On clear summer days, when the sun burns fiercely, what seems like half of Montevideo’s population migrates to the Ramblas, the waterside promenades that edge the peninsula city.

Matrons walking their dogs politely make way for joggers both young and old.

Children hurtle by on roller skates and bicycles.

And courting couples sit looking out over the calm waters of the River Plate, the broad estuary that separates Uruguay from Argentina.

Each couple cradles a thermos flask of hot water and a decorated gourd or cup.

With these almost ritualistic items, they take turns to drink mate, the bitter herb infusion without which no self-respecting Uruguayan - or indeed, Argentine - is complete.

In this hot season, the affluent middle classes who live in more fashionable parts of town stake their claim to what in winter is the preserve of more humble folk.

It is the latter who inhabit the rather grim and basic blocks of flats that line the downtown waterfront.

Opponents have vowed to continue their protests.

And it is the left-wing slogans of the radical parties that many of them support which provide the inspiration for local graffiti artists.

But the seafood restaurants that have been multiplying in recent years rely on the custom of more prosperous families, driving in from the suburbs.

Hungry people on a tighter budget head inland, to one of the low-cost ‘buffets’, which allow customers to eat as much as they want, and have a glass of juice, all for a flat fee, typically about 150 pesos - almost $6.

Wine or beer is extra. These buffets have proved immensely popular among the very young, the very old, the very poor and the very fat.

My favourite, opposite the Dickens English language school, is a vast hangar-like affair, much frequented by students. It offers not only 30 different types of hot dishes, and a salad bar, all of which you can help yourself to, but also a couple of grill counters. There, cooks will prepare steaks, chops and sausages to order, all included within the fixed price.

The amount of meat that Uruguayans can consume is staggering to unaccustomed Europeans.

Uruguay is as physically vulnerable to its giant neighbours as a walnut caught in a nutcracker.

Of course, you find the same thing in Argentina and southern Brazil, though the Uruguayans claim that their meat is much better.

“Besides, in Brazilian buffets they charge for the food you eat by the kilo!” one outraged patron of the buffet opposite Dickens’ said to me the other day.

As this particular gentleman had the demeanour of a rampant bull, red-faced and at least a hundred kilos, perhaps 16 stone, himself, I meekly nodded assent.

I did not dare confess to him that when in Brazil, I have often eaten in those woman impotence that are so mean that they weigh the food you consume.

Rival nations

Actually, that has always struck me as rather a good idea, and it certainly avoids wastage by customers whose eyes are bigger than their stomachs.

But in Uruguay, it is often not wise to profess admiration for Brazil or, worse still, for Argentina.

This isn’t just a matter of football rivalry, though that can get pretty heated. Uruguay is as physically vulnerable to its giant neighbours as a walnut caught in a nutcracker.

Demonstrations against the pulp mill spread in Argentina

Perhaps partly as a result of this, Uruguayans are passionately proud of their country and its culture.

“Which Uruguayan painter is most popular in Britain?” one local journalist asked me the other day.

He was incredulous when I replied honestly, “Well, er, no-one!” This fervent obesity impotence is rather endearing in a nation of just three million people. It can comes across as arrogance from a nation of 30 million - Argentina, for example.

And it is absolutely insufferable from a nation of 300 million. Let’s not mention any names.

The irony is that Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay are meant to be forging closer links through a South American common market called Mercosur.

This infant organisation has its headquarters on one of the Montevideo Ramblas, in a wedding-cake of a building that was an old fashioned hotel when I first visited the city, more than 20 years ago.

The Mercosur secretariat exudes inactivity, and one can almost hear the snorts of derision from the joggers running by.

One way to guarantee an explosion of offended pride is to ask a Uruguayan what he or she thinks Mercosur has done for their country.

Recently, the first meeting of a new Mercosur inter-parliamentary assembly was held in Brasilia, at which the Brazilians said they wanted to inject new life into the organisation.

