Word: britain
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...monumental piffle on the campaign trail in Britain. The Conservative Party announced a major initiative to fight teenage binge drinking, which-given the much celebrated local custom-seemed as likely to succeed as a plan to oppose rain. Not to be outdone, Tony Blair's Labour Party announced an equally major initiative to meet the needs of a new, mythic electoral figure: the Schoolgate Mum, whose desires were said to include better school lunches, athletic activities and access to school nurses. This proved risible even to Labour Party stalwarts. "I thought we were going to call them Schoolgate Nans," said...
...accept that there is a trust issue?" the BBC's Jeremy Paxman asked Blair in an interview last week. Blair agreed but clumsily tried to spin it toward "trusting" Labour to sustain Britain's strong economy. Paxman, a brilliant barracuda, would have none of that: "All right, let's look at Iraq. When you told Parliament that the intelligence was 'extensive, detailed and authoritative,' that wasn't true, was it?" It took Blair some minutes of squirming before he could get around to making the case that Iraq was better off without Saddam, that 8 million Iraqis had voted...
Another factor that will restrain U.S. imports is the falling value of the dollar. Since early March, it has dropped 17% against an average of other major currencies. The finance ministers of the so-called Group of Five--the U.S., Japan, West Germany, France and Britain--announced in September a coordinated effort to bring down the rate of the dollar. A cheaper currency will make imports more expensive for Americans and thus help the U.S. cut its $150 billion annual trade deficit. But it will also inflict further dam age on Asia's export industries...
James Baker, who replaced Regan as Treasury Secretary in January, is not as devoted to freely floating exchange rates as his predecessor. The Administration took a step away from that system in September, when officials met with representatives of Britain, France, Japan and West Germany at New York City's Plaza Hotel. The group agreed that the dollar was too powerful and tacitly decided to depress its value by selling dollars and buying other currencies. Robert Hormats, former Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, believes that without saying so, the Treasury Department is eyeing a target zone...
...suburbs, and moviegoers are broadening their taste beyond Hong Kong's martial-arts kickfests. A Tianjin-born property billionaire whose projects have reshaped Sydney is inspired by Shanghai's buildings (fewer columns, more concrete, less steel). Australia has had such infatuations in the past. First it was Britain, then the U.S. and Japan. In the 1980s it was China; now, after a pause, it's China again. But this time, the life force is different: you can sense China's velocity and intensity, a pull and push that can't be stopped, but that hopefully can be managed...