Word: chunnel
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...breakthrough confirmed that Britain is destined to become a more integral part of the Continent. The tunnel, commonly called the Chunnel, is scheduled to be completed in the summer of 1993, in time to benefit from the 12-nation European Community's plans to dismantle all internal barriers to the movement of goods, services and people...
...banks have seen their assets balloon, partly because of the rapid appreciation of the yen against the dollar, they have become more ambitious, aggressive and resourceful. The Japanese have bought up banks in the U.S. and Australia, financed iron-ore mining in Brazil and provided funding for the underwater Chunnel, which will link England and France. Taking their cue from Japanese manufacturers, banks like Dai-Ichi Kangyo have penetrated foreign markets partly by charging less for loans than their competitors...
With those words French Secretary of State for Transportation Pierre Billecocq co-signed the historic 1973 treaty committing France and Britain to support the construction of a 32-mile train tunnel under the English Channel. Plans to link the two nations by "chunnel" had graced the drawing boards of imaginative engineers for nearly 200 years; French Engineer Albert Mathieu's 1802 design shows a coach-and-four trotting through a candlelit tube with ventilating pipes reaching above the waves. But whenever the 19th century pipe dream threatened to come true, Britain got skittish. A characteristically insular reaction came from...
Politics undoubtedly played a role, although a minor one. Only last week Prime Minister Harold Wilson tentatively set a June date for a referendum on whether Britain should remain in the Common Market-and some members of the Labor government see the chunnel as an undesirable link with the Continent. Indeed, many Labor M.P.s cheered enthusiastically when the project was killed. Still, the decision was based more on economics than on politics. Just 18 months ago, the cost for the tunnel was estimated at $2 billion. Today the figure has risen to more than $4.5 billion. Although the construction...
...partially from dangers, absolutely from the temptations which attend upon the local neighborhood of the continental nations." As for the French, it would still have been a long way to Tipperary, anyway. Unless, of course, Monsieur Billecocq was looking ahead to the even greater improbability of an Anglo-Irish chunnel...