Comment on From Spain – 19th March by richotto

Who mentioned moral strength? The words I used were responsible and restrained and those are qualities which they demonstrably showed in examples I gave such as culturally an aversion to credit and less intense ambition for the owning of property and translating into a sustainable non bubble type economy and public policy.
The issue of being on the periphery while there to some extent has always been used here in a self serving and exaggerated way. You’d think we were in outer mongolia sometimes. Western Europe is a small area in world terms and we are pretty close to the centre of the biggest consumer area in the world. Countries the other side of the world doing very well do not seem to be bothered much about that. The likes of Finland and Sweden could argue that they are in an even more marginal position yet they don’t. Also consider that we have benefitted in tens if not hundereds of billions in todays money since we joined the EU in regional aid and agricultural subsidies with Germany and the Benelux countries as the main
paymasters. And yet for all our supposed disadvantage we still manage to pay our public and private sector professional class considerably more than in the countries who are paying for our bubble economy and budget deficit.