Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 5.9.19

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.  

                  Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain

Spain

• I've reported that you can be fined in Spain for driving with your arm out of the window. Or even for having your elbow on the door frame. But this must be fake news, for this morning I saw a Tráfico cop driving with his arm out and his hand flat on the roof. But maybe he planned to fine himself. If not, possibly his colleague.
• Spanish Localism: There's a difference of up to 20 days between regional return-to-school dates. Navarra's infants first, Castilla y Leon's students of 'Professional Training' last - 4 September and 23 September, respectively. Here in Galicia the range is only 11 to 16 September. 
• The Spanish economy: This is an interesting and honest article, entitled: Spain: The Recession Will Arrive With The House Broken. How well I recall the bum era - 15 years ago - when I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing around me. As for now: In Spain we have recent experience, that of the Great Recession of 2008. It hit us hard. The official narrative insisted that the financial system was sound, the best, and that the financial crisis was for others. The outcome is well known and 11 years later the bills have still not been paid. As I've said more than thrice, the already-rich-in assets have done well out of the recovery. Others rather less so.
• It's good to know that none of our many narcotráficos have reached this level of skulduggery.
• As for out teenagers . . . They're reported to be sleeping one hour less/fewer a night than they did only 4 years ago, down from 8.4 to 7.4. But why? What are they doing with the extra time?
• An animal lovers' ONG, Libera!, has demanded that wild boars not be 'criminalised'. Given the destruction to crops they're wreaking, I would've thought they were doing a bloody good job of this themselves.

The UK

• After yesterday's events, I think we can all be excused for being even more confused than ever. All bets are off. But, then, they have been for a long time. I wish I could time-travel to, say, 2050 and read the verdict of History on this bizarre era.
• Mr Johnson opined last night that yesterday had been a 'very good day', inviting the question of what on earth would be a bad day for him. Below is a report for the Political Correspondent of the Times on the Alice-in-Wonderland proceedings of the House of Commons.

Spanish

• Word of the Day:- Infinito

English

• Even before reader María and I exchanged a few thoughts on American v. British English, I'd wondered the night before whether von Papen was pronounced (by Germans) with what I call the 'short' (northern) A sound or the 'long' (southern/posh) A sound. As far as I can tell from Google, it's actually something in between. But I'm still irritated by a British historian on TV saying the name 10 times as if it was Von Paarpen. I can be easily irritated . . .
• Apologies for not posting this yesterday; couldn't find the booklet . . .  William Penn - writing in 1682 - elaborates on the word Dispatch thus:-

1. Dispatch is a great and good quality in an officer [of State], where duty - not gain - excites it. But of this too many make their private market and overplus to their wages. Thus the salary is for doing and the bribe for dispatching the business; as if business could be done before it were dispatched; or, if they were to be paid apart, one by the government and one by the party.
2. Dispatch is as much the duty of an officer as the doing; and very much the honour of the government he serves. 
3. Delays have been more injurious than direct injustice.
4. They too often starve those they do not dare deny. [???]
5. The very winner is made a loser because he pays twice for his own; like those that purchase estates mortgaged before to the full value.
6. Our law says well: 'To delay justice is injustice'.
7. Not to have a right and not to come at it differ little.
8. Refusal - or dispatch - is the duty and wisdom of a good officer.

• Coincidently, in her comments on American English, reader María justifiably asked why on earth the British had added a U to the original word 'honor' and the like. As you can see above, Penn, although an American, used 'honour'. Or at least his London printer did.
• Still on British/English usage . . . .  This is a joke - being told by an Irishman - which wouldn't be permitted to an Englishman these days. Apart from being funny, it displays the Irish usage of the verb 'bring':-

This usage is common - if not universal - in the USA and is about the only thing which causes me problems. For it contravenes the British 'rule' that: In 'bring', the something or somebody is moved to where the speaker is currently situated. 'Take' is used to indicate moving something or somebody to a place that the speaker is not currently at. So, no Brit would ever say, for example: "Please bring me home". Or "Bring this to your mother upstairs". I believe the British norm is the same in Spanish with llevar(take) and traer(bring) but I could be wrong on this. The most interesting comment I've seen on this is: This is quite a recent usage in the States and is by no means cut and dried in terms of acceptance. In fact, all the criticism of it I've seen has been on American websites, not British ones. The standard line seems to be exactly the same in the US as in the UK. I blame Irish influence for this 'mistake'. Which I'm allowed to do, as I'm about to take out Irish nationality. María?

