This is a very weird chart, i mean if you look at the numbers the netherlands scores higher than France, the only area they beat us is life expectancy.
Besides average working hours in The Netherlands 30? that's not believable, almost everyone works 40 hours a week.
Hm, the average working week in NL is less than in France? Hell, no way! France is known for having the shortest working week of the entire EU. I think they, for some weird reason have the ATV (Arbeids Tijd Verkorting - lit: Shortening of Working Time) into account, but that is not relevant; the working week in NL is generally 40 hrs and in with deduction of the 12 days (one per month) those ATV days, I come to a average working time of 38,15 hr. So most likely this is some sort of nonsense graph again, not very well researched by some journaille-crap that had nothing better to do but find sensational things.
Edit: ah, it's the Daily Mail. Thank God, we don't have to take it too seriously then.
>^..^<
M-G (average working week in France is 35 hrs at the most)
The rest of the numbers (for NL at least) isn't correct either. Laura Clark, the writer of this nonsense, should go do what she does best: give head to anyone who wants, instead of bothering ppl with this nonsense.
Hm... those numbers just don't add up. I don't understand how it is posible Poland: 1. net household income after taxes = 21331 GBP 2. GDP per head = 6984 GBP
Hm... maybe if in the household there are grandparents too ;-)
Absolutely. I live in a city where the average wage is about £20000 before tax, and I earn way above that, but I'd say that the majority earn less than £16000 round here. The last figures I read suggested that even in London, the average wage is only about £31000 before tax (and let's face it, even in London, most people earn a lot less - the figures are simply skewed by ridiculously high salaries in the City, which are comparatively few in number) so where on earth do they get figures like this from?
And where on earth do all these Polish families live, who have a NET monthly income of around 8000PLN a month??? That would need about four average-wage adults to live in one flat! With Poland having one of the highest unemployment rares in the EU, I find this extremely hard to believe.
Well, the UK went beyond the US in terms of earnings last year, business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article3137506.ece
Arguably, the crisis hit the US harder than the UK. Yet again, I bet Europeans think their quality of life is so much better than those in the US. Pointless stats really.
It was hardly that hard to catch up with Hungary as they made a hash of the transition from communism to capitalism. It was an unmitigated disaster!
Estonia? Well, they are rich in, um, almonds. 'In almonds we trust' is written on a bag I bought in Tallinn. Amber is more to be found in Lithuania and also Latvia.
Standard of living is better, BB. Quality of life, for me personally, is every bit as much a spiritual thing as a material thing. If I have enough to live plus a nest egg, that'll do. My quality of life will be in ensuring that I'm never spiritually bankrupt as so many people are these days.
oh cmon seanus. youve got all the data above. its less than 8%. or maybe you make your own resarch and more reliable statistics.
keep in mind that before 1989 and right after the collapse of commie block PL was the poorest ex commie country. with lesser gdp than soviet reps such as ukraine, belarus or todays eu outsiders - romania ,bulgaria
GUS put the figure at 10.9% as of Sep 2009 and that had been the case for the previous 3 months. Labour market experts say that it's likely to rise to 12% by the end of the year. In all likelihood, around 11.5%.
Poland is second only to Spain in number of holidays per year. That explains why my Polish colleagues always ask if there's a day off work for such-and-such because there is in Poland. No name days either? Tsk tsk!
I actually earn less, work more and get less holiday, although I get more sunshine and expect to live longer.
From Jun-Sep (inc) 2009, it rose by 0.1% each month so, according to that logic, it should be 11.1% at the end of this month. Exactly, McCoy, the sources are misleading. We cannot pretend to know either as neither of us have conducted any empirical research.
