The earth moved...

...and said, according to Mark Steyn, No mas;

Just before last week's Eurovision [Song of the Year] finale in Azerbaijan, The Daily Mail in London reported that the Spanish entrant, Pastora Soler, had been told to throw the competition "because the cash-strapped country can't afford to host the lavish event next year," as the winning nation is obliged to do. In a land where the youth unemployment rate is over 50 percent, and two-thirds of the country's airports are under threat of closure and whose neighbors (Britain) are drawing up plans for military intervention to evacuate their nationals in the event of total civic collapse, the pressing need to avoid winning the Eurovision Song Contest is still a poignant symbol of how total is Spain's implosion. Ask not for whom "Ding-Ding-A-Dong" dings, it dings for thee.

That last being a reference to the 1975 winning song. Which was back in the bad old days when Spain operated on a Peseta standard.  And probably would still if the Europeans had listened to Tories Margaret Thatcher and  William Hague, according to the Telegraphs's Peter Osborn;

Hague made a series of speeches which, reread today, rival Margaret Thatcher’s in their prescience. He predicted that membership would “lead to huge booms and deep recessions”. Hague chillingly added that “the single currency is irreversible. One could find oneself trapped in the economic equivalent of a burning building with no exits.” He noted that euro membership could lead to a “full-blown banking and financial crisis.”

Nobody listened, many mocked, and Hague was accused of dragging the Tory party to the Right. The BBC, an integral part of the pro-European alliance, played its full role in marginalising critics such as Hague. The state-owned national broadcaster lumped the Tory leader in with cranks and xenophobes. By contrast, euro supporters were invariably presented as mainstream and sensible.

Fortunately for the people of Great Britain, Thatcher and Hague managed to keep their nation on the Pound Sterling and out of the worst of the still burgeoning European crisis.  Maybe the rest of Europe should take a hint.