Ponters Pensées: 29.8.16

Spanish Nationality: The relatives of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 and after - the Sefardis - have been offered a fast-track process, as belated compensation - I guess - for this astonishingly stupid, self-damaging measure. So far, only 2,624 have taken this up. But I've no idea what this is as a percentage of those entitled. Pretty small, I suspect.

PreConquest Mexico: This looks like an interesting development.

The EU Commission and its Principles: Here's another gem from Don Quijones, this time on the subject of a planned EU-wide 'Google tax'. This, incidentally, has been an abject failure here in Spain. The Commission, says DQ, has shown once again that it has learnt absolutely nothing from the Brexit experience. It continues to legislate with no consideration for the public interest, serving the exclusive interests of the most powerful lobby groups in Brussels, while continuing to say one thing in public and doing the exact opposite in private. In other words, it’s business as usual in Brussels. The Commission, DQ stresses, seems determined to make itself even more unpopular among Europe’s disaffected public - just at a time when a rash of popular referendums and make-or-break national elections is about to be held in countries across the old continent. Here's Christopher Booker on much the same subject - the incompetence of the EU technocrats and political leaders. Do GB Remainers really discount this? Or just accept it as no worse than national government??

Theists: One of the problems with these is that they often give each other a bad name. So it was with the 'Christian' who essentially blamed Tom Daley's failure in the Olympic diving competition on his being gay. Oddly, this didn't impede the British team - which contained a married lesbian couple - from winning the hockey gold. But, strange indeed are the ways of the Lord. Here's another example:-

• Rabbis ban education for women as being dangerous. To men, of course. 

But it's not all bad news . . . Norway's evangelical Lutheran Church has launched a website to make it easier to track members -- a site that also allowed them to opt out of the Church altogether -- more than 15,000 people chose to leave for good. (And that's just in the first week.) I wonder when the Catholic Church will, if ever, stop counting we lapsed folk as members of the '2 billion global membership', simply because we were once baptised without our knowledge or consent.

Languages in the UK: So, which - after English - is the second most widely spoken language there? Well, Polish, of course. The Poles - who are universally admired in the UK- have just overtaken Bangladeshis as the highest foreign community, so this is very understandable. That said, Polish speakers amount to only 1% of the population. So, why is everything published by the NHS in 12 languages, you might ask.

Our Simian Heritage: This is a fascinating, 'Swiftish' treatise by Clarence Day on our origins, lamenting the fact we didn't evolve from, say, cats or elephants. It's funny, thought-provoking and highly prescient for 1920. You can get it from Gutenberg as an ebook.

Pontevedra's Retail Scene: I continue to fail to really understand this. Here are 2 more recently closed shops, this time directly opposite the checkouts in a Carrefour hypermarket in the mall at the bottom of our hill:-



Delayed reaction from El Crisis? Money laundering places that didn't work out?

Finally . . .  Amazon Spain. Having slightly cracked the screen on my kindle, I checked about repair and read eulogies about the company regularly handing out free replacement products. In other countries at least. You can get them to call you in the USA, the UK, Germany and France - inter alia - but not (yet) in Spain. Where, in addition, the site seems not to recognise the problem of a broken or cracked screen. One wonders why not. Anyone had a better experience?