Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain

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'

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain .

This last week has certainly lived up to the Spanish belief-cum-myth that here in Galicia it rains every minute of every day of the year . . . Just what you need when locked down. Our rivers are about to overflow their banks, it's reported.

On a wider front . .  Almost 11,000 British pensioners have ended their dreams of a European retirement and headed home since the Brexit referendum in 2016. More expatriates are returning home than retirees moving to the Europe. More than 3,000 moved back in the year to May 2020.  The countries with the biggest drop in the number of British expatriate retirees were Ireland and Spain - 2,129 and 1,824, respectively. There are still 103,000 Britons over 65 in Spain. 

I doubt all these numbers, believing, firstly, that more than 1,824 below-the-radar Brits have left and, secondly that far more then 103,000 retired Brits are still here - unregistered and technically non-resident. It’ll be very interesting to see how many more have gone since May 2020, as reality dawned on them.

The UK 

Nice to read: Britain stands ready to help the EU with its vaccination crisis, the vaccines minister said after Brussels abandoned its threat to block supplies at the border. The minister stressed that the focus is now on "collaboration" with the EU, adding that Britain has gone "out of our way" to help Brussels with its production problems and "will continue to do so". The government drew a line under the extraordinary diplomatic row over vaccine exports on Saturday after the EU promised Britain that it would not stop supplies from Pfizer's Belgium factory reaching the UK.

The EU and The UK v the EU 

The BBC: The EU 'fiasco' on N Ireland heaps pressure on the EU Commission.

Richard North:  Ursula von der Leyen is victim of the EU's Byzantine procedures – and its almost total inability to explain itself lucidly to the media corps – resulting in journalists opting for the easy hit of pinning the blame on her, rather than taking in what was in fact the opening shot in a staged process.  . . . There's a sense  that UvdL has been thrown under a bus, which is where she may belong. Spiegel International ["Europe is facing a vaccine disaster"] seems to think so, claiming that the Commission president is seeking to duck responsibility for the EU's "botched vaccine rollout". Yet, it is the member states who are, to a very real extent, letting the Commission take the Flak for a policy they demonstrably support. And, though there is no evidence that this was intentional, it can't hurt to let the Commission draw the fire, keeping most of the national leaders in the background, while accounts with "big pharma" are settled. Any idea, though, that AstraZeneca or any of the others are going to walk away from this unscathed is perhaps misplaced. An organisation which counts among its scalps Microsoft and Google is not to be under-estimated. While the English press at the moment is baying for blood – egged on by self-serving Northern Irish politicians – it may well be that UvdL gets the last laugh.

See also the article below on the EU president’s plight.

Germany

The relative lethargy and inefficiency of the Brussels-led vaccine procurement is now causing consternation within the EU, notably in Germany. The broadsheet Die Zeit, no lover of Brexit, opined that the European Commission “is acting slowly, bureaucratically and in a protectionist way. And if something goes wrong it’s everyone else’s fault ... The European Commission is currently providing the best advertisement for Brexit.”

Not only in Spain. . . My old friend in Hamburg tells me that they have a little scandal there. Top German Red Cross officials and their wives have obtained vaccinations fraudulently..

The USA

A fascinating article: The Antipope of Mar-a-Lago: What a medieval religious schism can teach us about Donald Trump’s unprecedented and radically antagonistic approach to the ex-presidency.

Finally . . .  

 I like the street argot for ‘celebrities’ - slebs. Quite close to ‘slobs’ and (media)‘sluts’.

THE ARTICLE

The great Brussels vaccine bungle: Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, is at the sharp end of a messy war with EU member states

Calm, assured and always immaculately groomed, Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission president, cuts an impressive figure as she bestrides the European stage. Her medical degree and the fact she has somehow managed along the way to raise seven children adds to her superwoman image.

The 62-year-old’s reputation in her native Germany, where she has spent most of her political career, has always been more nuanced, however. Her performance as defence minister, her last job in domestic politics before moving to Brussels, has been especially criticised.

Yet even von der Leyen — embroiled over the past few days in a messy vaccine war with Britain during which she briefly threatened to erect a “vaccine border” through the island of Ireland — will have been taken aback by the virulence of the attacks on her by German media, which culminated this weekend in a withering piece in Der Spiegel, the influential news magazine, pinning responsibility on her for “the EU’s botched vaccine rollout”.

As recently as last month, the European Commission president had been boasting of a “European success story”, it said. Now faced with “what might ultimately turn out to be the greatest disaster of her political career”, she had gone uncharacteristically quiet.

It is not just in Germany that von der Leyen has faced a bad press over the commission’s struggle to secure enough supplies to immunise its 446 million people. There is criticism in France too: “Little prepared for this type of operation, the European apparatus is accused of not seeing the bigger picture and of a lack of agility,” wrote Sylvie Kauffmann, a commentator for Le Monde newspaper.

The ultimate impact on attitudes towards the EU could be considerable, both within its own 27 remaining member states and in Britain. Whether over Brexit or the UK’s 100,000-plus Covid-19 death toll, Boris Johnson’s government has until now been a byword on much of the Continent for jingoistic ineptitude.

Britain’s success in vaccinating more than eight million people — a greater number than Germany and the next biggest four EU members put together — has prompted many Europeans, however, to look enviously across the Channel.

When Britain, which formally left the EU a year ago today, announced early during the pandemic that it would take charge of securing its own supplies of the vaccines scientists were racing to develop, the response from its domestic critics was predictable. Here again, they argued, Johnson was putting sovereignty ahead of co-operation.

Our erstwhile EU partners followed a different path, giving the European Commission a lead role in negotiating their vaccine supplies. The decision was based on the justifiable belief that working together could give them greater clout with suppliers. It also reflected dismay at a lack of European solidarity during the early days of the pandemic when the 27 member states imposed border controls on one another and squabbled over supplies of personal protective equipment. 

A joint European approach on vaccines provided a way for Brussels to seize back the initiative. It was coupled with a drive to create a €750bn (£665bn) European recovery fund to help those countries hardest hit by the effects of the virus — €209bn of which is to go to Italy.

Quite how politicised the question of vaccines had become was shown in June, when — as it has since emerged — Jens Spahn, the German health minister, and his counterparts from France, Italy and Holland attempted to reach an initial agreement with Astrazeneca — only for Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to insist it be left to the commission.

Explaining why the resulting negotiations went so badly is difficult to say. Much of the blame has been pinned on the commission’s slowness to act and failure to tie down producers to delivery dates — highlighted by different interpretations of the wording of its 41-page contract with Astrazeneca, which was finally published on Friday, albeit in heavily redacted form.

The Bavarian leader, Markus Söder, seen as a possible candidate to succeed Merkel after September’s election, said “operational responsibility” for what was a “more than unsatisfactory” situation lay with Brussels. “The decision was made in what I think is a typical, normal, bureaucratic EU procedure, also with regard to the money issues. And I think the fundamental importance in this situation was completely underestimated,” he said.

Allies of von der Leyen have hit back against such criticism, however, saying the commission’s task was complicated by the need to square differences between member states with varying views of how much they were ready to pay.

 Some were also reportedly wary of the more experimental mRNA — messenger RNA — vaccines of Pfizer or Moderna, preferring Astrazeneca’s more conventional one. Either way, the results have been demonstrably disastrous: EU countries did not start vaccinating until a good three weeks after Britain and then, far from closing the gap with the UK, they have slipped further behind.

The European Medicines Agency — which moved from London to Amsterdam in 2019 — delayed giving its approval to the Astrazeneca vaccine, a mainstay of its immunisation campaign and at the centre of last week’s vaccine war. It was finally granted on Friday.

Further confusion came courtesy of Stiko, the German standing committee on vaccination, which suggested the vaccine should not be given to the over-65s — a reservation seized upon by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, who raised eyebrows among scientists by dismissing it as “quasi-ineffective for people in that demographic”. The commission has also, meanwhile, moved to control the export of vaccines produced on its territory.

France, the birthplace of Louis Pasteur, has put in a dismal performance: although with a similar-sized population to the UK, it has so far vaccinated just 1.3 million. An online calculator has estimated that, at the current rate, it would take more than five years to immunise its entire population.

Others have not done much better: Germany, hailed for the Teutonic efficiency with which it dealt with the first wave, has managed to jab just 2.2 million. Spahn, also spoken of until recently as a potential successor to Merkel, warned last week progress could be slowed further. “We will still have at least 10 tough weeks with a shortage of vaccine,” he tweeted.

Most surprising perhaps is Holland. The country has been in the headlines in recent days because of anti-lockdown riots that have constituted the worst unrest in four decades. Less noticed has been the snail-like pace of its vaccination programme: fewer than 216,000 of its 17.3 million people have so far been immunised.

Until now such statistics have remained just that — statistics. That will soon begin to change, however. The herd immunity that will ultimately liberate us and allow a return to normal life is not suddenly achieved at a precise point. It is a gradual process. For that reason, the speed of Britain’s vaccination programme may have already begun to play a part — alongside the lockdown — in the pronounced fall in new cases in recent days.

The effect will be felt much more slowly on the Continent, in effect dooming them to several more months of on and off lockdowns. Portugal, whose death rate is now the highest in Europe, has been one of the latest to tighten the screws, postponing planned school reopening and extending its state of emergency. The surge has been blamed largely on to too great a relaxation in restrictions over the Christmas period. Though home to just 10 million people, it is reporting almost 13,000 cases a day. How long its population and those of other European countries will tolerate such restrictions remains to be seen: the Dutch are not the only ones taking to the streets.

Germany’s Querdenken — lateral thinkers — movement, a mixture of far-right-wingers, antivaxers and conspiracy theorists, have organised noisy protests in recent months including one in November in which they half-heartedly attempted to storm the German parliament.

It is fear of such protests — or merely of lower-level civil disobedience — that appeared behind Macron’s unexpected decision to step back this weekend from imposing the full third lockdown that his country’s scientists had demanded and its media have widely trailed.

France is something of a European champion when it comes to street action. Yesterday saw mass demonstrations in Paris and dozens of other cities against planned legal reforms. Mobilising large numbers against lockdown would not be difficult. Macron’s government instead announced late on Friday more minor changes — the most significant of which was the closure of large department stores, which have been open along with other non-essential shops since before Christmas — as well as a tougher enforcement of existing rules. In a reflection of a fear of the “English mutant”— the more infectious variant of Covid-19 first identified in the southeast — France has also in effect sealed its border with Britain from today; similar moves are being taken by Germany and several other EU states.

