Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- El País's gallery of fotos of the Villar de Domingo García finds.
- Here and here are articles on the attempts by PM Sanchez to establish an administration.
- I've moaned about young people on motorised scooters on the streets and in the parks of Madrid. In brief, scooters meet Spanish localism and the result is chaos. Described by El País here.
- One plus of Brexit actually taking place is that it should mean the end of the career of Nigel Farage.
- Ursula von der Leyen will replace Jean-Claude Juncker as the president of the European Commission this autumn. A close ally of Angela Merkel and supporter of a Euro army will be the next president of the European Commission. Anyone ever heard of her? Oddly, Her nomination is so divisive in Germany that Mrs Merkel last night claimed that she had “abstained” on the appointment of one of her closest, most longstanding allies.
- Social democrats [and Spain] get Josep Borrell, currently Spain’s foreign minister, in the role of EU high representative for foreign and security policy. More here on this.
- Are your ears sufficiently curated?
- Celine Donne does fashion:-
The USA/Nutters Corner
Perhaps they both have second careers as comedians. They make me laugh anyway.
English v. Foreign languages
- See the article below on the 5 reasons why English speakers have problems with strange foreign lingos.
- Talking of things in 5's . . . The second article below provides British residents with tips on retiring early successfully.
Five reasons English speakers struggle to learn foreign languages
According to a recent survey co-ordinated by the European Commission, 80% of European 15-30 year olds can read and write in at least one foreign language. This number drops to only 32% amongst British 15-30 year olds.
This is not just because all European young people speak English. If we look at those who can read and write in at least three languages, the UK is still far behind. Only 8% of UK young people can do what 88% of Luxembourgish, 77% of Latvian and 62% of Maltese young people can do.
So what are the difficulties Britons face when learning other languages? Here are a few of the basics.
1. Objects have genders
One of the most difficult and bizarre things about learning languages such as French, Spanish and German – but also Portuguese, Italian, Polish, German, Hindi and Welsh – is that inanimate objects such as chairs and tables have genders, so they are masculine (he), feminine (she) or sometimes neuter (it).
There is no real logic to this – milk is masculine in French, Italian and Portuguese, but feminine in Spanish and German, but it still tastes and looks the same. In Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, gender is usually indicated by word endings (-o and -a), making it easier to learn, but sound changes in French have made genders rather opaque, and a real challenge for second language learners.
Interestingly, English used to have grammatical gender too, but this was basically lost in Chaucer’s time. There are still some remnants of it in English, though: the pronouns he/she/it are masculine, feminine and neuter, but he/she are now only used to talk about living things, not tables and windows (as they were in older stages of English).
Contrary to what you might think, languages don’t actually need gender. The gender-neutral singular pronoun they, has been much discussed of late, but many languages lack the equivalent of he/she, having only they(among them Turkish and Finnish). Other languages, notably Swahili and related languages, have many more genders – up to 18. French gender is easy by comparison.
2. Agreement is vital
Once you have memorised the fact that house is feminine and book is masculine, the next step is to make sure that all the adjectives, articles (the/a), demonstratives (this/that) and possessors (my/his) describing these words have matching gender and also indicate the difference between singular (one) or plural (more than one) ma belle maison(my beautiful house) but mon beau livre (my handsome book). Linguists call this “agreement” or “concord”, and it is very common, especially in European languages – but nonetheless quite tricky for English speakers, simply because they don’t really have it (any more).
Once again, English used to have this, but it has been almost completely lost. They still have a little bit of it left though: “this sheep is lonely but these sheep are not”, and we know that partly because of the word these, a “plural” demonstrative.
3. Just being polite
French has tu/vous, German has du/Sie, Spanish tu/usted, Italian tu/lei, but, in English, we just have plain old you. Linguists call this the “T-V distinction” (because of Latin tu/vos) and this politeness distinction is found in many European languages and well as in other languages (Basque, Indonesian, Mongolian, Persian, Turkish and Tagalog).
