In every case, the push for cityhood is essentially a desire to keep the riff-raff out. Independence would not arrive in time for the millennium, but could become a reality shortly thereafter.The Los Angeles area is full of smaller independent mini-cities which believe they can manage their affairs better on their own - Beverly Hills being perhaps the most famous example. The petition, which was completed to great fanfare a few days ago, will - if two-thirds of the signatures are verified - lead to a ballot initiative proposing secession some time in the next couple of years. Their drive is also being seen as a giant manifestation of that very Californian ideology, Not In My Back Yard.Being a predominantly white, middle-class part of town, the Valley is simply sick of shelling out for minorities and the poor in the downtown areas and would rather spend its tax money on white, middle-class things, like raising the tone of its neighbourhoods and nudging property values upwards."The Valley is tired of being treated like a cash cow," said Richard Close, chairman of the Valley Vote movement which is spearheading the push for secession So far, his group has been remarkably successful.

LOS ANGELES is the city that everyone loves to hate - including, it seems, 200,000 of its inhabitants. That is how many people have signed a petition calling for the secession of the San Fernando Valley, the suburban slice of Los Angeles north of the Hollywood Hills, and the creation of what could become the sixth largest city in the United States. The reasons for the rebellion will sound reassuringly familiar to LA- bashers: the desire to get away from an unwieldy city bureaucracy which sucks in tax money but does little or nothing about shoddy schools, public transport, air pollution, inner-city crime and all the other ills for which Los Angeles has become a byword.Or at least that is the way the secessionists portray it. There is a case for more political unity in Europe, short of the arrogant, bureaucratic, federal superstate of Eurosceptic nightmares. But the closer you come to real lives of real people, as the euro does, the more you need to be sure that the real people accept what is happening in their name and why.The indifference with which the phantom phase of the euro will be greeted throughout euro-land next week may baffle Eurosceptics; it should also unsettle the pro-Europeans.. Removing economic barriers forces the removal of political barriers. The coming of the euro sets that clock ticking again, more powerfully than ever before.Fine There are good economic arguments for the euro. The history of the EU has been one of setting purely economic targets - the common market, the single market, the single currency - which turn out to be deeply political targets.

To this extent, the decision of the new German government to drop the Kohl- fired opposition to such a notion is not so much a swing to the left as a recognition of reality. Once that happens, the case for more direct democracy at European level would become unanswerable. But the otherwise destabilising effect of differing national economies will force euro-land governments to co-ordinate economic policy more closely. Scope will remain for independent policies on taxation (as even the individual US states or Canadian provinces have). Similarly, the Blair government, under withering Eurosceptic fire, tends now to minimise the significance - in terms of sovereignty, in terms of loss of economic control - of joining the single currency.In truth, the existence of a single currency is likely to force the euro- land governments, little by little, to take many more economic and political decisions together. Part of the reason why many Britons have never emotionally accepted the EEC/EC/EU is that it was sold to them as a simple common market, which it never really was.