With
an election looming, it's a racing certainty we're going to get a lot
more of charisma-deprived President Rajoy telling us about the
economic miracle he and his party have wrought. Right now, few
Spaniards - less than 20% in fact - believe things have really
improved and that Spain is standing on the springboard of economic
take-off. Perhaps because, even more than elsewhere, nearly all
politicians are seen as lying crooks. The only exceptions are those
running the new left-of-centre Podemos party. Who'd win the election
if it took place tomorrow. We wait to see what dirt the
government digs up on them, even if has to be found where it doesn't
exist. Politics, as they say, is a dirty business and politicians
revel in dirt. The good ones, anyway.
An
even smaller percentage of Spaniards - 12% - support the government's
planned - and ludicrously named - 'Citizen Protection Law". This
is a blatant attempt to control free speech in advance of next year's
general elections. It'll be interesting to see if it's retained if the
opposition socialist party gets back in. My guess is Yes.
One
reason for citizen discontent could be that while local, regional,
national and EU politicians and bureaucrats continue to line their pockets, the
increase in pensions for next year will be 0.25%, or less than 2
euros a month, on average. The annual Galician average will then be a
whopping €738 a month. Directors and bankers claiming
responsibility for Spain's economic miracle will possibly get more.
Per day. Even if the recovery was financed by taxpayers' money.
Very
good news: The final stretch of the north coast motorway - the A8 -
will open on Dec 31, thus fulfilling the promise that it'd be
completed in 2014. I wonder if it will close again on Jan 1, until it
really is finished. But, anyway, it will cut a bit more time off my
drives to and from Santander, only provided that the high Mondoñedo
stretch hasn't been
closed because of fog. The only thing I have to worry about now is
how long it will be before the free A8 becomes the AP8 toll road and
crushing fees are imposed.
Which
reminds me . . . Over the last 3 years, the Traffic Police in Galicia
have fulfilled their revenue-raising responsibilities by extracting
€61m from motorists. I wonder waht the amount was pre-Crisis.
Penultimately
. . . Thanks to a famous Galician bagpipe-player, we now know that it
was Gallegos who introduced this wonderful/appalling instrument to
Scotland, in 1435. And that a Galician battalion fought with Rob Roy
against the English at the battle of Glen Shiel in 1719. In revenge
for this, he says, the British sacked Vigo in the following year,
also doing a bit of damage to Pontevedra, I believe. Wikipedia, by
the way, refers only to the 'Spanish' allies of the Scots. Who lost.
You Couldn't Make It Up
Department: The
police inspector and chief of the Anti-narcotics Group in Murcia have been arrested in connection with drug trafficking. HT to
Lenox of Business Over Tapas for this tidbit.
Finally . . . More
from the 1942 Guide for Yanks going to live among Limeys:-
The Country
You will find out right
away that England is a small country, smaller than North Carolina or
Iowa. The whole of Great Britain together – that is England and
Scotland and Wales together – is hardly bigger than Minnesota.
England's largest
river, the Thames (pronounced "Tems") is not even as big
as the Mississippi when it leaves Minnesota. No part of England is
more than one hundred miles from the sea.
If you are from Boston
or Seattle the weather may remind you of home. If you are from
Arizona or North Dakota you will find it a little hard to get used
to. At first you will probably not like the almost constant rains and
mists and the absence of snow and crisp cold. Actually, the city of
London has less rain for the whole year than many places in the
United States, but the rain falls in frequent drizzles. Most people
get used to the English climate eventually.
If you have the chance
to travel about you will agree that no area of the same size in the
United States has such a variety of scenery. At one end of the
English Channel there is a coast like that of Maine. At the other end
are the great white chalk cliffs of Dover. The lands of South England
and the Thames Valley are like farm or grazing lands of the eastern
United States, while the lake country in the north of England and the
highlands of Scotland are like the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
In the East, where England bulges out towards Holland, the land is
almost Dutch in appearance, low, flat and marshy. The great wild
moors of Yorkshire in the north and Devon in the southwest will
remind you of the badlands of Dakota and Montana.
Age Instead Of Size.
On furlough you will probably go to the cities, where you will meet
the Briton's pride in age and tradition. You will find that the
British care little about size, not having the "biggest"
of everything as we do. For instance, London has no skyscrapers. Not
because English architects couldn't design one, but because London is
built on swampy ground, not on a rock like New York, and skyscrapers
need something solid to rest their foundations on. In London they
will point out buildings to you like Westminster Abbey, where
England's kings and greatest men are buried, and St. Paul's Cathedral
with its famous dome, and the Tower of London, which was built almost
a thousand years ago. All of these buildings have played an important
part in England's history. They mean as much to the British as Mount
Vernon or Lincoln's birthplace do to us.
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