Jobs, yes, customers, no
A GOOD WEEK for Euronomics. London may have lost the European central bank but Britain is to get an agency for evaluat- ing medicines, and this will create jobs. It sounds like a Jubilee line with test tubes. I suppose that somewhere in Virginia Bot- tomley's budget we already have some medicine evaluators, and I imagine that they will carry on. In fact we are bound to need more of them to argue with their opposite numbers. Meanwhile in Stras- bourg the European Parliament has cen- sured British Airways and urged a boycott of its flights. BA's offence is to offer ladies- only cabins on its flights to Saudi Arabia. Tut, says the motion of censure — the prin- cipal airline of a member state has let itself be used as an instrument to reinforce the discriminatory practices of a third country. Worse still, it may be what the customers want. It may even explain why BA is a European company which can compete in world markets. Any more of this ,and growth will break out. Let us hurry to trans- fer our business to poor virtuous over- staffed Air France, just as soon as it can get the cows off the runway.
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