Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, April 03, 2019

Thoughts from Galicia, Spain: 3.4.19

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
            Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain

  • There are several Republican symbols in Madrid that survived the Franco era.The Local writes on them here.
  • With the EU now in the Brexit driving seat and totally free to impose conditions for an Article 50 extension, some are predicting that one of these will be that there are sovereignty talks with Spain over Gibraltar. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if there were.
  • There's a Spanish web page called Napflix. 'Nap' of course means siesta and this is from the Home page:- Welcome to Napflix. We all know the feeling of insomnia. Your body wants to sleep but your mind is still awake and active. So how can we steady up our mind? Napflix is a parody video platform where you can find the most silent and sleepy content selection to relax your brain and easily fall asleep. Taking siesta to the next level. Check it out here. And note that the one of rain falling lasts for over 2 hours.
  • An interesting new shop in Madrid.
  • I mentioned yesterday the need to fill your 2018 tax declaration on line. Here's The Local with some timely advice on this challenge.
  • My siblings and I are selling our mother's flat. Our lawyer says it'll take 6-8 weeks, once we get all the papers together over the next week or so. Here in Spain, it could be done inside 2 weeks. Possibly even 1. No lawyers are involved, usually. Only the state-employed notary. Though foreign buyers are (very) well advised to use a local lawyer. Preferably an honest one.
Local News. All about cars. 
  • Car sales in Galicia in Q1 were well down on last year. Significant?
  • A woman was arrested this week when driving a car without tyres on 2 wheels. Over the alcohol limit, of course.
  • The reinforced car of the long-time ex president of Galicia, Sr Fraga, was recently put on sale for €10,000. No one wanted it.
Brexit, the UK and the EU
  • So, Mrs May wants Labour to help her get a softer Brexit and thus avoid an early No Deal crash-out. This would include a 'customs union'. As one Conservative MP said last night: We're delegating the decision-making to the man we’ve spent 4 years saying isn’t fit to govern. You couldn’t make it up. However contentious the first part of this sentence is, the second part is undeniably true. The madness suddenly got madder. Reminding me of this.
  • As for a customs union without staying in the common market, this is a chimera. A unicorn.  A fantasy. An illusion. Cloud cuckoo land. Take your pick. See the first article below for why I say this.
The EU
  • Hard to argue with this: The European Union is close to a diplomatic and political triumph. Against all the odds it may be able to conclude its negotiation with the UK achieving everything it could possibly have wanted. A situations made possible by the grisly errors of the inept hard Brexiteers. Richard North - a Brexiteers don't forget - would surely agree with this assessment.
The UK
  • I've more than once cited the book Watching the English by Kate Fox. One of her main themes is that the English are socially inept. I thought of the book last night when reading these comments on a famous personality: Alan Partridge is more than just a comedy character. He is an expression of Englishness. Specifically, he is an expression of English social awkwardness.
  • Failure is the cornerstone of UK comedy. As a nation we love to watch depressed people struggle on through unimproveable situations that we've been in ourselves. And for many of us, there is no failure more profound or painful or recognisable than a social failure. What elevates Partridge to iconic status is not just that he encompasses this level of total social failure as a human being - it’s that he always tries to rectify it.
  • BTW . . . If you are or remain socially inept, you're not going to survive in Spanish society. Unless you  choose to live as a hermit in one of the country's many abandoned villages.
The USA
  • Fart has several golf courses around the world. In all of their clubhouses, he hangs framed copies of the front cover of Time Magazine from when he was voted its Man of the Year. Just one thing: Trump has never actually been Time Man of the Year. The pictures are fakes. He is literally decorating his establishments in fraud. A maniac. But is this perhaps not fitting for the leader of a Mad, Mad World?
The World
  • I should add to my comments on English social inadequacies that Finnish friends tell me that their compatriots are even worse. Some readers might recall the cartoons I posted from a book on this theme which they'd kindly given me.
  • Want to know if you're part of the 'flat white' segment of the economy? See the second article below.
Social Media
  • The invasion of privacy etc.  . . .With the peerless, messianic arrogance for which his industry is famed, Zuckerberg's  conclusion really does seem to be that this is more a problem of governments than his. Worse still, maybe he’s right.
Spanish
English
  • Odd Old Word: Caputpurgia: 'Cleansers of the head'.
Finally . . .
  • My domestic zoo is one kitchen-mouse less. Now to check the (humane) mole trap . . .
THE ARTICLES

1. Why it's pointless for Parliament to obsess over customs unions: Juliet Samuel, Daily Telegraph

After months of posturing, Parliament has at last seized control and MPs are relishing the chance to issue orders on how they think Brexit should be done. The top item on their wish list, if and when they can finally agree on it, is likely to be the negotiation of a permanent EU-UK customs union.

