Correcting skewed perceptions

Several months ago, I discovered Monocle magazine. It's an international magazine, with headquarters in London, and it looks at a wide range of issues (current affairs, business, culture, and design). It has a strong slant towards life in cities, and what it takes for cities to be good, liveable places for their residents.

But that aside, the most recent issue has a very interesting feature looking at 3 countries the magazine thinks can be looked at as failing states. What makes it interesting is that these three countries are not in the developing world. Monocle decided to turn things around and focus on developed industrial countries, which have all the advantages that this implies, but which are failing in some important ways. The three are Britain, Italy and Belgium.

According to Monocle, Britain is failing in the areas of crime and education. Apparently, around one fifth of the British youth are neither in education nor in training, nor in employment. In addition, standards in British schools are dropping -- with British scholars performing more poorly than many of their European colleagues. Related to this, there has been a marked increase in youth-related crime with stabbings, in particular, on the increase.

In Italy, one of the major problems is corruption. State-run institutions are bloated and inefficient, politicians are unaccountable, and there are jobs for friends and family. One symptom of a larger problem is the national airline, Alitalia. It is broke, and the government keeps pumping money into it -- but it's inefficient and badly managed.

Belgium, the third country on Monocle's list, has bigger problems. The very existence of Belgium as a state is under threat. Belgium has always been an uneasy coalition of two groups: the French speakers, and the Flemish. But lately the tension between the groups has escalated to the point where there is no longer a functioning government.

I mention these countries not to gloat or to say it's good news. Not at all.  But sometimes it's good to have a reminder that it's not just developing nations that have problems like corruption, crippling ethnic divisions, unemployment and less-than-perfect education systems. On the other hand, it's good to remember that it's not only developed countries that have good things going for them. Monocle is quite good at pointing these out, too. In one of its previous issues it featured top cities to live in -- and quite a few of these were in developing nations.