In an echo of last spring, EU member states are also again erecting barriers against each other: France, for example, will require visitors from other EU countries to come equipped with a negative PCR (polymerase chain reaction) Covid-19 test certificate. The requirement could be difficult to enforce given its long and porous borders.

The next months will show whether current frustration with the European Commission’s performance will turn into Euroscepticism. The painful wrangling of the Brexit negotiations — and the teething troubles that have followed the conclusion of last month’s trade deal, widely reported on the Continent — have hitherto diminished rather than boosted calls for other countries to go their own way. Frexit and its equivalents still remain a minority passion, but that could change. Marine Le Pen, the Eurosceptic French far-right leader, has been gaining in popularity ahead of presidential elections in spring next year: a shock poll last week showed her trailing Macron by just 52% to 48%. In an attempt to defuse her criticism of his government’s handling of the pandemic, Macron invited Le Pen to join other party leaders in talks late last week on what form the new restrictions should take, despite her National Rally’s minimal representation in parliament.

The sheer ferocity of media attacks, especially in Germany, on what is portrayed as bungling Brussels will also further hurt the reputation of the EU’s bureaucracy, whose legitimacy relies on its perceived efficiency. This will prove all the more damaging if individual governments attempt to deflect criticism from themselves by pinning blame on the commission, too. Von der Leyen could be in for a difficult few months.

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

Another telltale sign of the virus - 'Covid tongue' 

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain .

Madrid seems a tad confused on the issue of the week:-

1. Editorials published on Thursday in conservative-leading El Mundo and left-wing El Pais, Spain’s two biggest newspapers, criticised the bloc’s handling of the vaccine program

2. Spain made clear on Thursday it supported the European Union’s handling of a shortfall in COVID-19 vaccines after a leaked document suggested the health ministry was blaming Brussels

Forced back into line, I suspect.

Clarification of the need (for Brits  of a licence from the Defence Ministry for some rural plots around the country, including our coastline - here, here and here. This has always been the case for non-EU citizens such as North Americans. I'm told the size of the plot make a big difference. For larger ones, it all goes to Madrid but for smaller ones, Valladolid. Where they're quicker. At least they have been in the past, when the volume was lower.

Taxis. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive of the 56 cities studied is a whopping 125%. The most expensive of cities are Tarragona, San Sebastian and Vitoria. The cheapest - Las Palmas and Cádiz.  At last, some good news for us up here . . .The cheapest minimum daytime fares are found in three cities in Galicia in the far north-west – Lugo (€1.88), Pontevedra (€2.09) and Ourense (€2.10). More here.

Marìa's New Year Same Old: Day 29. Another bad experience with with what she calls a  consented monopoly which has acted in bad faith.   

The EU

Time to remind ourselves of 4 things:-

1. There's a price to pay in speed and efficiency for acting, in an emergency, like a committee that needs to satisfy 27 members whose interests might not be identical.

2. The bureaucrats/technocrats who run the EU don't fully understand the huge complexities of the Irish/British relationship.

3. These bureaucrats/technocrats can't be voted out of office. However incompetent they are. Or not by the affected public at least. 

4. In my view at least, the EU has no long-term future, as it will eventually collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions. A view that this week's events has naturally endorsed. But could still be wrong, of course.

The UK and the EU 

Needless to say. AEP is not impressed by the EU's current attitude and actions. Invoking powers that would allow the European Council to seize intellectual property and data from pharmaceutical companies would be madness. Since he wrote this late yesterday, the EU has (wisely) backtracked on its threat to ban vaccine exports into Northern Island. Which infuriated not just the UK but also Ireland.

Richard North today: After its relatively sure-footed performance during the Brexit and trade negotiations, the Commission seems determined to snatch a humiliating defeat from the jaws of its previous victory. By common accord, Brussels seems to be in turmoil on this issues and even its friends seem to recognise that it is losing the public relations war. By contrast Johnson, for once, is having a "good war", while many former Remainers are being driven reluctantly into the Brexit camp. One can only admire the skill with which the Commission has managed to convert a winning position into a train-wreck in such short a space of time.

It must have struck in North's craw to say anything positive about Johnson, whom he detests.

The Way of the World

'Ho' was, I think, American slang for 'prostitute', from 'whore'. God knows what else it means now. But, anyway, you have to laugh . .  Facebook apologises for flagging Plymouth Hoe as an offensive term, after it mistakenly labelled posts referring to the Devon hillside as misogynistic. And these people now rule the earth.

Finally . . .  

I stumbled across these marvellous examples of colouring old fotos, here and here.

Finally, Finally . . .

I shopped early in Carrefour this morning and noted only 1 of the 12 tills was open at 10.05. By 11.10, though, all of them were busy. I don't like Carrefour but am forced to shop there as I'm not allowed to leave my barrio, where a local chain - Froiz - prevented the opening of a Mercadona shop. Two main reasons:- 1. There are so few staff around, there's usually no one to ask where things are; and 2. They still don't do veg and fruit weighing at the check-out. It's irritating when you have to go back and weigh something. And truly annoying when you have to do this a second time . . But if you're someone who likes Marmite, they have this. Plus something that cheered me up . . . Heinz baked beans. So, the hour had its high points.

BTW . . . Beats me: Ordinary porridge oats, €1.50 a kilo. Gluten free (German brands), €8.

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

Another tour-de-force from MD of Private Eye below. There’s a UK bias, of course, but also a brief analysis of German success against English up-to-now failure. 

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain .   

As if we didn't know . . .

So, the good news is that: Ikea will launch Home Solar, its solar panel service for Spain and Portugal in the spring. Buyers will not have to do any self-installation as Contigo Energía will be in charge of the installation and management of these systems for rooftops. Without giving out any more details for the moment, the Swedish company claims that it will be an affordable offer that facilitates access to self-consumption "for the majority", in addition to being a "simple" option for home-owners… Let's hope this time round the Spanish government doesn't very heavily penalise folk for going this route, to the benefit of their mates in the utility companies

Marìa's New Year Same Old: Day 28. 

The UK

Caitlin Moran: This week has been the worst so far, hasn’t it? Time seems to have turned into a single grey, interminable blob, stretching out as far as the eye can see. Boris Johnson will try to jolly things up by madly saying things like, “We could start looking at easing lockdown in mid-February!” but even the most ardent fans of Johnson’s fecklessly positive bullshit have long stopped believing anything he says. The government's answer, she says, is “Festival UK 2022”, which, in a way, is bringing people together: together in hating the Brexit festival. As author Danny Wallace pointed out this week, its official title abbreviates to “FUK 2022”.  At this point the most British thing the government could do is to issue a press statement saying, “It’s all gone wrong, we’re so sorry” and quietly forget about the whole thing. After all, the one thing the British are still pre-eminent at is apologising.

Ireland

If you want to understand the long and (very) complicated relationship of this country with Britain, this BBC series is for you.

The EU

Yesterday I cited this headline: Covid is a 1914 moment for the post-Cold War globalised order. Vaccine nationalism and border closures mark a paradigm shift with vast implications for freedom. The full article is below.

The UK and the EU 

No one who's been reading Richard North's blog for years will be surprised at the major problems now faced by British exporters into the EU - for which the only(?) solution is to invest in an operation on the Continent to deal with at least some of the non-tariff barriers. As the British government is responsible for this mess, does the solution lie in it setting up central government facilities on both sides of the Channel for meeting this challenge, providing a free service for all exporters? Not that this would be very efficient, of course.

The Way of the World

'Ho' was, I think, American slang for 'prostitute', from 'whore'. God knows what else it means now. But, anyway, you have to laugh . .  Facebook apologises for flagging Plymouth Hoe as an offensive term, after it mistakenly labelled posts referring to the Devon hillside as misogynistic. 

Finally . . .  

British cuisine: A Spanish writer spills the beans on the UK's saucy secrets.  For the record, I've never tried Marmite or bread sauce.

THE ARTICLES

1. MD one Covid in the UK

Good news 

We are leading the pack on vaccine roll-out, with 14.9m of our highest-risk citizens promised a first jab by 15 February, and a further 17m by spring. It's a tough ask, and government promises have depreciated markedly in value over the past year, but NHS GPs and pharmacies have a good track record delivering vaccines, and the addition of hospital centres and regional mega-hubs could make this achievable, provided supply can keep up with demand. 

But don't have a post-vaccine party. 

Protection takes at least 3 weeks to kick in. We don't yet know if vaccines prevent transmission or infection, or just reduce severe infections and death. We don't yet know if the 400,000 people who have had 2 doses will have significantly better protection than the 4m who have had one. With the over-80s at least partially protected, Covid deaths should fall from next month, but the median age of an ICU patient is 58, so hospitals will remain busy. 

To control Covid globally, all countries need fair access to vaccines. Many rich countries, including the UK, have over-ordered vaccines and must redistribute any surplus via the global COVAX initiative. With more than 2m deaths and counting worldwide, vaccination should happen according to risk, not wealth. 

Bad news 

TheUK is leading Europe in both Covid deaths and excess deaths. Over the year, Scotland and Northern Ireland have performed better than England and Wales. 

Excess deaths are the best measure of how a country has dealt with the pandemic overall. It encompasses not just how well we managed to control infection and treat Covid, but also how well we have promoted public health and kept other services open to treat cancer, heart disease, stroke, mental illness, etc. Unsurprisingly, countries with the lowest excess deaths have also suffered the least economic, educational and psychological harm. 

Alas, last year's deaths were up 15%, or 75,925 above the five-year average in England and Wales. This was the largest increase in deaths in a single year since 1940; our life expectancy, which had levelled off alarmingly in the years running-up to the pandemic, will now fall. The virus has exploited all our systemic weaknesses. We were poorly prepared for the pandemic, with poor public health and poor public service capacity. And our government played "chicken" 3 times with the virus on the rise and lost. 

The new variant was spreading well before Christmas, and it is impossible to know how much extra spread occurred with the "escape the mutant" rush from London and the South-east on 19 December. Many people had already planned to cut back at Christmas, but Boris Johnson "battling the experts to save Christmas" (as the Express put it) before his screeching U-turn just sowed panic and confusion. Covid is like a dirty bomb that detonates in those who are most susceptible 21 days or more after infection. Whole families have gone down with the new-variant and daily deaths are now higher than they ever have been.

It has been clear since March that winter would be the time of highest risk for a respiratory virus resurgence, variant or not. An NHS overloaded with Covid now has a waiting list of 4.5m, and more than 1,000 patients in London need urgent cancer surgery but have no data for it. The private sector must help. Also, we're trying to vaccinate during an outbreak, which gives the virus more chances to spread and become resistant. So, not ideal. 

