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Be very careful with comments like this.
Recently there was a programme on BBC2 detailing facts about the UK economy.
The total cost of ALL energy (including elec, gas, nuclear, and all oil extraction) only came to a grand total of less than 2% of GDP.
Yup, thats right, as a nation we spend more on widgets from china than ALL forms of power.
To suggest that we couldn't send between 2 - 5% of GDP overseas indefinitely would be quite naive.
Even if we had no North sea oil and gas, and the raw cost of energy doubled, we'd still be fine.
Incidentally, our BIG earner, is the finance industry. Primarily based in the city of London. Who'd have thought it. The City of London more valuable than the North sea oil & gas industry.
Andy
It doesn't matter if energy is 2%, 5%, 10% or 20% of GDP. Without energy you got no economy.
The finance industry, don't make me laugh. The UK once had a real economy, these days it got an imaginary economy based on people selling houses to each other and rich russians. One day not so far into the future the music will stop and you will be all out of chairs.
And it is you who are naive if you imagine those of us on continental Europe in the future will share our food and energy with you in return for paper with numbers printed on it.
Got gold? No that's right you don't. You sold it for half of what you could have gotten for it today.
And how viable do you think the earnings of the City of London will be in the new economy of post-Peak Oil? A huge proportion of the City's earnings come via the trade in derivatives and currencies. In a post peak world these are 2 'commodities' I don't think I fancy greatly. In the coming years which countries will be better placed, those who produce substantial amounts of their own hydrocarbons or those who's manufacturing base has collapsed below 20% and who's primary means of raising cash involves pushing near fictional amounts of money between various trading desks in the City of London?
Incidentally a very good point from Hurin regarding Brown's sale of a substantial amount of the UKs gold at almost the bottom of the gold cycle, and one that is not commented upon enough. Clueless, but then Prudence has mortgaged UK plc - just look at the Public spending deficit.
Well, AndyT, you'd better hope the UK can make it on its own.
I agree with AndyH that the UK would be well-advised to join the eurozone. But with Brown, no chance of that (best hope, a Conservative government?) I predict that by the time the UK government gets around to begging to join the Euro, they will be turned down flat. They don't have a strong case for EC solidarity, given that ever since they joined, all governments have systematically worked to weaken and undermine European efforts at integration and solidarity.
Here comes the BNP.
Banque National de Paris?
... Oh I suppose you mean British National Party. But I don't grasp your point?
Are you saying that no government will join the Euro because of thick-headed reactionary nationalism? Exactly, which is why I think they won't try till it's too late?.
I think what cynus means is that they are waiting for the alternative political parties to be thoroughly discredited so that power falls into their laps - a bit like the Weimar Republic and Hitler.