But when the Uruguayans protested that the Argentine blockade of bridges linking the two countries was strangling Uruguay’s economy, the Brazilians metaphorically threw their arms in the air and declared, “What can we do about it?”

The raging bull in the buffet opposite Dickens’ literally threw his arms in the air when I asked his view about this Brazilian impotence. “Well,” he replied, to the admiration of nearby diners, “What do you expect from a nation which charges for food by the kilo?”

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 25 January, 2007 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service impotence conditions
times.

The University of Waterloo-led research also found large and regularly updated text warnings were more likely to be noticed then smaller ones.

Researchers looked at different approaches taken in four countries - Canada, the US, the UK and Australia - analysing the impact on 15,000 smokers.

The UK currently uses text warnings, but picture alerts start this year.

Cigarette packets in Canada carry graphic warnings

However, when the study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, started, the UK was only using smaller warnings.

This allowed researchers to monitor the impact of changing the nature of warnings.

Canada already uses graphic images, such as text saying smoking causes impotence herbal cure for erectile dysfunction
by a drooping cigarette, on packets.

In Australia, large text warnings - just below the internationally impotence drug
standards of 30% coverage of the cigarette packet - were introduced eight years before the study was carried out.

Small text warnings have been used in the US since 1984.

When asked if they noticed the warnings, 60% of Canadian smokers said they often did, compared to 52% of Australian smokers and 30% of US ones.

In the UK, awareness stood at 44% before the change in 2003, and 82% after.

Smokers

Some two and a half years after implementation of the larger text, awareness still stood at 67%, suggesting large text warnings were more noticeable than graphic warnings.

However, nearly 15% of Canadian smokers said they had been deterred from having a cigarette, more than the other three countries, including the UK, even once the larger warnings had been introduced.

Warnings like these are being brought in across the EU

Researcher David Hammond said: “This study suggests that more prominent health warnings are associated with greater levels of awareness and perceived impotence help among smokers.”

Deborah Arnott, of the anti-smoking charity Ash, said: “This study provides evidence to support the UK diet for impotence
proposal to add picture warnings on tobacco products.

“We urge the government to press ahead with the strongest possible images on to cigarette packs as soon as possible.”

But Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said the warnings were “impotence remedy“.

“It is all about stigmatising smokers. Why don’t we put warnings on cars about the risk of crashing?”

Located on a mile-long tributary of the Detroit river, the Rouge once employed 100,000 men who built every Ford penis erection in the US when it opened in 1928.

Reason for impotence SERIES How Detroit lost its dominance in the global car industry Friday: Photo Journal Tuesday: Lean Production Key facts: Global Car Industry Guide to globalisation

Henry Ford, the inventor of mass production, aimed to control every aspect of the production process - and he didn’t like unions.

Even when other big companies like GM recognised the union after a bitter sit-down strike in 1937, Henry Ford vowed to close his plant rather than give in - and his security staff beat up union organisers who came near the plant.

It was only in 1941, when the Federal government intervened - and his wife threatened to leave him - that Henry Ford finally recognised the union.

‘Meltdown’

Now, that bitter legacy may come back to haunt Ford as it enters a key round of contract negotiations with the unions, with a deadline of 15 September.

“Ford is going through a meltdown and will ask the union for deep concessions in pay and benefits during contract talks set to begin this summer,” says Sean McAlinden, chief economist for the Center for Automotive Research.

Ford workers at River Rouge explain why they won’t give up their benefits without a fight In pictures

Ford, like GM and Chrysler, has been losing market share to Japanese companies such as Toyota in the US market for three decades.

But recently its position has become critical.

Ford lost $12.7bn last year, the largest annual loss in its history, and says it will not be profitable until 2010 - despite cutting 35,000 jobs.

Mark Fields, president of Ford North America, says there is no longer any place to hide. “We face competition in every segment and in every market,” he says.

