Delays on Italy’s spruced-up trains have got worse
Matteo Salvini is making feeble excuses
Britain’s former railway monopoly, British Rail, never truly recovered from the explanation one of its executives gave for disruption to its services in early 1991. He blamed it on a “different kind of snow”, which repetition transformed into a trope: the “wrong kind of snow”. British Rail was broken up and fully privatised six years later.
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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “A tale of a nail”
Europe October 12th 2024
From the October 12th 2024 edition
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Why Russia is trying to seize a vital Ukrainian coal mine
Without it, the country’s remaining steel industry will be crippled
The search for Ukraine’s missing soldiers and sailors
The families of missing loved ones are trying to find them, alive or dead
Europe could become Trump’s geopolitical roadkill
A second dose of MAGA will put the EU in a pickle
Russia continues to advance in eastern Ukraine
But it is encountering growing problems
Turkey’s long hard struggle with inflation
High interest rates are starting to do the trick
France stares into a “colossal” budgetary abyss
A fragile new government must try to plug the hole. Fast