Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spanish Politics- "Who Should Be Afraid of Podemos in Spain and Who Can Just Relax?": Podemos was born from the rage against austerity as a previous government poured rescue money into the banking system. Now the party is on the brink of taking power as part of a coalition in Spain and investors are worried. Click here for the article.
- Said Spanish banks are not popular with the public. Usually perceived as ruthlessly rapacious, they got billion of euros of taxpayers' cash after 2008 and have repaid them in the past 11 years via parlous interest rates. And now they're all cranking up their charges. Yesterday I received news from Santander that it's increasing its 'maintenance commission' by a mere 50%. Imagine the millions of pure profit that will bring them in the blink of an eye. Friends in government, of course.
- On past record, none of [Spain's politicians] are are fitted to a system of dialogue and cooperation. Instead, all seem to embrace the attitude denounced by the 19th-century writer Ángel Ganivet, who claimed too many Spaniards saw their country as “a cage full of madmen all suffering from the same mania: their inability to put up with one another”.
- It might surprise you to know that: There's still a long road ahead before the Spanish really start to appreciate 100% natural coffee. Click here to know what olive oil and coffees you should be enjoying/avoiding.
- Well, there doesn't seem to have been much to complete the works on O Burgos bridge since I left almost 7 weeks ago. In fact nothing, as far as I can tell.
- And nothing has been done to make the huge zebra crossing any less hazardous, as I discovered yesterday.
- This is typical of the approach I cited towards the NHS . . . The threat to our most beloved institution can’t even be removed by Labour’s promised £26 billion cash injection, nor the Tories’ £20.5bn. The crash will merely be deferred.
- Why? Because here in Britain, we are gorging ourselves into an early grave. The number of obese adults has doubled in 2 decades . . If you really care about the NHS, lose some weight.
Europe
- The myth of bed-hopping aristocracy has been debunked as a study shows that the lower classes are much more promiscuous. See the article below.
- Ffart has publicly attacked one of his ambassadors. How many of us know a more disgusting individual than him? I certainly don't.
- Billionaires are wailing that Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’s wealth tax proposals are attacks on free market capitalism. Rubbish. There are basically only 5 ways to accumulate a billion dollars, and none of them has to do with being successful in free market capitalism. Check on these here.
- Phoney cash Isas still top of Google searches. Google is still promoting websites that offer high-risk or potentially fraudulent savings products, despite promising to crack down on such companies.
- I like this guy and his dissertations on, for example, early English. But I'm not too impressed by the pursuit/creation of Anglish.
- Spain should be on Greenwich Mean Time, not Central European Time. See this diagram of the latter's band for other horological distortions in France and Africa:-
THE ARTICLE
Myth of bed-hopping aristocracy debunked as study shows lower classes are much more promiscuous
The myth of the bed-hopping aristocracy has been debunked after researchers discovered that historically the lower classes are 12 times more likely to have had illegitimate children than those of higher ranks.
Paternity scandals have often plagued the royals and gentry, with Henry I and Charles II siring at least 41 children out of wedlock between them, many of who were given the surname Fitzroy to distinguish them as offspring of the king.Even the Archbishop of Canterbury recently discovered he was the illegitimate son of Winston Churchill’s private secretary, Sir Anthony Montague Browne.
Yes a new study by researchers at the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium has found that the chances of being illegitimate for the European upper classes is one in 200 (0.5 per cent), compared to around one in 17 for the lower classes (just under six per cent).
The team used long-term genealogical data to find 513 pairs of male adults in Belgium and the Netherlands who shared a common ancestor at various points in the past 500 years.
Unless there had been a break in the line - known as an extra-pair paternity event (EEP) - they should have carried the same Y chromosome.
“Extra-pair paternity, especially due to adultery, is a popular topic in gossip, jokes, TV series, and literature,” said geneticist Dr Maarten Larmuseau, of KU Leuven.
“But scientific knowledge on this phenomenon is still highly limited, especially regarding the past.
"Our research shows that the chance of having extra-pair paternity events in your family history really depends on the social circumstances of your ancestors.
"If they lived in cities and were of the lower socioeconomic classes, the chances that there were EPP events in your family history are much higher.”
While the number of illegitimate events overall was fairly low (averaging out at one in 100), their frequency varied considerably among people depending on their circumstances.
Specifically, evidence of illegitimacy turned up much more often in people of lower socioeconomic status who lived in densely populated cities in the 19th century.
Among farmers and more well-to-do craftsmen and merchants the rate of illegitimacy was around one per cent, compared to four per cent for labourers and weavers.
For middle and upper classes living in the most sparsely populated town the rate was 0.5 per cent compared to almost 6 per cent for the low socioeconomic classes living in the most densely populated cities.
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