Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spanish Politics- The leader of the 'far left' Podemos party has given his overview of the recent election results in The Guardian here. His principal points: Vox’s momentum hasn’t been fuelled by the effects of globalisation on poorer neighbourhoods, nor by the fears of parts of the Spanish population about immigration. It emerged because of the way in which the Spanish right – the PP and Citizens parties – approached the Catalan crisis. . . But Vox’s success is also down to a Spanish media ecosystem in which ultraconservative media groups and pundits have normalised extreme-right discourse, and in which some progressive sectors have perhaps reckoned that turning Vox into a topic of perennial political debate would scare the centre left into mobilising. . . Above all, this general election has confirmed for the 4th time – we’ve had four elections in as many years – that the era of the two-party system in Spain is well and truly over.
- For his part, the leader of the Socialist party is reported to be cultivating the support of one of the minority parties, ahead of voting which will determine if Spain yet has an operative government.
- Here's The Local with what you need to know if spend your days in a Spanish work environment. And your nights/weekends with a work colleague.
- And here's The Local again with what you need to know about the truly staggering ERE corruption case down Andalucia. In which the wheels have turned very slowly indeed. And in respect of which no one ever seems to have answered the question of where the vast amounts of money actually ended up. Or whether being banned from office for a few years isn't a price well worth paying en route to spending the millions you've banked.
- A nice intro to the Basque language.
- Our Oz friend has learnt of the risks of trying out her newly-gained Spanish, specifically using coño instead of conejo. All I can say is that it's actually a good thing she didn't enquire about the lady's conecito. Sorry that this will be lost on some readers but, as this is a family blog, I can't go into the idiomatic meanings of the various words. . . .
- BTW . . . The mixture of Castellano and Galego she cites is castrapo. I've never found out why it's called this. Though I've just discovered that Wiki has a little on this 'vulgar' dialect here.
- Last night's leaders 'debate': John Crice in The Guardian: The debate did reveal something. That voters hold both leaders in open contempt and are in despair that one of them will end up as prime minister. Given the chance to show off their best selves, Johnson and Corbyn merely proved they didn’t have one. The country is even more screwed than anyone has previously imagined.
- Remember when the TSB bank tried to connect all their customers' accounts to the IT system of its new owners, Spain's Banco Sabadell? Well, a vastly expensive report has come to two main conclusions: 1. The new IT platform was not ready to support TSB’s full customer base; and 2. Sabis, the technology arm of Spanish parent Sabadell, was not fit to operate it. The fall guy for these failure was the senior Spanish executive who was in charge of TSB’s IT operations. The report finds that he was aware of many of the shortcomings in the tests performed on the system and should have “escalated” them. Instead, at a board meeting just days before the fateful weekend, he claimed it “was ready”. But, says the report, no one emerges from this shambles with their reputation intact. It is a lesson in collective failure.
- The future UK economy: Labour, says thinks it has alighted on a miracle cure for the British disease. It is, says Ambrose Evans Pritchard, an illusion. See the article below.
- Says one of Ffart's victims: The vile character attacks on these distinguished and honourable public servants is reprehensible. It is natural to disagree and engage in spirited debate; this has been our custom since the time of our Founding Fathers, but we are better than callow and cowardly attacks. You don't need me to tell you who these came from.
- A nice nickname: Tweety Gonzales
- Writes a female columnist: The truth is that for years now the message to girls (and boys) has been weakness, fragility, the abdication of responsibility – and blame. Who should we blame? Well, it’s either mental health or men. And since men are apparently to blame for our mental health, it’s basically just men. The patriarchy. Forty-nine per cent of the population. So let’s denounce the lot of them, purely for possessing the Y chromosome that has fostered so much resentment over the centuries. Let’s make our need for sexual reparations interminable. . . . Only, this “hostile attitude to men” simply hasn’t proved itself to be helpful. As well as eroding female energy and ambition and encouraging young women to enter the workforce with “an unreceptive frame of mind”, it is deeply uncivilised on a human level
- Just noted
- Spanish: ¿Has tomaado ya tus Weetabix? Single plus plural.
- Portuguese: Já comeste o teu Weetabix? Single plus single.
Footnote: Google Translate declared the Portuguese version to be Galician. Which would actually be: Xa comiches o teu Weetabix. Single plus single again. Funny things, languages.
English
- In the parlance of modern dating, if someone 'ghosts' you, you can 'breadcrumb' your revenge by dishing it out, cold, over a long period. Sounds good to me. . .
- I went into a health food shop with my daughter last night. The array of products was staggering and their prices astonishing. I can't help feeling there's a huge scam being visited on the young - and not so young, I guess - by global corporations. Which is why Weetabix is said to be:-
- Low in sugar, and
- High in fibre.
But, to be fair, my daughter tells me Weetabix comes well out of assessing it with this app.
THE ARTICLE
Labour has fallen in love with the German economic model but it cannot be grafted here: Ambrose Evans Pritchard
The Shadow Chancellor has imported the German ‘Rhineland Model’ wholesale to Labour headquarters, shorn of its anthropological context as if were an off the shelf commodity.
John McDonnell’s plan for workers to “take back control” of companies is a copy of Germany’s two-tier board structure, with a supervisory board dominated by trade union representatives and regional stakeholders with powers to keep managers in check.
The model has its roots in South German Christian Democracy and the Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII in the 19th Century, later married to the Bad Godesberg social market ethos of the centre-left.
