Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

The Rainy Day wife's favourite quote of last week was provided by Tom Friedman writing in the New York Times. Responding to the French "Non" vote on the EU constitution, Friedman noted: "French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day." She laughed her infectious laugh at that, did Mrs Rainy Day.

In "A Race to the Top", Friedman added: "The fact that a top German politician has resorted to attacking capitalism to win votes tells you just how explosive the next decade in Western Europe could be, as some of these aging, inflexible economies — which have grown used to six-week vacations and unemployment insurance that is almost as good as having a job — become more intimately integrated with Eastern Europe, India and China in a flattening world."

Will Hutton, who has spent a decade telling the people of Britain that they'd be better off with the Franco-German statist model, was furiously channelling Friedman yesterday in the Observer, but lacking Friedman's energy he just sounded melancholy. On and on he waffled, bludgeoning his public with all those stock phrases one has come to expect, but just as this reader was dropping off to sleep, Will's closing "gloomy outlook" jerked him out of torpor and sent cold sweat pouring down his back. Don't read it if you are terrified by the prospect of a global economic war — because that's what's coming if the 35-hour week elite refuse to accept that we live in a flattening world. It's probably too late for the dole-as-good-as-a-job crowd. They're going to get flattened by Eastern Europe, India and China, anyway.