Vaccinating during a surge 

It's much safer to vaccinate in advance of an outbreak, as we do with flu, than during one. The virus currently has more opportunities to mutate and may spread in clinics, which vary in how well spaced and ventilated they are. Cathedral clinics with drafts and very high ceilings would be ideal. Health and care settings are the highest-risk places to contract Covid, and many NHS staff are over 5O and overweight. Vaccinators need vaccinating too. 

Vaccine homework 

According to a YouGov poll, 80% of Britons are willing to have a Covid-19 vaccine, although BAME citizens may need more reassurance. There are excellent information leaflets at www.gov.uk on vaccine types, ingredients (no pork or beef), indications, side effects and protection. 

If you want to delve deeper, the Green Book is the vaccination bible for NHS workers and contains much of what we currently know about the virus and the vaccines. It is also freely available on the www.gov.uk website (chapter 14a). You may get more than one invitation for a vaccine (from GP, pharmacy and regional mega-hub), so only accept one. If anyone asks for money or personal details, it's a hoax. 

MD's jab 

I had my first Pfizer BioNTech jab last week at my hospital. Thank you. I had mild side effects, which are a good sign the immune system has responded to the vaccine, but it takes a few weeks for a decent measure of protection to evolve. A few of my younger NHS colleagues have had worse headaches, arm pain, enlarged lymph glands and higher temperatures post vaccination, especially those who have already had Covid. However, nearly all pass in 48 hours. 

Post-vaccine deaths 

Unsurprisingly, MD is already being sent social media posts claiming the Covid vaccine has killed someone. In general, vaccines are among the safest health interventions known, with around one in a million people suffering life-threatening side effects. Most recover with prompt anaphylaxis treatment, but if you vaccinate billions globally, some will die as a result of vaccination. 

However, many more will die from Covid, including Covid they caught around the time of vaccination that will be blamed on the vaccine. Others will die after vaccination from something completely unrelated (eg dementia). The older you are, the more likely you are to die at any time, and we are vaccinating the oldest in our population. So expect post-vaccine deaths, nearly all of which aren't vaccine-related. There is no "zero risk", and all serious after-events should be reported via the Yellow Card Scheme. 

Tribal warfare 

In a liberal democracy, people are free to believe any old bollocks. The completely deluded believe Covid doesn't exist, all the tests are false vaccines are unnecessary and our hospitals are empty. At the other end, there are those who strongly believe in the pandemic, believe it is a consequence of the way we live on this planet and that a global cull of destructive humans for virus food is welcome evolutionary payback. 

Between these extremes, both pro- and anti-lockdown factions believe in vaccines. If you're anti-lockdown, you just want all the highest risk people vaccinated to reopen society completely; if you're (usually reluctantly) pro-lockdown, you think at least 70% of the population need to be vaccinated and even then we may be wearing masks next Christmas. 

MD is far more cautious than I was a year ago. And countries which kept coronavirus at the lowest possible level have had far fewer deaths, school closures and job losses than those who tried to keep it at "a manageable level". With exponential growth, manageable very soon becomes unmanageable, as we keep discovering. And so now has Germany.

England v Germany

Comparing the UK to New Zealand or other smaller population nations isn't fair, although we can clearly learn from them. China managed to brutally suppress the virus by brutally suppressing its people, but that isn't the British way. 

Germany is democratically, culturally and climatically similar to us. It has a larger population than the UK (83.02m v 66.65m), and we have the advantage of island status to better control our borders from viral invasion. We should have outperformed Germany over the year, but it put us to shame in round one. It's still beaten us in rounds two and three, but they have been closer. So are we getting better or has Germany got worse? 

Round one 

Preparation is key in any pandemic. If we'd matched the percentage of GDP Germany has put into healthcare just since 2000, we'd have put an extra £260bn into the NHS up to 2018. Think how much extra capacity that would have bought us. Germany has the most hospital beds and ITU beds per 1,000 people in the European Union. Unlike the UK, it had testing and tracing infrastructure in place at the outset, was first to come up with a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, and the country's 400 local health authorities quickly tracked, traced, isolated and supported the contacts before numbers got out of control. 

Crucially, it took the pandemic seriously from the outset. Angela Merkel (scientist) declared it the country's greatest threat since the Second World War, while Boris Johnson (optimist) was shaking hands in hospital and encouraging people to carry on as normal. 

Unsurprisingly, it is the UK that has posted the highest excess deaths since the war. Wave one German deaths peaked at 2. 78 per million people, compared with 13.88 in the UK, 13.59 in Italy, 16.87 in France and 18.57 in Spain. Germany had barely any excess deaths. 

Rounds two and three 

Germany was first again to come up with a vaccine (BioNTech), but the UK wasn't far behind this time (Oxford) and we were quicker to approve vaccines and roll them out. 

There has also been a convergence of behaviour as we became "habituation nations". If your individual risk from infection is low, there is a limit to how long you will make huge personal sacrifices to help those less fortunate and save your health service. In both Germany and the UK, the workers most at risk from Covid can least afford to isolate. Many are under constant pressure to go to work and put food on the table. Covid is low on their daily risk list. 

Germany's citizens experienced so few deaths in wave one they relaxed over the summer, and an autumn surge emerged that even their track and trace couldn't contain. It went into "lockdown light" on 2 November, with schools and nurseries remaining open. But it hasn't worked and Germany now has 1,000 Covid deaths a day. Why? 

Christmas markets were largely cancelled, but there was still a lot of festive mingling and "mulled wine to go". Some restaurants bent the rules. Merkel warned that Christmas was high-risk, but under pressure from the chief ministers of Germany's federal states, rules were relaxed. It now has 4 times as many infections as in the peak of spring, and 4,000 Covid patients in intensive care. 

As in the UK, the more infectious variant is partly responsible. Unlike the UK, there won't be the huge number of excess deaths in Germany because it has far more healthcare capacity. 

Home or hospital?

If you got what you think is Covid and are trying to tough it out at home, when should you call for help? NHS England has an excellent leaflet - Important information to keep you safe while isolating at home. Ambulance services and hospitals are overloaded in many areas and they're encouraging people to phone 111 first. The leaflet tells you when to go to A&E or call 999. GPs can provide free home-use pulse oximeters for those most at risk. It's an emergency if your blood oxygen levels are 92% or less (retake your reading immediately before calling). If it's 93-94%, call 111. 

Symptoms can worsen very quickly with Covid, and indeed any health emergency. In reality, it's bloody hard to judge how sick you are when you're also frightened, which I suspect is one reason so many have died at home this year. Like the government, the tendency is to hope for the best and delay taking action - never a good plan in an emergency. 

Animal Farm 

Vaccines may be our way out of this pandemic but they won't change the social and environmental conditions that allowed the virus to jump species. We have to change fundamentally the way we treat animals. Until we do that, we'll continue to be at risk from zoonotic viruses. 

2. Covid is a 1914 moment for the post-Cold War globalised order: Vaccine nationalism and border closures mark a paradigm shift with vast implications for freedom: Allister Heath, the Telegraph.

When the assassin’s bullet felled Archduke Franz Ferdinand on that fateful day of June 1914, it didn’t only set off a chain of events that led to unimaginable slaughter. It also abruptly terminated the first modern era of capitalist globalisation, reversing four decades of integration that had transformed living standards.

John Maynard Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace, published in 1919, contains the classic account of that lost Edwardian civilisation; the parallels with our own times are stunning, proof again of the maddening circularity of human endeavour. “The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep,” Keynes recalls.

They could invest their savings in businesses worldwide and “secure forthwith … cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality”. Most tellingly, the educated metropolitan classes “regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable”.

Yet just like our own pre-Covid universe, when we thought we had conquered disease, it was too good to be true. The Great War wiped it all away, and it took around 100 years for the global economy to surpass the level of integration it had reached in 1914.

It is now Covid’s turn to wreck the assumptions that underpinned another period of globalisation: a wonderful, freewheeling, ultra-mobile 30-year affair that started with the downfall of communism in 1989 has come to a screeching end. A paradigm has shifted: a shrinking, integrating world is expanding and fragmenting again.

Many of the freedoms we had taken for granted have been revealed as temporary privileges, revocable at any time, by states that are flexing muscles we thought had atrophied. A liberal era is over; a new phase of managed globalisation is upon us. It will affect all of us hugely, in two major ways.

The travel bans and quarantine hotels are this new philosophy’s first, most shocking manifestation. For the first time since the mid-Forties, governments are preventing citizens from leaving their countries via hard borders. In Britain, it is now against the rules to go on holiday, and guarded hotel quarantines are being imposed on citizens returning from high-risk countries. This policy will surely be extended drastically as more mutant virus strains pop up across the world.

The old certainties – that it would always be possible to visit family abroad, or grab some sun, or find a job in Dubai if things went really wrong – have been dashed. Psychologically, this closing of exit strategies will be oppressive for many. In just nine months, border shutdowns have gone from inconceivable impositions in the modern, easyJet world to one of the state’s key public health tools.

Whether one believes this new approach to be vital to save lives, or a calamity, is irrelevant: it is the new normal. Travel bans and quarantine hotels won’t be a one-off. There will be more outbreaks of infectious diseases in the near future, and also false alarms, and they will all be accompanied by crippling restrictions.

So what does this mean? The costs of changing country have shot up, and international lives, from second-home ownership to Eurostar commuting, less worthwhile. Zoom-style technologies help, and have richly rewarded a small number of tech firms, but ultimately are an ersatz: the trauma for the millions of families with relatives abroad will be immense. Many will be forced to reorganise their lives.

Entire industries are now uninvestable. Corporate vested interests have been exposed as toothless: in a pandemic, or any other emergency, states will act without cost-benefit analyses, disregarding the financial and economic impact. Human rights rules are equally meaningless, including the “right” to education, private property or simply to walk freely. Given that there will now be regular lockdowns, we may need new constitutional norms to govern such events.

Every firm will have to plan for the likelihood of future lockdowns. Travel bans will become like recessions: a known risk to be managed. Many business models will no longer make sense. There will be huge demand to travel and eat out when this period ends, but hotels, airports and airlines have become speculative investments, the value of which could fall to zero at any time. There will be calls for state guarantees, with foul consequences, including a vicious circle of higher tax and greater economic decline.

