Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spanish Politics- Can you imagine a British party bring forward a bill to ban the Scottish Nationalist party? Of course, you can't. But things are different here.
- On a roll, the Vox party has come up with educational idea that had some support. See The Guardian on this here and Lenox Napier on it here.
- There are at least 3 Galician cities which will come under this national initiative.
- The writer of this article regards the economic measures of the new coalition government as a folderol which is to be funded by higher taxes on business, banks, energy companies and the wealthy – a formula that has never delivered its promise in any country, ever. The Spanish state, he insists, will be painfully relearning the most basic economic lessons - as all the free market reforms of the last decade are being reversed even though the latest measures conflict with the Spanish constitution itself.
- In the 11th item in yesterday's list of health-oriented things you can do in Spain, 'mindfulness' should have been 'kindfulness'. Bloody auto-corrections.
- María tells us here what it's like to be a young person seeking employment here. And their parents.
- The writer of the above article on Spain's new economic measures points out that: Under EU laws you can’t pursue this kind of extravaganza and still remain in the Euro – but who cares about that? The record of compliance with rules in the EU is so flaky that they might as well tear them up.
- Given that 'trial' is not the right word for the process taking place in the Senate, I wonder what the right term is. 'Farce' is clearly not apt, as it's not remotely funny. Nor is it a 'drama', as we know the outcome with 100% certainty. Anyone got a suggestion? Monumental bore might be one. Albeit inevitable.
- Meanwhile, Ffart has given a performance at Davos, described below.
- Twitter continues to be hilariously wrong about every topic it touches and is gradually morphing into a kind of AA group for the pathologically un-self-aware (presided over by Lily Allen)
- Words of the Day:- Hat tip to Lenox Napier for Bulos: False news or transplanted videos. And Ahorre la vara y mime al niño; Spare the rod and spoil the child.
- 'suffering from' is now 'engaging with', it seems. As in the case of Ozzy Osbourne and his Parkinson's disease.
- The editor of the UK satirical mag, Private Eye, has had to advise a US magazine that the story that PE had run at Thanksgiving about a turkey pardoning Ffart had been a joke. This was after he'd learned that the piece had got PE included on a list of fake news outlets compiled by a university in Massachusetts. The editor also had to advise that other stuff wasn’t true either. For instance that Theresa May was headmistress of a school.
Donald Trump just gave the most incredible speech at Davos... and it went a little something like this:
Tremendous boasting. Phenomenal boasting. Outstanding boasting. Donald Trump was boasting like no American president had ever boasted before. His boasts were some of the biggest boasts in the history of boasting. His boasts were truly incredible. You wouldn’t believe them.
The president was giving a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and it was non-stop boasting from soup to nuts. He boasted about the American economy, and how incredible and tremendous it was, now Donald Trump was in charge of it. He said America’s “economic turn-around” had been “nothing short of spectacular”. He said that when he’d taken over from the last president, whoever that was, the American economy had been in “a dismal state”. But now, thanks to Donald Trump, “years of economic stagnation” had given way to “a roaring geyser of opportunity”. He was proud to say that America was now enjoying “an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen before”. He said the “time for scepticism” was “over”.
Very nasty people would probably say that in fact American economic growth slowed last year, and that Donald Trump’s best figure for economic growth – 2.9 per cent in 2018 – was exactly the same as Barack Obama’s figure in 2015, the year before Donald Trump was elected. Very nasty people would probably also wonder what Donald Trump meant when he said America was enjoying “an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen before”, because under Bill Clinton economic growth was way higher than it is under Donald Trump. In each year of Bill Clinton’s second term the American economy grew by over four per cent.
Donald Trump did not say any of that, and neither did anybody else. That would have been very nasty. The time for scepticism was over.
What Donald Trump did say was that America was “winning again like never before”. He said women were doing better than ever before, and African-Americans were doing better than ever before, and young people were doing better than ever before. He said no one had benefited more than the working class. And then about a minute later he said no one had benefited more than the middle class.
The point was, everyone and everything was better under Donald Trump. He did not quite say American men were taller and stronger and more manly than ever before, or that American women were hotter than ever before, you wouldn’t believe how much hotter they were now, over 30 per cent hotter than under the last administration, it was incredible how much hotter they were, American women were now the hottest women since records began. Donald Trump didn’t say that. But no one would have batted an eyelid if he had.
Very soon the United States is going to hold a presidential election. Everyone is saying Donald Trump is going to win it. If he loses, it will be incredible. It will be tremendous.
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