I've
drafted this post between 6 and 7am on Brittany Ferries' flagship
boat, the Pont Aven. Despite numerous attempts, I've failed to get
the internet on either my Mac or my Samsung phone. And have now given
up all hope of doing this until I get to Santander in 4 hours' time.
They tell me I'm not alone but that some people have been able to get
access. However, they can't give me any explanation for this, beyond
the excuse that the at-sea internet service is supplied by a private
company in, probably, Finland. Very frustrating.
The
Guardian,
reporting on the trial of Spain's Princess Cristina and her husband,
avers that: The trial has done
little to allay public concern over the apparent ubiquity of
corruption at the highest levels of Spanish society. You
can say that again. Despite being found innocent of a crime, the
princess has been fined €265,000 for indirectly
and unknowingly benefitting
from her husband's malfeasance. I assume this is a civil offence. As
I say, I'm not sure there's anyone in Spain – least of all the
princess and her lawyer – who believes that she was unaware of what
was going on as her husband embezzled more than €6m. Where's that
gone, one asks, noting that he's only been fined €500,000.
As
we know, the AVE
high speed train Madrid-Galicia
route won't be operating until at least 2020, though the official
prediction remains 2018. In this light, it's amusing to read this bit
of info I found on my laptop last night, from the Voz
de Galicia
of 22nd of October, 2006.
In other words, more than 10 years ago:-
This is
the current situation with the various stretches:-
Santiago-Vigo:
Was promised for 2007, now 2009
Santiago-Ourense:
Should be finished in 2008
Vigo-Ourense:
Should be finished in 2010
Lubián-
Ourense: Should be finished in 2010 It’s in the tender phase but
there’s no budget for
works in 2007
Madrid-Lubián-Vigo:
The most optimistic forecast is sometime in 2010
Santiago-La
Coruña: Forecast to be completed by Dec 2011 [= 2012]
To this
info from the local newspaper, I'd added:-
Vigo-Cerdedo branch: No indication of when. Has been ‘under
study’ for 2.5 years
Vigo-Tui-Portugal ‘God knows’
All
these dates were hopelessly missed and the Madrid-Galicia line will
be operating, it's believed, a full 10 years later than the forecast
of 2010
provided in 2006. Which helps to explain the Spanish public's lack of
confidence in their government's statistics and forecasts. The last 2
lines mentioned - to Cerdedo and Tui/Portugal - have been completely
abandoned. Against that, I think all the tracks
except that that between Lubían and Ourense have now been laid, even
if we don't actually have AVE trains running on them yet. Just faster
versions of normal trains. But without the safety system designed for
AVE trains. Hence the tragic accident near Santiago a couple of years
ago. For which no government or corporate official will ever be found
accountable and punished.
On
to madness on a wider scale . . . . I also found on my laptop this
draft letter on Britain
and
the
EU,
penned by me in October 1999, just before I moved to Spain. But, as
far as I can recall never actually sent:-
Dear
Sir: The prolonged period of peace we are now enjoying is in danger of
becoming the Age of the Bureaucrat, as the exercise of power moves
relentlessly from great men and major issues to small men and little
issues. From leaders to focus groups.
This is
a global phenomenon, of course, but it seems to me that the UK has a
competitive disadvantage that is hastening its own relative decline.
In contrast to most other countries, we have a stable, largely
incorrupt bureaucracy which has taken more than 200 years to
establish its entrenched power in almost every facet of our daily
life. Its (rather self-serving) purpose is to create and implement
regulations to the letter, albeit fairly.
At a
time when - on a purely domestic front - we should be vigorously
fighting the trend towards greater bureaucracy and trivialisation,
what are we actually doing? Why, handing over power to a new but
larger and vastly more corrupt bureaucracy which doesn't operate at
all fairly and which is, in practice, totally unaccountable. And the
agent of this super-bureaucracy is our own home-grown bureaucracy,
peerless in its concern for the law and in its diligence. Is it,
therefore, any wonder that whole industries in the UK are suffering
greater depredations than elsewhere in Europe?
This is
suicide by a self-inflicted thousand cuts. We are the victims of our
own longevity, stability, integrity and law-abiding nature. Not to
mention our political blindness and pusillanimity.
Who
will lead the fight to slaughter the legions of well-intentioned
bureaucrats before it is too late? Not me, I'm off to live where the
infrastructures are less established and where the response to
domestic and international regulations owes rather more to common
sense and flexibility than it does here.
Yours
faithfully,
Interestingly,
the letter is signed by one of my pseudonyms - David
Collins.
I can't recall why.
All
of this is a nice lead-in to an article in the Business section of
yesterday's Daily Telegraph.
The headline to this is: Eurozone
peripheral nations paid a high price for single currency folly.
It seems that the experts now have the ability to model what would
have happened in these countries if they'd not entered the eurozone
and if there hadn't been the austerity that followed the euro-driven
boom of 2000-2007. In brief, these nations would be 17% better off in
GDP terms. Which helps to explain why the writer asserts: It
is increasingly obvious that it is by far the greatest self-inflicted
economic policy mistake ever made.
For which Greece, at least, will be paying the price for as far ahead
as one can confidently predict. Spain, on the other hand, seems to
have emerged reasonably strong from the mayhem caused by the purely
political decision to bring in the euro. At least if you only look at
the macro numbers, and ignore what's gone on down at the various
coalfaces. And is still going on.
By
overhearing someone, I've finally established that the way to get a
normal
white coffee at Costa
is to ask for a white Americano,
ignoring the fact that the essence of an Americano
is that it's black. What you get is said black coffee with a milk in
a tiny jug beside it. I guess it makes sense to someone.
At
least one of my readers contends I/we should stop obsessing about
Trump
and his crew.
In a Guardian
article here, entitled Trump
is a media troll – so let's stop feeding him,
Marina Hyde provides some support for this view, arguing that the
real issue is not how Trump regards or treats the mainstream media.
Nobody
in the world cares if a president is mean to journalists,
she says. It's
time of focus instead on his lies.
I agree.
Finally . . . . Another Bill Tidy cartoon:-
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