A few minutes back I was glancing through Chinese trade statistics, in an attempt to put together the hopefully reasonably detailed post on what is going on in China that Brian has been nagging me to write. With respect to Europe, the stat that pops out is that Germany runs a significant trade surplus with China, but that the eurozone as a whole and even more the EU as a whole runs a large deficit...

David Rennie (aka The Economist's Bagehot) has an excellent column in this week's issue about the difficulties that Britain will face if she tries to repatriate powers from the EU. His main argument, having spoken to a number of senior German politicians and officials, is that if Britain holds up any treaty revisions in the hope of extracting concessions in return, then the other EU stat...

While I agree with much of this article* on Chinese healthcare, the stat it leads with, life expectancy, is fundamentally flawed. Why? Because it relies on the Chinese official data from 1949-1980, a period where, even more than today, Chinese...

MORE people in Scotland are finding work as the economy struggles to recover from recession - but their wage packets are continuing to fall behind the cost of living, new stat

One statistic does not a political winter make. Nevertheless, today's news that the economy shrank rather than grew in the last quarter will change the political climate. Up until now the coalition economic argument has gone largely unchallenged. Not any more. Today's stat, yesterday's warning by the outgoing CBI director general Sir Richard Lambert that the government lacked a visi...

Tuition fees work. By the standards that any progressive is supposed to hold dear - higher overall participation rates in universities and higher participation rates among low income groups – experience from other countries shows that fees work. As the think tank Centreforum showed four years ago in an in-depth study, fees have long been the norm in Australia, New Zealand and the United Stat...

I spoke with folks at NORTHCOM, and they intend to put out a press statement shortly that notes the contrail seen near Los Angeles last night is not a foreign military launched missile. At this time NORTHCOM cannot confirm what it is in the video. A multi-agency process has begun to identify the contrail, and at this time they are still not sure. I will post the contents and link to the press stat...

SCOTLAND could learn a lot from the success of Lithuania, according to the Baltic state's prime minister, who believes that there are huge advantages in being a small stat

The flotilla, supported by the Turkish charity IHH, Free Gaza Movement and Viva Palestina is sailing to Gaza from Turkey, it consists of 9 ships, carrying 750 passengers in total including 35 MPs, numerous press members, artists, intellectuals, writers, representatives from NGOs, activists: women, men and children and 15,000 tons of humanitarian aid cargo.As the organisers stat...

Diplomatic parking bays 'unlawful since the 80s' Islington Gazette nlnews@archant.co.uk 11 February 2010 ALL tickets handed out in two "unlawful" parking bays could have to be repaid by Islington Council.The two bays - in White Lion Street, Angel, and Cowper Street, Finsbury - are reserved for diplomats. But Islington Council failed to get the proper permission from the secretary of stat...