You
have crooked teeth; we have crooked dentists:
Thirteen directors of another nationwide dental franchise company – Vitaldent -
have been arraigned, presumably for not being shining white. Still
less their income. Thirty six
luxury cars and a million-euro private jet have been seized, fifteen
dental surgeries raided and 124
properties all over the country embargoed. The good times might well
be over. Whether anyone goes to jail will depend on all sorts of
things. Least of all, perhaps, the law. The Pontevedra clinic is still open for business, it says.
Residence
in Spain:
If you're already a resident or thinking of it, take stock of these
comments from my web colleague, Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas:
To become a fiscal resident in Spain is now an invitation to buy into
a living tax trap, and at the end, potentially serious inheritance
grabs. Whatever emerges from the current political confusion is
unlikely to make the situation better for expat purchasers who are
considering permanent residence. Quite the contrary. It seems the
regime wishes to micromanage the financial affairs of Spanish
citizens and residents, when it is clear they can’t manage the
political, economic and financial affairs of the country - or most
parts of it.
The lesson to draw is - Get professional
financial and legal advice, even before you sign a private contract
and make a deposit. Or even before you talk to any of the many
charming, deceitful agents.
Odds
& Sods: With another HT to Lenox of Business Over Tapas for some of
these:-
- Spaniards are doing well in England's Royal Ballet. The director is Pilar Rojo and one of the pupils – at 47,000 quid for the course – is actually a young Galician woman.
- The S&P people feel Spain should take a hard look at the AVE high-speed network and decide whether this is a fantastically expensive political project or a commercial venture. As the moment, it's certainly the former.
- 80% of Galician couples are said to need family help to achieve a work-life balance.
- The Father of the Catalan nation – ex President Pujol – is threatening to bring down Spanish democracy, if he's prosecuted for massive financial skulduggery over several decades. He says he knows where numerous bodies are buried. Nice chap. No wonder he throve for so long in politics.
- Having no experience of forming coalitions, the PSOE party and, particularly, the new Podemos party continue to make unmeetable demands of each other. At least in public. It could be a long time before the Spanish have a new government. They might even beat the Belgian record.
- Things don't look good for Mr Cameron in his fight to get a deal with the EU that will prevent a Brexit. The betting is back on the referendum not taking place until at least next year.
- I'm told that lots of surnames in Ribadavia - up in our hills - are related to occupations, such as Zapatero(shoemaker) and Carpintero(guess). This is said to reflect the fact that these were names assumed by those Jews who wanted to stay in Spain after 1492 and were willing to convert to that fine crusading faith, Christianity. I must check this out.
- So Mexico was delirious about the Pope's visit. Isn't it interesting that Catholicism - a relic, along with Castellano, of vicious Spanish colonialism - is now valued so highly there? I'm not sure this is so true – at least as regards religion – in ex British colonies. India is hardly full of Anglicans, for example.
Just a Thought: How sophisticated we think we are, at least in the developed world. How primitive we'll seem in only 50 years's time. Aboriginal in a century's time.
Finally
. . . . A nice article from
David Aaronavitch The
Times on
Russia:
Where
are all the protests over Putin’s bombs?
Despite
Russia’s appalling record of bullying and tyranny, the regime still
has its loyal apologists in the West.
At
a disco in a medieval tower in the town of Weimar in January 1980 a
student from the French Communist Party and I fell into conversation
with a young East German. “Well,” said the French comrade (or
words to this effect), “this doesn’t look too bad! Not at all
like the image of the German Democratic Republic we are fed in the
West!” “Yes,” said the German youth, “but the difference is
that you are allowed to come and see this. But I cannot come to you.”
The
Frenchman had already, like the rest of us attending the
International Education Conference, crossed a Berlin checkpoint in
the snow, watching the anarchic rabbits bobbing freely from wire to
wall, had also had his magazines confiscated by border guards, and
will have noticed the oddly redundant men in raincoats sitting
silently in the lobbies of the hotels where we stayed. But for all
that, when he saw the dancers in the renovated tower, he was easily
reassured. Socialism worked.
It
struck me then in a normal bat-squeak way and later in more of a
bellow, how some people from the West both took their own liberties
for granted and failed to understand what a society without those
liberties was like.
So
it is with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Of course, if you say it now,
you’ll be accused of “demonising” the man. Back in 1980 the
word “demonise” was not in common use as a way of pre-emptively
rebutting unpleasant truths about someone or something. If someone is
being “demonised”, then you don’t have to bother listening too
hard to the charges made against them.
