The pound loses weight

Explain this one to me, can you?

The French own much of our railway system and now, it appears, our energy system, too - gas or electricity or is it both? Who cares?

Everybody but us owns what is left of the car industry in Britain - The Japanese, the Germans, the Indians.

The banks were owned by everyone else as well, until they screwed up and our government (or rather you and me, if you pay tax in the UK) had to pick up the tab for them screwing it up and leaving us with none of the massive profits, but all the eye-watering losses.

Then there is football. It might be called the English Premier League, but there is nothing English about it. The Americans own two of the top four clubs. A Russian owns one of the other top clubs and another Russian looks as if he is about to elbow in on Arsenal, managed by a Frenchman, captained by a Spaniard, ex-captained by another Frenchman (or three Frenchmen actually). Even Queens Park Rangers is run by an Italian, as is West Ham, although it is owned by a bankrupt Icelander. The new nickname for Iceland, by the way, is apparently, Halfpriceland - a moniker given not by a foreigner by an Icelander - or at least that is how you are greeted at the main airport on a placard made, in these straightened times, of cardboard.

Enough of Iceland.

Is there anything significant and privately owned in the UK that is not foreign?

Much of the media is foreign-owned, including the Times, the Sunday Times, The Sun, The News of the World, Sky Television - most of the big media outlets, in fact, who decide how we should be thinking and what's important and not important. If that isn't enough, half of what is on television is foreign-produced.

Strange to think that only 30 years ago, we were exhorted to 'Buy British' (as well as 'Keep Britain Tidy').

Buying British back then meant buying a Morris Marina or a Hillman Hunter instead of, say, a VW Golf or a Volvo. Or buying, say, Charlie Cook (centre forward for Chelsea) instead of Johann Cruyff (fancy Dan foreigner).

We bought British back then and concluded that it was mostly crap, so we went and bought foreign instead.

We sold everything worth selling to foreigners (banks, football clubs, breweries, gas, electricity, water, oil, railways, your pension, your savings, your grandma) and bought foreign, instead - food (any country you can think of), fast food (US), electricals (Japan), computers (Japan, the US), houses (France and Spain and other places), televisions (Japan), television programmes (US), clothes and toys (China), furniture (Sweden), software (US), bosses (too many nationalities to mention), footballers (too many nationalities to mention).

Which brings me to my question: If we like all things foreign so much, why are we so against the Euro? Sticking with the Pound is a bit like sticking to the Morris Marina when you could buy a VW Golf. It's crap. The Pound, that is.

Go abroad now and you pay nearly twice as much for the same thing as you did a couple of years ago. Worse than that, for those of us who live in Blighty for roughly fifty weeks a year or more, all those foreign things that we buy are going to get more and more expensive.

At the moment, the retailers are bearing the brunt of the squeeze on the £, but, hey, guess what? Most retailers can't afford the squeeze on their profits so many will go out of business in 2009. Then where will we shop, assuming we have any £s left to spend?

One good reason for sticking with that symbol on your computer keyboard - the '£' - is, of course, that it has the Queen's head on it, a symbol of Britishness, but she, too, is of foreign extraction (German) with a Greek husband.

Both the Greeks and the Germans have the Euro. Why not us? Because we are different from anyone else? Well maybe we are, but the Irish are different from the Greeks and they are different from the French who are different from the Dutch who are not at all like the Italians. They all have the Euro, so why not us?