As Gaza is torn apart by war, where is Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair? He's been on HOLIDAY

By Matthew Kalman, Daily Mail
Last updated at 12:32 PM on 05th January 2009


For the last nine days, the eyes of the world have been on war-torn Gaza as it descended into all-out conflict and hundreds lost their lives.

Yet Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair was far from the action - spending Christmas and New Year with his family.

For at least part of the time he was in London, where he was spotted at a special private opening of the Armani store in Knightsbridge.

Staying out of the euro has spared us a Spanish-style catastrophe

By Jeff Randall
Last Updated: 5:43AM GMT 09 Jan 2009



Half-built flats and soaring unemployment show that the boom has turned to gloom on the Costa del Sol. And it's a fate that could easily have befallen Britain.

Ten years after it was launched, the euro is propelling Spain towards disaster. In giving up control of domestic interest rates to the European Central Bank, Madrid handed over a vital instrument of macroeconomic management. It is learning to regret that.
For the early part of this millennium, that loss of power seemed not to matter: Spain's outrageous (and in some cases illegal) construction frenzy hid a multitude of sins. At the peak, about 800,000 homes were being built annually on the basis that demand from foreign buyers was limitless.
That dream has vanished, along with the over-supply of cheap money that funded it. Drive down the E-15, the main motorway link between Malaga and Gibraltar, and you will see block after block of half-built apartments, connected neither to essential utilities nor to financial reality. They stand as temples to a religion that ceased to exist when the bubble popped.