Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spanish Life- Info for Brits on post-Brexit healthcare.
- I cited the Spanish word for pranks/practical jokes recently - novatada - but it also (primarily?) means the sort of initiation ceremonies that take place in universities around the country. Here's something on these. BTW . . . I'm guessing that 'hazing' is American English for this.
- A judge has been suspended for handling her cases too slowly. Given the usual pace of justice here, this begs a few nice questions.
- More from the happy Aussie camper in Galicia. Interestingly, I've been writing about Galicia for 19 years and no one has interviewed me yet. Thought-provoking.
- Our mayor has announced that his next campaign will be against the 'ugliness' of some buildings and walls in the city. As a foreign couple commented to me last night, he should also give some thought to eradicating the blight of graffiti, in at least the old quarter.
- As I sat in pavement café yesterday morning, a chap went past on a bike at a sedate 10kph. To be followed by a (smiling) woman on an e-scooter doing at least 20kph. Both of them were moving faster than the cars on the road. At a much greater risk to pedestrians, of course.
- It's been suggested that the UK will finally give its 'legally-workable proposals' for a Brexit deal by Thursday of next week, 5 October. Whether this leaves enough time for 11th hour negotiations before the EU Summit on 17 October is rather doubtful. To say the least. But miracles do happen in Brussels from time to time.
- There's any number of Youtube videos on Ffart's latest travails. Here's Jimmy Kimmel with one of the more amusing ones. As he says: Trumps thinks we're idiots. And we are idiots. We elected an idiot as president.
- I've added a few adjectives to my list of those I've seen applied to Ffart. In bold here:-
A
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Arrogant, Autocratic, Alienating, Anti-intellectual, Angry, Abuser of women
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B
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Bullying, Boastful, Braggart, Belligerent, Bigoted, Blowhard, Bad-tempered
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C
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Chaos-creating, Clueless, Cheating, Combative, Child-like, Childish
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D
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Disruptive, Dishonest, Deluded, Divisive, Destructive, Disorganised, Devious, Disgusting, Despicable, Dangerous.
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E
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Exaggerator, Egotistical, Egocentric
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F
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Fox News-Obsessed, Follicly challenged, Fraudulent, Fantasist, Fast-food-Guzzler
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G
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Garrulous, Global-warming-denying, Gaffe-prone
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H
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Hyperbolic, Hateful, Heartless, Humourless, Hollow
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I
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Idiotic, Insulting, Insensitive, Irreligious, Incompetent, Inconsistent, Ignorant, Islamophobic, Inattentive, Insecure, Inimical, Incoherent, Illogical, Irrational, Intemperate, Inept, Impatient, Intimidatory, Insane?
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J
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Jealous
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K
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Kinglike, Kinky, Know-all
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L
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Liar, Lazy, Low esteemed,
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M
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Misogynistic, Media-obsessed, Menacing, Mad?
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N
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Nauseating, Narcissist, (White) Nationalist
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O
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Obsessive, Orange-hued, Obnoxious
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P
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Paranoid, Putin-admiring, Petty, Pussy-grabbing, Populist, Posturing, Pugnacious, Poseur, Philandering, Phony, Politically inexperienced, Psychologically suspect.
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Q
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Quixotic, Querulous
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R
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Russia-dependent, Rabble-rousing, Reckless, Racist, Resentful, Repulsive, Rapist
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S
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Short-attention-spanned, Self-centred, Self-obsessed, Stupid, Self-vaunting, Susceptible to flattery, Swaggering, Small-minded, Self-interested, Sleazy, Scumbag.
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T
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Twitter-obsessed, TV-obsessed, Tyrannical, Trade-disrupting, Threatening, Triumphalist, Thin-skinned, Temperamentally unsuited for the job
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U
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Unfriendly, Unfaithful, Unintelligible, Unreliable, Unwilling to listen, Unaware, Untrustworthy, Unpredictable, Undisciplined, Un-self-aware,
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V
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Vocabulary-deficient, Vengeful, Victim, Vain. Vulgar, Vindictive
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W
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Wearisome, Weird, Whoring, Worrying, Wrathful, Wrong-headed, War-mongering
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X
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Xenophobic
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Y
|
Yankee . . .
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Z
|
Zig-zagging
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I wonder if the world has ever seen anyone else displaying this appalling compendium of characteristics. Oh, and how his wife can stay married to him.
The Way of the World- As an ex-Catholic, I'm very aware of just how much the Church obsesses with death, most obviously of JC but also of its numerous garishly-despatched martyrs. So, I found it a tad ironic to read that the Vatican had accused Italy - after its constitutional court ruled that it was not always a crime to help someone facing intolerable suffering to die - of “spreading a culture of death”
- See the article below on the woman who doesn't want to be registered as the mother of the child born to her.