For London and the South East, dependent on short-term overseas labour, business travel and leisure tourism, the blow will be especially devastating. Of the 1.3 million immigrants who have already left the UK, 700,000 were Londoners, slashing the capital’s population by 8 per cent. Will London reinvent itself, or will it be levelled down? What of the rest of Global Britain?

All of this takes us to the second major shift: the return of competitive protectionism and the collapse of supply chains. Free trade is fragile, and illiberal forces are acting to destroy a system that has rescued billions from abject poverty. We first saw during the race for PPE that countries were willing to ban exports and seizing output from factories located in their territory. We are now witnessing a war for vaccines, engineered by a desperate, incompetent and grotesque EU. Contracts and the rule of law are being fatally undermined.

Tragically for free-traders, this will force countries to reshore capacity in a range of areas. Yet where does this end? Countries will need their own vaccine and PPE plants, but what else? What about factories to build microchips (dangerously concentrated in Taiwan)? What about China’s control of cobalt and lithium? How do we prevent a nihilistic race for Thirties-style autarky, triggering another Great Depression?

Covid is a human tragedy, the West’s most lethal pandemic since the Spanish flu. But it is also upending our political economy. The old world is gone, and no amount of wishful thinking or vaccination will bring it back.

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

Good news: From Spain - A new Covid vaccine 100% 'made in Spain' could become a viable alternative to those currently on the market or about to be released, and is due to start the clinical trial stage very shortly after having been found to provide total immunity in mice. 

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

So, what's really odd about this report of 2 youngsters snapped kissing in the middle of the empty snowbound A2? Answer below, for when you've read the article.

Despite the panoply of things required of air and boat travellers rom the UK to Spain . . . Overland travellers to Spain are exempt from these equirements and are, therefore, not [even] required to present a PCR, TMA or LAMP test, or Health Control Form on entry by road or rail. IGITSTS.

Interestingly, going to Ireland first and then flying (and maybe sailing) to Spain seems to allow one to bypass the requirements.

Back in the late late 19th century, there were problems between the UK and Spain over wine duties. A senior English politician of the time  complained that: More than once the talks have run into the morass of Spanish prolixity. But I'mm sure this doesn't happen now, as Spanish diplomats have a fine reputation, in Brussels at least. Don't know about London.

A lovely bit of Almerían nostalgia from Lenox Napier here.

Low ethics again . . 

Marìa's New Year Same Old: Day 27.   

The UK

If you watch, listen to or read British media, you'll surely notice how many foreigners appear there, as performers, academics or heads of organisations in the UK. For example Tamara Rojo, who's Spanish and the Artistic Director of English National Ballet. This suggests widespread meritocracy and I wonder which other countries get anywhere near this. And I'm not talking about Scottish, Irish and Welsh voices. Nor even the (non-British) Irish voices which are everywhere in the media. Especially the Irish. Though many of these will be resident in the UK.

Ireland

Talking of the Irish . . . It's recently been found that the man they hate most - Oliver Cromwell - was himself of Irish descent. Which will be a bit of a shock to everyone, I guess. Less surprising is that more than 50% of Liverpool folk are also of (more recent) Irish descent.

 The EU

Did you know that there were Exit parties in several major EU countries? And that they're getting together?But these might not be the EU's biggest problem, says the writer of the first article below.  

The UK and the EU 

Some UK headlines this morning:-

- How the UK's vaccine gamble paid off – and the EU left itself without a leg to stand on.

- Covid is a 1914 moment for the post-Cold War globalised order. Vaccine nationalism and border closures mark a paradigm shift with vast implications for freedom

- AstraZeneca is a scapegoat for the European Commission's staggering institutional failure. 

The last one is from an article from AEP, the 2nd below. Like me, AEP has no confidence in the long-term future of the EU. My view for decades has been that it won't survive continuing sectarian national interests. These, of course, come to the fore in times of crisis, like this one.  Hence the 2nd headline.

Finally . . .  

A couple of local artists/friends: of mine:-

1. DJ Something? We Are One

2. Yasín the adopted Ethiopian son of my Dutch friends who died a year ago this week. [Sorry. I can't get this to uplod at the moment]

I’m told by people younger than me that these are both terrific.

THE ARTICLES

1. With Brexit done, the EU has other problems to deal with — starting with ‘illiberal’ Hungary: Peter Conradi, Europe Editor. The Times

In the hours since Britain completed its exit from the EU on Thursday evening, Charles-Henri Gallois, the leader of France’s fledgling Génération Frexit movement, has stepped up his campaign on social media for his compatriots to follow suit.

“The sound of liberty. Big Ben Brexit Bongs,” Gallois, 33, tweeted as the UK’s post-Brexit transition period ended at 11pm. “The United Kingdom is from today an independent country.”

Under the slogan “Reprenons Le Contrôle”, his group launched a petition in November calling for France to have its own referendum on membership. By this weekend, it had attracted just 9,562 signatures.

With little interest from the country’s mainstream media, Gallois, a business school graduate and author of a book denouncing the EU’s “economic illusions”, still has some way to go before becoming a French Farage.

When Britain voted for Brexit in 2016, jubilant supporters claimed its example would encourage several of the EU’s other 27 countries to follow suit. Four years on, their dream looks no closer to becoming reality.

The relatively smooth start this weekend on both sides of the Channel to Britain’s new trading relationship with the EU has pushed the issue down the news agenda in most member states. The preoccupation, from Portugal to Poland, has instead been Covid-19 and whether tighter restrictions will be imposed to counter its resurgence after the new year break.

If Britain is held up as a model at all, it is for the speed with which the government has begun its vaccination programme against the virus: “Germany has vaccinated more than 42,000, the United Kingdom 900,000 and France less than 200!” tweeted Bruno Retailleau, leader of the Republican party in the French senate, on Wednesday.

When it comes to Brexit itself, commentators remain as baffled as ever by what many see as a self-inflicted harm, with sentiments varying from bewilderment and regret to downright rage.

“I don’t feel sadness, only anger,” wrote Nikolaus Blome in a withering column for Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, last week. “Britain has been captured by gambling liars, frivolous clowns and their claqueurs. They destroyed my Europe, to which the island belonged just as much as France or Germany do.”

Emmanuel Macron set out a similar view in his New Year’s Eve address. Although insisting the “UK remains our neighbour but also our friend and ally”, the French president criticised the “lies and false promises” that encouraged Britons to vote to leave.

The way to prevent another country going the same way lay in European integration, he indicated, citing the recent £677bn in loans and grants agreed by EU leaders to help kick-start their economies. The sum is small against the EU’s combined GDP of £11 trillion. Yet the symbolism is considerable, because, in a first for the EU, the sum is being raised on financial markets by issuing common debt, taking its members closer to a shared budget.

However, the limits to such plans were shown by the struggle faced by Paris and Berlin to secure support for the deal from the “Frugal Four”: Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Holland.

A more fundamental problem is posed by tensions with Hungary and Poland, whose governments delayed the plan — and the EU’s next seven-year budget — in protest at attempts by Brussels to make the release of their shares dependent on respect for the “rule of law”.

Viktor Orban, the self-styled “illiberal” Hungarian prime minister, and Mateusz Morawiecki, his conservative Polish counterpart, were eventually won over last month. Yet they continue to oppose what they see as attempts by the EU’s western members to impose liberal values on their own more traditional societies — paving the way for more clashes.

Even if the EU looks unlikely to lose any more members, finding agreement among those that remain may not become easier.

2. AstraZeneca is a scapegoat for the European Commission's staggering institutional failure: Ursula von der Leyen’s Davos speech this week sounded more like a threat than a request for Britain's help: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Telegraph 

Brussels wants Britons to die so that Europeans should live. That is the implication of diverting up to 75 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to the EU market. It is a large demand.

Diplomatically, this country can invoke vital national interest and restrict exports of doses manufactured in the UK, just as the EU has announced it will do for doses made on its own territory. Whether this country should act in such a fashion is a question of statecraft. 

But it would be a remarkably generous gesture at a time when the EU is being horrible on everything to do with the post-Brexit settlement, from customs clearance, to Ulster, or financial equivalence. It is reciprocating on almost nothing.  

Personally, as a man in my early sixties, I might forgo my jab for a while so that the over eighties at greater risk in France, Italy, or Bulgaria can be saved, although why do they have a greater claim than Tanzanians? But the EU does not seem to be making a moral request for solidarity. It is issuing orders. 

Ursula von der Leyen’s speech to the virtual Davos forum this week did not sound like a request for help from this country. It sounded like a threat. Companies must “honour their obligations”, she said in her teeth-clenching staccato style. 

Health commissioner Stella Kyriakides says AstraZeneca is legally bound to divert doses from two UK factories.  "In our contract it is not specified that any country or the UK has priority. This needs to be absolutely clear," she said.

You would hardly know that AstraZeneca is the saviour in this saga, not the villain. It is making no profit from the vaccine. It is selling at cost, like a charity, offering a humanitarian service to the world. But don’t expect gratitude from the Berlaymont.

Nor is there any hint of acknowledgement that Brussels got itself into its vaccine disaster by haggling over prices and trying to drive hard bargains on indemnity. It wasted three months before committing to AstraZeneca, as if it were the easiest thing in the world to mass-produce a viral vector vaccine. That is why the EU-based plants are not yet up to full efficiency.  

The UK and the US invested seven times as much public money per capita to accelerate the vaccine breakthrough, acting with war-time energy while the Commission remained stuck in its bureaucratic box-ticking subculture, catering to the lowest common denominator of 27 states. If ever there was an example of  why Brussels should not be let anywhere near policies of real national sensitivity, this was it.

EuroIntelligence said the EU conducted vaccine talks in the same spirit that it conducted Brexit talks. “It tried to lock in a perceived short-term price advantage at the expense of everything else,” it said. Speed is everything in a pandemic. The Commission could not see the wood for the trees.

I have no idea whether AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot is right in claiming that the company has no contractual duty to deliver tens of million doses to the EU by a fixed date, but rather only to make its “best effort”. Nor do I know whether vaccine supply-chain is set up for each specific country. The issue is larger.   

All of a sudden the stereotype roles of the last four years have reversed. Europe’s technocrats are now the populists, the vaccine imperialists. Borisian Britain is starting to feel like a haven of calm by comparison.  For all its mistakes, the UK is now cleaving closer to science. It is behaving better.

Germany is in fever, hunting for somebody to blame for the inexcusable fact that it cannot obtain more than a trickle of its own BioNTech vaccine. If that blame ultimately lands squarely on Brussels, the European project is in trouble.

