A Tale of Two Termini
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 October 2012
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Unemployment's up, the tax bills are up, public cheerfulness is down. Hugh Schofield says these are gloomy times in France. Sunday's general election in Venezuela could be a close one. And already it's providing our correspondent Paul Moss with a wardrobe nightmare. The stalemate in London surrounding Wikileaks founder Julian Assange continues. Jo Fidgen says that in Sweden, where he's wanted after allegations of sexual assault, most people believe he should come back for questioning. Hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars have been returning to their homeland. Robin Banerji has been learning that many are finding it hard to track down their cultural heritage. And biggest, tallest, longest, most expensive? Modern China certainly deals in superlatives but Martin Patience wonders if size really does matter or if it's all a question of insecurity.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a download from the BBC, this is from our own correspondent. |
| 0:04.6 | You can hear the version of the program we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site |
| 0:08.9 | at BBC online. |
| 0:10.8 | But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Adi. |
| 0:16.0 | Today a tale of two railway termini indicating France is further off the rails than it's been for decades. |
| 0:23.0 | You're not going out in that, a clothes crisis for our man at the Venezuelan general election. |
| 0:29.0 | Hundreds of thousands of Tartars have returned home to Crimea, but a search for their lost culture goes on. |
| 0:36.2 | And they've got the biggest, the tallest, the most expensive. |
| 0:38.9 | Today's China loves superlatives. |
| 0:41.6 | But does size really matter? Now it's not been a great week to be French. |
| 0:47.0 | Unemployment across the channel has just hit 3 million. Growth for next year won't get much better than |
| 0:52.4 | zero, and on Friday the government presented its budget for next year. |
| 0:57.0 | 20 billion euros in tax rises. |
| 1:00.0 | Perhaps it's not surprising the popularity ratings of President Hollande have collapsed by 11 percentage points in one month, a near record in post-war France. |
| 1:10.0 | Our correspondent there, Hugh Schofield, has spent a lot of time recently hopping between Paris and London. |
| 1:16.0 | Comparisons between the two capitals he reckons are not favorable for the French. |
| 1:21.0 | Anyone who uses the Euro-star regularly gets to know the stations at either end pretty thoroughly, |
| 1:27.0 | so I don't think I'll be the first traveller on the line to make the following observation. |
| 1:31.0 | St. Pancras, Jem, Gardunor, Dum. Get on the train in London and it's a treat. |
| 1:38.5 | The station's an architectural marvel, it's clean, staff are friendly. Get off in Paris and you know straight away you're in a |
| 1:46.4 | less than salubrious part of town. A couple of weeks ago about to board a train |
| 1:51.4 | there to Brussels, I interrupted the activities of an obvious con man. |
... |
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