WHEN I was a lad -- which to me seems like yesterday but was in those wonderful 60s with the Beatles, the Stones, the Hollies, and of course the Four Pennies -- going abroad was a serious big deal.
Aside from the cost, in real terms, there was the fact that half of Europe was, literally behind barbed wire with the Iron Curtain, and three major Southern Europe countries -- Portugal, Spain and Greece -- were under the cosh of unpleasant right wing dictatorships.
And, even once you had got your travel tickets, there was the hassle of getting foreign currency -- not obvious, exotic stuff, but French francs or German deutschmarks.
You had to go to a bank, with your passport, fill in a form, and have the back of the passport stamped to ensure that you had not gone over the limit of £250 in any one year (equivalent today to about £2,500).
Foreign, even across the channel, meant what it said -- different, strange and far away. Today, I'm forever bumping in to constituents at Preston station or Manchester Airport for whom a long weekend in Amsterdam or the Costa del Sol is commonplace, and who take globe-trotting entirely in their stride.
As I sat on the government bench on Monday listening to Gordon Brown give the Cabinet's interim verdict on the euro, I thought about this shrinking of Europe and the world. Has our 30-year membership of the European Union made any difference to Blackburn? What would the euro do for us?
Answer. Most of the big shifts towards globalisation -- from the IT revolution, the spread of western mass media, much cheaper air travel -- would have happened anyway. But I am in no doubt that the EU has hugely helped the process of freedom for eastern and southern European countries, and we in the UK have been able to play a much greater part in all this because of our membership of the EU.
For example, I doubt very much whether Vodafone UK would have been able to transform itself into the world's largest mobile telecom operator without the benefit of a liberalised "home" market across Europe which our membership of the EU has provided.
So what of the euro? Would it be good for Blackburn? In principle, yes. Although holidaymakers no longer have to go through the rigmarole of the old 1960s exchange controls for their holiday money, "transaction costs" -- the money dealers' commission -- and, more important, the cost of fluctuating exchange rates between the pound and the euro -- add to the risks and uncertainties of exporting to Europe.
Since Blackburn and North East Lancashire has a much bigger manufacturing and exporting base than many other areas of the UK, we stand to benefit more from the significant increase in trade with the EU which would result from our entry into the euro. And, though it is not a clincher, being able to use the same currency in Benidorm or Barcelona as in Blackburn would make travel even simpler.
On the other hand, we have to ensure, before we recommend that we go in, that our economy and those of mainland Europe are broadly on the same track -- the point of the famous five tests -- otherwise we would not get all the benefits of entry. So that's why Gordon Brown is rightly being so careful about Britain's economic interest.
Aside from the "four thousand holes in Blackburn Lancashire" immortalised by the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper, Blackburn's more positive contribution to the sound of the 60s was its home grown group, the Four Pennies. Those pennies mean the old big ones - 240 to the pound.
There was a big fall when we changed from the old shillings and pence, to decimalisation, in 1971. But now no one would want to go back to that over-complicated system.
The new one is simply more convenient. If and when we have a euro referendum there will be for sure a great debate at the time. But if we then changeover I think people will so rapidly embrace its benefits -- in terms of prosperity and jobs in our area - that sentiment about the old currency will be just that -- a memory of a less convenient time, a bit like my memories of trying to change money in the 60s.
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