Essentially, there are two different forms of you depending on power dynamics, and every time you strike up a conversation, you need to choose the right pronoun, or risk causing offence. [Not if you are me]. This poses obvious difficulty for English speakers as there are no hard-and-fast rules about when to use the formal or informal form. [As implied, you can just ignore them]
In fact, usage has varied over time. In the past, pronouns were often used asymmetrically (I call you vous, but you call me tu), but western Europe increasingly uses pronouns symmetrically (If I call you tu, you can call me tu as well). In recent years, the polite forms have become less used in some western European countries (at least in Spain, Germany and France). That might mean that these languages could eventually change, but in the opposite way from English.
English also had thou/you until Shakespearean times, but the informal thou was eventually lost (and retained only by some dialects, for example in Yorkshire). Thou was also the singular form, just as tu/du are – used when addressing just one person. So, when English lost thou, it also lost the difference between talking to just one or more people. Languages like to fill in gaps like these, and many dialects have created novel plural forms: y’all, you lot, you guys, youse.
What’s interesting is that these forms are often themselves regulated by politeness. So, many people would use you with parents, you guys with friends and you lot with kids. When it comes to language, politeness is always there but, in some languages, it is a little more in your face. Once again, French, Spanish and German are not actually that complex in making a simple two-way distinction. They are nothing compared to languages like Japanese, which have bamboozingly difficult “honorific” systems.
4. Keeping track of case
Where German has der/die/des/dem/den/das, English has only the – and this poses considerable challenges for English speakers learning German. So why does German have all these different ways of saying the? This is the German case system which spells out the article the differently depending not only on whether it is singular or plural (see above), but on its function in a sentence (subject, direct object, indirect object, possessor).
English has case too actually, but only with pronouns. “I love him”, does not (alas) mean the same thing as “he loves me”. It’s not only the word order that’s different. I/he are the subject (nominative) forms and him/me the object (accusative) forms. They are also different from my/his, which are the possessive (genitive) forms. Once again, English used to be like German but it has lost most of its case system.
Articles, demonstrative and adjectives all inflected for case in Old English, so English speakers a few hundred years ago would have found German pretty simple. German is not alone in having case. Many European languages have case and it is also found in many unrelated languages (among them Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Dyirbal and many native Australian languages). In a sense, case gives us another way of keeping track of who is doing what to who. English speakers use word order for this function, but this is by no means the only option.
5. A matter of mood
This takes us to our final challenge, verbal inflection. Where English regular verbs have just four verb forms jump/jumps/jumping/jumped (which can combine with auxiliary verbs in certain ways as in “I have been jumping”), Spanish has a hefty 51 (I won’t list them all here). So Spanish (like Italian and German and to some extent French) is a richly inflecting language.
Verbs in Spanish (Italian, and French) change depending on tense (as in English), but also depending on aspect (the duration of an event), mood (the nature of the event) and person/number (the kind of subject they have).
This poses notorious problems for English speakers, especially when it comes to mood. The dreaded subjunctive indicates that something is not being asserted as true and this turns out to be difficult to learn when that is not an important distinction in your own language.
Once again, though, English itself used to be more like Spanish, French, Italian and German in this respect. Old English verbs also inflected for tense, person/number and mood. In fact the subjunctive remains an option for many speakers in examples such as: “I wish I were (or was) you” and: “It is vital that you be (or are) on time.”
Once again, then, English speakers a few hundred years ago would probably have been better linguists than Britons are now, as their language still had many of the features which pose difficulties for modern-English-speaking language students. Somehow I think it’s not really grammar that’s holding Britons back, though. With language, where there’s a will, there is always a way. The 2% of Britons who can read and write in more than three languages show that that’s true.
2. The ultimate guide to retiring young: five essential tips to enjoy the later years Laura Miller
Live fast, die young is a cheap (if not terribly attractive) retirement plan. Far better, if you can afford it, is to retire early, while still very much alive to enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Would you like to spend your later years cruising the Mediterranean, basking on a sun lounger atop a seaside terrace or enjoying slow days writing a best-selling novel? Then get planning now. Time is the best weapon you have in the fight against a miserable retirement bereft of the basics. All the more so if you aspire to spend your later years seeing the world.