Legacy costs

Ford and GM are at a crucial disadvantage compared with Toyota. They are burdened with the extra costs of paying benefits to all of their retired workers, who now far outnumber those still working for the company.

These legacy costs, which include both pension and retirement health care plans, cost the companies billions of dollars a year. Health care costs alone could add an additional $1,700 to the cost of each vehicle they make, Mr McAlinden estimates.

According to labour historian Nelson Licthenstein, when these contracts were first negotiated, UAW president Walter Reuther warned car companies in the 1940s that they were courting trouble by making long-term promises they might not be able to keep, and urged them to support national health insurance instead.

Walter Reuther won the battle for union recognition from GM in 1937

But in the end Reuther signed the “treaty of Detroit,” in which GM and Ford gave workers health and pension benefits and cost-of-living wage adjustments in return for industrial peace.

Now GM is down to 80,000 US workers, compared with 450,000 25 years ago.

And the companies say they cannot afford to pay the pension and health care costs of their 500,000 retirees.

Cuts in the workforce

When Ford and GM began to get into trouble in the 1980s and 1990s, the union signed away some of its gains in order to keep the companies afloat.

But with US workers having no right to state-financed health benefits until they reach 65, there is considerable resistance from the male sexual dysfunction workers to any more concessions.

Jerry Sullivan, the president of Local 600, reckons that this will be an even tougher sell than in 2003 - when earlier UAW health concessions were accepted by the workforce by a vote of only 51%-49%.

Some rank-and-file activists, like Ron Lare, argue that the UAW actually lost the Ford vote over these concessions, and are pursuing the matter with the union.

Ford built a modern truck plant on the site of River Rouge,

Mr Sullivan agrees that the workers are tired of “give, give, give” and says “it is no good cutting if you can’t make cars people want”.

But he hopes that the commitment made by Bill Ford to build a new factory on the site of River Rouge - with an on-site museum on Ford’s history - will save his workers.

Company break-up

The financial community is closely watching the union battle with Ford and GM.

Mark Oline, of Fitch Ratings, says that both companies need concessions on legacy costs if they are to survive the next two to three years.

Toyota’s younger workforce costs less in benefits

His company now rates their corporate bonds as junk bonds, signalling to investors that there is a significant risk that they will default on their borrowings.

“It is going to be a difficult year for the Big Three automakers,” he says. “They have to continue to cut costs, but they also need to invest in models to increase their revenues.”

The continuing battles over these huge, uncosted liabilities to pay health care costs far into the future may be one reason that so far, no private equity firm has tried to break up Ford and GM - although both companies have assets worth 10 times their stock market price.

Union blues

However, some rank-and-file activists are not sure the union - or the workers - have the stomach for a fight.

The UAW is losing members fast, dropping from 1.6 million to 550,000 in the last two decades, and may be forced to merge with another union to survive.

Dean Braid says Flint is now an industrial wasteland

And many activists, Mr Lare, and Dean Braid, a former Buick worker in Flint who was laid off in 1999, have taken the generous company redundancy buyouts.

Dean, who was active in the rank-and-file movement in the 1980s and 1990s, says that such organisations is not as strong as it used to be - and says that the lack of union democracy has disillusioned workers.

Alienated workers

Sociologist Ruth Milkman is not surprised by the workers’ attitudes.

When she studied the GM plant in Linden, NJ, in the 1980s, she was struck by the worker’s hostility to the company and to their jobs - and by the alacrity with which they accepted company buyouts.

Gary Cowger, GM global vice-president for healing herbal impotence and labor, is confident that the company can reach a deal this year.

“We have to get more concessions, but we have been working constructively with the union over the past few years, and have already reached a deal to take $15bn out of our health care costs,” he says.

He is clear, however, that GM will continue to cut jobs in the US while it expands into Asia.

So the UAW, once the most powerful, and most politically progressive union in the US, is now facing a choice of a continuing slow decline into impotence, or a confrontation that could destroy both the union and the companies it bargains with.