The paternalist doctrine is that companies are not responsible solely to shareholders. They have an equal responsibility to stakeholders: their workers and communities.
This thinking is the foundation of Mr McDonnell’s 20-page prospectus, Rewriting the Rules. Under his plan (with two variants) the supervisory board will be made up of “customers, employees, and long-term shareholders” with sweeping powers “to steer the strategic direction of the company.” It is German co-decision on steroids.
To the extent that it works in Germany itself - hotly-contested - it is because property is sacrosanct and market signals are upheld. The German model is underpinned by a Burkean respect for inheritance. Owners of the family Mittelstand firms that form the backbone of Germany’s export economy are exempt from inheritance tax if their children take over the business. These firms are cherished as princely fiefdoms.
They are served by a network of 1,900 savings banks and community banks with interlocking relationships dating back decades. The eco-system that sustains the Rhineland social market economy does not exist in modern Britain.
Labour’s ideological thrust is radically different. It is has a strong whiff of class war rather than German togetherness. Mr McDonnell is launching an assault on property and the "unfettered pursuit of profit". Companies will have to hand over 10pc of their shares. In July Mr McDonnell spoke of cutting the inheritance tax threshold from £475,000 to £125,000 to whittle down wealth.
Whether Germany’s worker councils really do what they say on the tin is another matter. “They are more symbolic than real. Workers feel better integrated but frankly nobody even talks about it any longer,” said Heiner Flassbeck, the former German state secretary of the economy.
Mr McDonnell said workers in Britain are often treated as “virtual chattels". But that is the same complaint made by the neo-Marxist Die Linke in Germany. The Hartz IV labour reforms eroded worker protection and have led to the pauperisation of the bottom fifth of the population, including a Lumpenproletariat of 7.8m people on ‘mini-jobs’ of €450 a month.
Companies learned how to seduce union representatives on their board, famously so in Volkswagen’s ‘bribery, and brothels’ trial in 2008. The company had earlier forced through a de facto pay cut by threatening to relocate plant to Poland. The unions on the board meekly went along with it. “They were co-opted,” said Mr Flassbeck.
Mr McDonnell cited evidence that worker co-decision boosts productivity. The record in Germany is less clear. OECD data shows that productivity rises since 1995 in the UK and Germany have been similar. Raw capitalism in the US has done far better than either.
Labour thinks it has alighted on a miracle cure for the British disease. It is an illusion.
THE ARTICLE
Labour has fallen in love with the German economic model but it cannot be grafted here: Ambrose Evans Pritchard
The Shadow Chancellor has imported the German ‘Rhineland Model’ wholesale to Labour headquarters, shorn of its anthropological context as if were an off the shelf commodity.
John McDonnell’s plan for workers to “take back control” of companies is a copy of Germany’s two-tier board structure, with a supervisory board dominated by trade union representatives and regional stakeholders with powers to keep managers in check.
The model has its roots in South German Christian Democracy and the Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII in the 19th Century, later married to the Bad Godesberg social market ethos of the centre-left.
The paternalist doctrine is that companies are not responsible solely to shareholders. They have an equal responsibility to stakeholders: their workers and communities.
This thinking is the foundation of Mr McDonnell’s 20-page prospectus, Rewriting the Rules. Under his plan (with two variants) the supervisory board will be made up of “customers, employees, and long-term shareholders” with sweeping powers “to steer the strategic direction of the company.” It is German co-decision on steroids.
To the extent that it works in Germany itself - hotly-contested - it is because property is sacrosanct and market signals are upheld. The German model is underpinned by a Burkean respect for inheritance. Owners of the family Mittelstand firms that form the backbone of Germany’s export economy are exempt from inheritance tax if their children take over the business. These firms are cherished as princely fiefdoms.
They are served by a network of 1,900 savings banks and community banks with interlocking relationships dating back decades. The eco-system that sustains the Rhineland social market economy does not exist in modern Britain.
Labour’s ideological thrust is radically different. It is has a strong whiff of class war rather than German togetherness. Mr McDonnell is launching an assault on property and the "unfettered pursuit of profit". Companies will have to hand over 10pc of their shares. In July Mr McDonnell spoke of cutting the inheritance tax threshold from £475,000 to £125,000 to whittle down wealth.
Whether Germany’s worker councils really do what they say on the tin is another matter. “They are more symbolic than real. Workers feel better integrated but frankly nobody even talks about it any longer,” said Heiner Flassbeck, the former German state secretary of the economy.
Mr McDonnell said workers in Britain are often treated as “virtual chattels". But that is the same complaint made by the neo-Marxist Die Linke in Germany. The Hartz IV labour reforms eroded worker protection and have led to the pauperisation of the bottom fifth of the population, including a Lumpenproletariat of 7.8m people on ‘mini-jobs’ of €450 a month.
Companies learned how to seduce union representatives on their board, famously so in Volkswagen’s ‘bribery, and brothels’ trial in 2008. The company had earlier forced through a de facto pay cut by threatening to relocate plant to Poland. The unions on the board meekly went along with it. “They were co-opted,” said Mr Flassbeck.
Mr McDonnell cited evidence that worker co-decision boosts productivity. The record in Germany is less clear. OECD data shows that productivity rises since 1995 in the UK and Germany have been similar. Raw capitalism in the US has done far better than either.
Labour thinks it has alighted on a miracle cure for the British disease. It is an illusion.
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