The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Remember the orang-utang Jesus in that church down in Borja? Well, they think they've found the picture on which the original fresco was based. Click here for more. And yet another laugh at the wonderful chapuza.
The Evil that Keeps on Staying: Transparency International has just issued its annual report on corruption. Spain, they say, is second only to Moldavia in Europe when it comes to this. Good, then, to see that the king has done his bit and said that this must stop. Just as well, as 80% of Spaniards or more see continuing corruption among their politicians, their guardians of the law, their business operators and even - would you believe - their judges.
An Evil to Come?: Is Spain about to be swamped by crystal meth, asks El País in English. God forbid.
THE SPANISH ECONOMY
That Deficit and Those Punishments: Need I say that Brussels - after deciding not to fine Spain for its nth failure to keep her deficit below the official max - has now announced that neither will it be following through on its threat to reduce subventions to Madrid. Instead, it's merely repeated its (toothless) demands for more cuts in government expenditure. One's forced to ask: What's the point of rules that every EU country except perhaps Greece breaks with impunity? Starting with Germany and France. What was that phrase? Oh, yes - moral hazard.
THE EU
Brexit/Flexit: How frustrating it must be for Richard North. At the end of this post is a Times article pushing, as innovative, exactly the transitional 'solution' that North has been proposing for years. And which is embodied in his comprehensive Flexit document. I look forward his response in his Euroreferendum blog tomorrow. Meanwhile, I can say that the article doesn't even mention either North or his Flexit plan.
France: Would you believe that presidential hopeful, Mr Sarkozy, has said that: The EU must transform itself and try to keep Britain in with a new treaty that gives everyone what they want: limits on immigration and restored powers to national governments. Of course, he's really only interested in France and worried about Madame Le Pen. Plus, he's a politician and might just not mean what he says.
ELSEWHERE
New Zealand: Another of those lunatic 'Christian' pastors attributes the recent earthquake there to God's wrath at homosexuals, etc. This guy is also one of those religious leaders who insists God wants him to be very rich. Is it not possible to apply a sanity test to people who get up in pulpits? Or just lock 'em up?
The USA 1: Recent events there - like similar things in Spain - have left me happy that the UK has neither a written constitution nor a constitutional court. They do appear to be troublesome in practice, if fine in theory. The irony, by the way, is that Britain has written many of the constitutions of those benighted countries which do have them.
The USA 2: Forty percent of the population doesn't see global warming as a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. And about the
same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand
years ago. And they're still entrusted with a vote . . .
GALICIAN STUFF
Renfe: This is Spain's national train operator. In the UK, you can easily buy your tickets with them on line using a debit or credit card. Here in Galicia - and quite possibly in the whole of Spain - you have to first to make a trip to a station and to register your card there. I'd experienced this a few years ago but was surprised it was still the case when a friend tried to buy a ticket on the net. The company, it seems, is still in the 20th century. Though the trains themselves are in the 21st. Mostly.
FINALLY
Animal Intelligence: I know a good bit about this as regards dogs. Especially border collies, as I've owned 3 of these. But I'm not very familiar with that of cats. All I can say is that the young cat I managed to get down from the top of my palm tree on Wednesday morning - after 2 hours of risky endeavour - was back up there yesterday morning. And will stay there until hunger drives him down. Or until he rots. That'll learn him!
THE GALLERY
The intellectually challenged cat . . . . Again:
ARTICLE
How May can break free
from Brexit muddle: Philip Collins
In the
three-dimensional game of chess beyond the looking glass the White
Queen believes six impossible things before Brexit. Her foreign
secretary is impossible with the Italians about trade in prosecco and
fish and chips, uses a rude word to the Czechs while being impossible
about the movement of people, and is upbraided by the Dutch finance
minister for talking impossible nonsense about a customs union.
Meanwhile, the prime
minister insists she has a plan for the country’s departure from
the European Union but refuses to say what it entails. Mrs May has
already had to listen, at PMQs, to a Tory MP ask if his Italian
parents will be permitted to stay. This is never going to last. There
are just too many impossible things here.
It is not unreasonable
for the prime minister to wish to keep her detailed thoughts secret.
A comprehensive wishlist would be an open invitation to critics to
denounce its contents and deplore what was missing. It would
inevitably, thanks to the trading nature of negotiating, ensure that
some of the wishes were denied. The published list would therefore
have to include dummy options that the prime minister was secretly
prepared to lose. Then she would be denounced, either for dishonesty
or for not bringing home the bounty promised.
