Although there are potentially looming problems of overcapacity and concerns about subsidies, it’s hard to deny that the emergence of budget airlines over the last decade has revolutionised travel among European countries, not only through cheap fares but also by allowing more flexible travelling arrangements, with a greater choice of flight departures and destinations. Furthermore the competition from them has had a positive knock-on effect on previously stuffy national airline companies, such as Lufthansa and British Airways.
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Author Archives: Matthew Turner
Better bread and more free time
As the rest of Europe wonders if the French elections prove the old adage that in all countries the government lies to the electorate, but in France the electorate lies to the government, John Kay in the today’s FT offers reasons why the French voted as they did. Basically France is a nice country to live in, with better bread and more free time, and the French want to keep it that way. He has a point, though cynics might note that Kay lives in France but works in Britain.
It’s expensive, but we’re rich!
Remember this debate about the relative living standards of Sweden and Alabama? One little commented result of the euro, krona and pound?s rise against the US dollar over the last two years is that measured in current exchange rates European countries? income per head now compares rather more favourably against the United States.
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More Europeans
Say hello to another 1,276,000 inhabitants of the EU in 2003, bringing the total to 380.8 million people on January 1st 2004. Most of them were immigrants, out of the total increase of 3.4 people for every 1000 inhabitants, 2.6 was down to net migration while only 0.8 was accounted for by natural increase (births minus deaths).
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Europe’s love affair with diesel
Latest figures from Automotive Industry Data (AID) show that in 2003 diesel accounted for 44% of the West European car market, up from just over 20% ten years’ ago. In some markets, such as Austria, Belgium and France, diesel penetration is now 60% to 70%, while in Sweden it is under 8% and Greece only 1%. Might this have major implications for global politics?
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The World in 1856
A few months ago I came across an old book that my grandmother had been left by her grandmother. Called ‘Geography for Children On A Perfectly Easy Plan’ it dates from 1856 (first printed 1848) and is a British geography school textbook, educating children on each country in the world, its inhabitants and its economy. What follows is presumably therefore how British schoolchildren viewed Europe and Europeans in the mid-19th century. It bares a remarkable similarity how the British tabloid press views Europe and Europeans today.
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Europe as an economic irrelevancy
By 2050 Western Europe could be an economic irrelevancy, with its four leading economies, the UK, Germany, France and Italy (note the order?) enjoying a combined output of less than half India?s and a third of China?s. Both Brazil and Russia will be twice as large as any single Western European economy.
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The mathematical game
It’s the first day of Europe’s Champions League football tournament but if you can’t wait for the results, no worries as Eurofootsie probably knows them all already thanks to it’s whizz-bang computer modelling.
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The UK as number one
Since the 1960s Germany has had the largest economy in the EU but Nigel Griffiths, the UK trade minister, thinks all that might change :
“I think that construction and manufacturing alone as sectors could ensure that within 10 years we [the UK] overtake the German economy. We’ve got to see whether we cannot become the third biggest economy in the world* in terms of gross domestic product. I think that is feasible.”
Now before our British readers start singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and waving their Union flags, an important point. He’s talking rubbish.
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Work Freedom Day
European countries never do very well in the gimmicky league tables or comparative indices of nations that thinktanks love to devise in order to meet the bills. You know the sort of thing ? the World Competitiveness Ratings or the Index of Economic Freedom. I thought it was time to come up with one that plays to Europe’s strengths.
What strengths, you may ask? Well the combination of gloomy back-to-work September, and a recent report from the International Labor Organisation, Key Indicators of the Labour Market, reminded me of something the continent has in its favour ? short working hours and long holidays. And so to boost European?s international self-confidence during these difficult economic times, I would like to propose a new measure of how much time we have to spend at work, Work Freedom Day.
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