While Latvia is still arguing with the EU Commission over the spelling of eiro (or is it euro), the FT today asks the much more pertinent question: will the other baltic states even be able to join? On the backs of the energy hike Estonia and Lithuania are struggling to comply with the entry conditions, [...]

It has now been a year and a half since I moved to France. I am not going to bore you with all the domestic challenges the move caused me, do not worry, but I need to mention this since I have only just begun to explore life in France. This post about France will [...]

Not as much as you might think, argues The Economist in a long, Christmas-special piece about French anti-Americanism (article freely available to non-subscribers) :
In one 2004 poll, 72% of the French had a favourable view of Americans, more even than in Britain (62%) or Spain (47%). Some 68% of those questioned in another poll [...]

Today’s news is of course welcome news for everyone who cares about poverty in the third world, but going back to my Evo Morales post during the week, this policy will only really bring the benefits it could do if it is combined with a systematic drive to change the demographic profile of these [...]

Just a brief query: Can anyone think of the last time one of the big four countries in the EU — Germany, France, Britain, Italy — had a successful presidency of the Union?
It looks like the UK’s turn at the top will end without a budget agreement, which is fine for Blair’s domestic politics, but [...]

Back in July I published a post about Austrian demographer Wolfgang Lutz’s hypothesis that those countries which sustain total fertility rates below 1.5 for any length of time may have fallen into a self-reinforcing low-fertility trap. Old Rottenhat (Ray to his friends) argued in comments that I had explained the reasons for the existence [...]

At the present time some 66 countries have fertility rates which are below the level necessary for population replacement (TFR 2.1). Within the next decade the number of counries in this group is set to grow to the point where a majority of the world’s population will be living in regions where the existing [...]

Dusty HeratDust. It’s everywhere. On your body, in your eyes, your hands never feel clean and clean clothes never stay like that for more than an hour. At night, visibility sometimes is less than 50 meters. And during the day, the city vanishes under a cloud of beige.

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Nation building in failed states can be a little tricky, as not just a few political strategists are realising these days. With respect to Iraq, the deadly result of their misconceptions can be watched on the hour every hour. This, on the other hand, has, for better or worse, reduced the world’s attention devoted to [...]

New Economist has been indulging himself (actually, truth be known he wants us to indulge him) with three posts on the Nordic Model (here, here and here).
Two things strike me. Firstly the fact that the UK presidency has been an absolute non-event (except for getting the Turkey negotiations started) since we were promised an [...]