So, as the sceptics predicted, there's to be no
Eurovegas gambling city on the outskirts of Madrid. Apparently the
Spanish negotiators finally found some cojones and said No to the
demands for preferential tax and legal treatment. Mind you, even if
they'd agreed to these, Brussels had already said they'd be illegal
under EU law. So perhaps it wasn't too tough a decision after all.
I heard in a podcast today an American farmer
bemoaning the worst storm in 150 years and saying that God had given
him and his colleagues their animals and they'd failed Him by
allowing them to die. But God had to be thanked for allowing him to
survive the storm. It didn't seem to occur to the guy that God might
carry some responsibility for it in the first place. Anyway, I love
this image of God deciding who'll live and who'll die. Or as
Fitzgerald put it (masquerading as Omar Khayyam) - Destiny with men
for pieces plays. Hither and thither moves and mates and slays. And
one by one back in the closet lays. Of course, the Calvinists
take this nonsense to its extreme, believing that The Chosen are
selected before they're even born. And the rest of us are going to
Hell in the proverbial handcart. So why bother creating us?
The international tourism industry produces two
lists - the first is of visitors to countries and the second is of
their per capita spend. France always tops the first but comes bottom
of the second. Which raises a question or two. Perhaps France is
routinely swamped by boatloads of Brits, desperate to buy cheap fags
(cigarettes, not gays) and booze, returning an hour later on the next
ferry back to Blighty.
Finally . . . The Spanish Foreign Minister earned
(from me) the soubriquet of Motormouth Margallo, following his interventions over
Gibraltar. Now he's opined on the issue of Britain and the EU, saying
that the UK economy would be 'reduced to rubble' it it left the EU.
Demonstrating that he knows as much about economics as he does about
diplomacy.
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