Room to breathe

Despite my respect for the originator of the quote, I don't buy the cliché that the UK and US speak very differently. There are probably far more differences between regional accents just within England than there are between English and Americans. At least in the business world, perhaps unfortunately, we sound very similar.

However across Europe, things sound very different. Yet they look broadly the same. Old buildings, little roads, people on the streets. But it's weird, people are talking incomprehensively. In America, you can understand the language perfectly, but the look of the place is completely different. Not because they have fundamentally different goals and aspirations from Europeans. But because they have more space.

Big Car Small Car

There are still a lot of big cars in America. A colleague in charge of certain North American automotive metrics today pointed me to a recent study from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business that proved the regularly quoted mpg figures are often misleading.

Simple numerical facts. As usual here, considering my own example instead of copying that from the study:

First car is a typical one, one that does 30 mpg. Could increase by 10 mpg to give 40 mpg.
Second vehicle is a large SUV. It does 15 mpg. Could increase by 10 mpg to give 25 mpg.

Where is the bigger benefit? Both increase by 10 mpg so benefit is the same, right? Wrong.

First increases mpg by 33%, second increases by 67%, so the second gives twice as much benefit, right? Wrong.

Say the SUV increases only by 33% like the first case, 15 up to 20 (corresponding to 30 up to 40). The benefit is the same, right? Wrong.

If the SUV increases only from 15 to 18 mpg, it still saves more fuel than increasing the car's mpg from 30 to 40. I've said it before: However far the journey.

The Europeans have been using litres per 100 km for years. It just makes more sense.

Stereotypes

Live blogging. Spain versus Italy. Extra Time. Whenever a game is without a goal and there have not been many chances, the cliche is always the same, the sterotype is always the same: it's a chess match.

This game is not like that. The cliche is in the teams. Spain are pretty to watch, knockng it around with the ball fizzing across the turf. Slick one-touch passing. The beautiful game. Perfect football ... except for one thing, typically lightweight and always muscled off teh ball in challenges, and despite the bullish centre forward, toothless in attack.

Italy have embodied their cliche too. The dour, negative tactics. Their one creative midfielder (Pirlo) not playing. No width in midfield. Fullbacks who stay back. Catenaccio. The dying swan impresson after the slightest challenge. The "injured" player even crawled back onto the pitch to waste more time. World cup finalists apparently playing for penalties from the kickoff.

Fabregas is stepping up for the final penalty ... justice!

(links later - the fastest post on the web)

I Want a Pay Riise

At last, another diagram. Deduced from the match yesterday.




Yesterday Liverpool were 1-0 up against Chelsea after the allotted 90 minutes, and only a few seconds of injury time remained. Chelsea striker Kalou fired in a low cross from the left wing, Liverpool defender John Arne Riise was marginally ahead of the second incoming striker. In that position, 99 per cent of footballers, even me, would have swung the right foot and belted the ball clear.

Instead the defender dived forward to try to head it away. I was too gutted to listen to post-match analysis, but I have not read any explanation for his action. He earns a lot of money. But I suggest he does not do enough training.

I suggest that only a select few footballers would have attempted that clearance; Kinkladze, Hagi, Maradona, even Jon Wood. They're half decent players.

US UK Europe

In Thursday's post I listed some fairly lightweight trivial differences between the US and the UK. But at the end of Friday's post I hinted at a far more important difference.

Today Neil Perkins pointed us in the direction of a recent survey in the Economist that tried to substantiate these differences. Nothing there was very surprising, there have been plenty of other discussions but it is often worthwhile to update with the current state of opinion.

The article clearly highlights one fundamental difference, the religious majority in America compared with the secular majority in Europe. I may return to that subject another day.

But in answer to the more directly relevant question, "should UK social and economic policy be closer to an American or to a common European model?" there is a very simple answer. We need to look at the history and the geography.

The United States developed the wide open resources of the Native Americans, many settlers believed that they had a God-given right to fence off their own territories and do there as they pleased. The cities and infrastructure were largely built within the last two centuries.

By contrast, many major European cities have been in existence for thousands of years, and we cannot easily change them. The narrow winding streets and crowded "historic" neighbourhoods mean that US-type policies on car ownership and public services simply do not apply here.

If the gulf stream stops or changes, then we are hit in the same way. Many British are taught to fear or mock the French and Germans, but fundamentally our problems and opportunities are exactly the same. We are inescapably European.