Ireland v France

A recent quality of life survey touted by the Guardian newspaper is a perfect example of the need to look behind the statistic headline. The headline reads the UK and Ireland are the worst places in Europe to live, and France is amongst the best. You can see how this might conjure some suspicion given Ireland's perennial heights in self-rated QOL surveys and France's perennial problem with strikes - as a case in point I believe the city of Paris is on foot today due to an all out train strike there! Interestingly, one aspect of the questionable index is age of retirement...

The index also magically (!) mixes together hours of work, holidays, GDP per capita, VAT rates, fuel-, alcohol-, tobacco-, and food-prices, life-expectancy and hours of sunshine.. but what really makes the caldron bubble is government spending on health and education. where more spending is unquestionably good.

Criticism on the complied score and resulting rankings aside, the scores on the individual aspects measured are new and provide an interesting and useful snapshot for quick comparisons.