A survey from the Share Centre, an investment broker, found that 71% of those asked put travel at the top of their retirement “to-do” list, with 23%planning to live abroad for at least part of the year. Round-the-world cruises are a popular retirement option.
And it's not just travel: with work set aside, hobbies can come into their own if you are able to afford them, whether that means taking up a new sport or making more time for your golf or horses. Other retirees use the extra time to fulfil ambitions such as doing postgraduate research.
All these things cost money and with pension ages rising, many fear they will have to work until they drop. Based on current annuity rates, to retire at 55 and enjoy a lifelong inflation-linked £20,000 income, you would need to have accumulated a pension pot of around £422,000, on top of a full state pension.
There are ways to crack the system, however. Here are five strategies to reach your dream sooner rather than later:
1. Ease yourself into retirement
Nearly half of Britons plan to glide into retirement by continuing to work part-time for as long as they can, either with their existing employer or in a new career.
This can be a good idea. It will enable you to pay less tax and enjoy lower working expenses, with an income coming in. If the mortgage is paid off, this may produce enough to live on without dipping into retirement savings.
A variation on this theme is to continue working full-time, but to negotiate with your employer an option to take regular sabbaticals. This allows the company to keep your expertise, while developing the careers of younger staff who will eventually replace you. It also gives you a trial run of retirement. Tom McPhail, head of pensions at Hargreaves Lansdown, the fund shop, said: “It can be a good idea to try out retiring to see if you like it, before burning all your boats. Sabbaticals give you time to pursue your ambitions without giving up all your salary for good.”
Under pension freedoms, cash can be withdrawn from your pension to fund any big adventures. But if you are still working, it may make more sense to use tax-free Isas, or where possible tax-free cash from your pension.
ATM-style pensions that allow over-55s to withdraw retirement money when they choose, while keeping the rest invested and growing, were a central selling point of the 2015 freedoms. But cash on demand comes at a cost – unless you know what you are doing. Stephen Lowe of Just Group, a pensions company, said: “Accessing the money is easy. Grasping all the future tax effects is much harder. “More than a million people are subject to stricter rules dramatically reducing the tax efficiency of pensions and increasing the potential for triggering charges.”
Take a penny more than your 25% tax-free cash and the annual total you can save back into your pensions with tax relief, including from your employer, drops by 90%. Exceeding it triggers a charge based on how much has been overpaid and your rate of income tax.
2. Save enthusiastically and young
Unsurprisingly, those who enjoy happy retirements paid for by a good pension have contributed more during their working lives, according to a report by the Pensions Policy Institute.
Healthy contributions emerged as the primary determinant of comfortable retirements from factors including charges, governance and security. So it is important to start saving early.
Royal London, a pension company, ran the numbers based on April 2019 figures. The full state pension is £168.60 per week or £8,767 per year, so to top this up to the desired £20,000 income you would need to find an extra £11,233.
The best inflation-linked annuity for a 55 year old today is 2.7% This means for an annual income of £20,000 you would need a total pot of £422,000. To reach that in today’s money, starting at age 25, will require a total contribution rate, including you, your employer and tax relief, of around 21.5% assuming a salary of £25,000. Bear in mind the current minimum under auto-enrolment is just 8%. Chris Noon, a partner at consultants Hymans Robertson, said: “If you are renegotiating salary with your current or new employer, try to get it to increase its pension contributions at the same time. It is a cheaper way for it to reward you anyway.”
More extreme methods are available. Eager hopefuls are being sold the dream of retiring early by "financial independence" gurus, who champion drastic cuts to day-to-day expenses in the cause of saving and investing enough to give up work decades before the traditional retirement age of 65 – even as early as your mid thirties. Experts say the reality of “extreme saving” means a beggarly existence for most. Find out if you could stick to this life hack.