For now media wrath is turning on diversionary scapegoats. AstraZeneca is the easiest target.  Hysteria is taking over. One can only guess which figures in ‘government circles’ (Kreisen der Bundesregierung) leaked a fabricated story to the Handelsblatt alleging that its vaccine is virtually useless against the elderly.

The claim has been shot down by German scientists. AstraZeneca has debunked it. Oxford University, unused to such political bloodsport, gently pointed out that five peer-reviewed papers show that efficacy is comparable across age groups. Not a single elderly volunteer died or became critically-ill after the jab.

No matter. The fake news lives on, amplified by Bild Zeitung, and still given credence by others, as if there were a genuine debate. This mendacious virus is now a staple of social media and lodged in the German mind. That is how to destroy confidence in a vaccination campaign. Kreisen der Bundesregierung indeed.

France’s rationalist president is like a rabbit caught in the headlights. The ‘variant anglais’ has surged to 10pc of all Covid cases in greater Paris even on the lagging official data. It is going parabolic. The scientific authorities are pressing for an immediate lockdown. Still he hesitates.

Emmanuel Macron is warily eyeing the travails of his friend and fellow-rationalist Mark Rutte. The Netherlands have been blind-sided by violent anti-curfew riots for three consecutive nights, “shameless thieves” in the words of Rotterdam’s mayor, or “the scum” to one minister.

Macron knows that civic acquiescence for his stop-go strategy is near breaking point. Consent for yet another lockdown has dropped to 40pc. A gilets jaunes two lies in store if this drags on deep into the Spring.  

The EU’s vaccination debacle has delayed Europe’s social reopening and economic recovery by three months, with all the consequences that this will have for sovereign debt ratios, small firm solvency, and labour hysteresis.

It is one reason - though not the only one - why the International Monetary Fund thinks the region will be left behind as the US and China roar back this year.  It is a Sino-American G2 world from now on. The pandemic has brought forward Europe’s definitive relegation from the top league. 

The IMF and other global bodies lump the UK with the worst of Europe in their grim forecasts. The Fund thinks growth will be just 4.5pc this year after a 10pc contraction in 2020. The OECD says the UK will be the laggard of the developed world, far behind even France and Italy. 

If that happens, I will eat my hat (another one). Britain’s vaccination success so far - and a steeper relative trajectory over coming weeks - imply a rebound roughly ten weeks sooner. So long as Rishi Sunak restrains the Treasury from fiscal tightening too soon, it may well be a V-shaped take-off.

 The Office for National Statistics will publish a paper next week showing that the UK’s (best practice) method of measuring health and education in GDP figures exaggerated the fall in GDP last year. We cut ‘output’ when doctors see fewer patients, or schools have fewer classes. Other countries measure differently.

This flattered German GDP by roughly 2pc last year, or French and Italian GDP by around 1pc. The opposite effect will kick as life returns to normal. It is the UK recovery that will be flattered.   

My bet: the UK will be the star of the big European economies this year and may clock up 6pc growth as pent-up investment flows, assuming the IMF is broadly right on world growth. The Brexit trade shock will be less than feared. 

The UK’s flexible labour markets will make the switch to the post-Pandemic digital economy better than Germany, France, or Italy. Sterling will be the foreign exchange darling. The FTSE-250 will be the catch up story of 2021. 

The global narrative on Brexit will become less relentlessly hostile.  It will be the mirror image of Europe’s eroding credibility. Who knows, perhaps even the Scots will feel that they have judged our imperfect but interwoven union a little too harshly.

Answer: Neither of them bother with social media. Let's hope they're trendsetters.

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

Good news: More here from Spain.

The UK: Here's the Guardian's explanation of the country's awful numbers. But someone has told me this morning that no deaths from flu or 'old age' have been recored this winter. If true, it's also a factor.

Inexplicable: The first 2 sufferers in the UK were from a family of 3. The son and then the mother went down with the virus but the father/husband didn't.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

An example of our culture wars, courtesy of Vox.

Marìa's New Year Same Old: Day 26. I also know of a café which had placed more tables on the pavement/sidewalk and ignored the 2m rule, while reminding me they couldn't serve me inside.

Portugal

The ‘nationalist, far-right’ party, Chega!, got only 1% of the vote in the general elections in 2019. This week, its presidential candidate got 12%. It’s reported that Portugal has not so far seen the same anti-establishment surge from the right that have reshaped the political landscape in some larger EU nations in recent years, although it has seen a rise anti-immigrant violence. Things might be changing for the worse, as here with Vox.

The EU

Europe faces an identity crisis over the vaccine trade war. See here.

The EU and the UK

Probably the majority British view: The EU’s collective approach to vaccination has been slow to order, late to get going, incompetently rolled out, and possibly for reasons of vested interest, riddled with bad bets. The European Commission’s complaint against AstraZeneca is instructed more by the need to find scapegoats for its own failings as anything else. It also seems in some way to have been conflated with the ongoing sense of grievance over Brexit, and the UK decision to go it alone on vaccination strategy, rather than join the collective European effort. Allegations that AZ is deliberately prioritising UK and US markets are essentially just sour grapes. Apparently officially sourced German press reports – now denied by the German health ministry – that the vaccine is largely ineffective among the over-65s have fuelled the flames. AZ is a global healthcare company which is not directly beholden to any country or government; it is as much Swedish as British, and ironically it is run by a French national. It is, moreover, selling its vaccine at no profit to itself, and is establishing local sources of production around the globe as fast as is logistically possible. The idea that it would deliberately favour one country over another is preposterous.

Possibly a minority British view: The EU's vaccine fiasco threatens the very future of Project Europe. The botched vaccination rollout has been a reputational disaster, proving the European Union to be a petty and dysfunctional bloc. . . .  The UK has made serious mistakes – our high Covid death rate isn’t only due to our global connectedness. But the vaccine challenge has been a reputational disaster for the EU – with these latest moves revealing it to be spiteful and dysfunctional, a shabby, protectionist bloc. Full article below.

The USA/Nutters Corner

If you're wondering how all those Christian 'prophets' who said God would give Trump a 2nd term dealt with actuality, this is for you. As the Friendly Atheist says: If God exists, He should seriously smite them for making Him look this bad. Or just laugh. I wonder if any of them have retired from the (profitable)) business of conning the (gullible) faithful. I'm guessing none.

The Way of the World

De-platforming, it is now clear, works. Without the megaphone of social media, Trump is no longer the booming and scary Wizard of Oz but rather the pathetic little man behind the curtain. But the silencing has come at a price. It has shown the enormous power that privately owned social media has. In response, both social media companies and also mainstream news outlets as well as think tanks have stepped up the policing of speech. Likely motivated by a misguided effort to prove they are balanced, these powerful centrist institutions are now engaged in an active effort to silence voices that make conservatives mad.  . . . The social media clampdown combined with the firings at the Times, the Niskanen Center, and Fox News all point in the same direction: Major institutions are now trying to placate the Trumpian right. The cost of Trump’s being quieted as a public voice is that many other voices now are going to be silenced as well. This is too high a price, and reminds us that, though Trump has gone, the real battle for media democracy has just started. Full article here.

Finally . . .  

For Spanish speakers and folks with Google Translate or similar. How to treat your masks:-

THE ARTICLE

The EU's vaccine fiasco threatens the very future of Project Europe: The botched vaccination rollout has been a reputational disaster, proving the European Union to be a petty and dysfunctional bloc: Liam Halligan, Telegraph

The EU’s Covid vaccination programme is a fiasco. So badly has the bloc bungled its vaccine rollout that an escalating row between Brussels and the 27 member states, to say nothing of voter outrage, is damaging “project Europe” itself.

At the start of the pandemic, the European Commission decided that it would take responsibility for sourcing the vaccines, despite its limited competence in the area. It reasoned that its size and the “efficiency” of its bureaucracy would enable it to seize a lead on its rivals in the vaccine race, and show the tangible benefits of European unity.

Instead the experiment has turned into a catastrophe. The UK has administered 10.3 doses per 100 of our population, including four-fifths of the over-80s. No EU nation comes close. Germany has managed just 2.1 doses per 100, the EU average is 1.9 and it’s 1.7 in France. Other member states, such as the Netherlands and Sweden, are lagging further behind.

Now public confidence across the EU is deteriorating fast. Parts of the German press have accused Angela Merkel of sacrificing lives by overriding the vaccine policy of her own government and entrusting it to Brussels. There have been riots in some member states among populations who can see no realistic hope of an exit from lockdown. That’s why the Eurocrats are lashing out, indulging in dangerous vaccine nationalism and seeking scapegoats for their own failures.

In doing so, however, they are exploding another EU myth: that it is a rules-based body devoted to international law and truth. The commission is threatening to obstruct exports of vaccines made in the bloc, including to Britain, in breach of commercial contracts. We’ve also seen what appear to be attempts to discredit the UK-made vaccine. Such disinformation wars are reckless. The AstraZeneca vaccine is vital – set to be used across the world, given that it is cheap and can be stored in a domestic fridge. The UK is right to be furious.

Of course nobody in the EU is prepared to own up to their mistakes. Instead they are doubling down on the ridiculous suggestion that Brussels has received unfair treatment at the hands of the vaccine manufacturers. But at a time of intense demand, shortages are inevitable. Production is an unpredictable biological process and both AstraZeneca and Pfizer have admitted to understandable delays. 

The bottom line is that, for all the UK’s failings during the pandemic, this country invested much earlier and to a far greater extent in the production, clinical trials and procurement of vaccines than the EU. So did the US – and again, America’s vaccine rollout is far superior.

The commission has displayed its usual combination of cack-handedness, bureaucratic torpor and a tendency to bend to special interests. Having dithered over the summer, Brussels buckled to pressure from Paris, ordering 300 million doses of the GSK-Sanofi vaccine. That bet back-fired – a major trial setback means this “French” vaccine won’t be ready until at least the end of 2021.

Brussels placed no firm order with Pfizer until mid-November – even though its partner firm BioNTech is German and had emerged as a front-runner months before. By then, other customers having moved much faster, the EU was way down the list.

“Obviously, the European purchasing process was flawed,” says Markus Söder, the Bavarian premier among the favourites to replace Merkel as chancellor. “It’s hard to explain why people elsewhere are being vaccinated more quickly with an excellent vaccine developed in Germany.”

As for the AstraZeneca vaccine, the European Medical Agency has claimed its “higher standards” have prevented it so far granting approval. And, even then, there may be further delays as labels for the vaccine are printed in the EU’s multiple languages.