None of this makes
silence a virtue. Representatives of the government had a hissy fit
about the Deloitte report leaked to The Times this week but its
contents brought a truth into the public realm: Britain’s process
for leaving the EU is a shambles, or “Mickey Mouse land” in
Kenneth Clarke’s phrase. The most complex task of postwar British
politics — at least 500 separate projects — is going to require
more civil servants than are employed across the EU. The official
forecast for next week’s autumn statement will set the bill for
Brexit at £100 billion over the next five years. The chancellor
hopes to hand out goodies for those who are just about managing —
the “jams” — but, as the White Queen knows too well, it is
going to be “jam to-morrow and jam yesterday but never jam to-day”.
There is an inescapable
sense of nobody taking back control. This is no great surprise,
really. The Leave campaign was recklessly cavalier about how easy
leaving the EU was going to be.
Disentangling Britain from a series
of legal treaties is not one event but many. The EU has about 50
international trade agreements from which the UK benefits, all of
which will now have to be begun again. It will be a mammoth task even
to replicate these arrangements, let alone improve on them. Maybe one
day Liam Fox will return triumphant from Bosnia-Herzegovina with a
new deal. Next stop Costa Rica, Mauritius the week after.
Mrs May needs to make
us think she has a plan and the best way to convince us is to have
one
Dr Fox cannot even
start until Britain’s relationship with the EU is settled. The laws
that frame the markets for financial services, employment,
restructuring and insolvency, data protection and intellectual
property have all been painstakingly drafted in chambers of the EU.
Pension law, competition, telecommunications and media are almost as
complicated. There are some bills, such as the Equalities Act, in
which some provisions refer to the EU and some do not. That’s not
to mention clauses whose parentage and application is a matter of
legal dispute. Somebody is going to have to go through all of it and
say yes or no to every clause. Every change will be the subject of
well-informed corporate and charity lobbying.
It is going to be
fabulously complicated. If the referendum question had only been “can
you really be bothered?” we would have voted to remain. This
negotiation can only be done badly in two years and it probably
cannot be done at all. “Divide a loaf by a knife: what’s the
answer to that?” asks the White Queen. On the current trajectory it
is likely that Britain will crash-land out of the EU in 2019 with no
completed deal. It’s hard to put a figure on how bad that will be
but make mine a large one. A crash landing is in nobody’s
interests, least of all the prime minister’s. It is bad enough that
she is inviting the charge of drift that could easily stick. Drift
could soon come to define the government and its leader.
It’s even worse,
though, to drift towards a cliff-edge. Mrs May needs to make us think
she has a plan and the best way to convince us is to have one. The
best answer is therefore to accept that half a loaf is better than
none.
Mrs May should signal
now that Britain will seek a transitional deal, prior to the
comprehensive terms on which departure from the EU will be sought. It
is entirely possible that Britain could successfully apply to the
European Economic Area (EEA), which is an agreement to secure the
free movement of goods, services, capital and people between Iceland,
Liechtenstein, Norway and the 28 member states of the EU. This would
permit us to opt out of those EU laws, such as fisheries policy,
which we found burdensome. We would have bought temporary certainty
on commercial and social policy. Crucially, we would also have bought
time to do a proper negotiation and Mrs May would have the scope to
play poker her own quiet way.
This does present
trouble politically, though. First, there is the minor problem of
explaining to Dr Fox what most people have realised already, which is
that his department is defunct. The bigger issue will be explaining
that EEA membership includes the free movement of people. The
abolition of free movement is the only European topic on which Mrs
May has not been inscrutable. There is a risk of being denounced by
those zealots who fear a temporary deal will end up being the basis
of a permanent settlement. That is still better than landing with a
thud in 2019. Mrs May will have to ask the people to take her bona
fides on trust. The 2020 general election would then become, in part,
a plebiscite on which team is trusted to replace the interim deal
with an enduring relationship.
The White Queen has the
great advantage of living her life backwards. She is given foresight
through the benefit of hindsight. The White Queen screams first and
only later pricks her hand on a brooch. Mrs May should be screaming
silently to herself right now as she stares into the looking glass.
If she wants to avoid the prick she needs a plan she can discuss in
public. At the moment she is pulling a fast one which is no cleverer
for the fact that she’s doing it so slowly.
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