NI cinemas to screen anti-euro ad
Campaigners against the euro are to take their case against the single currency to Northern Ireland cinemas, it emerged today.
A controversial star-studded advert against the euro will be screened in cinemas across the province from tomorrow over the next fortnight before the latest Nicolas Cage movie.
The advert, which will be shown before the war movie Windtalkers, features Live Aid founder and pop star, Bob Geldof, comedians Harry Enfield, Vic Reeves and Rik Mayall, musician Jools Holland and Northern Ireland-born Labour MP Kate Hoey.
The 90-second film sparked controversy in the rest of the UK in July over a scene featuring Young Ones star Rik Mayall impersonating Adolf Hitler addressing a crowd with the slogan: “Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Euro!”
Former Sports Minister Ms Hoey said the film was an attempt to make the euro debate more meaningful to ordinary people.
“This film is the start of a different kind of campaign which will reach out beyond conventional party politics and develop a real people’s campaign,” she said.
It will be the first time the anti-euro advert has been screened in a part of the UK which shares a land border with a country which is a member of the Eurozone.
The euro replaced the punt here earlier this year.
Visitors to some Northern Ireland shops and restaurants have received bills which give the amount owed in both pounds sterling and euros and in some border towns in the provinces, cash machines dispense the currency.
Anti-euro campaigners insist the advert has three core messages:
* It is not anti-European to oppose the euro.
* The UK’s economy and democracy would be undermined if the British government were to hand over control over its economy.
* It is not inevitable that the UK must join the euro.
During a visit to the Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast earlier this week, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the British government had won the political argument for the Euro but still needed sound economic reasons for joining.
After a meeting with the joint leaders of the power-sharing executive, David Trimble and Mark Durkan on Tuesday, he said: “We in the UK Government have already made the political case.
“We put it to the British people not on one occasion but two elections.
“We believe in principle that the Euro benefits people in Britain and we have had that endorsed in successive elections.
“So the issue now is on the economic arguments and that is why the Chancellor of the Exchequer has set out the five tests which are essentially whether our economy in the UK can converge with the Euro 12.
“Those five tests are clearly the subject of an economic assessment. We will announce the results some time before the second anniversary of this administration next June and if we decide it is in the interests of the British people, including those in Northern Ireland, to join then we will make that recommendation.
“The decision will not be made by us either in Cabinet or in the British parliament, but it will be made by the British people in the secrecy of the polling booths.”