The Brussels-made vaccine fiasco will result in more deaths, a longer lockdown and a deeper recession. As government debt ratios across the bloc spiral upward, a repeat of the 2011 eurozone crisis looms into view.

The UK has made serious mistakes – our high Covid death rate isn’t only due to our global connectedness. But the vaccine challenge has been a reputational disaster for the EU – with these latest moves revealing it to be spiteful and dysfunctional, a shabby, protectionist bloc.

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 more good news: A study has raised hopes that a drug - colchicine -  that costs less then 30p and is commonly used to treat gout could reduce the risk of people with Covid-19 having to be admitted to hospital.   

The UK: Almost 500,000 people received their first coronavirus jabs last Saturday, a pace that if maintained would allow the government to beat its target for covering the most vulnerable people in society. As of Saturday, nearly 6.4m had received a first dose.  

The reality?: Even with vaccines, we'll still have to learn to live with Covid. The government, the media and the public all need to get accustomed to Covid-19 deaths being a regular winter occurrence.

Galicia: After the latest announcement, we're very close to the total lockdown of last March. But at least we're allowed to take a walk outside the house. Though we can't meet anyone we don't live with. Which won't do much for romance, I guess. 

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

Thanks to Franco, here in Spain the go-to insult for those with whom you disagree - be they of the Left, the Right or the Centre - is 'fascist!’. So, it's a tad ironic that the 2 British historians in this podcast agree that Franco wasn't one.

Given the restrictions, it's hard to believe the highest number of flights into Heathrow in January came from Spain. Can these be for some of the people I'm hearing more and more about - the Brits (c.800,000?) who'd been living below the radar here. Not on the local padrón, not officially resident and not paying the right amount of tax, if any. Presumably they’ve decided it’s better to go ‘home’ than face the Hacienda, despite (because of?) spending many years here.

Banking frauds are not confined to any one country, of course, but I was interested to note that the main participant in a Deutsche Bank fraud was a desk in Spain, which sells hedges, swaps, derivatives and other complex financial products. And that, while the investigation initially focused on Spain but was extended to the rest of Europe, it is believed only Spain and Portugal-based clients were affected. I was reminded of an assertion from a Spanish reader some years ago that Spain was not as corrupt as I perhaps implied it was but merely a country of 'low ethics'.

An odd tale from here in Galicia. So . . . Wasn't her ID number on every document? If so, and it made no difference, what was the point of it?   

Marìa's New Year Same Old: Day 25.

The UK

No one who's lived in both the UK and Spain will be surprised at this report on respective alcohol consumption.

The UK and the EU

Just what was needed  - the politicisation of vaccine deliveries: The Times: Amid concerns about the level of supply, the EU has told Pfizer and other drug companies that they must secure its permission before exporting vaccine doses to Britain. Brussels has announced plans for new controls on the export of vaccines in response to public anger at the slow pace of immunisation programmes in the EU. The intervention will raise fears that Britain’s supplies of the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine, which is made in Belgium, could be disrupted. Germany has suggested that vaccine exports could be blocked to safeguard supplies within the EU. Imagine how EU governments would react if the USA did this.

The Way of the World

The impact of Covid-19 is fuelling a 21st-century revival of spiritualism.

Unscrupulous breeders are producing dogs which face a lifetime of health problems. Lilac and merle coloured breeds, for example. And stumpy-legged creatures resembling toads. But which cost up to £10,000 each. I give you the American bully dog. Which can't breathe properly. But looks nice . . . .

Finally . . .  

Maria has advised of another English-looking mansion in the North of Spain - the Palacio de Hornillos in Cantabria:-

Finally, Finally . . .

My thanks to those who yesterday cheered up my daughter locked down with 2.75 young kids - by reading her latest blog post - on Ebay failures. Hers, I should add.

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

Starting with some more good news . .  A new nasal spray - currently being trialled - could block Covid

Astonishingly . . .A review of 61 studies and reports suggests that at least 1 in 3 people with Covid don't have any symptoms. Details here.

Some bad news on the impact on the mental health of front-line workers.

An anti-measures view . . . No amount of shutting borders, banning flights, bankrupting businesses, cancelling surgeries, denying children a decent education or wrecking havoc on people's mental health has delivered us to the promised land of a Covid-free existence. Only vaccines provide a solution.

Looking back 12 months:  The lesson from this pandemic?: If you don't act quickly and wisely, you'll be chasing your tail for eternity. And, in the process, badly damaging everyone and everything. Except Amazon and Pornhub.  

The lesson for the next pandemic?: Ditto.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

There's no much doubt about 'typical winter weather' in England. But what about Spain? Here's one answer.

For years, I've been telling newcomers to Spain they'll like/love this country more if they lower their expectations and accept different norms. But, truth to tell, there are things you can get used to - such as unpunctuality and false commitments - but there are others which just seem to go on niggling and niggling. Roundabout behaviour is clearly one of these for me. But there are others. I was reminded of this by this comment on queue-jumping by someone who's been here, like me, 20 years: What fascinates* me is how many locals will talk for hours at the counter to the butcher or fishmonger, totally oblivious to you standing in the queue behind them. Once they’re at the front of a queue, no-one and nothing else matters at all.

*I think he really means 'irritates'.

Just in case you didn't get to the end of yesterday's long-ish article on rural depopulation, here's the relevant bit:- Spain is expected to lose more than half its population by 2100; already, three-quarters of Spanish municipalities are in decline. Picturesque Galicia and Castilla y León are among the regions worst affected, as entire settlements have gradually emptied of their residents. More than 3,000 ghost villages now stand in various states of dereliction. This rural abandonment is one factor that has contributed to the resurgence of large carnivores. The Iberian wolf has rebounded from 400 individuals to more than 2,000, many of which are to be found haunting the ghost villages of Galicia, as they hunt wild boar and roe deer – whose numbers have also skyrocketed. A brown bear was spotted in Galicia last year for the first time in 150 years.

My daughter in Madrid ignored my exhortations and left various Brexit-related matters until late last year. These included getting her TIE and changing her driving licence. Things are going OK as respect the former, but as regards a Spanish driving licence: The service is misleading and chaotic. Each person you talk to gives a different opinion on the law and the process. But at least she has proof of her pre-deadline attempts to initiate the process and hopes these will satisfy whoever she talks to at a future cita.

Which reminds me, although I'm entitled to an EHIC/GHIC frm the British government, my daughter isn't. She has to get a TSE from the Spanish government. If you're working permanently here, this will apply to you too, assuming you're paying social security taxes. Click here.

Marìa's New Year Same Old: Day 24. I’ve said flu cases are down; Maria adds whooping cough and chicken pox.

The Way of the World

Do people want to be free? Or do they prefer security at any price? See the first article below. The worrying bottom line: Perhaps the most important thing we have learned from this deranging time in our history is that fear remains such a strong human impetus that it can easily stampede all the principles assumed to underpin democracy. Does this make it more likely that governments will be prepared to close down all social interaction again, in response to future crises? Almost certainly, and maybe not just for disease epidemics – perhaps for crime waves, terror threats, rioting or mass unrest of any kind. After all, look how easy it was this time.

Thanks to the internet, modern dating - ‘sexual bargaining’ - is complicated, superficial, cold-blooded and hostile.  See the 2nd article below. Can the clock ever be turned back?

English

The word ‘alibi’ was first attested in Edward Grimestone's 1612 General History of Spain. Possibly through Dutch, it comes from Latin, where it literally translated to ‘elsewhere’ or ‘another place’. More on it here.  

I've never seen the 'Grocers' apostrophe' used like this before, as in the plural of country - countrie's. Perhaps unintended.

Finally . . . 

The Miramar Palace of  yesterday . . .Wiki endorses my view it’s a mish-mash: It has a purely English style and presents some neogothic ornaments. Elsewhere I’ve read it’s  built in ‘Queen Anne English cottage’ style.  Reader Eamon has cited a similar mansion, Richthofen Castle in Colorado, USA:-

Built in the styles of Gothic and Tudor Revival. So, another melange/mezcla. 

Finally, Finally . . .

My younger daughter’s latest blog post - on Ebay problems.

THE ARTICLE

1. Do people want to be free? Or do they prefer security at any price? The extraordinary argument that it's okay to sacrifice freedom for security has returned: Janet Daley, The Telegraph.

The present emergency has raised a question that we thought was answered: do people value safety more than freedom? The great political argument of the twentieth century between a totalitarianism that promised lifelong protection, and open democracy which took the riskier path of liberty seemed to have been settled when communism collapsed and its Western acolytes, for the most part, gave up the fight. Or at least re-framed their position in a way that could accommodate the winning side.

Democratic socialism (or “social democracy” if you prefer the more benign title) made an attempt to meld the two visions into some acceptable consensus about how societies could incorporate economic security with individual self-determination. These solutions varied from country to country and from one political party to another - and teetered constantly on the edges of credibility. The Middle Way between government guarantees of what Gordon Brown used to call “social fairness” and free market economics never seemed satisfactory.

But the really big philosophical choice had been made when the Berlin Wall came down. For human beings to lead fulfilled adult lives, they had to be free to take decisions that might involve risk to themselves and possibly even to others, for which they could be held personally accountable. And furthermore, they were fully aware of this truth, which is why they were determined to fight for freedom even when that fight involved very considerable danger.

Of course, in the present context, the notion of risk is quite immediate and absolute. Liberty is no use to you if you are dead, and few people would claim that you should have the right to put other people’s lives in jeopardy. And we are not, however much political rhetoric has been expended, in anything like a war with a sentient enemy. By shutting down so many of the most fundamental personal freedoms we are going further than most countries would ever have done in wartime but we are not handing any sort of moral victory to the enemy – because there is no enemy. This is not an ideological battle with an alien force. It is an argument we must have with ourselves.

I don’t propose to engage yet again in the dispute over the present lockdown restrictions – whether they are effective and how urgent it is to lift them. What interests me is how public opinion has responded to these measures. Do people want to be free? Or do they want to be, above all else, safe? Both, paradoxically, but when it comes to an unavoidable choice which way do they go? It isn’t the imposition of these measures that needs examination here but the willingness to comply with them: the positive eagerness to embrace such unprecedented repression to the point of demanding more of it.

Have we stumbled onto something that was thought to have been extinguished in modern life, at least in the West, but was really a still powerful (maybe ineradicable) force in society? It’s certainly true that when the Soviet system crashed, a great many of the citizens who had lived under it were terrified and appalled: they had genuinely believed the communist state to be the guarantor of stability and survival. But the chaos into which Russia descended, having sold off all its publicly owned assets in a corrupt fire sale, had a great deal to do with that. This wasn’t freedom: it was anarchy and instant impoverishment.

