A bumper post . . . .
LIFE IN SPAIN
Ethics: Trust: A huge Spanish company, teetering on the verge of bankruptcy last year, raised a huge sum of money in Mexico just days before the plug was pulled and immediately transferred all the cash to Madrid. All legal, of course. But moral? Mexican investors are not at all happy, as you might expect. But appear to be powerless. See Don Quijones on this tawdry tale here.
Safety. Risk: In the
context of reports about the recent fatal train derailment near
Pontevedra, an official is reported to have stressed that 90% of
railtrack points in Spain work well. Bloody 'ell . . . In case you
missed it, that means an awful lot don't.
Driving in Spain: I
read an article yesterday in which the roundabout advice was
different from that of the Guardia Civil I recently posted. Is it any
wonder there's total confusion here about which lane to be in when
there's more than one? Anyway, I decided on Monday last to note the
percentage of roundabouts on which drivers on my right cut across me
– “illegally” - because they've stayed in the outside lane even
though they're not turning right or going straight on. Having been taught to do this to pass their driving test. Within 2
seconds I'd clocked the first instance. As of now, it's about 80% but
I'll continue the exercise for a while.
Taxation; Thanks to several vicious and short-sighted measures which hit foreigners even more than Spaniards, Spain is now said to be one of the most heavily taxed countries in the world. And a dangerous one to live in if you have assets outside Spain. Believe me, they are a hostage to fortune. Literally. Sometimes one wonder is anyone in Spain looks beyond tomorrow.
OTHER THINGS
Health: Inspired by the
news that 69 year old Trump has a BP of only 126/70, I checked mine
and was pleased to find it was OK. But can Trump really have such a
startlingly good level at his age without medication? Is this why his
medical report is so thin?
British TV: I've
stumbled on an FTA channel that appeals to my love of history - Yesterday. Naturally, it doesn't look much to the future. Except for
the irony that most of the ads target the snow-tops who favour the
channel and who are endlessly encouraged to think about their
funerals.
Which reminds me . . .
Another Daft
AdvertIsing Claim: From the Coop Funeral Care – We're here for you
when you need us most. Like when your'e dead and gone, for example.
Finally . . . Words: Here are the 18th century meanings of these:-
Economist: Someone careful with money
Auditor – Listener
Plaudit – Applause
Cue argument from that crashing bore, Alfie Mittington.
THE GALLERY
I had visitors from
Finland this summer and they kindly left me a book of cartoons
depicting “Finnish Nightmares”. The astonishing thing about these
is that they are all identical to British/English nightmares. I'll be
posting them all. Here's the first two. Sorry about the American spelling . . . :-
SPANISH POLITICS SUPPLEMENT
The Status Quo: Nothing
to report beyond continued stalemate. Daft.
EU SUPPLEMENT
It's reported that the
Merchant Banker Juncker and his colleagues are planning to follow up
the appointment of 2 anglophobes as his chief Brexit negotiators by
making the negotiations so tough that the UK will beg to stay in the
EU. If this is true, it's another woeful failure to understand Brits
and the consequences of hundreds of years of democracy. Anyway,
here's an article which addresses severe EU failings and puts forward
a collaboration option that might just work – splitting poltical
and commercial aspirations. Let's hope so. And let's leave the
political dreamers with a reduced federal superstate where the people
don't really count because Daddy knows best.
For those really
interested, here are 3 articles from The Times.
Juncker is fiddling
while EU economy burns
Saint-Georges-de-Mons
is one of those French towns you barely notice on your way to the
more scenic parts of the Auvergne. There is a small church, a few
bars, an unappetising restaurant and a brutalist town hall.
The only interesting
thing about it is a nearby building site — not because of what is
being built there (a factory to recycle aviation-grade titanium) but
because of who is paying for it. For the EcoTitanium plant is one of
the only visible signs of the project which was supposed to save
Europe.
Last year, shortly
after taking charge of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker
trumpeted an unprecedented £268 billion investment programme to
kick-start the EU economy. The Juncker plan made all the right
noises: Europe needs more investment in infrastructure, more shared
spending and more economic growth. But as with all infrastructure
splurges (Philip Hammond take note) those big promises have proved
difficult to deliver.
The whole point was to
go beyond Europe’s existing infrastructure plans but the vast
majority of the projects are small schemes that qualified mainly
because they were too boring to feature in European finance
ministers’ own budget speeches. So there are obscure road widening
projects near Stuttgart, home insulation schemes in France and a
proposal to roll out smart electricity meters in the UK.
Indeed, according to
the Bruegel think tank, of the 55 projects approved by the EC, only
EcoTitanium would have struggled to get funding from existing
investors such as the European Investment Bank. In other words, the
great legacy of the Juncker plan might be a factory you’ve never
heard of doing a job you’ve never heard of in a town you’ve never
heard of.
Still, while other
cultures would see this as evidence of failure, that’s not the
European way. So today, Mr Juncker will propose an extension of his
scheme at the EU summit in Bratislava. It is worth dwelling on this
for a moment, because the failings of the Juncker plan are a useful
shorthand for the deeper economic malaise affecting Europe.
