Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, January 05, 2014

Eyes right. Or Left?; Plane fantasy; Big-breasted birds; Abortion nonsense; & More speed traps.

There was a little 'agricultural' museum in Verger de La Frontera, in an ex-chapel. One of the paintings was of 4 women of the pueblo covered by the chadoor-type veil they used to wear. The inscription said that the ladies used to cover everything but their right eye. Which was odd as those in the picture were revealing only the left eye. Bit of a gaffe on the artist's part, I assumed. The model had her left eye covered but he painted it as he saw it, with her right eye eye obscured.

Picking up a brochure for Cuidad Real in my Valdepeñas hotel yesterday, I noticed the cover sketch included a Concorde taking off from the city's airport. The latter, of course, is the infamous billion dollar ghost facility, which has never seen any plane take off from it, never mind a Concorde. It seemed rather appropriate in its grandiosity.

Which reminds me . . . I was invited by some good friends to join them for lunch in Madrid yesterday and to meet a large-breasted Galician bird. This turned out to be a pularda - a female chicken - or, to give it its technical name, a hen - which has been sterilised to promote growth. And very tasty she was too.

The only rationale I've heard from the Spanish government for taking the abortion law back 30 years is that it will "Take back the moral high ground from the Left". And the only defence there's been of something opposed by the majority of the electorate has been that the measure was promised in the party's manifesto. The best response to this nonsense is that so were a wide range other things that haven't been delivered. Witness this extract from a recent letter to El País: I read the argument that the new abortion law will be enforced to comply with the PP party's election manifesto. This zeal to fulfil what was promised is commendable - so rare when it should be normal - but I'd like to see this commitment extended to the lowering of taxes, to economic growth, to job creation, to government transparency, to reconciliation, to equality, to combating corruption, to a credible and effective foreign policy, to more social policies designed to improve education and health care, and to nil interference with the independence of the judiciary. Chance would be a fine thing.

Finally . . . A couple of years ago I suggested the traffic police could do worse than equip me with a buttonhole camera so I could snap all the drivers I saw every day on their phones, inter alia. Well, someone has come up with an idea which not only does something similar but also helps to reduce Spain's huge unemployment figures. Enjoy.

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