The First World War, 1914 - 18, was also known as the Great War and the war to end all wars. With a wartime loss of 35 million people one would hope so, but sadly, it was not to be.

The Second World War, 1939 - 45, took another 70 million lives and left Europe in blood soaked tatters. The cry of ‘Never again’ was heard once more, but this time it led to something more positive and durable; the formation of the European Union.

The EU has generally worked well as an entity. It has lowered borders, boundaries and barriers whilst promoting and developing European integration and understanding, without diluting or detracting from each member states unique character. We can now jump on a cheap, low cost flight to Spain or hop on the Eurostar train and go to Paris for the weekend without any fuss.

The political motivation gave way to the economic expansion and we saw the introduction of the new European currency, the euro, in January 2002. There were twelve member countries at the outset, but this number has grown with many new countries joining the EU. Today, the euro is one of the world’s most powerful currencies, used by more than 320 million Europeans in twenty-three countries.

At no stage did the United Kingdom ever participate in the Eurozone, although there were a couple of close calls. Whilst we have financial independence from the monetary union and the euro, we have a massive trading dependence with our EU partners, so we are not without severe exposure.

The Eurozone is in a deep and dangerous crisis. Some of the monetary member states have been living too well and borrowing beyond their means, unchecked and unchallenged, and are now on the brink of collapse because the cost of borrowing money to pay their debs exceeds the value of the repayments and the assets. It is like having negative equity on a mortgaged house; the capital loan borrowed exceeds the value of the house and any payment you make is soaked up by the sky high interest.

The EU crisis meeting wants all of the 26 member countries to participate in creating an enormous slush fund to help those beleaguered countries that have dug themselves an enormous, fiscal hole and then hit a sewer pipe.

Our Prime Minister has refused and he may well be right on this occasion. The broken sewers are still pouring out effluent to share amongst the monetary member countries, and we have said no thanks.

When Greece finally defaults on its loan payments, which will happen around Easter, there will be a disastrous financial tsunami that will sweep across Europe and reverberate around the world. Italy and Spain will be the next casualties.

The monetary effluent will really have hit the Eurozone fan then, and I think David Cameron has just bought the UK a financial umbrella.