Question for brits - pounds? euros?

how come Englanders talk about PS? I thought Europe had a standardised currency. how does this work?

Hi Chris, Yes I was aware of that. My question is, (given that UK is part of Europe), why is it that it still uses pounds stirling? Wasnt the whole idea of the Euro a standardised European currency?

Well I'm not entirely sure what an 'Englander' or 'PS' is ('English' and '拢s' maybe??), but the reason we didn't convert to Euros when the single European currency was introduced is that the UK's main and most profitable form of industry is the banking and finance industry. Having a strong currency such as the 拢 (which remains far stronger than the Euro or dollar) is vital to maintaining this industry. Converting to a new currency when we had a perfectly good one seemed somewhat pointless and so the UK negotiated an 'opt out clause' which means that we opted out of the initial phase where the Euro was introduced but retained the right to join at a later date. As the 拢 has continued to remain one of, if not the, strongest currency in the world we have had no need to join the Euro.

There is also the matter that Brits generally don't tend to feel as 'European' as some of our continental neighbours (you may have noticed some of the comments on here when well-meaning Americans refer to British people as being European) and are feeling increasingly frustrated by European integration. The thought of losing the pound to a standardised European currency is a bit too much for some people and politically the government probably didn't feel that they were in the position to make such a decision.

Some countries don't have Euros yet. Poland included.

Englanders do you mean English. Pounds just for the simple fact that i dont want the British economy subsidising lesser economies in europe. Shove Europe and Shove the Euro. Just in case you didnt realise Europe is not one country.