scenes from the new new economy

Apparently, Britain is agonising over its poor performance in attracting fatcat tourists from China. Also, Europe in General is straining every sinew to hold on to the Arab Spring jackpot of assets transferred into its jurisdiction by disposed dictators.

Comments

[nick s]

The IHT had a piece earlier in the year implying that quality beat quantity. Wasn't there a documentary or a NYT feature not long ago on Chinese tourists replicating the American "if it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" tour?

(This write-up from Tourism Australia's a bit of a hoot.)

[chris y]

Well, fat cat tourists might be hard to attract, but we were quite good at attracting students who made contacts with British businesses while they were studying here and maintained those contacts after they went home and started climbing the ladder.

So, naturally, Cameron has made that illegal.