Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'
Covid
Some sound advice.
Spain: The European Commission has asked Spain for ‘coherency’ on travel restrictions within its own national territory and on journeys to and from other European countries – underlining that the risks linked to the spread of Covid-19 are similar – in the case of both internal and cross border travel. Spain’s Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya defended that the travel restrictions imposed by Spain are ‘aligned’. She could have fooled me.
Cosas de España
From 30 March, British tourists will be allowed to come to Spain again, to join the Germans and French folk already here in large numbers for an Easter break, despite the fact 3rd or 4th waves are surging back home.
A whole raft of PP ex-minsters - including the ex PM - are denying there was a chest of black cash in their HQ and that the party treasurer - as he claims under oath - gave them great monthly wads of the stuff in brown envelopes. No one in Spain believes them, of course. Including themselves, I imagine. But it won't do their lucrative corporate careers any harm. A 'low ethics country', as they say.
Cousas de Galiza
An episode of a series called Un Asunto Privado is being filmed in Pontevedra city. Here's a press foto. I assume the 'female actor*' will take off her 21st century puffer jacket before they actually shoot the scene:-
Blimey! IMDB calls her an 'actress'. How very 20th century.
This is a wall of one of the 2 weeds called Japanese knotweed, and very pretty it is too. Actually pinker than it looks here:-
A Brit couple coming from Portugal this week to meet their lawyer here and armed with the appropriate bits of paper, were told by police officer he was going to fine them. Not speaking Spanish, they called their lawyer, who was told by the officer that it was because they were in a camper van. But said lawyer was smart enough to persuade him to desist. Confusing rules permit arbitrariness. I’ve been assured by 3 Guardia Civil officers now that I can have 3 passengers in my car next week but I won’t be surprised if another one tries to fine us €600 each. You’d be forgiven for thinking they’re on commission.
Maria's Tsunami: Days 51&52
The UK
Boris Johnson lives to joke, to prick pomposity (as he sees it) with a flippant statement, delivered tongue-in-cheek, preferably amid an avalanche of alliteration. This is his schtick. Clowning around is a key element of his style: it cheers up his supporters and enrages his opponents, who make the mistake of thinking he’s an idiot which, in turn, leads them into making fatal strategic errors. BUT . . . it’s not an approach suited to the row over access to vaccines. Joking about greed is not going to help us secure supplies when some in Brussels are convinced we’ve already grabbed too many. So it’s unhelpful for the prime minister, someone the EU and its leading member states are predisposed to hate, to casually introduce a caricature anti-Anglo Saxon meme and boast about the unfettered greed of perfidious Albion. It risked handing the incompetent commission political cover and allowing his opponents to say that he has ceded the moral high ground. His ill-judged attempts at humour only encourage stereotypical views of Tories and their capitalist cronies. All that said: He is a joker, not a real-life Gordon Gekko. How very true. Is no one capable of convincing him of this? And of the need to get a bloody hairstyle that doesn't encourage the image of a clown?
BTW . . . His remark was also silly because it’s not true. The success of the British vaccine programme is not down to greed. Collaboration between an enlightened private sector and the quicker-moving parts of government and the NHS are what did it. . . . It is deeply frustrating. Johnson is highly educated and surely understands the difference. But for the sake of a daft joke he has handed his enemies a weapon. Essentially, he just can't help himself. A lability in a crisis.
The EU
What’s clear is that the EU is unable to assess risk rationally and is too bureaucratically rigid to respond to fast-moving events. What would you expect - even in non-crisis times - of a committee of 27 members?
Oh, dear . . . It was an extraordinary story – the European Commission had turned detective to find AZ's secret stockpile reserved for Britain. During a surprise raid, an elite unit of Italian military police, acting on EU orders, discovered 29m doses at a factory near Rome. The discovery appeared to confirm the EU's long-held suspicion that AZ was giving the UK special treatment, secretly exporting doses to its home country while failing to deliver on contracts agreed with Brussels. Yet, as EU officials later admitted, the allegation, briefed to the Continental press, simply wasn't true. In fact, most of the doses were destined for the EU itself, with the remainder headed for poorer countries across the world. A Portuguese ex-minister called it possibly the "most embarrassing day in the EU's history". I'm not sure that's an accurate statement.
The USA
Intriguing . . . Having dropped 11 points in a decade, the USA has fallen behind Argentina and Mongolia in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties.
Oh, Lordy, Lordy . . . Trump’s lawyer Sidney Powell is defending herself in a billion-dollar defamation case by arguing that “no reasonable person” would mistake her claims that the election was stolen from the former president as fact.
The Way of the World/Social media
How bleak it is that every dumb teenage remark is logged so it can be used to destroy adult lives. This has to end. But how? A cultural shift backwards??
English
To Americans – or at least Californians – phrases like “speaking your truth”, “reaching out”, “what you’re sharing with us” sound perfectly normal. Most of us in Britain, however, are left either squirming or scratching our heads. To us, it’s baffling: the bombastic jargon of corporate press releases, melded improbably with the mushy blathering of self-help books. We don’t get it.
Which reminds me . . . Yesterday I wrote quite to very optimistic. Later I recalled that, 30 years of experience with Americans had taught me that quite and very mean much the same thing to them. Whereas, in British English, the meaning of quite can be anything from very bad to very good. Tone is critical here.
Finally . . .
Although an ex-RC atheist, I don't begrudge anyone their faith, especially as theism can be a source of humour to me. Someone in Madrid recently held up a sign saying: I shall die when God is ready. I'd have thought it was when your body was ready. Which, sadly, can be after your mind has gone before. Which God doesn't really seem to care about. He's only interested in your soul, I guess. The only one of the 3 things I can't find.