Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spanish Politics - The Catalan political party ERC (Esquerra Republica Catalana) is said here to hold the key to the creation of a majority government by the acting Prime Minister of the PSOE socialist party. Needless to say, they're not making it easy for him, in a situation in which almost any concession will lead to accusations of treason from all the right wing parties. I can never understand why anyone wants to be PM of a country. Even less the leader of the UK Labour Party. (See below).
- The family beyond our shared wall have several huge (and noisy) feasts (fiestas) in the next couple of weeks - Xmas Eve, Xmas Day, New Year's Eve and Los Reyes (6 January) being 4 of them. Here, from The Local, is the sort of stuff they'll be tucking into. As it is, I'm now down in Madrid for a few days so will miss at least 2 of these. Sadly . . .
- I wonder if I'll ever get used to Spanish drivers either making either no signals at all or, worse, misleading signals. I counted 6 instances yesterday. Expect the unexpected is the basic rule. And the second rule is: Don't trust in any signal made by another driver.
- Which reminds me . . . I wrote this many years ago.
- What with submarines and things, this year has set a record for cocaine hauls in Pontevedra province. To date 19,000 kilos, said to be worth €600m on the street.
- The good news is that a cycle track is planned along the coast, linking up in Tui with one that comes up from nearby Portugal, as part of the Atlantic Coast Route of Eurovelo. Perhaps they'll eventually get round to putting some on the pavements of Pontevedra city. The narrowing of the - now one-way - roads have left these very wide. So, no problem with space.
- Galicia how has 1,200 Airbnb places, and much higher rental prices than before it started. There's talk of licensing more hotels in Pontevedra city, including one behind the ruined facade I recently posted a foto of.
- As I said above, aspiration in these circumstances is beyond me . . . The bloodletting [in the defeated Labour Party] is under way and the bad feeling runs very deep. Declared and undeclared candidates want to break free and establish their own identities but fear that the left and the unions can still kill their campaigns at birth if they are too critical of the recent past. Corbynism has failed to win two elections but it still holds control over the levers of power. More here.
- Ending this is at least a hundred years late. But my bet is that it won't happen in 2019.
- More shamelessness than ever?
- The historian, Niall Ferguson gives us the White House Christmas Carol below.
- Transgendering . . . The most difficult issue concerns the treatment of children. The Tavistock Centre, which runs the only gender-identity clinic for young people in Britain, has seen its patient numbers shoot up from under 100 in 2010 to more than 2,500 today. As a former governor told this paper, the pressure to transition may in future be seen as a “dark chapter” in the treatment of children with psychological difficulties.
- Words of the Day: Descerebrado: Brainless. Mindless. Half-brained. Etc.
- Phrase of the Day: A cuestas: Piggybacking. In tow.
Finally
- My home-making younger daughter has advanced from vlog to a web page. Looks very good. Am rather envious.
A White House Christmas Carol: Niall Ferguson
Donald Scrump meets the Ghosts of Impeachment Past, Present and Future
Stave One
Madison was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Madison was as dead as a door-nail.
Donald Scrump knew he was dead. Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrump and Madison were separated by heaven only knew how many years — two hundred, at least.
Old James Madison was one of those who, in helping to compose the constitution, had agreed that a president could be impeached and, if convicted, removed from office for treason, bribery or “other high crimes and misdemeanours”.
Other men had insisted that the need for re-election would provide sufficient check on a president. But old Madison would have none of it. The democratic discipline of election would not suffice, for between elections a wicked president “might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers.”
This, then, was Madison’s legacy, which Scrump had inherited. But to repeat: Madison was dead. And his successor never bothered his head about such stuff. “Bah!” said Scrump, whenever anyone mentioned the constitution. “Humbug!”
Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year, on Impeachment Eve — old Scrump sat busy in his White House. It was cold, bleak, biting weather.
“A merry Impeachment, Mr Scrump! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice.
“Humbug!” said Scrump.
But as he entered the bedroom, he was startled by a booming sound, and then he heard the noise of footsteps on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
“It’s humbug still!” said Scrump.
His colour changed though, when Madison’s ghost came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes.
“You will be haunted,” said the ghost, “by Three Spirits. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.”
Stave Two
The hour bell sounded with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, and Scrump found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them.
“Who, and what are you?” Scrump demanded.
“I am the Ghost of Impeachment Past. Rise! and walk with me!”
The Ghost led Scrump to a large, white, domed structure, and asked him if he knew it.
“Know it?” said Scrump. “I’ve always wondered what it was and why it was so much huger than the White House.”
They went in. At sight of a plump gentleman, Scrump cried in great excitement: “Why, it’s old Bubba Clinton! Bless his heart!”
Old Bubba laid down his cigar, and looked up at the clock. He rubbed his hands and called out in a comfortable, jovial voice:
“Yo ho, my boys!” said Bubba. “It’s Impeachment Eve! But it don’t signify.”
“They impeached old Bubba,” whispered Scrump to the Ghost. “They said he lied under oath and obstructed justice about his lady friends. But they acquitted him. Just as they acquitted old Andrew Johnson before him.”
“Does Impeachment remind you of Christmas?” asked the Ghost, with a spectral wink.
“Why yes,” replied Scrump. “Children believe in Santa Claus just as they believe in the impeachment clause. But grown-ups know better.”
Stave Three
Back in his bedroom, Scrump was startled to hear a voice in the adjoining chamber. “Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost of Impeachment Present. “Come in! and know me better, man!”
Without another word, the second Spirit whisked Scrump across a vast sea, arriving finally in a darkened city that Scrump almost recognised. They approached a black-painted door, unadorned save for the number 10.
On the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped to bless Boris Snatchit’s dwelling.
Looking through the frosted window, Scrump perceived that Snatchit — whom he considered his most devoted ally — was giving a party.
“Mr Scrump!” he heard said Boris exclaim; “I give you Mr Scrump, the Funder of our Fellowship!”
“The Funder of our Fellowship indeed!” cried Mrs Merkel, reddening. “I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.”
“It should be Impeachment Day, I am sure,” she went on, “on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr Scrump.”
“God bless us every one!” cried Tiny Volodymyr.
Stave Four
The third ghost was shrouded in a deep black garment, which left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand.
“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Impeachment Yet to Come?” said Scrump.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand — towards a churchyard.
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. Scrump crept towards it, trembling as he went; and read upon the stone of the neglected grave not his own name — as he had feared — but the words: “The Constitution.”
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!”
The finger still was there.
“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, “Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will honour Impeachment in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”
Stave Five
“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrump, laughing and crying in the same breath. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Impeachment to everybody! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”
“A merry Impeachment, Boris!” said Scrump, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped poor Mr Snatchit on the back.
“A merrier Impeachment, Boris, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll lower your tariffs, and endeavour to assist your economy!”
Scrump was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Volodymyr he was a second father.
That, anyway, is how Dickens ends A Christmas Carol: with the redemption of the miscreant. But Marley remains dead. And in this version of the story, I fear that the same may prove to be true not just of Madison, but of the constitution too.
Madison’s criteria for impeachment and removal had their ambiguities, but it is hard to deny they have been met in the case of Mr Scrump.
Nevertheless, Madison is dead — as dead as a door-nail. And if Mr Trump rides all this out and secures re-election on November 3 next year, then the same will be true of that crucial section of the constitution that Madison helped devise.
In which case, my Christmas message this year must be a variation on Tiny Tim’s: God help us, every one!
No comments:
Post a Comment