Back in the 90s, a colleague who’d joined our office from America demanded to know what, exactly, got made in Britain. Nothing got made or done here; that was his basic position. At the time, I thought the best answer was to point to things like aerospace, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Not so many internationally recognised [...]

Spain, as those 1990s tourist brochures used to tell us, is different. And it certainly shouldn’t be confused with Greece. Even a cursory look at the most basic of maps should satisfy any doubts we might be harbouring in that regard. But being different is not the same thing as being economically sound. Which is [...]

The June Flash PMI reports, which were out on Thursday, make do not make agreeable reading, in the sense that while the French and German economies both continued to expand during the month, their rate of expansion, and in particular in the leading manufacturing sector, seems to have dropped sharply, and for the second month [...]

“If you look at the world, it would inevitably appear India’s growth is preordained. The world needs working hands. The world needs back offices. India seems to be a natural fit…We are producing a workforce which is not only for India, but a global workforce.” Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder and chairman of New Delhi-based Bharti [...]

 By now it’s very obvious to everyone in the UK that there aren’t enough Olympics tickets. Two thirds of the nearly two million British ticket applicants didn’t get any of the tickets they wanted – in fact they didn’t get any tickets at all. At the same time, there are stacks of unsold tickets to [...]

Ed: At this critical moment for the European project, we have the honour to present a special guest contribution from Norman Strong, who has agreed in the light of the extreme circumstances we are facing to finally resume the occasional series of posts he began here in 2002. Like Duke Nukem Forever and the Stone [...]

A quote from a Wall Street Journal article about the standoff over how soon Lorenzo Bini Smaghi should resign from the ECB board: “Our understanding is that Mr. Bini Smaghi wants to know where he would work next if he were to voluntarily resign from the ECB,” one French official said.  Mischievous suggestion: Greek trades unions [...]

Compare and contrast: IMF statement on Egypt – “A number of fundamental structural reforms, including the transition to a VAT-like consumption tax and reform of the highly inequitable and costly system of subsidies, are needed to improve the efficiency of public spending and help reduce the fiscal deficit in the medium term. We share the [...]

Rowan Williams: [we have seen a] quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor”. Iain Duncan Smith: With respect to the Archbishop of Canterbury I have never ever spoken about the deserving or undeserving poor. I don’t believe in that concept. All I say is that the system itself has created an [...]

If there are, famously and waggishly, only two places in France — Paris and the provinces — what of other European countries? In the common imagination, the literary tradition, in culture as a whole, and of course for a fanciful exercise like this, in gross stereotype. For the UK, which I do not know very [...]