After all, on the
surface, things seemed to have improved across the Channel. For a
brief period before the Brexit vote, growth in the euro area exceeded
that of the UK. Most economists were forecasting decent growth this
year and next, thanks to the European Central Bank’s quantitative
easing programme, and to the fact that Germany has pledged to spend a
bit more on investment. Berlin even hinted that it might help Greece
by writing off some of its debt.
But a closer look
reveals the cracks. For one thing, economic growth has started to
peter out. Economists now expect the euro area to grow at a slower
rate than the UK this year. The same is true of the Continent’s
supposed engine room, Germany, where recent surveys of industrial
activity suggest the economy is flatlining.
One explanation is that
for all his promises — to the IMF, to the G7 and to every other
international body — that he would spend more on investment, the
German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has reverted to type. His
obsession has always been what Germans call the “schwarze null” —
getting a big “black zero” on the fiscal balance sheet. Mr
Schäuble has actually gone further, posting a comfortable surplus in
the first half of the year.
While a fiscal surplus
would be good news for most countries, for Germany it is damaging.
Weak government spending means weaker growth, not just at home but
throughout the eurozone, which depends on its leading economy to lift
everyone else. It also prevents the kind of rebalancing needed to
allow Greece and its fellow Mediterranean economies to survive within
the single currency.
Already there are some
worrying echoes of the euro crisis: the ECB’s so-called Target2
accounts which measure how reliant the troubled southern economies
are on the north show imbalances are rising again, in Italy’s case
to the highest level on record. Inflation is still barely in positive
territory. Investment spending across the continent is now actually
lower than when the Juncker plan was launched. In short, Europe is
deeply vulnerable.
Most worryingly, this
time around, Mario Draghi, the central bank president who in 2012
promised to do “whatever it takes” to safeguard the euro, seems
to be running out of ammunition. The ECB’s massive programme of
quantitative easing [i.e. hosing free cash around] is struggling to find new eligible bonds to buy.
The question of whether it will continue beyond next March was not
even discussed at the bank’s policy meeting last week.
All this before one
considers the two main issues under discussion at today’s summit:
Brexit and the refugee crisis. Leaders arriving in Bratislava have
been given a dossier by the commission showing that immigration and
terrorism are now the biggest concern for EU citizens.
The optimistic take is
that these two crises finally force the leaders to resolve their
problems, to create a true monetary and fiscal union for the euro and
an arm’s-length outer doughnut with migration controls that even
tempt Britain. Moreover, while he seems deaf to economic reason and
the struggling economies of the Mediterranean, the German elections
next year may at last force Mr Schäuble to loosen his purse strings.
Then again, Europe’s
history of doing the wrong thing and then doing it all over again
suggests the road ahead might be even bumpier.
The Eu an interregnum
Merkel must solve
Europe’s identity crisis
Brexit is turning into
the political equivalent of Schrödinger’s cat. As long as the
government refuses to invoke Article 50 and open the box, Brexit will
resemble the moggie in the famous paradox, both alive and dead. That
strange limbo encourages silliness among British politicians — Liam
Fox leads the field with his rant against unpatriotic golfers — but
also a wilful blindness about what is going on in Europe.
The fact is that we are
fast becoming yesterday’s problem. There is no queue to leave the
EU — one Eurosceptical minister at a Polish mountainside retreat
last week described Brexit to me as the Great Leap Backwards — and
no sense of urgency about accommodating Britain’s new needs.
We may flatter
ourselves that the upcoming Bratislava summit of the rather large
rump of the EU, the 28 Minus One, will be all about the British
question. Seen from Europe, that question was answered on June 23 and
the chief anxiety is about the likely return of the migrant exodus;
how to deal not only with the numbers but with issues of identity, of
the rights of national parliaments to resist centralised control by
the European Commission. The task of finding solutions to the
multiple crises on the continent is being left, as ever, to Angela
Merkel at the most wobbly moment in her career.
Under the force of mass
migration, Europe seems to be splintering into three blocs. First
there are the northern states — the Nordics, the Baltics, and the
Netherlands — which still abide by the good housekeeping rules set
by Germany. Then there are the southern Club Med states that want to
bend those rules and demand more solidarity on illegal migration from
the north. And there’s the awkward squad in central Europe, who
feel let down by what they see as a bullying Commission and are
beginning to challenge some of the founding principles of the EU.
These power hubs are
fluid. An enfeebled French government sometimes seems to be a more
natural member of the Club Med. The Dutch and the Danes could find
themselves aligned with central Europeans in showdowns with Brussels.
Poland and Hungary, though seemingly the new leadership tandem in the
east, are at odds over how to deal with Vladimir Putin.
Merkel’s way of
threading together a modern problem-solving Europe, a post-Brexit
pragmatism, is to identify and encourage a favourite among the
southern leaders. Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, is her
man. “We do not bring extravagant requests for help or
concessions,” Renzi said, drawing applause from the German leader.
