No smoke without fire

I have a theory that the cost of living, if you aggregate everything, is pretty much the same all over the world. Take the comparison between Singapore and Sweden, which are at two ends of the spectrum in terms of how their economies are run.

In Sweden, you pay a lot of tax - up to 50 or 60%. But that means healthcare is pretty much free, the transport network is very heavily subsidised, and it's generally not as expensive as you might think.

In Singapore, you pay next to no tax (15% or so income tax, 2% sales tax and that's about your lot). But things like rent and health insurance and eating out anywhere posh are horrendously expensive. In the end, I had about the same amount of money left at the end of every month over there as I did when I was in Stockholm.

One exception seems to be the UK, which is getting horrendously expensive for everything from the price of housing to the price of petrol to things like broadband internet access, which seems to be betwen two and three times the price I pay here in France.

But I had a bit of a shock on Saturday, when I bought a smoke alarm. I'd been worrying all week since I heard the story of one of my colleagues, who had a fire in her building, two floor below where she lived. Fortunately she wasn't in, and apart from a bit of smoke damage no harm was done. But the woman that was asleep in the flat below her was killed. It made me realise that you can take all the precautions you like in your own place, but living in the situation I'm in you're dependent on other people.

I tried Castorama (our local DIY superstore) and a couple of supermarkets without any luck. In the UK there's been a terrific amount of publicity regarding smoke alarms and how they dramatically improve your chances of survival if there's a fire in your home. As a result, you'll be able to pick up a smoke alarm for under a fiver in any supermarket, DIY store or similar.

In France it seems there hasn't been the same interest, and this one cost me £40. I know I'm getting old, but I didn't have to think about it. The chances might be infintitessimal, but can you imagine how I'd feel if I didn't buy one and something ended up happening to Sam or Isobel?