an even currency playing field that will make us more competitive abroad, more attractive to European investors and, more important, to non-Europeans wishing to have a no-problem-currency base in Europe.