3. Plan taking your pension cash carefully
You will make your money go further by thinking about how much you will need and when. Mr Noon said: “There are typically three phases of retirement. The first is ‘go-go’ when you are healthy and active and want to fulfil your dreams. The second is ‘slow-go’ when you’re still reasonably healthy but less active. “Finally, you may hit ‘no-go’, where you are not so healthy or active. Income needs will typically reduce over time, so factoring this in at the start can help enable you to retire earlier.”
Experts say pension funds are the last money you should spend in retirement. Using cash and Isas first allows you to keep your pension invested and growing, giving you more in the long run.
Moving money from a pension into a bank account rarely makes sense. Pension freedoms have liberated millions of savers once forced to take whatever payouts they were given by retirement firms. But four years on, fears that people would blow all their savings on Lamborghinis are being replaced by calls to stop the wave of over-55s who swap lucrative investments for bank accounts that pay next to nothing.
You can boost your pension further by buying your retirement income as cheaply as you can. Topping up your state pension can be a much cheaper way of buying income than purchasing an annuity.
The full new state pension is £168.60 per week, and requires at least 10 qualifying years paying national insurance (NI) contributions, although they do not have to be consecutive years. This means 10 years in work paying national insurance, getting NI credits if unemployed, ill or a parent or carer, or paying voluntary NI contributions
Anyone with a gap in their national insurance record for any year from 2006/07 to 2015/16 under the new state pension system has until 5 April 2023 to fill those gaps. Sir Steve Webb of Royal London and a former pension minister, said: "For many people, topping up their state pension through paying voluntary NI contributions can produce a good rate of return because the cost of doing so is subsidised by the government.”
It doesn’t make sense for everyone however, so check your entitlement at the DWP Future Pension Centre.
Including the state pension in all planning can help maximise your income in early retirement. Mr Noon recommended buying a bridging pension to fill the gap between retirement and the state pension kicking in, rather than a maximum whole-of-life annuity, which will pay the same throughout retirement.
Using “income drawdown” in the early years can also provide a higher immediate income than buying an annuity. It is riskier, though, as you will need to ride out market volatility. Buying an annuity later in life can also save money because it will pay out for less time, meaning more per year. But you forgo the pension you would have enjoyed while you wait.
4. Make the most of tax breaks
Jonathan Watts-Lay of Wealth at Work, which provides financial education, fears that people spend too much time worrying about the size of their pension and too little about minimising tax they pay in retirement. “If you can avoid a 20% tax-slice, then you have just boosted that chunk of money by 25%,” he said.
A quarter of your pension pot can be withdrawn tax-free, but after that it is subject to income tax.
But when it comes to tax, not all pension withdrawals are made equal.
How much tax you pay, annually and over your whole retirement, depends on differences that could mean a bill 200 times higher, the Pensions Policy Institute has found. Savvy pensioners can live tax-free by using a few tricks.
And for those still working who want to carry on paying into a pension, there are ways to keep the taxman at bay while using your retirement savings like a bank account to make flexible withdrawals and also paying up to £40,000 a year into your pot.
By combining income from a taxable source such as a pension with tax-free income from an Isa, pensioners can make the most of their personal allowances and basic-rate income tax band, allowing them to avoid higher and even basic-rate tax.
5. Don’t forget property
Moving to a cheaper property, region or even country can help you fulfil your dreams. Alternatively, a prime property will provide scope for “equity release” – releasing cash from your home – in later life should you find yourself house rich and cash poor.
During the last three months of 2018 a record £136 of housing wealth was unlocked every second using equity release. The total for the year was £3.94bn, taken by 46,000 new customers, an increase of 25% on 2017.
Equity release allows homeowners to release cash from their property without having to move. Borrowers can take the money in a lump sum, as drawdown or as a home reversion plan. A drawdown plan allows borrowers to take small amounts at different times up to a limit, whereas a lump sum involves taking out the entire amount all at once.
The language used by equity release firms in television adverts is inviting: "Access the value of your home, tax-free". But just how safe is hollowing out the value of your property? Telegraph Money has created a guide to the pros and cons.
People considering equity release must get professional financial advice beforehand.
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