BRITAIN'S Euro-sceptics - the majority of voters, I believe - should not take too much comfort in us not being signed up to the single currency as the euro dives to record lows.

For even though we are not in it, the collapse of this contrivance to turn the EU into a federal super-state dominated by France and Germany is costing you and I a packet.

First of all, we learn that its tumble on the foreign exchanges has already cost Britain more than £26 million because Chancellor Gordon Brown decided to sell more than half the country's gold reserves and invest 40 per cent of the proceeds in buying the sick euro and, worse, could end up losing £100 million if the revenue from forthcoming sales of more of our gold is ploughed into this ailing currency.

I don't know what mandate Mr Brown had - if any at all - to sell off the country's bullion.

But if displaying Britain's credentials as "good Europeans" by supporting the euro at a time when a monkey could see it was in freefall was his notion of a good idea, then I suggest we give the job of Chancellor to a monkey for it to be done more ably.

Secondly, having had the country's taxpayers suffer that loss, we find that £550 million of European aid for this country has gone up in smoke because the value of the £10 billion EU package for regeneration projects in Britain's inner city areas has gone down by that much because it was calculated in the flagging euro.

Why? If we are not in the sick single currency, why must we be, in effect, paid in it by the EU?

Both these instances, surely, speak volumes for being out - and for Mr Brown and Tony Blair to ditch their support for the Britain in Europe campaign for taking us in.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.