UK Euro watch: April 2009

This is our monthly round-up of BBC content touching the possibility of the UK entering EMU and adopting the Euro. Little happened during the month at a political level to move this forward.

17 April: Shops to accept euro for two days: the initiative in Bewdley, Worcestershire on the weekend 18-19 April was part of events marking the 20th anniversary of its twinning agreement with German town Vellmar.

22 April: BBC World Service: In its Global Business series, The Edge of Europe (part 2), Peter Day looked at the edges of Europe and asked whether joining the Euro, or in the case of Iceland wanting to, was worth it?

23 April: Radio 1 Newsbeat reported in Seaside town allows euro payments that some businesses in Poole (and Bournemouth) now accept the euro. It mentioned 'Dunster in Somerset became the first UK town to accept euros', which may surprise businesses in Northern Ireland, in particular Newry, which have been doing this ever since the notes and coins were first circulated.

26 April: In The Westminster Hour, At the Heart of Europe examines how Labour's policy on Europe evolved over three terms in government.

28 April: UK keeps EU working week opt-out, maintaining another key policy difference to the Eurozone

Goodbye Norton 360

I've used Norton Antivirus and related products exclusively for the PCs that I control for the last 10 years. Laptops arrived with Norton products pre-installed, and these did the job adequately.

Norton 360 was included with the Toshiba Tecra (Vista) laptop that I bought about 15 months ago. Though I didn't like it very much, I renewed the subscription before the 90 days' trial was complete. Now that 12 months' renewal has expired and guess what! All protection seems to have stopped - the product doesn't carry on checking for viruses, firewall, intrusion protection, e-mail scanning, virus and spyware scan. The whole lot seems to have been switched off (if I understand the messages correctly) now that the date has been reached. Other Norton products carry on protecting with the versions of the virus signatures up to the date of the renewal. This doesn't; it's abdicated completely.

Goodbye Norton 360. I won't accept such a business policy. It's AVG for me.

UK Euro watch: March 2009

There was little to be found in BBC content in March regarding the possibility of the UK entering EMU and adopting the Euro. Gordon Brown addressed the European Parliament on 24th March, and two speeches in response called on him to show European commitment by joining the single currency. That seems to be the sum total.

These speeches were all outshadowed by Dan Hannan's scathing response. Mark Mardell, Europe Editor, defended himself for failing to comment on the latter.

Stories about other countries:

13 March: Will euro save Eastern Europe? by Konstantin Rozhnov, Business reporter, BBC News

23 March: Could Greece laser the euro? Mark Mardell, referring to the Centre for European Reform blog What if the Euro broke up?

Articles from other publications:
12 March: In EuropeanVoice.com, Hilary Heuler gives a profile of Jacek Rostowski, Poland's finance minister, and his euro ambitions: The euro enthusiast

15 March: The Sunday Times, not famous for its euro-enthusiasm, Cracks in the euro, by Iain Dey and David Smith

31 March: Charles Grant, of the Centre for European Reform (see above), writing in The Times Ten years on, the eurozone must beware of Greeks bearing debts