New ‘Incidents’ in London

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The press and TV stations are begining to report a series of new incidents on the London underground. I use the word ‘incidents’ since things are so confused it is not clear what is happening. In one incident a rucksack apparently exploded, but the explosion was small. I will update as more info arrives.

On Thursday, the Warren Street, Shepherds Bush and Oval stations were evacuated. Emergency services personnel were called to the stations, police said.

“People were panicking. But very fortunately the train was only 15 seconds from the station,” witness Ivan McCracken told Sky news. McCracken said he smelled smoke at the Warren Street station, and people were panicking and coming into his carriage. He said he spoke to an Italian man who was comforting a woman after the evacuation.

“He said that a man was carrying a rucksack and the rucksack suddenly exploded. It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open the rucksack,” McCracken said. “The man then made an exclamation as if something had gone wrong. At that point everyone rushed from the carriage.”

Update 15:16 CET

The situation is still very confused. It seems there were 4 incidents, 3 in the tube, and one bus. The tube stations were Oval, Warren Street and Shepherd’s Bush. The bus was in Hackney Road, on a junction near Colombia Road, this is east London. There is speculation that detonators and not the bombs themselves went off. The emergency services report the following:

“We were called to Oval at 12:38 pm (1138 GMT) and sent three ambulance vehicles,” a spokesman said Thursday. “We were called to Warren Street at 12:45 pm (1145 GMT) and sent five vehicles. “We will shortly confirm details of the incident at Shepherd’s Bush. “At this time there are no reports of casualties at any of the scenes.”

I think you don’t need to be a genius to have imagined that after reports that Haroon Rashid Aswat had been arrested started circulating any remaining groups he might have set up would have been forced to act quickly.

Update 14:20 CET

Still thankfully no reports of anyone seriously injured. Massive police and security activity everywhere. And according to AP, at least one detention.

Police also said an armed police unit had entered University College hospital. Press Association, the British news agency, said they arrived shortly after an injured person was carried in.

On the blogging front, Robin at Perfect UK is covering developments from inside the UK.

Running It All Away

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This story today is worth a quick glance:

Mark McGowan went into the tiny backroom kitchen of a south London gallery three weeks ago and flipped on the cold water. He didn’t turn it off, and doesn’t plan to for an entire year.

“The Running Tap,” as it’s called, is McGowan’s effort to protest against wasted water in London by blatantly letting it go down the drain.

Merkel’s Reform Agenda

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Angela Merkel has an interview in the Financial Times today. Unfortunately the transcript is subscription only. This is a pity, since to some extent she defines the kind of Europe she would like to see:

In an interview with the Financial Times, Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democrat Union, on Wednesday issued a clarion call for economic reform in Europe based on countries borrowing successful policies from one another. ?If I look at Scandinavia, for instance, I see we still have a long way to go in decoupling our social security system from labour; if I look at central and eastern European countries, I see I still have a long way to go in reforming my tax system; and when I look at the UK, I see I still have much to do to make my labour market more flexible.?

Ms Merkel’s references to central European countries and to the UK are striking, since the former are identified with low corporate taxes and in some cases, such as Slovakia with a ?flat tax? system. The deregulated UK labour market is often demonised by continental European politicians as alien to the European social model.

Her remarks provide clear backing for Tony Blair, prime minister and current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, in his campaign to put economic reform at the centre of the EU’s effort to reconnect with European voters after their rejection of its planned constitution in France and the Netherlands in the past two months.

The big difficulty I see with her proposals is that they will put more of the burden of financing government on consumer taxes (VAT), and this will not help Germany lift domestic consumer demand which is one of the ‘big issues’.

Morgan Stanley economist Elga Bartsch, who I have in the past maligned somewhat here on this blog, has a pretty fair and balanced summary of the CDU reform programme here.

Albania again

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Former Prime Minister Sali Berisha won a surprise upset victory in the Albanian elections earlier this month.

This is not particularly welcome news for anyone outside of Albania. Berisha, who was Albania’s chief executive from 1990 to 1997, is remembered as a corrupt and erratic authoritarian who ran a government of cronies, best remembered for the “Pyramid” crisis of 1997 that left Albania in anarchy with hundreds dead.

Inside Albania, however, Berisha has been cultivating an image as a repentant reformer. He’s been aided in this by widespread dissatisfaction with the Fatos Nano government, which was seen as extravagantly corrupt and increasingly isolated from the concerns of ordinary Albanians.
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Unocal Update

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Following up on Edward’s post from last month.

Chinese interest has gained Unocal’s shareholders at least $400m extra from Chevron and its shareholders. Whether having regulatory clearance is worth $1.5bn (the remaining difference between the Chevron and CNOOC bids) is an open question. Since Unocal closed at $64.99 per share yesterday, $1.99 per share above Chevron’s bid, the market clearly expects a higher offer from Chevron or a choice in favor of CNOOC.

Unocal’s board of directors has endorsed a sweetened, $17 billion takeover bid from Chevron, rejecting a higher offer from one of China’s state-owned oil companies. …

Chevron boosted its offer by $2 per share to $63 per share — or $17 billion overall — shortly before the Unocal board met Tuesday night. CNOOC Ltd., an affiliate of China National Offshore Oil Corp., has an $18.5 billion offer on the table for the El Segundo-based company. Unocal’s board had previously also endorsed Chevron’s lower offer over the higher CNOOC bid.

More.

What Makes China Tick?

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This week seems to be China week. Everyone seems to be asking the same question: why is China so successful? ( see here and here and here.

Now maybe this is just an excuse for a bit of self-publicity, since I have just spent a day ‘sprucing-up’ the China page on my website, but lets see if I can take a shot at the question myself.
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Hungary Given Euro Warning

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Hungary risks missing its 2010 target for adopting the euro unless its government reduces the budget deficit and improves policy co-ordination with the central. This at least is the view of the OECD as expressed in its annual report on Hungary out today. According to the OECD:

“the key conclusion is that further reductions in the general government deficit have to come about through spending cuts because of the already high level of taxation. Failure to reach deficit targets have damaged credibility in the recent past and the Chapter discusses ways of providing more realistic budget targets, more transparent fiscal planning, better assessment of progress over the budget year and improved estimation of outcomes.”

I can think of two pertinent questions to put to the authors of the report: will the euro still be around by the time we get to 2010 (in its present form, I doubt it), and if it is, are they sure that it’s a good idea (looking at what has happened eg to Portugal, Greece and Italy) for Hungary to join.

Confronting Demographic Change

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Confronting Demographic Change is the title of a two day conference currently being organised by Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Commissioner Vladimir Spidla. The emphasis of the conference is on gender and family impact issues.

You can find a background briefing paper here.

This is also an interesting presentation.

Here’s a summary of the objectives. It’s very ‘commission speak’ of course, but at least it marks a growing recognition of the problems we are all going to face. I’m also intrigued by something: “Demographic changes, globalisation and rapid technological change are the three major challenges facing Europe today”. I’m intrigued to know when the hell they figured this out, especially since (if for globalisation you read China) it is something I have been arguing for over five years now, in this precise combination.
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