- Word of the Day: Desecho
- How about these coincidences around a family funeral I'm attending in the UK next week . . .
- My local good friend Fran(cisco) will be in the UK on the day of the funeral, 4 October.
- The funeral lunch will be in a Wirral village called Frankby, which means 'Frank's farm' in old Norse.
- Fran will be passing Wirral en route from Ruthin to Liverpool on the 4 October and will detour a little to take a look at Frankby.
- October 4 is the feast day of St Francis/San Francisco . . .
THE ARTICLE
No transgender parent should be able to airbrush their child's history: Judith Woods, Daily Telegraph
Calling all Archers fans! Have you heard about the latest au courant plot twist in this everyday tale of farming folk?
New parents Adam and Ian are only going to court to have their surrogate Lexie’s name taken off the birth certificate so that Ian can be legally registered as the mother. Well, he is taking a year off work, you know. What do you mean you don’t believe it? Might that be because even for a long-running radio soap that pioneered all things organic (Pat and Tony on the farm) and orgasmic (Sid and Jolene in the shower), this is just too stupid?
And you’d be right. Sometimes, life is far too ludicrous for art to even think of imitating.
That’s why I pity the High Court judge who had to sit with a straight face as they heard Freddy McConnell, a transgender man, argue that, despite giving birth to a baby, this incontrovertible biological truth should be struck from the record.
Freddy, 32, clearly feels he is some sort of social justice warrior. Excuse me while I roll my eyes.
A quick recap for those I’ve lost at the back: Freddy was born a girl (am I allowed to say that?) but suffered from gender dysphoria. Which is a shame.
Some years ago, he transitioned into a man. Gosh, that can’t have been easy. But he decided to retain his womb so that he could still give birth.
Seriously? There’s not a man alive who would want to go through that. My husband had to nip off for a balti and have a quick nap just to cope with watching me.
So far, so modern. Which is to say that it sounds really weird, but it’s 2019 and we’re not allowed to question other people’s bizarre having-it-all life choices for fear of being set upon by a baying Twitter mob.
Freddy conceived a baby via IVF – he’s a journalist with The Guardian, and generously invited in a TV crew to film his journey, water birth and all – and is bringing up his little boy as a single parent. He also has a fine moustache and looks every inch the proud father.
What a happy ending. But that’s not enough.
He’s unhappy that he’s named as the mother on his child’s birth certificate, because – despite having deliberately kept his womb so he could be a mother, and being filmed in labour – he’s not a woman any more.
And, apparently, that’s deeply painful. Not as much as childbirth, obviously, but these days hurt feelings count for much, much more.
Now, I no idea why Freddy wants to redact his past so badly. Lord knows there are any number of events in my life I’d prefer not to remember (my ill-fated radio career, for a start), but just insisting they never happened doesn’t make it so.
Demanding the courts alter his child’s birth certificate and effectively leave a little boy without a biological mother in order to assist the rewriting of his own personal history was always a frivolous waste of time.
I know “frivolous” is a legal term, but as a layperson I can’t help thinking it implies that proceedings adding to the gaiety of the nation, instead of dragging us all under the wheels of a gender juggernaut that is grinding both common sense and common decency beneath its wheels.
I’m under no illusions: Freddy seems to have an insatiable appetite for publicity, and I’ll wager this brouhaha is a lot more about po-faced activism than personal angst.
He finds the court’s judgment distressing, as he would prefer to forget he was ever a mother (maybe inviting the film crew was a bit of an own goal?). But he was a mother. He chose to be. So why the hell doesn’t he just accept that we can’t always have what we want, and enjoy what he has got? If a couple gets a divorce, they might prefer not to mention it ever again – but it doesn’t mean they were never married.
I struggle to understand Freddy’s revisionism or his need for attention; they are his demons to battle. He can knock himself out, as far as I’m concerned. But he has no right – legal or moral – to deny the facts of his son’s birth because that is not his history to alter. I feel shocked and outraged he would even want to do so.
Every mother knows that, in utero, a baby is entirely yours. Once you bring an infant into the world, your responsibilities multiply, but your rights are curtailed – this child is a person in its own right. But then Freddy rejects motherhood with all its selfless joys and burdens.
Instead, his look-at-me attempt to control and manipulate his son’s birth certificate smacks of the most monstrous egotism. It’s what Sigmund Freud described as the “narcissism of small things”; an almost pathological need to be different, to insist on concessions, to demand special treatment.
I’m proud to live in a society where a genuinely troubled individual like Freddy can change gender. I’m even prouder that we have a legal system that point-blank refuses to let him change another person’s truth.
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