Driving
in Spain: If you're planning to do this, one of the best bits of
advice I can give you is: Follow local custom and don't trust
any and all signals. Or the absence thereof. And be particularly
careful on roundabouts(circles), where cars can come at you from all
angles and do things that don't happen in countries where the rules
are clearly different.
Which
reminds me . . .
New
Road Signs: To combat the regular (and inexplicable) occurrence
of drivers going the wrong way on our local autopistas – termed
kamikazes in Spain - new road-surface and road-side signs have
been introduced. Let's hope they work. I wonder whether they'll now
do something about the drivers who forget to put their lights on at
night.
Which
reminds me . . .
Pedestrian
Peril: Just when you think you've seen it all . . . Traversing a
zebra crossing yesterday morning, I noticed that a second car was
starting to overtake the one that had stopped to let me cross. The
driving instructor in the passenger seat looked rather less alarmed
at his pupil's manoeuvre than I thought he should've. But at least he stopped it.
Past
Participles: I'm aware there are differences with regard to
these in British and American English – spat/spit, fitted/fit and
got/gotten, for example – but this morning I read this phrase: “I
drug the dead dog up onto the curb” and was left wondering whether
this was normal US usage for 'dragged'.
Waugh's
Who: From The Times Diary: Time magazine has published
a list of the top 100 women authors who appear on American university
reading lists. Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf all make
the top ten. But the good intention was slightly spoilt by the
inclusion at No 97 of Evelyn Waugh.
The
Donald: Will it be a good thing for the world if the next US
president has a surname which, in very polite British English
(Bringlish?) means 'fart'? Sadly, we may get to see.
Finally
. . . . A Nice
T-shirt slogan seen in town
yesterday: Be nice or go away.
THE
MODELO 720 SUPPLEMENT
Free
advice for anyone subjected to this outrageous law of 2012: Never
close an overseas bank account, even to transfer all the funds to
another of your accounts. I'm advised that, if you do, you're
obliged to make a declaration to the Hacienda to tell them of this,
even if your assets haven't increased by €20k in the relevant
year. Of course, if you make the slightest innocent mistake, the
fine is a minimum of €1,500. So it pays them to maximise the number
of things you have to report. Pretty scandalous really. Even without
recalling the humungous frauds reported daily of politicians and
businessmen who seem to be immune from punishment. Talk about
low-hanging-fruit! So, don't close an account: leave a few quid
in it.
THE
BREXIT SUPPLEMENT
More free advice: If you're a Brit
resident who's been here fewer (not 'less'!) than 15 years, you're
entitled to vote in the referendum. Here's how you register.
And now . . . A top-down view from
Allister Heath of the Daily Telegraph. If you haven't realised it yet, this is where I'm coming from. But I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise by the Inners over the next 3 months:-
EU
elites wrongly believe they have perfected government, so we should
leave
All
political debates, including whether or not we should belong to the
European Union, can ultimately be traced to a profound and historic
disagreement over human nature.
Half
the world believes that human beings are inherently good and benign,
or at least perfectible; they conclude that it is therefore safe and
sensible for elites and experts to be given whatever power they need
to get things done. Such folk, dubbed the self-anointed by the US
philosopher Thomas Sowell, are often obsessed with politics and never
see a new initiative they don’t like.
The
other half is convinced that people, including those in a position of
authority, are unavoidably self-interested and fallible, and that
power should therefore be constrained and divided to reduce the
chance of a catastrophic failure. They tend to believe that their
homes are their castle, and in the wisdom of crowds.
The
first group impatiently derides the second as dreadfully pessimistic
and hopelessly unambitious; the latter cannot stand what it sees as
the former’s utopianism and lack of realism about the human
condition. I’m a paid-up member of this second category, and that,
dear reader, is why I want the UK to leave the European Union.
