Meanwhile,
a little bit further south, Moroccan feelings are riding high as it
emerges that a paedophile who raped 11 children there has been released
from prison at the request of the Spanish secret service. It's a
dirty business, governing. Though the Moroccan King says he had no
notion of what he was doing when he acceded to the Spanish pressure to
pardon the ("Iraqi") paedophile.
As
many have pointed out, the PSOE has its own celebrated corruption
case going slowly through the courts. This centres on fraudulent
activities down in Andalucia, a by-word for financial shenanigans -
both coastal and inland - going back many years. As is not unusual,
the judge handling the so-called ERE case is being harassed by the
regional politicians, who'd like to see her removed because of her
'lack of impartiality'. All part of the game.
On
the face of it - and not surprisingly - not only the governing PP
party but also the Opposition PSOE party are in trouble. According to
a July survey, support for them has fallen to 24% and 21%,
respectively, not much above the level for two or three small
parties. There's some way to go until the next election - unless pigs
start to fly and Sr Rajoy brings them forward - but if things stay
this way it could impact on the country's stability and, thus, its
ability to meet its challenges. We can expect President Rajoy to bang
on about this stability during the next 2 or 3 years, as he did in his recent parliamentary appearance. Meanwhile, in a
video issued by the Opposition PSOE party, he's been compared with
President Nixon. Which is quite clever.
The Train Crash: The Sunday Times today has a review of the developments of the last week, stressing that expert are still baffled as to why the driver didn't brake. The paper adds one detail I haven't seen elsewhere, viz. that the driver received a flashing warning 3km from the bend telling him to slow down and, although he acknowledged it, he didn't apply the brakes. I'm not sure whether this warning is one of the 3 auditory warnings mentioned in the Spanish press.
There
are, of course, wider issues than whether the driver was guilty of a
crime - hard to see that he isn't - and the biggest of all, perhaps, is
whether this was an accident waiting to happen simply because the ASFA safety system in place wasn't up to the job and the more
effective ERTMS system should have been both installed and operative
for the entire Ourense-Santiago stretch, as it now is, say RENFE. I hope we can assume that
the panel of experts commissioned to investigate the accident will
address this question, and all the others. Meanwhile, it's been reported that the
Brazilian government has advised that the Spanish consortium is still
in the running for the 13bn euro contract being adjudicated there in
September. Is this support for the cynicism of my friend who thinks
they'll get the contract but only on the basis of higher kickbacks?
Finally on this, the family who sought (or who were offered) the
favour of an easy exit from the train at Pontedeume, lost the wife
and one of the children in the crash. It's impossible to imagine the
feelings of the desolate husband, knowing that they triggered the sequence of events which seems to have led to the disaster.
Finally, and triflingly:-
Matters
domestic 1: - I was intrigued to see a sign in my usual
supermarket (Mercadona) promising Novedades, or new product
lines. These turned out to be pre-cooked pancakes and
'cocktail ice'. Which says it all really, as regards innovation. By
the way, 'cocktail ice' is merely crushed ice, suitable
for mojitos and the like, I guess.
Matters
domestic 2:- Spaniards are reported to have recycled 358,128
tonnes of plastic last year, or three times more than a decade ago.
On the surface this is impressive but I wonder how much of this
simply due to the fact there's far more packaging to get shut of now
than there was 10 years ago. Here, for example, is just a week's
material from one person living alone, me.
As you'll note, this being early last week, there's a definite lack of Economist magazines.
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