In case you hadn’t realised it, the European City of Culture for 2008 is Liverpool. Here’s something about this. And here are the events you might like to catch. Enjoy! As they say in Childwall.

Back here in Spain, the year has begun with a welter of statistics which endorse the view of the majority of the population that life is not going to be so easy this year. For those of us with a bet on, this news may not be quite as bad as it seems. However, for a government facing an election in three months’ time, it’s little short of a disaster. No wonder it’s been posturing a tougher line against ETA. Or even against anyone and any organisation with any link – however tenuous – to the terrorist organisation. The other favoured tactic of the moment is to portray the Catholic Church as the very same organisation as that which so wholeheartedly supported Franco. Mind you, the Church is making this rather easy, with its loud, orchestrated public attacks on the government’s recent social and educational measures. Or advances, as most of us lay individuals would call them. To modify an old quote, the Spanish Catholic Church now represents the PP party at prayer. Or at least its extreme right faction.

Spaniards of both sexes and all ages and classes swear at the drop of a hat. And they have no absolutely no problem with the taboo-to-Anglos F and C words. But to call someone a billy goat can often be regarded as beyond the pale, essentially I guess because of its cuckolding connotation. Anyway, here’s an interesting comment on this theme from a British politician who seems to know Spain quite well.

Finally, I’d like to remind those kind readers who go to my blog every day that this is most easily done via Google Reader, or something similar. The last time I wrote this, the number of people doing this immediately went from 15 to . . . . well, 15. But, then, there are now, I hear, 112 million blogs out there. So competition is tough. One has to be grateful that one’s rubbish is even of marginal interest to anyone at all.