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 [...]

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. [...]

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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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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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 [...]

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 [...]