“We are offering something to Europe to help it return to being a
community, rather than reducing itself day after day to a mere
contract.” In that spirit, the post-Brexit EU states will meet in
Rome next spring to renew their vows.
Merkel likes that —
her grudge against Britain was that its relationship with the EU was
framed too much as a contract — and she will fight hard behind the
scenes to help Renzi win a constitutional referendum later this year.
“The Mediterranean now carries more weight than the Channel,” a
proud Italian headline said the other day. Renzi, if he survives,
will be put in the driving seat of southern Europe, dealing with the
migrants and playing a lead European role in stabilising Libya.
It is, however, the
central Europeans who are the coming force. Viktor Orbán, the
Hungarian prime minister, sees Brexit as a golden opportunity to
argue his case for a return to national and regional action rather
than intrusive rule from Brussels. He is not alone in central Europe
in predicting that the Turkish migration deal with the EU will fall
apart. The answer, he says, is not a system of compulsory quotas for
taking in migrants, but a reinforcement of the Schengen zone’s
external borders. Hungary is about to build a second wall on its
frontier, and works with its neighbours to plug weak spots.
The answer, Orban says,
is not a system of compulsory quotas for taking in migrants, but a
reinforcement of the Schengen zone’s external borders.
On October 2 Hungary
will hold a referendum that will probably voice national opposition
to EU-imposed quotas. That will be a launch pad for further central
European demands for less Europe, more national sovereignty.
According to Orbán, the European dream has moved from the west to
the east, and it’s a very different one. Merkel does not much like
him, but no matter: he’s a truth teller. He was right to pronounce
the death of multiculturalism as a political ideology. Right, too,
that migrants are heading in our direction because Europe is
perceived as being rich but weak.
These are Europe’s
problems and it seems that they are no longer ours. If we can think
of solutions, we tell ourselves, nobody is likely to listen. Yet
however EU membership may chafe at the collar, its elites are at
least beginning to conduct the big debates. We are living, says the
think-tanker Mark Leonard, in an interregnum, the dangerous period
between the end of an old order and the establishment of a new one.
Worthy postwar institutions such as the EU, UN, even Nato, are
looking frayed; the very idea of globalisation, despite its many
merits, is being rejected on the streets and in parliaments.
Leaving the EU was a
recognition that we would never be able to reform it from within. But
the next step cannot be reduced to the mechanics of getting a good
exit deal. We need to start a proper conversation with ourselves
about nationhood and community, about where we really stand in the
world. And let’s listen more carefully to what is being said across
the Channel. We’re not the only ones in the throes of an identity
crisis.
Hungary ‘should be
kicked out of EU’
Europe’s cultural
divisions deepened yesterday after Luxembourg called for Hungary to
be kicked out of the EU because of the country’s hard stance on
Muslim refugees and migrants.
The row has further
poisoned relations between liberal western European countries and
eastern Europe three days before a crucial summit on the future of
the EU after Britain’s vote to leave in June.
Jean Asselborn,
Luxembourg’s foreign minister, demanded the suspension or expulsion
of Hungary over its authoritarianism and anti-migrant razor wire
fences on its Balkan borders.
“We
cannot accept that the EU’s fundamental values are being massively
violated,” he told the German newspaper Die Welt.
“Anyone,
like Hungary, who builds fences against refugees fleeing war or
breaches press freedom and the independence of the justice system
should be temporarily, or if needed, for ever excluded from the EU.”
He added: “The fence
that Hungary is building to keep out refugees is getting longer,
higher and more dangerous. Hungary is not far away from issuing
orders to open fire on refugees.”
Since taking office
with a huge parliamentary majority in 2010, Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s
nationalist prime minister, has repeatedly clashed with the EU over
media regulation and controversial sackings of judges.
He further inflamed
western European liberals last week by describing Britain’s
referendum as a “fantastic opportunity” for a cultural
counter-revolution to roll back the EU’s commitment to welcome
refugees.
The European Commission
is exercising previously unused powers to confront Poland, which has
changed its constitution so that politicians can appoint judges. The
“rule of law mechanism” was drawn up after concerns that Hungary
undermined democratic norms when Mr Orbán was elected.
Mr Asselborn wants
those powers to be used against Hungary. He will also endorse EU
treaty change at the summit as a part of the debate on the future of
Europe, and proposes to make it easier to suspend the voting rights
of countries accused of human rights abuses.
“It
would be helpful if the rules would change so that the suspension of
membership of an EU country in future no longer requires unanimity,”
he said.
In three weeks Hungary
holds a referendum on EU quotas to relocate 160,000 refugees from
Greece and Italy. The measure was imposed, after German pressure, in
defiance of central and eastern European opposition.
Mr Orbán has
campaigned vigorously for a No vote with billboards blaming the EU
for last year’s migration crisis and the terrorist attacks in Paris
and Brussels that killed 162 people.
Péter Szijjártó, the
Hungarian foreign minister, called Mr Asselborn “an intellectual
lightweight” who “lives a sermonising, pompous and frustrated
life . . . just a few kilometres from Brussels” and accused him of
“working tirelessly to demolish European security”.
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