Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- Surprisingly - to me, at least - Spain doesn't figure in this list of the Top 20 countries as regards 'brand image'. Less surprisingly is that, thanks to Brexit, the UK has suffered a large fall from 12th to 19th place:-
Norway +4
Switzerland -1
Sweden =
Finland +8
Germany -3
Denmark +2
Canada -3
Austria +1
Luxembourg =
New Zealand =
United States -5
Netherlands +3
Italy +4
Australia -7
UAE +3 [???]
France =
Singapore -4
United Kingdom -7
South Korea =
- BUT . . . The days of Spain playing a bit role in Brussels are finally coming to an end. Madrid has a great opportunity to shape EU politics and policies over the next 5 years. . . . Madrid is finally learning how to play the EU game. This is especially important now that Spain seems set to become a net contributor to the EU budget. More on this here.
- Meanwhile . . . . How to deal with the problem half of Spain will have from today . . . here, here and here.
- Richard North on the 'plans' of Johnson and Hunt: Neither of these is a serious proposal offered by serious men. They do not take us any further forward and do not deserve to be treated seriously. Nor will they be [by the EU]. Whether leavers or remainers, we deserve better than these cretins, whose delinquent approach to such a vital subject is a colossal betrayal of the nation.
- The Times: If Tory leadership contenders are serious about crashing out of the EU, they need to be honest with the public about what this would mean for trade. Fat chance, I would have thought. But the Times is slightly more optimistic than me: There are signs that the intensity of the leadership contest may yet bring clarity to a public debate that has until now been shamefully lacking.
- Offence archaeology, the dark art of online excavation to uncover long-forgotten offensive comments or unorthodox views in order to have a person ‘cancelled’, as the young now call it, is big business. It’s not just the already-famous who are under scrutiny. Just this week, a grandfather has been sacked from his job in a supermarket for sharing a sketch on Facebook after a colleague complained it was Islamophobic. . . . Regardless of who it is directed at, offence archaeology is an ugly practice. It assumes the worst in people and unscrupulously takes comments out of context. . . . The demand for social media purity suggests not just that we are intolerant of people who hold different views from ours but that, more significantly, we have swapped intellectual risk taking for the dull security of conformity. It seems we no longer have room for the quirky, the idiosyncratic or the eccentric genius. See the full article below.
- Useless men: See the second (amusing) article below on the application, in the UK, of new rules on how men and women can be portrayed in ads.
- Word of the Day: Fuego
- Half a hat off to this guy . . . At an English fete, a mime artist - swathed head to toe in check cloth - offered a £100 prize if he could be identified correctly. But the self-styled "Mystery Man" literally turned out to be a mystery when he vanished after pocketing an estimated 300 quid in cash. Not a scam you could pull off twice, I imagine
1. Our obsession with 'offence archaeology' is robbing young people of a carefree childhood: Joanna Williams, the Daily Telegraph
Whether directed at sixth-formers or celebrities, scouring online to find offensive views is an ugly practice
Exams are over and school is – almost – out for summer. But there is no slacking off for anxious teens worried about university places and future careers.
According to a new report from the LSE, growing numbers of young people would prefer to delete their social media accounts altogether, concerned that someone, at some point in the future, might poke around and find something inappropriate.
Silly photos, jokes with classmates, hastily expressed opinions and arguments that got out of hand: all must be purged. The risk of public shaming or opportunities being rescinded makes hitting delete imperative.
Sadly, these teenage fears are not irrational. Offence archaeology, the dark art of online excavation to uncover long-forgotten offensive comments or unorthodox views in order to have a person ‘cancelled’, as the young now call it, is big business.
Last year, Toby Young was forced to step down from an appointment to the Office for Students following the discovery of his past fondness for tweeting the downright idiotic.
In Roger Scruton’s case, offence archaeologists similarly trawled through academic papers and published essays in search of phrases that could be used to justify cries of ‘I’m offended!’. After initially holding out against his sacking, the government caved to the naysayers when Scruton's remarks were selectively quoted in a New Statesman interview, removing him from public office shortly afterwards.