But in the West, there was a glorious moment of belief in the value of enterprise and individualism. In Britain, this had come about as a reaction against the producer-capture of the public services by Leftwing trade unions. So furious was the reaction against state control and nationalised industry, that Labour had to reinvent itself as a party committed to capitalism. Freedom won that round hands down, helped very considerably by the ability of political leaders of the day to identify and articulate the dissatisfactions that really were dominating everyday life.

Is that the formula? For freedom, or security, to dominate public consciousness, must there be that critical combination of ordinary experience, and leadership which knows how to capture and express it – thereby gaining popular trust? If that is so, then it might help us to understand what is going on around us today. The attraction of freedom is that it embodies hope. That is the whole point of it: the hope that people will behave well when they have choices, and that a better future can be created out of human ingenuity and endeavour.

The longing for security, on the other hand, is based on fear: the belief that life (and other people) are so inherently threatening that only an all-powerful institution (or state) can ensure your survival. So it is not difficult to see how the Covid pandemic could present an opportunity for political leaders to craft a message that makes use of fear which will win out over any possible dissent.

Fear will always be a more urgent driver of behaviour than hope, and it is much easier for governments to act on. With enough enforcement and authoritarian regulation, you can deliver a reasonable degree of safety from almost any danger, and righteously suppress any contrary argument. Freedom, on the other hand, is a much more problematic thing to defend. It needs (by definition) constant debate, examination and re-definition. It is an exhausting business that requires an enlightened populace and a government willing to engage in ongoing disputation of quite an abstract kind. Most politicians would be inclined to dislike the precariousness that this involves. (Margaret Thatcher and her mentor, Keith Joseph, were among the few who relished it.)

Perhaps the most important thing we have learned from this deranging time in our history is that fear remains such a strong human impetus that it can easily stampede all the principles that were assumed to underpin democracy. Does this make it more likely that governments will be prepared to close down all social interaction again, in response to future crises? Almost certainly, and maybe not just for disease epidemics – perhaps for crime waves, terror threats, rioting or mass unrest of any kind. After all, look how easy it was this time.

2. The new language of love reveals modern dating's cold-blooded chaos. 'Vulturing’, ‘doxxing’ and ‘eclipsing’ are just some of the terms on a list drawn up by the CPS to help its lawyers understand young people: Zoe Strimpel

Back when I began writing about dating as a columnist for a now-defunct London freesheet, the topic wasn’t taken at all seriously. It was sordid fluff and entertainment, providing voyeuristic distraction for tired commuters. With its high-stakes clash of the sexes, however, I always thought dating was more interesting than it was given credit for, and eventually went back to university to study it academically. But it was hard to get people to take it seriously even then.

It is gobsmacking how much has changed. Dating is finally being appreciated as the ultimate Petri dish of sexual and social relations that it is. In particular, as the great and the good have twigged, if you want to understand the challenges facing young people today, you must boldly enter the jungle of digital semiotics – the slang – through which intimacy is now conducted.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the latest example of an august institution doing just that. This is not the first time it has tried to keep up with changing mores, but its latest guide to key terms, published last week, shows an organisation truly trying to grapple with the pressures faced by the many millions using online dating to find complex combinations of romance, love and sex. The CPS wants its lawyers to understand the ‘new normal’, so that they have a better grasp on the context in which consent is refused, given and abused. This will help it better aid mostly female victims of sexual crimes, many of which now originate online on people’s phones.

Crime aside, however, the new CPS guide is extremely revealing. It shows how complicated but also how superficial, cold-blooded and hostile the sphere of romantic – and sexual – bargaining has become. The guide features a range of outlandish-seeming terms – but for those accustomed to the bewildering dynamics of the contemporary dating swamp, they make perfect sense.

Many deal with the deployment of photos and the manipulation of information in order to maximise options and power. Thus, a ‘thirst trap’ is a sexy selfie posted, almost always by a woman, to attract attention and therefore to accrue power. This is not to be confused with ‘thirsty’, which means desperate for sex, and is generally something someone asserts, sleazily or mockingly, about someone else, rather than in relation to oneself.

Dating today allows access to lots of information about dates, or potential dates, without having to interact with them. You can hoard it instead, and then use it at the right moment. One example of this is ‘vulturing’, which means staying in the shadows on social media, watching for someone’s romance to fizzle so you can swoop. ‘Doxxing’, far more sinister, means harvesting someone’s online information in order to harass them, while ‘exoskeletoning’ is contacting an ex’s new squeeze – easily done thanks to social media.

If this all has a stalkerish vibe to you, then you may be interested to learn about ‘eclipsing’, in which someone becomes obsessed with the hobbies and interests of the person they are dating.

Perpetual awareness of options, and an infinity of distractions, sets the tone of courtship today. ‘Roaching’ means hiding the fact that you are dating numerous people at the same time, while to be ‘sidebarred’ is to be on a date with someone who is looking at their phone in front of you. Phones offer a cascade of stimulation and the illusion of total choice in the human meat market; no wonder the numbing rudeness of sidebarring has become so common, it has come even to the CPS’s notice.

Then there’s the fact that with choice comes bad choices. Enter ‘fleabagging’, named after the romantic car-crash Fleabag character created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, to denote repeatedly choosing incompatible people to date.

If you are long-married or lucky enough to have sought and found your romantic kicks offline, then these terms may seem strange; both overspecific and meaningless. But for those who have dated in the past seven or so years since Tinder came on the scene and changed the whole landscape indelibly and forever, they perfectly represent a familiar chaos. In particular, they capture the twin evaporation of accountability and coherent communication patterns. If communicating used to stand you a decent chance of a timely reply – eg, call was generally met with response – now your call may or may not be met with a response, timely or otherwise, and there is no understanding which it will be or why. I’ve had men disappear in the middle of a back-and-forth conversation, only to pop up three weeks later like nothing happened.

In the good old days (the 2000s and earlier), communication was simpler and more to the point (“Are you free on Friday?”). Now there is a battlefield of text to navigate, a world of emojis to select, and endless grades of tonal subtlety to manage, from the use of full stops (can be seen as passive-aggressive) to length of silences between messages to selfies to send – all without any rules or standards of decency.

Much can go wrong, and does. As the CPS has rightly realised, what happens online can be almost as distressing as, and sometimes more, than what happens offline.

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

The EU: More here on the slow roll-out of the jab. The target of 70%of all adults to get it by 'the summer' is  beginning to look impossible. BUT . .  The chart could change in the coming months, depending on new vaccine developments and better policy coordination. The question remains, however, whether that's enough.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

There is the occasional resignation in Spain of someone implicated in malfeasance. For example: The military chief quits after skipping the vaccine line. More on this here. 

This is an (ex?)royal place in San Sebastian:

It's said - by a Spanish commentator - to be in the classic English style. I wonder about this, even though the architect was, indeed, English. It seems a bit of a mish-mash to me, though I am reminded of the club house of the Wallasey Golf Club, as you approach it from the 18th fairway. 

The re-wilding of Spain's 'ghost villages.' 

Marìa's New Year Same Old: Day 23.

The Way of the World

The degeneration of public debate . . . See the article below.

An apposite comment:

Finally . . .

A surprising item on the shelves of a Mercadona supermarket:-

THE ARTICLE

Piers Morgan’s idiotic rants reduce subtle arguments to soundbites. The row over the retired judge Lord Sumption calling some lives ‘less valuable’ shows how debate is being demeaned:   Matthew Syed: The Sunday Times

Deborah James is a fabulous person. Diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in 2016, she has become an inspirational campaigner, writing a bestselling book and columns. We have become close friends (our daughters used to attend the same school), have a mutual interest in psychology and share a podcast producer.

Deborah was thrust into the spotlight last week after a BBC debate with the retired judge Lord Sumption. Sumption set out his now familiar disagreements with government policy over lockdown. He also made the point that in a world of scarce resources, it is sometimes necessary to ascribe relative value to human life. In essence, he argued that if you face the awful decision of saving the life of a 90-year-old or that of a nine-year-old, you should save the latter.

A few minutes later, Sumption made an intervention while Deborah was making an eloquent contribution of her own, and stated that her life was “less valuable” than others. It was a clumsy, indeed crass, contribution from the former judge, but it would have taken an inattentive viewer to have failed to understand what he meant. For those two words made sense only in the light of the broader discussion and his fundamental point that, while all human life is precious, we nevertheless sometimes face dilemmas in which not all lives can be saved.

But I do not wish to get into a discussion of Sumption’s views here (as it happens, I largely agree that it is sometimes necessary to weigh human life, but I disagree that it is in the public interest to lift restrictions on social distancing). Instead, I want to focus on what happened next. An hour or so later, a clip of his intervention, stripped of all context, was posted on Twitter. Instant headlines followed. As the “scandal” went viral, the story metastasised from one about how to make complex moral judgments to one about an evil judge seeking to euthanise people. About 99% of the coverage, in other words, focused on about 1% of what he actually said.

Then it got worse. The following morning, Sumption was invited onto Good Morning Britain to discuss a poll on the pandemic. In the event, he was hijacked by Piers Morgan, who constantly pressed him about his appearance on the BBC. ITV even played the clip of his intervention, again stripped of context. Four times, Sumption attempted to explain that the intervention was, indeed, clumsy, but should be seen as part of a broader contribution in which he acknowledged that all life has intrinsic value. Four times, he was interrupted by Morgan, the exchange ending when Sumption threatened to curtail the interview.

Why did Morgan act this way? Because he also had an eye on how a clip from his own show might play on Twitter. Sure enough, a little later, a segment of their exchange was pumped onto the internet. By this stage, we were left not with a parody of Sumption’s position, but a parody of a parody. It was as if a two-word intervention had come to stand for the world-view of a human being. In years to come, I suspect that few will remember anything of the incident beyond a vague sense that Sumption is sinister, perhaps wicked.

I have gone into this episode in detail not because I hold any brief for Sumption, but because of how it symbolises a wider catastrophe unfolding in our public life. In a wise essay in 1953, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin contrasted two types of thinker: the hedgehog and the fox. The hedgehog has one big idea. It reduces everything to this one idea. Everything else is filtered out. The fox, conversely, has lots of ideas. It likes to see the broader context, how concepts fit together, and is anxious to bring more information to light.

