So Celebrity Big Brother in the UK was won by a woman who was a phoney pop star, planted by the TV producers. She’s won 25,000 pounds but is expected to make a million more in the next few weeks. This just about says it all about today’s mass entertainment in the UK. The only positive comment one can make is things are even worse elsewhere, naming no names. It makes one pine for Roman circuses. At least they were exotic, albeit fatally so for the stars. A feature which is surely overdue for a comeback.

Whatever the width of a Spanish street, it’s invariably converted to a single lane carriageway by the ubiquitous double/triple parking that so little is done about. In fact, the only thing quicker in Spain than this process is the departure of the cars once the tow-truck appears on the horizon. Then, by some sort of telepathy, every driver in the neighbourhood is instantaneously made aware of the danger and emerges to drive the car round the block, to wait for the truck to tow away its sole, hapless victim. [Incidentally, this may be the only time one sees people running in Spain. Well, walking fast.] Then the whole cat-and-mouse game is repeated some time later. But only at long intervals, meaning the financial odds are very much stacked in favour of the drivers. And always will be until traffic wardens are introduced. But this, I suspect, is another of those ‘unfair’ and ‘ignoble’ practices which local politicians are loath to introduce for fear of an electoral backlash. As with the smoking ban, they need the cover of a national measure.

For similar reasons, the local town halls are up in arms about the pressure being put on them by the Galician government to implement the law about the completion of house- building projects. The background to this is that the magnificent Galician countryside is scarred by a plague of partly-built houses whose progress, over many years, depends on the availability of cash. Not to mention the builders. Having turned a blind eye to this for decades, the local councils now say three months before an election is not the right time to take this ‘unfair’ and ‘ignoble’ measure. Stuff the law.

Here’s a nice bit of irony. I occasionally send relevant information to people who write to me after reading my web page on Galicia, e. g. on buying property here. After doing this today, I've been put on a blacklist by AOL, who are refusing to deliver my emails to anyone with an AOL address. Their stance appears to be that my site has been reported by several people to be spewing out SPAM. I suspect the truth is they have some ‘clever’ software which has penalised my innocent circular because it went to two AOL addresses at the same time. So, Farewell any AOL friends.