The USA

• Anyway, we're compelled to ask, if Ffart does display the quality of 'dispatch', is he 'excited' to do so by a sense of duty or for personal gain? Is he 'making a private market' or adding an 'overplus' to his wages?
• Which reminds me . . . The Vice President has been having discussions in Dublin. Which is on the east coast of Ireland. But he's been staying in a Ffart golf club on the west coast, 3 hours' drive or an hour's flight away. IGIMSTS.

Finally . . .

• Everyone's seeing rats except me. There was one in the street of my regular bar midday yesterday and both my neighbours and my visiting daughter say they've seen one in my garden. I've had a (humane) trap there for several days but the rats are either too stupid or too clever to find their way into it. Very frustrating.

THE ARTICLE

You big girl’s blouse! Tears and jeers in show of playground politics: Quentin Letts 

Lebanon had sent a delegation of its parliamentarians to the Commons, to inspect our old democracy’s velvety procedures, its sacred connection to the voters. Oh dear.

The visitors were subjected to a marathon of soul-dirtying malignancy, quivering insults, bad stratagems and bogus concerns. There was clapping (improper in the House) at moments of emotive hyperbole. We had histrionics, blubbing, an epidemic of self-pity. It was a bruising day for Boris Johnson but a pretty rotten one for our parliament, too.

The Benn/Burt Bill aiming to delay Brexit was thrust down the House’s gullet, all stages in a single day — by MPs who professed to care about parliamentary propriety. Then, as darkness claimed us, MPs blocked a general election. It had been sought for political advantage. It was refused for political advantage. The main beneficiaries: Brussels.

Boris Johnson’s first PMQs was riotous. Some of his language needed bleeping out. Fists were shaken at him, fore and aft. At one point it looked as if Labour MPs might start a scuffle with him across the Commons table. The House’s relationship with Boris was that of a mechanical rodeo bull to a Texan bar rider. It tried to throw him. He clung on for dear life.

Slough’s Labour MP, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, went off on one about “racist” remarks in an old Johnson newspaper column. “Apologise!” cried the opposition benches, breaking into one of those rounds of look-at-me applause they use to assert moral superiority. Though Mr Dhesi’s line of attack was not new, it left a dent. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, was more inventive. After heckling from Mr Johnson, Mr McDonnell quipped: “Last time he shouted at someone, they had to call the police.” That was surely much sharper.

Unlike his predecessor, this PM certainly invigorates a room.

Electrifies some, electrocutes others. He pumped his fist and kept leaping to the dispatch box to take on his critics. When Jeremy Corbyn accused him of evading scrutiny, he said Corbyn was hiding from a snap general election and snorted: “You big girl’s blouse!” The Lebanese dignitaries in the gallery did a certain amount of blinking at this. It is not, perhaps, an idiom that translates easily into Arabic.

The Speaker ticked off Tory MPs for breaking minor protocols, saying they must honour “very long-established procedures”. This earned rolled-eyes from Bercow’s critics, who feel he is too happy to shatter precious customs. The Speaker gave the floor to several of the de-whipped Tory Europhiles, among them Richard Harrington (Watford). Boris blithely continued to call him “my honourable friend” and may even have been unaware Mr Harrington was a rebel.

Margot James (ex-Conservative, Stourbridge) kept nodding enthusiastically when Labour attacked Mr Johnson. She pinged in a snarly question about the Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings and the House went “ouch”. But the PM did not look remotely upset. “An excellent question,” he burbled. Ms James fumed. Boris’s failure to hate his opponents can be infuriating to them.

Out on Parliament Square, the now-customary protesters were screaming “Boris out!” Caroline Lucas, of the Greens, told them that the Johnson government was embarked on “a complete seizure of power”. Eh? It had just lost its power over the parliamentary agenda. Ms Lucas later told MPs there was a need for “a revitalisation of democracy”. She voted against an election.

Another of the punished Tory rebels, Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex), was clapped and fussed over after he made a tearful speech. “I’m truly very sad it should end in this way,” he sobbed. Soames, like Boris, has long been a vivid, politically incorrect figure. The Remainers insisting that he should be revered because he was Churchill’s grandson were the same people who in the past deplored him as some washed-up, sexist snob.

Caroline Flint (Lab, Don Valley) said she would miss her encounters with Sir Nicholas in the Commons lifts. We’ll let that one go through to the wicketkeeper, I think.