It sounds straightforward enough. As MPs are about to find out, however, there is nothing straightforward about it. In fact, the whole customs union debate is actually a perfect example of why it is that we entrust governments, and not legislatures, to negotiate international treaties on our behalf. Quite simply, Parliament is not institutionally capable of doing so.

A customs union is an agreement to eliminate tariffs between two trading blocs and to set the same tariffs on their external border. The aim is to reduce trade barriers between the members of the union. This much we know. But beyond that, it leaves an awful lot of detail up in the air.

Advocates of a customs union with the EU, led by the Europhile battle-axe Ken Clarke, argue that it is the only way to ensure an “open border” that facilitates easy trade and avoids the need for a hard border in Ireland. The motion he tabled yesterday, rejected by a majority of three, demands “a commitment to negotiate a permanent and comprehensive customs union”.

A rival motion, tabled by Nick Boles, similarly demands “a comprehensive customs arrangement” to last until the two sides replace it with “alternative arrangements that maintain frictionless trade”. From the debate, you get the impression that a customs union achieves fully open trade between the UK and EU. In fact, it is a rather vague, catch-all phrase that guarantees nothing of the sort.

Even if the Government were to roll over today and agree to seek a customs union as Clarke wants, there would still be three important unknowns. The first is the question of what administrative burden companies will still have to carry. The second is how many checks were still needed at the border. The third is whether we would benefit from any new trade deals Brussels signs.

The point is that there can still be friction inside a customs union. The union between Turkey and the EU requires companies to obtain an “ATR certificate”, costing about £50, proving a shipment isn’t subject to tariffs, and requires filling in a customs declaration and undergoing checks on the border. Under Boles’s plan for the UK to stay inside the single market, these checks could be cut down, but whether or not they are abolished entirely is still up for negotiation.

Meanwhile, a major Turkish bugbear with the customs union is that when the EU signs new trade deals, with Japan for example, Turkey doesn’t automatically get the benefit of them. Japan is free to export to Turkey, but not vice versa.

The irony is that the Withdrawal Agreement that Parliament has already rejected three times actually goes further in reducing trade friction than any of the motions MPs are tabling. In the Irish backstop, the treaty specifically states that the UK and EU would keep customs checks to a minimum and conduct them away from borders as much as possible, requiring both sides to be minimal in the paperwork and friction they impose. Even more than that, the UK has specifically negotiated wiggle room that would enable Britain to protect its market if its companies weren’t getting the benefit of new EU trade deals. After demands by British negotiators, the wording of the Irish protocol was deliberately worded so as to afford Britain this protection (for the geeks: it’s in Article 3.2a of Annex 2, which prohibits lowering tariffs, but does not raising them).

In other words, nothing that Parliament is trying to achieve in its motions would guarantee more “frictionless” trade than the one already negotiated. Even if MPs order the Government to seek a “comprehensive customs union” and Number 10 successfully does so, it doesn’t necessarily achieve this aim. Only detailed negotiations, involving administrative arrangements between customs and border agencies, can actually deliver “frictionless trade”.

Ultimately, this highlights the utter pointlessness of the exercise MPs are engaged in. There is a reason why our constitution, and that of any sensible state, outsources trade negotiations to the executive. Legislatures aren’t cut out to conduct talks like this, because they don’t have the time or expertise to bury themselves in the details of border administration and customs forms.

It makes no sense to work out a trade deal directly with a legislature: Just imagine the spectacle of talks grinding to a halt every hour so that 650 MPs could vote on whether ATR. 1 forms should be required for French apples or whether a new number-plate recognition system at Dover will streamline traffic sufficiently. The idea is totally absurd.

It is especially idiotic when you realise that the deal the Government has negotiated already goes further than the vague motions tabled in Parliament. The current deal suggests we would stay in a customs union unless or until trade can be frictionless without one. By definition, there is no advantage to going further than this, unless you have a fetish for permanently outsourcing trade policy.

The more honest MPs already admit this. They acknowledge that, in order to achieve the things they want, like single market membership or a permanent customs union, they will first have to ratify the existing Withdrawal Agreement.