It’s not just the already-famous who are under scrutiny. Academics have been hauled before disciplinary committees to account for social media posts challenging new ways of thinking about gender. Just this week, a grandfather has been sacked from his job in a supermarket for sharing a Billy Connolly sketch on Facebook after a colleague complained it was Islamophobic.
Regardless of who it is directed at, offence archaeology is an ugly practice. It assumes the worst in people and unscrupulously takes comments out of context.
One line taken from a conversation or a joke between friends may bear little relation to its intended meaning. Ransacking social media in search of something outrageous allows those pointing the finger to avoid difficult arguments while simultaneously assuming the moral high ground. It’s disreputable and dishonest. So today’s teenagers who have grown up on social media are perhaps right to be concerned about their digital footprint. But their worries are a sad reflection on the state of the adult world.
Over several decades, grown-ups have colonised and shrunk children’s access to the real world. We impose curfews and restrictions on them, driven by fear of traffic, or predatory paedophiles, or shame at not being thought a sufficiently-diligent parent. Alternatively, we cram our children’s evenings and weekends with supervised playdates and improving activities. The days of kids calling for friends to hang out together in parks or on street corners are largely over.
The attraction of social media for teenagers is that they can create a space free from adult interference where they can make friends, experiment with who they want to be and share jokes and wacky opinions. Whether on or off-line, it is vital teenagers be allowed this.
No one emerges into adulthood with a fully-formed range of woke opinions. We all need to be able to take risks, test the boundaries, experiment and make mistakes.
Unfortunately our censorious and unforgiving culture no longer seems able to tolerate young people’s transgressions. Kyle Kashuv survived last year’s shooting at his school in Parkland, Florida, and went on to win a place at Harvard. Now, following the revelation of racist Facebook posts he made aged 16, Harvard have rescinded their offer. The fact that Kyle says he no longer holds these opinions and regrets making the posts is of no importance.
Our inability, as adults, to recognise the impetuousness of youth and to forgive mistakes tells young people that they must constantly watch what they say, that they are being socialised into a world where mistakes are no longer permissible.
Teenagers feeling compelled to delete their social media accounts means we have successfully robbed them of the space to express outlandish, outrageous and perhaps even wicked thoughts. As a result, they are denied the opportunity to gauge the reaction of their peers, modify their views and sometimes change their minds.
The demand for social media purity suggests not just that we are intolerant of people who hold different views from ours but that, more significantly, we have swapped intellectual risk taking for the dull security of conformity. It seems we no longer have room for the quirky, the idiosyncratic or the eccentric genius.
Of course, something else entirely may be happening. Being a mother to three teenagers means I am all too familiar with their devious ways. They may well talk, straight-faced, of deleting social media accounts all the while having simply moved to new adult-free platforms with ramped-up privacy settings. At least I hope so.
2. Don’t ban the Philadelphia ad… dads really are dopey: Allison Pearson, Daily Telegraph.
I am sad to report that a fundamental human right is under threat. The right, that is, of women to laugh at men and, of course, vice-versa, although there is so much less material because women are always sane and right, aren’t we, ladies?
An advert for Philadelphia cream cheese that portrays dads as a bit dopey could become the first to be banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) under its new gender stereotype rules. The ad in question shows two first-time fathers who get so distracted by eating cheese that their babies end up on a conveyor belt of Philadelpia on toast. A full 32 complaints have been made about this scandalous and grossly unfair portrayal of male ineptitude. A spokesperson for the ASA says: “Complainants have challenged whether the ads break our new rule banning harmful gender stereotypes by implying that fathers are not capable of caring for babies as well as mothers.”
Is Dopey Dad really “a harmful gender stereotype”? In which case, I must have made up that incident 18 years ago when I got home from a work trip, the door opened and Himself was standing there holding our baby son, who was contorted into a rather hunched position. On closer inspection, this turned out to be because Daddy had dressed our offspring in one of his big sister’s doll’s outfits.
