Here in Spain, many large companies still operate a commercial strategy which can best be summarised as - Get customers by whatever means you can; Make it hard for them to leave; And then abuse hell out of them. The worst offenders are the banks, the utility companies and, of course, the state telephone company, Telefonica. Thus it is that the government has had to introduce a specific law this week to force the latter to comply with its legal obligation to allow customers to depart quickly and without penal costs. In defence of these institutions, this is probably a decent strategy where customers think all operators are as bad as each other and so don’t have much incentive to move anyway. And where people can be persuaded, in return for a couple of cheap Portuguese towels, to open a deposit account paying only one per cent interest.

The national traffic policy yesterday reported that, during their most recent campaign, only a mere 2% of drivers had been caught exceeding the speed limit. The explanatory comment was that the police allowed a 20% excess, taking the effective limit from 120 to 144kph. Or 90mph. The spokesman helpfully added that, if they’d used 120, they’d have had to stop everyone, including the unmarked police cars. This, of course, endorses an earlier comment of mine that the most relaxing thing you can do on a Spanish road is to drive on the legal limit, as this means you’ll never have to overtake anyone.

Which reminds me – I couldn’t help noticing last week that cars bearing GTi or something similar were far more common in Spain than in either France or the UK. It’s salutary to know that these are mostly bought by young men who live at home until they are in their 30’s, making no contribution to their upkeep along the way. Putting this another way, Spanish parents finance much of the road carnage.

WordWatch

Un scalextric – A particularly bad road junction. Priceless.