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Britain`s euro decision weighed by 1,200 years of pound`s history
London, June 08: When Britain`s government announces on Monday whether it will begin moves towards joining the Euro, at stake is not only mere economics but the fate of more than 1,200 years of continuous history represented by the pound.
London, June 08: When Britain's government announces on Monday whether it will begin moves towards joining the Euro, at stake is not only mere economics but the fate of more than 1,200 years of continuous history represented by the pound.
Chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, is considered certain to tell parliament that the time is not yet right to ditch sterling and throw the country's lot in with the euro zone.
And while the official reason will be a failure to pass one or some of five self-imposed economic tests on the benefits of euro entry, most pundits say the government's hands are largely tied anyway.
In any referendum -- which the government has promised before entry -- what is already a mainly eurosceptic British public would face impassioned arguments that losing its currency would erase one of Britain's defining features.
The notion of a pound, divided into units of pence, dates back to 765 ad when the idea was borrowed from Charlemagne, the conqueror of much of mainland Europe.
Since then, while it has changed out of all recognition from the original weight-based unit of silver, the pound has enjoyed a continuous history.
This astonishing tradition is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that the company tasked with supplying cotton-based paper to make the very first note-based pounds in 1724 still holds the same contract today.
Such a heritage deters many British people from wanting to join the euro, argued David Sinclair, author of "The Pound", a book charting the currency's long existence. Bureau Report
Chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, is considered certain to tell parliament that the time is not yet right to ditch sterling and throw the country's lot in with the euro zone.
And while the official reason will be a failure to pass one or some of five self-imposed economic tests on the benefits of euro entry, most pundits say the government's hands are largely tied anyway.
In any referendum -- which the government has promised before entry -- what is already a mainly eurosceptic British public would face impassioned arguments that losing its currency would erase one of Britain's defining features.
The notion of a pound, divided into units of pence, dates back to 765 ad when the idea was borrowed from Charlemagne, the conqueror of much of mainland Europe.
Since then, while it has changed out of all recognition from the original weight-based unit of silver, the pound has enjoyed a continuous history.
This astonishing tradition is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that the company tasked with supplying cotton-based paper to make the very first note-based pounds in 1724 still holds the same contract today.
Such a heritage deters many British people from wanting to join the euro, argued David Sinclair, author of "The Pound", a book charting the currency's long existence. Bureau Report