THE DANGEROUS IGNORANCE OF THE CBI

Dateline: 1st February 2000

Even the collapsing EURO has not led Digby Jones, CBI Director General, (DT 1st Feb) to give up his ambition to abolish the Pound, the Bank of England and what remains of our national self governance.

He seems equally enamoured of the Single European Market which like most businessmen he has swallowed as something to do with free markets, whereas the crucial word is SINGLE - as in single tax regime, single currency, single government, single State !

Jones objects to "French companies buying British electricity companies but not vice versa", he objects to highly regulated labour markets in France and Germany and the nonsense of British companies spending 3 years taking legal action to enforce free trade only to see a favourable ruling overturned by our new masters in the European Court. And yet he remains a Eurofederalist, committed to the very "Single Market" whose regulations frustrate his members and willing to sign up for complete powerlessness in the EURO.

The CBI is as far from rationality today as it was in April 1939 when it was concluding trade Agreements in Dusseldorf with the grandees of Nazi industry.