Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, April 06, 2006

As I'm here, a few snapshots of the UK....

A judge has thrown out of court the prosecution of a 10 year old boy for alleged racial remarks made in the playground of his school. Like the rest of us, he queried the priorities of the police against the background of rising violent crime. But, of course, British bobbies now see themselves far more as social engineers than as cops of the old school.

As if to prove the point, a nurse was stabbed to death yesterday as she took a cigarette break outside her hospital ward.

On a more macro scale, here are a few of the conclusions about the UK from the latest OECD factbook:-

The UK is not 'flooded' by immigrants. Greece, Canada and Spain top the list. Spain's ratio is 4 times greater, though I suspect there are defintion differences since returning emigres are regarded as immigrants there.

The population is barely growing. But at a higher rate than Spain's.

The educated are leaving.

Per capita wealth is high but not growing strongly. It's USD32,000 pa, against 26,000 in Spain. Though growth is even slower there.

Only Mexico has a worse regional gap than the UK's.

The UK scores highly as regards employment rates and in cutting long-term unemployment but Brits do not work excess hours, ranking behind the USA and Japan. Though above Ireland, Italy, France, Germany and Holland. Spain doesn't figure in the top 10, despite the strange working day. Perhaps they're talking about productive hours....

The UK tax burden is below the rest of Europe's but the Eurozone is catching up. Again, Spain doesn't figure in the top 10. The top 5 are Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy and the EU average, followed by the UK, Germany, the USA, Japan and Mexico.

The OECD says nothing about the quality of life, of course. These consistently place spain very high, with Norway always winning, I seem to recall. My next language?? I rather think not.


Good to see that the spanish national authorities are finally doing something about municipal corruption in Marbella. One wonders why it took them so long to attend to this very publicly festering sore on the national body. Perhaps they previously felt it was the responsibility of the Andalucian regional government. Who might just have been a tad compromised.

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