A failure of Ambition?

As always when coming to France, I am struck by the deliberate way the state has invested in infrastructure. It is not just that their Railways work so well, which is -frankly- a standing rebuke to Britain, the country that invented them, it is also the way in which grands projets reflect a vision of France. It may seem sometimes an overblown, perhaps even bombastic, vision to a more cynical Anglo-Saxon eye, but it does unquestionably reflect an ambition for France.

In a country half as densely populated as the UK- especially its South-East corner- it is obviously easier to build straight high speed rail lines or such huge statements as the Millau viaduct in France. However there is also a far greater will to do so. In Britain we spend billions on invalidity benefit and call it "investing in people"; in France they genuinely do "invest" in infrastructure. It is an investment that allows the French to travel across the country in 2-3 hours. To live in Mid France and still work in Paris: the equivalent of living in Sheffield and working in London, with only a one hour travelling time between the two. By contrast, it takes hours to simply cross London. There are no high speed RER trains in London, which make travelling in Paris so much faster. Cross Rail, which would be RER 40 years later, remains a distant dream, while in Paris there are already 7 or 8 RER lines.

The British economy is choking under the weight of the need to concentrate so much in London and South East England because it takes to long or is too expensive to travel if one is based outside that region. Paris and the Ile-de-France have far fewer problems because of the vision and the ambition that they showed in fixing up their infrastructure. Sure, not all of it works: the Mitterand Library is a poorly built, ugly shambles. Yet still one can not fault the idea. The Nimby-ism and catastrophically expensive real estate market in the UK are impoverishing the whole country.

And there is no-one to even start the national debate about what we must do.

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds. That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet. As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

One Year On

Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas,

Cicero's Songs

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