Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, June 02, 2013

In my garden here in Spain there's a weed remarkable for its stickiness. When I was a kid playing with friends in the fields near our street, we used to throw this stuff at each other. Every time I pull some out now, I'm briefly taken back to those halcyon days. And I wonder what will take today's kids back to their electronic toys decades from now. When I suppose today's must-haves will seem pathetically dated. But you can't date a sticky plant.

It all reminds me of the time I took my half-Spanish stepsons into a forest near my house in England and showed them a tree from which they could hang a rope to swing from. "Why on earth would we want to do that?" they asked. Or words to that effect. And then scoffed at my answer. I don't think they ever went into the forest again.

Relatedly, I see that Facebook membership is stagnating and it's even being suggested its day may be over. Can't say I'm surprised; it's been irritating me for a long time. Especially since it was floated on the stock market.

The Brussels mandarins are upset with the UK and with Spain and are taking legal action against both of them. The former because it's proposing to make it harder for immigrants to claim benefits and the latter because it's already allowing its hospitals to deny free treatment to tourists with valid EU health cards. Hard times. And savings have to be made. Except in Brussels, of course, where the budget rises inexorably, year on unrestrained year.

The Spanish king is said to be suffering from depression. Which isn't terribly surprising. Only this week boos and whistles were directed not only at Prince Felipe and the lovely Princess Letizia but also at Queen Sofía, who's never put a foot wrong as far I can see. What next? The tumbrils?

The president of Spain’s Securities Commission had admitted that the economic crisis “revealed weaknesses in the system of corporate governance.” This gross understatement is code for "Everyone in business and politics was on the take." Reading a Vigo paper today, I acquired more details of our local example of this, Pescanova. The new auditors, it seems, have found even more subsidiary companies around the world in which the directors hid debts and distorted the company's P/L and balance sheet. To their own advantage, of course. Staying in their jobs, for one thing.

Finally . . . I knew that Wellington had benefited from French error in winning the Battle of Salamanca in 1812 but I hadn't known this happened again at Waterloo, when Marshall Ney made the same mistake as Marmont had in Salamanca and wrongly assumed the British were retreating. Whereupon he sent the cavalry up a muddy hill, to see them cut to pieces by artillery and then (hidden) infantry squares. Understandably, Napoleon was not too impressed when he came back from a (still unexplained) two-hour break. Mind you, it wasn't very smart of Boney to later send his Old Guard up the same hill, with much the same effect. Incidentally, in both of these battles Wellington took great advantage of the land contours, very effectively hiding some of his forces from French view. Until it was rather too late. Napoleon, of course, abdicated. Which we may yet see the Spanish king do, I guess.

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