From America
Big Money vs Big Ideas
Republicans have to make a choice between Romney’s moderate politics and Gingrich’s extravagant idea
The Republicans: Veer Right and Right Again
The electoral process and the Tea Party risk jeopardising the Republican bid for the White House
The Silly Season
This must be a confusing time for those in Europe and around the world to try to figure out what America is up to.
Meat or Veg?
Main Content
Money and Jobs for the New Year
It may not come as a surprise that many New Year’s resolutions seem to be financially motivated
‘Save money’ or ‘change job’ where the favourite choices, when The Beginner asked its readers about their New Year’s resolutions for 2012.
The top news stories of 2011 - from homeowners struggling to pay off their mortgages, to home foreclosures, to indebted governments and continents, to dismal bond auctions – made it the year of debt. Following such a year of economic uncertainty, and the world economy still teetering on the brink of another major downturn, both options received 31% of our readers’ votes.
The remainder of the respondents opted for healthy choices, with 23% vowing to ‘eat healthy’ and another 15% saying they would ‘start exercising’. Interestingly, however, nobody voted to ‘quit smoking’.
The lack of votes for the last could maybe mean that the European Commission’s innovative campaign "Ex-Smokers are Unstoppable" has already been successful. The project claims that it offers an inspiring and motivating approach to quitting smoking by inviting smokers to think again about the benefits of giving up cigarettes, which include better health, better social interaction, more money, and an overall better quality of life. In less than half a year over 150,000 smokers in European Union have registered with the initiative digital tool, the iCoach, which was launched in June 2011.
Perhaps some of our readers have been converted as well.