There's naturally a
good deal of concern here in Spain – especially, of course, in the
South and East - about the impact of a Brexit on the tourism
industry. There's rather less concern, it would seem, about the property
market and almost no concern about the Brits living here. El País
addresses the issue here, in English. Hang on . . . HT to Lenox of
Business Over Tapas for the info in today's just-read bulletin that El Mundo
has an article on the impact on British residents. We're pretty
indignant, it seems. Lenox also cites this Guardian article on
impending Spanish doom post Brexit. Of course, no one knows what
Brexit will bring. Or even if it will take place. My own pure guess
is that the British public will be offered the chance to vote on
whatever deal comes down the track, and might well reject it. And so
breathe some life back into the EU project, currently moribund.
Meanwhile, you have to
laugh at the response of that pillock Juncker to the results of the
Dutch election. According to him, Europe has been saved from a
right-wing reaction. Which neatly ignores the fact that a very
significant percentage of the Dutch electorate voted for a populist
party of the right. And that the returned centrist party stole some of Gert Wilders clothes in order to stay in power, having been
given a golden opportunity to do so by the mad autocrat running
Turkey,
Talking of the EU . . . Don Quijones writes: As debates rage in
Europe over whether or not to take a two-speed or multi-speed
approach to post-Brexit integration, Germany rekindled interest in
the creation of a European Monetary Fund. But his/her headline is: There's an air of furtive desperation about the proceedings. Click here for more on this critical development.
There's an estimated
7,100 languages in the world and they're dying out at the rate of 2 a
month, it's said. And yet the total is actually increasing, as the discovery rate currently exceeds the mortality rate. Within
language, there's vocabulary, which is a lead-in to a new English
word for me – bism. This is defined as: Someone who is deliberately
irritating or annoying - a less harsh term than 'bitch' when this is
deemed inappropriate. And within vocabulary there's pronunciation . .
. When I was young, only the poorly educated said haitch for the
letter H, compared with aitch for the educated. Now it's commonplace,
if no longer common. And listening to a podcast yesterday, I heard
the novelist Will Self say ephEEmeral for ephemeral and remIT instead
of REEmit. Self has an exceptional vocabulary but one does wonder –
well, I do – where he gets some of his pronunciations from. A local
dialect? Hardly – he was born in the centre of London. Self has
been described as: that rarity in modern cultural life, a genuine
intellectual with a bracing command of words and ideas who is also
droll, likeable and culturally savvy. All true enough. But shame
about his occasionally bizarre pronunciation. Anyone would think he
was Dutch.
HT to my fellow
blogger, Trevor, for the news of a Galician kid who asked Google how
to see narcos free – meaning the movie – and was directed to a
local beach. Where, I guess, he could expect to see our
narcotraficantes (narcos for short) downloading cocaine from
speedboats. See here for the El Mundo report and here for reaction on something called Twitter.
Which reminds me . . .
The local press recently reported that, for 30 years now, Galicia has
maintained its status as Europe's main entry point for the white
powder. When I first came here, I read that our local smugglers
turned to this more profitable alternative when the EU compelled
Madrid to clamp down on cigarette smuggling. But I've since been told
this ain't true. Possibly.
The Sayings of
Ayatollah Khomeini: It's a tough choice but here's today's:- The West is nothing but
a collection of unjust dictatorships. All of humanity must strike
these troublemakers with an iron hand if it wishes to regain its
tranquillity. If Islamic civilisation had governed the West, we would
no longer have to put up with these barbaric goings-on unworthy even
of wild animals. Well, the poor man had been in exiled in France.
Today's cartoon:
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