City View

THE tentative efforts to open up British skies across the Atlantic for both passenger and cargo traffic have failed yet again.

The campaign to liberalise these highly lucrative routes has been going for 60 years. It will succeed one day.

We control the air space between the United States and the UK on grounds as comically primitive as the Navigation Acts that used to control shipping and so exasperated New England that it revolted against the Crown.

Today’s champion of mercantilism is our own Alistair Darling MP. The Transport Secretary’s instinct must be constructive but he is frightened off reform by the ferocious lobbying of those with the privileges.

Mr Darling’s agenda is far too diffident. He merely wanted to let British Midland ply Atlantic routes . He ought to scrap all controls.

The mercantilists say all moves have to be reciprocal. As reciprocity will never be yielded this is about as useless as arguing all trade liberalisation has to be mutual.

Mr Darling is the 24th Transport Minister to fudge this topic. He still has time to become a champion of liberalisation ... Britain forfeits all discretion in this matter to the Eurocrats in 2003.

A small world

THERE is a real romance in the story of Kevin Threlfall, the founder of T&S, who takes a cheque from Tesco today for 16 million.

Not so long ago he was a stall trader in his anorak selling cigarettes in the rain. By listening to his customers and constricting his prices he built up his convenience stores into a chain that Tesco thought was worth 520m.

Following the Co-op buying Alldays convenience stores on Monday, it seems the pattern of retailing is changing in surprising ways.

Convenience stores used to be very humble corner shops often on the edges of the more forlorn housing schemes. All they offered was easier parking than high street sites.

As we get busier and richer, say Tesco, the more we want to nip into a store to buy basic groceries rather than spending an hour drifting around the aisles of supermarkets.

So, the trend to both mammoth stores and smaller stores seems clear. We may be seeing the end of city centre grocery shopping - where parking is impossible.

Medieval ideas

OUR universities are in a dilemma akin to our football teams. Just as Rangers and Celtic linger in a pool of provincial mediocrity so our once world-class colleges are being limited by the pretence they are all equals.

Edinburgh University and perhaps St Andrews need to be in the Premier League.

Yet universities see themselves as nationalised industries unable to charge the market rates for their ability to boost the life chances of students enjoying the strange mixture of scholarship and holiday camp that is college life.

Edinburgh is certainly far richer for our universities. Perhaps they might copy the example of Britain’s only private university. At Buckingham you graduate in two years rather than the leisurely four.

It is perplexing that so much of education’s horizons are still set by the needs of the medieval harvest seasons.