Chris

Having properly read that article (another opinion piece, incidentally), I think its cavalier treatment of fact is disgraceful, especially given the qualifications and the experience of its author.

The countries he cites have been suffering savage cuts that vary from four to 12 times worse than anything we have seen in the UK. the medicine is too severe and is killing those economies. Here in the UK on the other hand the 'austerity' amounts to no more than 1pc of GDP. We have no catastrophic rise in unemployment (in fact, we have rising employment and a small, recent rise in our unemployment stats can be explained as still more people wishing to become economically active and registering as looking for work); the deficit, like an oil tanker, has finally started to respond to the helm; and the economy is growing, weakly but ahead of expectations.

The simple fact is this: you don't solve a debt crisis by piling on more debt. A further simple fact is this: the Club Med problem is of a completely different order and nature than the UK problem. Their currencies have been pegged to the D-Mark and the cracks wallpapered over with € symbols. The Eurocrats won't countenance any talk of the actual problem (the Euro) or the actual solution (breaking up the Euro) so they are perpetrating fiscal terrorism on the Club Med states in order to bring wage-earners to their knees and make them work for a pittance in Euros.