The “best” their votes can achieve, as they know, is a change to the “political declaration” – the non-legally binding element of the existing deal. So their expressed wishes will have no legal force, even if they are backed up in UK statute. They are purely political acts of grandstanding aimed at cutting down the Government’s room for manoeuvre and enabling MPs to claim victory. This is particularly pointless given that the next stage of the talks will almost certainly be conducted under a new prime minister, who may not feel bound by Theresa May’s mistakes.

The real aim, of course, is to string out the process and ultimately, to undo the referendum result. Under the guise of “providing certainty”, MPs are doing the opposite. They are wrecking our constitution and conducting an assault on democracy. Businesses won’t thank them for it.


2. Pets, plants and other tell-tale signs you're part of the 'flat white economy’: Charlotte Lytton, Daily Telegraph.

A cosy room, comfy chair, an array of drinks and snacks at arm’s reach – no, this isn’t a millennial’s house, but their adopted office where, thanks to a combination of flexible working and not being able to afford the heating bills in their own home, they are fuelling the ‘flat white economy.’

This sector (so-called after the less-frothy coffee beloved of hipsters) is now the largest driver of Britain’s economic output, overtaking even the current manufacturing boom, according to analysis of official data by Douglas McWilliams, deputy chairman at the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

The think tank’s report cited east London’s Silicon Roundabout – where hi-tech companies cluster – as the hub where macchiato-swigging millennials come to roost (or is that roast?), spawning myriad digital and creative businesses.

Yes, it’s easy to poke fun at their hand massaged oat ‘mylk’ and artisanal bicycle baskets. So, so easy. But from the lavish to the ludicrous, their spending habits are helping prop up the nation. Here’s how…

Buying. Endlessly

From fast fashion to tipsy online shopping, the unlikelihood of ever being able to afford a house deposit means young people are more willing to spend on fripperies instead.

Almost 60 per cent of under-37s have made a purchase while under the influence, with the average spend being (a troublingly high) £182.39.

Have the Silicon Roundabout flat white-slurpers not yet dreamt up a way to put a cap on late-night digi-purchases? Though, if these sozzled spends are halting Britain’s backslide into the red, perhaps we should let them continue.

Going plant-powered

It’s not just rejecting rib-eyes for cauliflower steaks: the 23-37-year-olds among us are increasingly horticulturally-inclined – you’d have to be, with most city-dwellers having only a Lilliputian ‘yarden’ for green space.

The UK garden market is now worth more than £5bn annually: “if we want the market to continue to grow, the entire industry needs to make sure that we help millennials to garden how they want,” says Gary Philpotts, chairman of the Common Sense Gardening initiative, who added that this cohort’s interest in the hobby has risen by almost a third.

Boosted, no doubt, by the likes of Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss and Alexa Chung posting their plant pottering on social media. Hashtag flower power, or something.

Going the distance

For those not fixed gear bicycle-inclined, access to a shared vehicle is a must. Make no mistake, that’s not a bus, but one of the on-demand cab companies such as Uber, Lyft and ViaVan, that can be summoned to your doorstep at the touch of a button.

Maybe this is another sign of the ‘affordable luxury’ millennials are so keen on. They go to more far-flung destinations, forking out an annual £150bn globally on tourism (last year even saw the launch of a millennials-only cruise ship), but spend three times less on accommodation than baby boomers once they get there. Proof, perhaps, that there is such a thing as being savvy and spendthrift.

Discarding plastic

Discarding as in reusing and recycling environmentally unfriendly objects, that is, not just throwing them in the regular bin like a planet-hating heathen. And it’s not just bottles and bags – now payment is possible at the touch of a phone or smartwatch, credit cards are fast becoming as obsolete as cash. A good thing for cutting down on the synthetic polymers required for our ‘paper’ money, perhaps; less handy when your battery flatlines at the Sainsbury’s self-checkout. How will we buy our cashew cheese now??

Hidden fur-gendas

British millennials are second only to their Greek counterparts in suffering the biggest pay squeeze in the developed world, according to a report last year from the Resolution Foundation, which found that those born around 1980 earn 13% less than those who were at the same stage of life in 1970.

And so a quandary has emerged for many: pets, or parenthood? In the United States, 75% of millennials own a dog compared to half of the general population. They’re not just a lot cheaper than a baby; photo-friendly pets can pull in lucrative social media, film and book deals, meaning they might actually make you money, versus the cost of caring for a human.

No, they won’t look after you in old age, but they will greet you at the front door more enthusiastically than a person (one you’ve spawned or otherwise) ever could.

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