Prominent firms idled along on government favours and captive markets.
Afterwards, I idled away an afternoon in the town's public gardens, watching children jump the flowerbeds, overseen by a statue of the company's founder, Jamsetji Tata.I have to wonder, though, what he would now think of the energetic leaps made by his descendant, Ratan Tata, who took over the group in 1991.
With a favourable wind, a new airliner's engines can be idled more than 150km from an airport for a gliding descent to the runway.A single such "green approach", as it is known, saves about 100kg of fuel, says Torbjorn Henriksen, head of airline negotiations at Avinor, the operator of Norway's 19 commercial airports.
But the luckless sales team will now have to persuade foreigners to buy when a third of the country's reactors are being idled well short of their 40-year lifespan and after years of deteriorating performance.
As many as 1,500 fleeing Rohingyas were stranded, left waiting on boats that idled in the Naf river, unable to land.
A proposal from 2007 to set minimum national standards has idled in Congress; its author now hopes to push it through.Tougher laws will be little use without enforcement, which is the job of mayors.
After all, the shares of big aluminium firms, such as Alcoa, have idled in recent years, even as those of mining conglomerates have raced ahead (see chart).
During a recent deep freeze, cars and trucks idled along the roads, left to warm up for ten or fifteen minutes before a short commute across the town.
Toyota, which pioneered the process of running just-in-time inventory systems, idled all its domestic plants for lack of parts or resins.The staggered power cuts are also proving ill-conceived.
As always, it's worth asking whether the projects funded by stimulus are worthwhile in their own right, but if they are, then there's little reason to delay such investments given the amount of resources being idled by the downturn.(Photo credit: Reuters).
Before it was idled, the plant supplied over 9% of California's electricity, serving some 1.4m people in the region.