Let
me explain my apparent leap in logic. It is clear that the post-Cold
War, post-industrial world is becoming ever more complex, as a result
of a convergence of explosive technological, scientific, economic and
geopolitical forces. The question is how to react to this: should we
trust elites even more, given the scale of the challenge, or should
we encourage experiments from which we can all learn? Should we
centralise power and political authority, or should we decentralise
it and seek instead to build resilient networks that can cope with
setbacks? Should we seek Europe-wide solutions to every problem, or
should we trust countries or even towns and counties to find their
own answers, adapted to local conditions? My answer, in every case,
would be to allow a thousand flowers to bloom.
The
problem with the European Union is that it is the embodiment of a
top-down approach when what we need is a much greater emphasis on
bottom-up solutions. A problem with banks? Easy, according to
Brussels. Let’s give the EU more powers and introduce the same set
of rules across all countries. Agriculture? Simple: let’s introduce
a pan-EU policy. Europe is behind the US when it comes to technology
and innovation? Great, another opportunity to invent another Brussels
bureaucracy, and come up with some more pan-EU rules, subsidies or
policies.
If
the EU were allowed to get its way, it would eventually seek to do
the same in all other areas, including education and health care. Its
most ambitious attempt at centralisation and harmonisation – the
euro – has been the most disastrous. Occasionally, of course, it
stumbles by chance upon the right answer, and then, unusually, its
one-size-fits-all rule does make sense. But more often than not, its
preferred solution – the result of endless bureaucratic and
political horse-trading in Brussels – is a disaster. By contrast,
smaller, competing political entities bound together through economic
integration and voluntary cooperation can innovate and will be much
more likely to discover the right answers. They can change and evolve
when they realise that they have made a mistake.
Lumbering
bureaucracies cannot: it’s the reason why the EU keeps on pursuing
job-destroying policies, for example. Once it sets its mind on a
particular course of action, reversing it becomes almost impossible.
Small
is more beautiful than ever. Empires and technocracies don’t work,
and neither do monopolies. They are unaccountable and unresponsive
and all too often scandalously corrupt. Even with the best of
intentions, they lack feedback mechanisms and thus fail to correct
their errors. Even when they are given the trappings of democracy,
such as with the European Parliament, they remain hopelessly detached
from the electorate.
International
cooperation is more important than ever in the 21st century. But the
EU is not the right vehicle and certainly isn’t the solution to the
Syrian crisis, or to the mounting tensions in South East Asia, or to
the fight against pandemics. It is not equipped to deal with mass
migration or the rise of artificial intelligence, to name just two
critical issues.
We
need new sets of international institutions that allow countries all
over the world to work closely together, sometimes on an ad hoc
basis, to free up trade, control terrorism and deal with problems
that require cross-border cooperation. Leaving the EU would be the
first step towards revolutionising our foreign policy; it would also
allow us to play a leading role in proposing and developing
successors.
The
problem with the more fanatical supporters of the European project is
that they are what Hayek called constructivists: they believe that
they have the intelligence and ability to remake the world afresh.
History and traditions are irrelevant. They have a neat and tidy
mindset, and the messiness of national diversity riles them. They
have no time for trial and error: they are convinced that they know
the truth, and wish to impose it on everybody. Their arrogance
beggars belief.
Some
CEOs of very large listed companies – though not so much
entrepreneurs – see the world in the same way. Because they are
paid to push through top-down change, they tend to like equally big
political bureaucracies. Political diversity irritates them and is
wrongly deemed to be a barrier to trade: they fail to see that the
best way to promote new and better ideas is to allow competition
between countries in the same way that it is encouraged between
companies.
The
answer, therefore, is to decentralise power radically – not just
back to nation states, but also further down. Britain requires a
constitutional revolution for which leaving the EU would be the
catalyst. The UK would become a proper federation, with its component
nations given full fiscal autonomy and put in charge of raising all
of their revenues. Cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham
would be given far greater rights and responsibilities.
Ultimately,
however, one’s attitude to the European question depends on one’s
view of human nature. Is it prudent to entrust technocrat-kings, in
charge of vast, distant post-democratic bureaucracies with our
futures, or are we better off betting on competition and radical
decentralisation? I know which side I’m on. Altrincham, Cheshire: June, 1971. One of these people can still get into his suit. Honest.
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