BBC Blog Network

User Profile

Greig_v_Brne

Listed below are comments made by Greig_v_Brne between Thursday, 2nd October 2008 and Monday, 14th September 2009.

«Newer
Older»

Lehman: 'It started in America' - but traumatised Britain's elite 11:26am on 14 Sep 2009 Writing in 1972, Henry Wallich, a former governor of the Federal Reserve and professor of economics at Yale, noted:

"Growth is a substitute for equality of income. So long as there is growth there is hope, and that makes large income differentials tolerable."

This quote appears in Wilkinson and Pickett's recent highly important book 'The Spirit Level: Why more equal societies almost always do better', a book that is said to have been gathering lots of sand on the politico beaches this summer - at least, let's hope it was
Who's running the EU? 2:38pm on 25 Mar 2009 Obama visits Prague on April 5, and was supposed to go for a pint with Topolanek. If he has to drop in to Prague castle instead, for a draught of Klaus' bile, it may be no bad thing for motivating Obama to go that extra few miles on attempting to sort out climate change
Tales from (eastern) Europe: Airports 11:11am on 24 Mar 2009 Here's the Onion on Prague's Franz Kafka airport:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/pragues_franz_kafka_international?utm_source=a-section
Tales from (eastern) Europe: Airports 01:02am on 24 Mar 2009 ah, the joys of Prague airport, home to one of the most expensive standard meal deals in European airports - ropey gulas and a pint for 35 euros.

You're right, Paul, about the PPP-ing of Prague. A light railway link connecting the Prague airport with the city centre is being proposed for the PPP treatment – and it goes by the name of AirCon. They like a bit of naked honesty in their names, do the PPP platoons that are fast spreading eastwards from their disgrace in the west. There's now a Europe-wide initiative to push PPPs going under the delicious name of "C.R.E.A.M. Europe".

The Slovaks - and others - are getting cagey about them now in crisis times, the Slovak Spectator recently reporting that: “The Transport Ministry has prepared an alternative plan for highway construction in Slovakia, financed directly from state coffers, in case of a failure of three PPP projects which are currently being tendered”.

My organisation has a recent study out called "Never mind the balance sheet – the dangers posed by public-private partnerships in central and eastern Europe", available at: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
Climate change plan under fire 10:58pm on 15 Oct 2008 When it comes to money, the ten new member states have 177 billion euros coming in to their economies in the EU's 2007-2013 budgetary period under the Structural funds and the Cohesion Fund.

Combined, these countries have chosen to use a paltry 4.2 billion of these euros - or 2.4% of all EU funds - to fund drastically necessary energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.

Slovakia, Estonia and Bulgaria make up the bottom three of the World Energy Council's energy INefficiency rankings for the EU. To produce a unit of GDP in Bulgaria you need 5-6 times more energy than the EU average.

There are jobs to be had in renewables too - but this fact and the ill-advised, carbon heavy spending plans for 2007-2013 tend to get glossed over in a region where being green often means you get tarred as a communist.
Did Brown block huge bail-out? 1:42pm on 02 Oct 2008 This week's French equivalent of Private Eye reminds us of some of Sarkozy's economic nostrums from the last couple of years:

- his encouragement to the French to take on more debt (a "sign of dynamism");

- in particular, his suggestions to take on more mortgage-backed debt;

- his consistent moves to decriminalise white-collar fraud.

[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

Greig_v_Brne