. . . is the topic of my latest Trade Tripper column in this Friday-Saturday issue of BusinessWorld. Excerpt:
"I’m talking about Midsomer, an English county that apparently has around 20 murders a year, with the past decade seeing a total of more than 200 murders, all premeditated. This does not include the assortment of accidental deaths and suicides. This is amazing when you consider that New York averages eight murders a year for every 100,000 individuals. To give an even better idea of the murder rate of Midsomer county, one published account noted that the likelihood of being murdered in London is .007% (per 100,000 people) whereas Midsomer is a shocking 27.4%. To paraphrase a line from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, it’s like Bosnia on a bad day. The body count is simply staggering — for a place that is not a war zone, it racked up three kills a week for the past 12 years. "