Putin
and his regime have destroyed Russia’s nascent democracy. They have
taken over all the most important media outlets and appointed stooges
to run them as propaganda organisations, peddling nationalist myths
and conspiracy theories. They have broken down any separation between
government and the judiciary and used the courts to pursue political
opponents. They have stolen tens of billions of dollars’ worth of
assets and moved the money to the despised West, where they are
protected by the rule of law. They have, in effect, prevented the
work of human rights organisations, of necessity part-funded by
donations from abroad, by classifying them as “foreign agents”.
They
have annexed the territory of a neighbouring sovereign state,
conducted war within its borders and are almost certainly responsible
for the shooting down of a civilian aircraft with the loss of
hundreds of lives of mostly EU citizens. They vetoed any action
designed, in the early days of the Syrian protests, to put pressure
on Assad to instigate full reforms. This week TV pictures showed them
bombing civilian areas of Aleppo with cluster munitions killing
dozens, possibly hundreds.
And
yet, for all this, a significant section of opinion leaders in the
West insists on suggesting that a recitation of these truths is
“demonising”. Late last week on the BBC the former ambassador to
Syria, Peter Ford, who believes that the answer in Syria is to back
President Assad, offered the firm view that Russia was being
“demonised” in Britain to help the government win the battle to
renew Trident.
The
exculpation of Putin, whoever it comes from, has the eternal
qualities used when excusing authoritarianism. One: he’s not that
bad when seen in appropriate context. Two: he’s no worse than us
because we’re very bad too. Three: in so far as he is bad, it’s
our fault anyway — we provoked him, or otherwise made him do it.
For
number one take your pick from the left-wing film-maker Oliver Stone,
Marine Le Pen of the French National Front or Donald Trump. According
to Stone, visiting Russia not long after the shooting down of flight
MH17 (which Stone blamed on Ukraine) Putin has “returned a sense of
certainty, harmony, and pride to Russians”. Ms Le Pen agreed. “I
admire that he has managed to restore pride and contentment to a
great nation that had been humiliated and persecuted for 70 years,”
she said. As for Trump, last month he questioned whether Putin had
any responsibility for the Litvinenko murder, adding that Putin is
“an absolute leader, respected in his own country and abroad”.
For
a perfect example of authoritarian-excuse-making number two, we can
take the statement made this week by the man who took over from
Jeremy Corbyn as chairman of the Stop the War organisation. Andrew
Murray allowed that the recent bombings of Syrian towns (known to
have been carried out by the Russians) seemed “most likely” to
have been Russian in origin and deplored them for a microsecond
before moving smartly on. British public opinion should not “be
diverted into thinking that Russia is the main problem in Syria.
Western intervention is longer-lasting, deeper-rooted and just as
malign in its effects.” Murray then went on to outline an approach
that would mean, in effect, the victory of the Assad regime, exactly
as Putin would want (but not, alas for him, as Putin or anyone else
can actually make happen).
Let
us note that if Israel bombs Gaza and kills a dozen poor Palestinians
then the streets of Kensington will be full of furious demonstrators,
plus Mr Murray, demanding action; but when Putin bombs Syrian
hospitals, the streets will be silent. Silent as the grave.
As
for number three, it’s our fault anyway, well you take your choice
between the left-wing version and the right-wing one. In 2014 and
2015 the new leader of the opposition wrote several times that the
Russian incursion into Ukraine was the result of “Nato’s eastward
expansion”. Ukraine he said (without evidence) had “been put
under enormous pressure to come into the EU and Nato military orbit”.
In any case Ukrainian borders had always been a bit wobbly, the place
had always been full of fascists, the Crimea had always been Russian
really, and so (the clear implication was) just let Putin alone.
The
right-wing version, well expressed by Le Pen, was to substitute Nato
with the EU in the demonology of western provocation. It is a view
you will often hear from Ukip supporters. It stinks.
I
don’t want to stop any of these people saying any of these things.
It’s their right, even if they give effective propaganda support to
one of the most dangerous politicians in the modern world. Even if,
as I see it, their obfuscations and untruths have an immense
influence on the social-media susceptible voters of Europe and
America. Who need to be reminded, as that Frenchman was in 1980, that
demons are demons, not misunderstood angels.
Problems once again with Facebook. So, here's me and an owl. I'm the one on the left. Marriage proposals should be sent to the owl. For vetting.
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