“Darling, Tom’s wearing a Baby Annabell outfit,” I said.
“Is he?” he said amiably. “You know, I thought it was a bit small.”
Dopey Dad or harmful gender stereotype? Hmm, give me a minute to think about that.
In the interests of fairness, I asked several friends for their best father-child stories. One said her husband had taken their daughter out for lunch. Just as the little girl announced she needed the loo, daddy’s burger arrived. Given the choice between child safety and food, guess which Daddy chose?
“Florence went to the loo all by herself and she was only four,” my friend recalls. “When she came out, she took the wrong turn, went up some stairs and wandered into a hen party. Luckily, the bride-to-be managed to track down my husband, who was totally oblivious and still eating his burger. It took me months to forgive him.”
Such stories are hardly unusual. Prime minister David Cameron, you may recall, left his daughter Nancy in a pub. Another friend tells me that her husband reassured her one evening that their two small sons had already had dinner. At midnight, she was shaken awake by Sam who wailed that he was hungry. “Please can I have dinner, Mum?” Daddy, the child explained, “bought us sandwiches and crisps”, but they got locked in the car.
I am not saying that men can’t take care of small children. I am saying that, as a rule, men are not used to putting their own needs second, they are quite casual about safety and hygiene and all the stuff women are fanatical about, and if cricket or football are on, they are rendered deaf and blind to anything else, including a dirty nappy or a house fire. Oh, and they have a very poor grasp of what constitutes appropriate clothing. Like Matt, who gave in one morning and let his tantrumming daughter wear a bikini top and tutu skirt to school. Fine, you might think, but not on the day Her Majesty the Queen was making an official visit.
Matt wouldn’t have clocked that Royal visit, of course. It was on a letter in the book bag. Has a man ever read a letter from school in the book bag? Not on purpose, no. We leave that to Mummy.
Sorry, you are never going to convince me these are gender stereotypes that can be ironed out of the human condition by banning certain advertisements. This is just how most people are. I notice that the ASA ban covers adverts that depict a man or a woman “failing to achieve a task specifically because of their gender such as a man’s inability to change nappies or a woman’s inability to park a car”.
Well, I don’t know about you, but my inability to park a car is legendary, a much-loved family joke. Do I think Himself can reverse backwards at speed into a small space while I try the same space five times and then drive away mortified because, on average, the male has far better spatial awareness than the female? Yes, I do actually.
Not all women are bad parkers, not all men are good ones but, for the most part, the “stereotype” is true. Yet the ASA is forbidding advertisers from using that joke because the shrill demands of identity politics dictate that facts about male and female differences are suppressed to suit a political agenda.
Look, I’m really glad we’ve come a long way from the adverts of my childhood, when women were still tethered to the twin-tub and a lying voice crooned: “Now hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face with mild green Fairy Liquid.” Today’s TV ads show blokes doing the domestic chores and changing the nappies.
A big improvement, you might think – and yet, according to the Office for National Statistics, British women still do almost 60% more housework than men, and childcare remains a predominantly female preserve. We have all observed that phenomenon, pointed out in The Second Shift by Arlie Hochschild, whereby a man who does a bit more round the house than the average guy is viewed as “exceptionally helpful”.
“Oh, isn’t your husband marvellous with the kids?” may well be the most infuriating phrase known to woman.
I reckon Philadelphia cheese should fight back against the unsmiling ASA and its farcical gender stereotypes rules. Philadelphia’s only crime is to tell the truth about Dopey Dads, and give a lot of overburdened mums a good laugh to boot. In the enduring differences between masculine and feminine is the place where humour resides, and much of the fun of being alive, quite frankly.
Our obsession with 'offence archaeology' is robbing young people of a carefree childhood
Whether directed at sixth-formers or celebrities, scouring online to find offensive views is an ugly practice
Exams are over and school is – almost – out for summer. But there is no slacking off for anxious teens worried about university places and future careers.
