Dawn

Dawn

Friday, May 14, 2010

Driving to the station this morning, I heard a spokesman for the Spanish unions complaining that the government’s only strategy was “Cuts, cuts, cuts – dictated by the financial markets.” Nothing to do with Spanish profligacy, then. Nor with the economy’s structural faults – all fiercely defended by the unions – which have been talked about for years now. And about which little has been done.

Arriving at the station, I heard from my daughter it’d been announced that work on the AVE high-speed train to Galicia had been suspended. So, bang goes my forecast for 2020. Which already compared badly with the 2012 date promised just before our last elections. The 12th of Never?

Reader Ferrolano writes to say that another thing to go will be the new anti-smoking law, as it will impact on the government’s desperate need to squeeze revenue from every conceivable stone. I’m not sure this is true but I wouldn’t be at all surprised. The government now needs to shorten the list of disaffected citizens wherever it can. And there are a lot of unhappy bar and restaurant owners out there.

Talking of phantom statutes. . . I’m guessing we won’t see any improvement in delivery on the law on Dependency Benefits. This was introduced a year or two ago but - because of recession-driven cash constraints – rapidly became an orphan. Especially as it was the regions which had to cough up the cash to meet commitments created by central largesse. And which are commission-neutral.

So, who will riot first? Possibly not the civil servants about to suffer a 5% cut in salary. Though they were reported on the radio this morning to be going on strike in early June. Will anyone notice? Surely not between 10 and 11, when most of them disappear from their desks anyway. For ‘breakfast’.

Finally . . . It was so cold this morning I had to light a fire for the sake of my nesh visitors from Madrid. I couldn’t put the central heating back on, even if I wanted to, as I’m still trying to get the new boiler installed last November to work properly. Now I’m being told that the complex system which controls the water pump and the thermostat needs to be replaced in its entirety. Which won’t be a snip, of course. Especially not to a guiri who lives in Pijolandia.

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