Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- I'm beginning to hate the folk at the Times Travel Section. Ensuring that their claim won't remain accurate, they've issued a list of 20 Best-kept Secret Places. These include the regions of Extramadura and Aragón, the Spanish cities of Segovia and Salamanca, the Portuguese city of Guimaraes, and the Cies Islands off Vigo. TBH, though, I'm only concerned about Extramadura, as all the other places are already well-frequented.
- It's a commonplace refrain in Spain that: I'm certainly not a racist. But I hate gypsies. Here's an interesting article on these (maltreated?) people.
- And here's a touching Spanish tale from the Beeb.
- Back to wild boars . . . Here in Galicia, they're a very significant cause of road accidents. There were around 2,500 involving them last year. Eat them all, say I.
- The EU parliament's Brexit Coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, admits the obvious - that Brexit has been a huge opportunity cost for the EU. For the Union, he says, it's high time we that we can spend our energy on more positive projects and on the in-depth reforms Europe desperately needs. Once can only speculate on what would have happened - or not - if this had been done years ago, when the UK was asking for it.
- Richard North today: The end result (so far): We are in a position where the Brexit debate is not only distorted by the staggering ignorance of its main players, but also by a continuous thread of dishonesty, in particular by attempting to downplay the consequences of a no-deal in order to justify blocking the Withdrawal Agreement ratification. Not content with that, there is that other strand of dishonesty – bordering on delusion - where MPs still believe (or expect) that the EU is somehow going to reopen negotiations on the backstop, despite being told endless times that this isn't going to happen. Yet, even that deceit is running aground as the attorney general has finally abandoned the fruitless attempts to negotiate a time-limit and a unilateral exit clause for the backstop. He is now said to be focusing on what is terms an "enhanced arbitration mechanism" that supposedly allows the UK or the EU to provide formal notice that the backstop should come to an end, employing an arbitration panel which operates outside the jurisdiction of the ECJ. Even if the EU was to accept this – which seems highly unlikely – his new stance means that the UK government has abandoned any attempt to modify the backstop.
- Just think . . . When this farce is finally brought to a conclusion, the same inadequates will start negotiating a trading relationship with the EU. Over 21 months. I suspect this will cause some folk to lose the will to live.
- From The English and Their History: In 1851, England was as religious as the USA is now. So, there must be hope that the far-right Christian Evangelists will eventually disappear from the scene.
- Comments from a social media moderator who gave it up:-
- This stuff is in my head. I’m never going to be able to get rid of the knowledge of so much hate.
- It’s the normalisation of nastiness that saps your faith in ordinary people, that affects your world view. It’s knowing that any story about something simple and nice is another excuse for people to be vile.
- Asked how we can make the internet a civilised space again, she replied:- I honestly don’t know, short of shutting it all down. People need to remember that the ones who are reading this stuff are human beings. What they say can hurt. But it’s hard to empathise through a keyboard.
Social media/Surveillance/Big Data
- If you're watching Bandersnatch on Netflix, you might want to know that they collect data on the narrative choices made by viewers.
- Amazon's Ring security camera system gives their R&D staff 'virtually unfettered access' to the video feeds of customers around the world.
- Words of the Day:- Troleo and infoxicante: As in: El troleo y otros males como praxis infoxicante. Trolling and a play on informatica(IT) and toxico, I guess.
- Odd Old Word: Mynning days: Days which used to be called month's mind and year's mind - Days on which the souls of the departed would be remembered and prayers said for them. By 1813, these were called anniversary days.
- I didn't know that Brazil was the biggest slave-trading country when efforts were being made to make the trade illegal. Logical I guess. It's pretty big. And had lots of plantations.
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