According to a new report from the LSE, growing numbers of young people would prefer to delete their social media accounts altogether, concerned that someone, at some point in the future, might poke around and find something inappropriate.
Silly photos, jokes with classmates, hastily expressed opinions and arguments that got out of hand: all must be purged. The risk of public shaming or opportunities being rescinded makes hitting delete imperative.
Sadly, these teenage fears are not irrational. Offence archaeology, the dark art of online excavation to uncover long-forgotten offensive comments or unorthodox views in order to have a person ‘cancelled’, as the young now call it, is big business.
Last year, Toby Young was forced to step down from an appointment to the Office for Students following the discovery of his past fondness for tweeting the downright idiotic.
In Roger Scruton’s case, offence archaeologists similarly trawled through academic papers and published essays in search of phrases that could be used to justify cries of ‘I’m offended!’. After initially holding out against his sacking, the government caved to the naysayers when Scruton's remarks were selectively quoted in a New Statesman interview, removing him from public office shortly afterwards.
It’s not just the already-famous who are under scrutiny. Academics have been hauled before disciplinary committees to account for social media posts challenging new ways of thinking about gender. Just this week, a grandfather has been sacked from his job in a supermarket for sharing a Billy Connolly sketch on Facebook after a colleague complained it was Islamophobic.
Regardless of who it is directed at, offence archaeology is an ugly practice. It assumes the worst in people and unscrupulously takes comments out of context.
One line taken from a conversation or a joke between friends may bear little relation to its intended meaning. Ransacking social media in search of something outrageous allows those pointing the finger to avoid difficult arguments while simultaneously assuming the moral high ground. It’s disreputable and dishonest. So today’s teenagers who have grown up on social media are perhaps right to be concerned about their digital footprint. But their worries are a sad reflection on the state of the adult world.
Over several decades, grown-ups have colonised and shrunk children’s access to the real world. We impose curfews and restrictions on them, driven by fear of traffic, or predatory paedophiles, or shame at not being thought a sufficiently-diligent parent. Alternatively, we cram our children’s evenings and weekends with supervised playdates and improving activities. The days of kids calling for friends to hang out together in parks or on street corners are largely over.
The attraction of social media for teenagers is that they can create a space free from adult interference where they can make friends, experiment with who they want to be and share jokes and wacky opinions. Whether on or off-line, it is vital teenagers be allowed this.
No one emerges into adulthood with a fully-formed range of woke opinions. We all need to be able to take risks, test the boundaries, experiment and make mistakes.
Unfortunately our censorious and unforgiving culture no longer seems able to tolerate young people’s transgressions. Kyle Kashuv survived last year’s shooting at his school in Parkland, Florida, and went on to win a place at Harvard. Now, following the revelation of racist Facebook posts he made aged 16, Harvard have rescinded their offer. The fact that Kyle says he no longer holds these opinions and regrets making the posts is of no importance.
Our inability, as adults, to recognise the impetuousness of youth and to forgive mistakes tells young people that they must constantly watch what they say, that they are being socialised into a world where mistakes are no longer permissible.
Teenagers feeling compelled to delete their social media accounts means we have successfully robbed them of the space to express outlandish, outrageous and perhaps even wicked thoughts. As a result, they are denied the opportunity to gauge the reaction of their peers, modify their views and sometimes change their minds.
The demand for social media purity suggests not just that we are intolerant of people who hold different views from ours but that, more significantly, we have swapped intellectual risk taking for the dull security of conformity. It seems we no longer have room for the quirky, the idiosyncratic or the eccentric genius.
Of course, something else entirely may be happening. Being a mother to three teenagers means I am all too familiar with their devious ways. They may well talk, straight-faced, of deleting social media accounts all the while having simply moved to new adult-free platforms with ramped-up privacy settings. At least I hope so.
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