It’s good to see the Spanish tax authorities taking further measures against the money laundering and evasion for which the country has something of a reputation. The latest development is a demand made to 12 law firms for details of their clients and their transactions. The firms have apparently been chosen on the basis of location and areas of involvement. I wonder what that means. This is against the backcloth of the feud between Germany and Lichtenstein over the details of German depositors in the latter’s banks. In which, incidentally, four federal deputies are said to be implicated.

Elsewhere, more than 4,500 of the country’s estate agents are being investigated over deals where there was a large difference between the buying and the selling prices. Again, one wonders why.

It’s been suggested that one of the reasons why the President, Sr. Zapatero, and the Leader of the Opposition, Sr. Rajoy, are competing so fiercely – and unrealistically - to promise vast expenditure on the teaching of and in English is that neither of them can speak what is nearly always called the language of Shakespeare here. And they are conscious it puts them at a disadvantage in international meetings. Seems plausible.

I’m used to seeing odd sights in the forest behind my house but on Saturday I witnessed a new one. Two white vans raced onto the earth track and then proceeded to do handbrake turns and the like. Of course, white vans all over the world are renowned for being driven on the edge of their capability – usually in one’s rear-view mirror – but I suppose it’s possible these had been tuned up and I was seeing a practice session for a new global event - The World White Van Forest Rally. Maybe both Hamilton and Alonso will graduate to it in their retirement. If either of them survives.

Here’s a surprise - As you glide along the supermarket aisle past the smartly packaged Fairtrade coffee and guiltily slip the cheaper arabica into your trolley instead, you may ask yourself how much good your overpriced purchase of the Fairtrade stuff would have done anyway. Well, now you know. Today's report from the Adam Smith Institute will probably confirm your suspicion: Fairtrade labelling is largely a marketing ploy, which makes clever use of the almost infinite capacity for guilt harboured by the residents of wealthy countries over the condition of those in poorer ones, even though that condition is, in no rational sense, their fault. It transpires that a very small number of farmers are getting a subsidised fixed price for their produce under Fairtrade franchises and that this is at the expense of most other farmers in their regions, who are actually worse off as a result. But even more serious, the Fairtrade operation helps to keep poor countries and undeveloped economies exactly that - poor and undeveloped.

I don’t normally do this but there are a couple of article references in Saturday’s blog which those readers only arriving today might like to see. So, scroll on down.