It's
taken me a while but I've finally realised why Brits start thinking
about not bumping into each other about 12 to 15 yards before
Spaniards do. It's because we Brits are not at all tactile and hate
being touched. We will, literally, shrink from it. Whereas, for the
Spanish, touching comes only after talking as one of life's great
prescriptive pleasures. One aspect of this is that it's not uncommon
in Spain for beautiful young women to look you in the eye and place a
hand on your arm. Worse (better?), on your thigh. And it's not
unknown for a degree of stroking to take place. But, if you're new to
Spain, I'm here to tell you it signifies absolutely nothing at
all. I rather suspect the ladies don't even know they're doing
it.
I
took my daughter, Hannah, to the bus station this morning. It being
Sunday, this took only 15 minutes. Getting back home on the other
hand took 75 minutes, and numerous U-turns. This was because the
police had blocked off all access to the route of today's
half-marathon in Leeds. In the end, I gave up, parked my car on the
grass verge and walked a mile to the house. Once the race was over, I
returned to the car, expecting to see another parking fine for me to
ignore. But the police had been sensible and there was no ticket. I
have to say some of the runners (crawlers) looked unfit for the
challenge and I wasn't too surprised to see an ambulance taking some
poor sod(s) to hospital. There'd have been more if I hadn't resisted
the temptation to mow down swathes of them when my frustration was at
its height.
But,
anyway, the rest of this post is about the eurozone. So, if you've no
interest in that, you can log off now.
Selected
quotes from a Dominic Lawson article in today's Times:-
It
was thought impossible. Then it became merely unsayable. Now it is
openly promoted. Such has been the evolving position of the eurocracy
— and, more importantly, the German government — on Greece being
jettisoned from the eurozone.
Those
of us who argued against the single currency at the start have grown
tired of pointing out that the motivation of its originators was
never economic efficiency; it was part of a visionary, almost
mystical plan designed to make the peoples of the countries involved
more “European” than national in their thinking, and therefore
more receptive to the idea of a European polity to replace the
allegedly superannuated nation states.
In
the case of Germany and France, there was something noble in this
aspiration, born of the experience of three wars and the
determination that such conflict could be prevented from happening
again only if there were a single European political entity. Yet as
men such as Nicholas Ridley in this country and Professor Martin
Feldstein of Harvard pointed out back in the 1990s, such a policy was
actually more likely to create violent disturbances in Europe if it
stripped economic policy from proper electoral accountability.
The
former German chancellor Helmut Kohl recently admitted about his
giving up the deutschmark: “I knew I could never win a vote in
Germany. We would have lost a referendum on creating the euro.” In
fact, the only reason the German people went along with it was that
they were given absolute undertakings by their leaders that they
would never have to be on the hook as taxpayers: that is, the euro
would not be a single fiscal zone like the pound or the dollar. Yet
the eurocrats have known this to be unfeasible at least since
1977, when Sir Donald McDougall, pointed out that currency union
without fiscal union could never work.
Germany
has already sunk about €200 billion into shoring up the single
currency; but it will need to pay the same every year from here to
eternity to keep the weaker nations solvent within the eurozone.
German taxpayers’ patience is already close to exhausted, which
explains the remark in the wake of François Hollande’s victory by
the leader of the DU in the Bundestag: “Germany is not here to
finance French election pledges.”
The
German political class has invested its all in the idea of being
“good Europeans”; and its exporters have gained mightily from the
creation of the euro. So it will fight ferociously to stop the
eurozone dissolving. But will it be prepared to bankrupt itself to
keep alive a currency that will not last without unfathomably vast
transfers from German taxpayers?
Remember,
what is unsayable can still happen. It is happening already.
In
an echo of Pontevedra, someone else has written:- What
is striking about Athens' beggars is how clean and well-groomed so
many are: not stereotypical street-dwellers, but working and
professional people deep down on their luck.
Finally
. . . More words of wisdom from Dr William Osler:-
Medicine
is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
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