Today I received a form to fill in, advising the Galician government how many chickens, turkeys, geese, doves, pigeons, pheasants, quail, partridge and ‘others’ I am raising in my back garden. You’ll have guessed this is an avian flu preventative measure. For reasons one can only guess at, the accompanying letter stresses the collection of data has ‘nothing to do with the tax authorities’. This might be more convincing if the form didn’t call for one’s identity number, which always doubles as your tax number.

You may recall I quoted a few weeks ago the report that, despite not signing up to Kyoto, the big, bad USA had actually reduced its CO2 emissions since then, albeit only marginally. Today we learned Spain has increased hers by 48% during the same period, well in excess of the 15% permitted. This is the worst performance of any western European state. But all is not lost as the government has announced it will impose ‘even more stringent requirements’ on companies. That should do the trick.

Another table in today’s media gave us the not-very-surprising news that Spain’s internet broadband prices are 32% above the EU average. Actually, the figure must be higher now as a fierce price war has just broken out in the UK. Needless to say, take-up of broadband in Spain is the slowest in Europe but this appears to be of minimal concern to Telefonica, who seem prepared to forego growth so long as they can continue to operate their suck[er]-‘em-in- and-bleed-‘em-dry strategy. I guess the compensation is that, once you’ve paid their extortionate access price, you can download Skype and never make another call via Telefonica. I’ll have to bite the bullet soon.

I felt a little guilty yesterday about labelling indulgent the parents of the 18 year old who killed 5 people in a road accident near Pontevedra on Friday. But today I discovered I hadn’t gone far enough. Rather than merely allowing him to use all his wages to buy a sports car, they’d actually bought it for him. And then allowed him to drive it without a licence. But this isn’t the most wondrous bit of information doing the rounds; despite the fact his dead mother had to be cut out of the passenger seat, the youth is said to have insisted he hadn’t been driving the car.

The Galician Nationalist Party has asked the Spanish Royal Academy to omit from the next edition of their dictionary the definitions of ‘Galician’ as 1. Stupid [in Costa Rica], and 2. Stutterer [in El Salvador]. They have a point, I think. Though the first one must surely apply to parents who give sports cars to unqualified 18 year olds. Or even to qualified 18 year olds, for that matter. One of them, at least, will now live to regret it. As, of course, will the families of the 4 motorcyclists mown down.