Perspective and principles. El Pais today opined that, if Tony Blair succeeds in his attempts to reduce the EU budget and preserve most of the cheque británico, this will be to the detriment of the ‘strengthening, cohesion and internal solidarity’ of the EU. In contrast, Spain’s attempts to reverse previous agreements to reduce from 2006 the subsidies flowing this way will, it seems, only redound to the eternal benefit of the EU. What really seemed to upset the leader writer of El Pais was the prospect that, unless Mr Zapatero gets tough, Spain could become a net contributor to the EU budget by 2013, a mere 35 years after first getting access to the trough. God forbid.

By and large, Galicia seems a pretty crime-free place. So it comes as a bit of a shock to read that 2 young man were murdered by contract killers yesterday in a ‘settling of accounts’ among drug dealers. This came two nights after the discovery of the burned-out remains of a speedboat and 4x4, the favoured vehicles of the local narcotraficos. And today there were calls for action from the local police in order to prevent Galicia becoming ‘another Sicily’. Let’s hope they’re more effective in this than the police there. Not that the local drug barons aren’t all very nice people.

Someone has made an analysis of the email services provided by the likes of Google, Yahoo and Hotmail. I can’t say it came as any great surprise to read that the provider with the slowest and least efficient offering gloried in the name of ‘Latinmail’. At least no one could say they hadn’t been warned. Though ‘Mañanamail’ might have been a bit more honest.