Relations, he told the BBC, "should not be business as usual - they should be better than usual because there is a lot of untapped potential in developing Russia-EU relations on all fronts".
Helped by his soft approach and by a swing in Greece's public mood from hostility to sympathy after two terrible earthquakes in Turkey (and another in Greece), the two countries, so long riven by enmity, are for the moment getting on much better than usual.
But on the whole an uneasy equilibrium prevails, which is better news than usual.
That may sound like a heap of money, and the margins, Porges estimates, will be significantly better than is usual in the flu-vaccine business.
They do seem to me to measure what we really want to measure rather better than the more usual figures.
However, the only good thing that comes of being elected in the midst of economic trouble as deep as Korea's is that at such a time there is a better-than-usual chance that your campaign promises will be forgotten, or at least forgiven, amid the desperation for a solution.
But if the resulting fish is better and more edifying than the usual slimy supermarket creature, it has to be worth it.
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There is significant evidence that "work sampling, " the use of tests similar to the work being performed, is a better predictor of future performance than the usual job-interview chit-chat.
But both Buckingham and BPP permit undergraduates to complete their courses in two years rather than the usual three, and now look better value.
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It's none of the usual explanations: lots of scoring being better than endless nil-nil draws I've been to cricket matches in which 1, 000 runs were scored and you could hardly call them riveting.
What could be better to replace the usual accompanying tipple of murky wheat beer than a glass of tart, delicious Riesling?
But this is more than the usual commodities cycle or host governments working out how to get better terms from international competition.
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