If
you came to Spain
today and travelled around the entire country, you'd doubtless be
amazed and impressed in equal measure. Magnificent new roads; a
high-speed train system that's the second largest in the world;
stunning geography; wonderful, friendly, fun-loving people; excellent
food and wine; a mind-boggling historical heritage; and marvellous
beaches. All-in-all, a thoroughly 21st-century country going places.
Below all this, though, is a corrupt corporate-political nexus of
truly depressing dimensions. Which forces you to ask how many hotels,
roads, railways, airports and numerous 'vanity' projects were really
necessary and how many were built primarily because of kickbacks. Is
there another developed country in the world quite like this? Greece?
Italy? Either way, Spain has been managed like this for centuries and
one wonders how long it'll be before things materially improve. The
daily litany of arrests and trials gives little cause for optimism.
Meanwhile, folk like me are unaffected in our daily lives. Except to
the extent that our taxes our inexorably rising to pay, inter alia,
the interest on the debts run up to finance the investments and
kick-backs. As yet, this isn't painful enough to spark a revolution.
But one day. Maybe. One thing's for sure, absent pressure from
Brussels, the politicians and their corporate friends have no
incentive to clean up their act. They rarely pay for their
transgressions. In fact, I wonder whether the word 'resign' appears
in the latest Royal Academy dictionary issued this week.
Compare
and contrast: "The
IMF say Spain’s economy will grow by 1.7%
in 2015. This is the fastest predicted growth of any advanced
European economy. " And: 2. "The
IMF says Britain will see its GDP increase by 2.2%
in 2015." The only explanation for this discrepancy can be that
the UK either isn't European or doesn't have an advanced economy. Or
both. Or maybe it's just bad, selective journalism.
If
you're truly interested in what is and isn't happening in Cataluña,
this article will interest you.
Another
new scandal in Galicia - a nun and two or three civil servants
have been arrested for taking babies from single mothers, who were
told they'd died. The nun was possibly acting out of misplaced
religious reasons but the officials are thought to have had rather
more pecuniary motives. But we'll see.
Finally
. . . Last week I mentioned I'd downloaded Apple's new OS, Mavericks.
A day later, I learned they'd just introduced an even newer system,
Yosemite. So I've downloaded this, also for free. It looks good but
it's taken me a while to find out where the Reader button is. This
allows you to read an article without all the crap that surrounds it
and is well worth having.
No comments:
Post a Comment