While we are all relaxing after the non-too-impressive shenanigans of the Amsterdam Treaty vote, the drive towards monetary union carries on apace.
The day of the euro, January 1st, 1999, draws ever closer, and we cannot afford to take our eye off the ball. Speaking of which, we should watch out for surreptitious European developments behind the smokescreen of the World Cup. As one of the 11 initial eurocurrency participants, we must not be blase or in the least bit smug. Vigilance is essential if the proceedings are not to overwhelm us.
Most recently we have been warned by the UK central bank governor, "Steady" Eddie George, about the challenges faced by his Irish counterpart, Maurice O'Connell.
Eddie says he would be uncomfortable in Mr O'Connell's shoes, trying to balance the needs of a growing economy with entering monetary union.
Eddie says that the essential disadvantage of monetary union is the "one size fits all" interest rates.
Indeed it is the "one size fits all" aspect of European integration that is the downside of the whole thing. Creeping homogenisation is the horror enveloping us.
But Eddie is right to say he would be uncomfortable in Maurice O'Connell's shoes. Eddie is a good few inches shorter than Maurice and we may take it that his shoe size is similarly smaller. For him, then, it is not so much a question of being "shoe-horned" into Europe as of being obliged to stumble around in an overlarge pair of brogues. How the vastly oversized Helmut Kohl is going to cope hardly bears thinking about; it is just as well he can easily afford hand-made shoes.
Eddie has also dismissed the idea that sterling would track the euro: "You cannot serve God and Mammon", he said: "And the Bank of England's clearly defined objective is price stability".
Most bankers asked in a straw poll yesterday did not know who Mammon was, but correctly surmised that God probably did not stand for enormous profitability, so made Mammon, the devil of covetousness, their choice.
I like Eddie. He is a plain-speaking man.
Anyway, post-Amsterdam, the sticky tentacles of mainland Europe are now well wrapped around our country. The Danes fought bitterly against this latest tight embrace yet finally gave in too, though not without providing a potent symbol of a Denmark locked in the fetters of federalism, namely the Little Mermaid of Copenhagen hung with chains and padlocks.
For a country bursting with creative talent, we are a little behind in the use of such symbols over here. There are many ways in which we could have used public statuary to show our unhappiness with the Amsterdam Treaty.
We could, for example, have stopped the water supply to the Anna Livia memorial in O'Connell Street, to symbolise the gradual reduction in EU funding to Ireland. Or, as an objection to homogenised food, we might have piled high the tasteless statue of the basket-bearing Molly Malone at the foot of Grafton Street with tasteless so-called Golden Delicious apples from France. We could have spotlighted the North Earl Street statue of James Joyce as a tribute to the writer's one-man campaign to Hibernicise Europe.
All a little late of course.
But now to more exalted matters. Cardinal Basil Hume, the Archbishop of Westminster, has condemned society's twin obsessions of sex and shopping and says that society is living off "a dwindling supply of spiritual and moral capital".
If this is true it is worrying news. Even those with a basic knowledge of economics (the systematic complication of the simple truths of housekeeping - thanks, Philip Howard) will recognise the dangers of living off capital. The ordinary honest worker usually tries to live off current income while simultaneously adding, even in a very small way, to capital, or savings. Those who simply live off capital, even if very wealthy, eventually use it up. Bankruptcy and penury are the usual outcome.
Still, the notion of a regular spiritual and moral "income" is difficult to grasp. Who is going to advise on how much should be spent, how much saved? Who will you go to for spiritual budgetary advice? How will falling interest rates affect the capital sums saved? Where are they to be banked? Can they be used as collateral for a large loan - say for a mortgage on a spiritual home or a self-righteousness extension? Will we see moves towards moral and spiritual union in the EU? All these questions need to be answered.
