So it has been a while because I have been on holiday!

One lovely month travelling home to New Zealand, via one of my other homes-away-from-home, Melbourne.

In a business sense, Melbourne was very interesting. Australia has been one of few countries to really weather the economic slowdown, and come out the other side looking pretty good. 

But when I went back to the suburb I used to live in, South Yarra (which anyone who has been there will know is affluent and happening) there were empty stores and businesses struggling to keep afloat. 

Anyway, enough of my holiday on to this weeks show.

We are focusing heavily on Europe this week. The fact is, Europe is still not in good economic shape. We are going to look specifically at Greece and it's debt problems which have garnered the attention of all of Europe (forgive the awful pun, but it really is an economic "tragedy" there).  

Have a read of this blog post by our business editor Abid Ali, which not only shows how bad Greece's problems are, but how bad everyone else's is too! 

We will also look at France, where attempts to reform the pension scheme are not going down too well. And we will wrap it all together in an interview with Lord Peter Mandelson, currently the UK's business secretary and formerly an EU trade commissioner.

We will have a couple of interesting stories from Asia too but I will let you see them for yourselves. Nice to be back in the chair and I will see you on the TV!

Counting the Cost can be seen each week at the following times GMT: Friday: 1430, 2030; Saturday: 0430, 1230, 1900; Sunday: 0130, 1630; Monday: 0830; Tuesday: 0600.