If you want to know what is really happening in a city then you can do a lot worse than to interrogate one of its cab drivers. Last week, one was muttering pessimistically about the introduction of the euro, a full fortnight after the old currency had been abandoned. Not that he gave a hoot about the new currency itself. It's only money, he shrugged.

No, he saw the euro as a Trojan Horse for the European government in Brussels, which, he claimed, ran the German government. The European Union was a scapegoat for all Germany's ills, including the pension-funding crisis sweeping the Continent.