Macho mayors; Bank rule; Abortions; & Funny songs.

Only in Spain? On the International Day of the Woman, a Spanish mayor opted to distribute nail files and aprons to competitors in a race. In his response to criticism, he displayed that affinity for bare-faced mendacity that comes so easily to Spanish politicians - "They were intended for the men". Of course, he didn't expect anyone to believe him. And nobody did. His next tack will probably be that OK, they were given to women but he didn't intend anyone to be hurt or insulted. So nobody was.

Everyone agrees that Spain's exit from recession will be slow, at best. A major reason is that Spain's banks are being overly cautious and extending very little credit. One wonders whether there isn't anything the government can do to stop the banks preventing more rapid exit from a deep recession which they caused in the first place. After 5-6 years of pain, do the bankers still rule the world? Will there not be a full recovery before they're all strung up from lampposts? Have we got enough lampposts? I think we deserve answers. Meanwhile, the Bank of Spain forecasts that the credit squeeze will bankrupt 15,000 large companies and 50,000 small companies by the middle of the year. If nothing is done. Anyone holding their breath?

Another gloomy forecast is that more than 60% of Spanish women say they will resort to 'desperate means' to abort unwanted children, if the government enacts its proposed Bill. Some would use backstreet abortionists here and some would travel to France or Portugal. As one commentator said, Spain's abortions would reduce only on paper. Something which would satisfy the Catholic Church and the Opus Dei members in the Cabinet but no one else. I still can't see the Bill reaching the statute book, especially as elections are looming this year and next year

Finally . . . Here's a witty song I learned off-by-heart when I was a kid, using a 78 from my grandparents' collection. If you like that one, you may well appreciated the singer - Frank Crumit - pondering the question of what kind of noise annoys an oyster, which has been a recurring theme of my dreams over the years. If you don't know what a 78 is, you haven't lived

Note for Mac users: My apologies to those of you who've been failing to enlarge their Gmail compose window. I haven't been able to get the fn + D trick to work again either.