Berlin’s point — although he made it subtly — is that it is psychologically easier to be a hedgehog, but to understand a complex world, it pays to be a fox. Neither meaning nor truth is contained in bare facts, assertions, data points, viral clips and simplistic headlines: rather, truth is contained within a context — how one thing relates to many other things, and how parts fits into more complex wholes.

The tragedy is that the world is being dragged — almost without our noticing — towards ever more extreme hedgehoggery. Twitter users argue on the basis of 280-character caricatures of one another’s positions. Television interviewers seek not to elicit information, but to provoke viral controversies. Readers respond to the headlines of articles rather than the words beneath them. Empathy has been sacrificed in the rush to misconstrue and misrepresent. Nuance has been destroyed in a bonfire of contrived outrage.

Morgan is, perhaps, the archetype of the world into which we have arrived, a parasite on the contours of democracy. He is a cunning operator who spotted the opportunities of Twitter early, learning to surf the waves that to outsiders seem arbitrary, but to him have become like second nature. He takes artificially emphatic stances, conveys false certainty, caricatures positions, strips away ambiguity, seeks scapegoats for complex problems and cajoles guests into simplistic answers that mislead the public — and then seeks to humiliate them when they think better of returning to the studio.

He becomes a temporary hero to the deluded souls for whom he becomes a cheerleader — at present, it is those who support restrictions over Covid — but they don’t see how he is systematically demeaning public debate upon which we all ultimately rely, or how he will soon be off to adopt another position, riding soap boxes like waves. He doesn’t seem to care about what soap box he is on, provided it is topical and divisive.

But let’s not reduce this to Morgan, for platoons of people have been sucked into the vortex of this cesspool — individuals whose rationality has been corrupted by the deep infrastructure of this perilous age. It perhaps goes without saying that Twitter is a huge culprit, a digital cancer whose catastrophic influence on our consciousness has yet to be fully grasped. Its algorithms are like acid, silently eating away at the fabric of how we converse, engage and grow in collective wisdom. Its influence has seeped into every medium; by proxy, into every life.

Yet I refuse to lose my optimism, the belief that with courage we can transcend this malaise. Two and a half millennia ago, Socrates argued that rationality and shared understanding would ultimately defeat their opposites. It may take a sea change in attitudes to ensure that his words remain prophetic. But we can do it. In fact, we must.

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

Given how much of our News bulletins are dedicated to the plague, you do have to wonder what unreported events we'd be being told/warned/frightened about - in breathless tones - if it didn't exist. But are now not important enough for even just a brief mention.

Spain: El Pais reports here on issues around the vaccine roll-out. But the good news is that the government, having said that tourism industry won't revive until after summer, is trying to improve things via a vaccination certificate.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

You can't live in the UK long before hearing the phrase ‘post code lottery’, usually in respect of some local service of the NHS which is inferior to that of somewhere else. The literal Spanish translation is lotería de códigos postales but I suspect that, while the words exist, the concept doesn’t. Here,  regional, provincial and municipal differences/inequalities are taken as read. Folk in Galicia simply don't expect to get what their (quasi)compatriots get in Cataluña, for example. At least, that's my impression, from the lack of complaints.

Déjà  vu/Plus ça change . . . Isambard Wilkinson of The Times has interviewed the famous Spanish novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, who claims that - thanks to idiot politicians - Spain’s politics have descended at times into little more than a slanging match about “reds” and “fascists”, reviving the language of the 1930s civil war. See below.

Maria finally exits the 19th century - New Year, Same Old: Day 22.

The Way of the World

The BBC has rejected a complaint against against a reporter for using the phrase 'nitty-gritty’, meaning the details. Some anti-racism campaigners claim that the term is unacceptable because it had its origins in the slave trade, although etymologists say there is no convincing evidence for this assertion.

Finally . . .

Everyone, of course, knows that Spain has 2 enclaves which definitely aren't colonies in North Africa. But I'd bet few know that Russia has some enclaves in Europe. One of these is Kaliningrad, which used to be Königsberg, in Prussia/East Germany. It's  surrounded by Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. See here and here.

THE ARTICLE

Spain’s idiot politicians are abusing our glorious history, says novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Extremist views pushed by party leaders are spreading fast in a country thought to be immune to them: Isambard Wilkinson, The Times

Spain’s politics has recently descended at times into little more than a slanging match about “reds” and “fascists”, reviving the language of the 1930s civil war. The tenor has alarmed many moderates in a country that until recently was perceived as inoculated against extremism by memories of the dictatorship of General Franco and the cross-party pacts after his death in 1975.

History, or its misuse, lies at the heart of the tension. Prominent among those concerned about the politicisation of Spain’s past is the historical novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, who is as swashbuckling in public debate as his most famous creation, Captain Alatriste, is with his sword. Lauded internationally as a successor to Dumas and Conan Doyle, in his novels Pérez-Reverte, who has sold over 20 million copies of his books in more than 40 countries, skewers Spain’s inept kings and corrupt courtiers as “whoresons” and “vipers”. In real life he reserves his bile for politicians, who almost make him bite his moustache with rage in the manner of Alatriste. “Politicians”, Pérez-Reverte, 69, told The Times, “have revived the civil war in an absolutely utilitarian way and this has created among the Spanish public disquiet, ignorance and polarisation that didn’t exist before. The civil war has been resuscitated by the politicians, not by the Spanish people. The idiot politicians do not know what a civil war is, nor have they read about it. But they play happily with complex and dangerous concepts.”

The country’s politics have become increasingly embittered since corruption scandals and an economic crisis from 2008-13 tainted the two main political parties. The rise of the ultranationalist Vox party, which became the third-largest parliamentary force at the last election, and the far-left Podemos party, which is the socialist-led government’s coalition partner, has deepened tensions. Both sides of the political spectrum frequently use rhetoric about the civil war to score points. In September Santiago Abascal, Vox’s leader, accused the government of being the worst in 80 years, implying that things had been better under the decades-long regime of Franco. Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, retorted that his administration would soon ban organisations that glorified the dictator. This week Pablo Iglesias, the deputy prime minister and Podemos leader, compared the flight abroad from justice of a Catalan separatist leader to the exile of half a million republicans after their civil war defeat in 1939.

Pérez-Reverte says that Spain’s politicians constitute “a political class that is generationally young and does not have a solid intellectual base”. He says: “They are political improvisers who in a normal country would never have come to power. They need simple arguments to cover up their ideological and political deficiencies.” He believes that “the political noise is poisoning Spain’s history”. He added: “Obviously there are thinkers in Spain but their voices have been silenced by the political bellowing that is gripping everything. This is the great Spanish tragedy.”

A household name in Spain since his days as a war reporter, which lasted for two decades from the early 1970s, Pérez-Reverte writes a popular weekly newspaper column and has 2.2 million social media followers. He is a rare independent voice among his peers, many of whom are in hock to the political left or right. Politicians’ ignorance, he said, had forced him to write his latest book, a novel about the civil war, Línea de Fuego (Line of Fire), in which he eschews ideologies and focuses on the trenches on both sides of the conflict.

Drawing on his own family’s experience, he strives to show how individuals were caught up in the war regardless of their politics. “My father belonged to the Mediterranean bourgeoisie but he fought with the Republic because of the circumstances of where he was. My father-in-law was a leftist but fought with the Nationalists for similar reasons,” he said. “It was a war in which it is impossible to draw a line, to say these were good as they were with the Republic and these were bad because they were Franquistas.”

His approach to a conflict that still divides has led to a moving tribute to its fallen. More than two hundred people have posted photographs of their grandparents, uncles and cousins from both sides of the war with brief notes about them on his Twitter timeline, allowing him to create an unusual, perhaps unique, album remembering the dead. “It is touching,” he said. “During the Republic there were 3 years of killing and in Franco’s regime there were 30 years of killing. But we forget that more people died at the battlefront, in the trenches, yet we don’t talk about them.”

A voracious reader who uses his library of 30,000 books to research his novels, Pérez-Reverte believes that Spain’s problem with its history began in the coup-blighted decades that followed the loss of its last big colonies in 1898. “We had great political chaos and so in Spain history became a political weapon, not a subject to study.” The rot deepened when Franco came to power. “El Cid, Hernán Cortés, the war against the French — he appropriated it all,” he said. “He harped on about imperial Spain, marvellous Spain, Spain that Christianised the world. When democracy came, the Left, instead of removing Franco’s contamination of history, failed to deal with it. So younger generations don’t have a useful historical discourse, and they ignore it, rejecting their own history.”

Pérez-Reverte is widely credited with reviving Spanish interest in the country’s 17th-century imperial Golden Age through his Captain Alatriste series, which was made into a film starring Viggo Mortensen. Some of the works are now used as textbooks in schools. “I think they are popular because I don’t write about good or bad but nuances,” he said. “History is not black or white but grey.” Meticulous in their historical detail, his novels, based on enigmas and puzzles revolving around his fascinations with chess, fencing and maritime history, have won him the epithet of the “Spanish Umberto Eco” and membership of his country’s Royal Academy. They have also attracted directors such as Roman Polanski who turned the novel, The Dumas Club, which concerns an antiquarian book dealer’s investigation into a satanic work, into a film featuring Johnny Depp.

Lean and neat, the writer is a picture of the self-discipline valued by his 17th-century compatriots. But his eyes twinkle when he talks about England. “Our enemy has always been England, historically. As a Spaniard I hate England, it has always fucked us. In the 16th, 17th centuries and even in the Peninsula war they came to fick us, not to help us. I have read Wellington’s papers, so I know their self-interested aims and pejorative sentiments about us as lazy and unclean.” But the author, who is irreverent about everything from God — “He is not a gentleman” — to his practice of literary art — “I don’t give a shit about it” — does express some admiration for Perfidious Albion. “I would like to have England’s capacity to convert history into something positive, like Dunkirk and the colonial wars in Afghanistan; disasters due to military incompetence by stupid generals turned into heroic events,” he said.

He claims that now that he is older he writes so that he can imagine himself “killing English and Frenchmen and conquering the most beautiful women*”. He will stop when his imagination fails, and focus instead on sailing and his library. Or, he adds, in the idiom of his world-weary heroes, “shoot myself, I don’t know”.

* Funny that we share that dream . . . Though only some Englishmen, in my case.

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

I don’t know if this is the same drug as the one recently cited but it's still good news: The first drug to prevent people contracting Covid-19 has been shown to work in early (Spanish?) trials, protecting 80% of care home residents from infection. Infusing people with artificial antibodies appeared to provide an immediate burst of temporary immunity, preventing illness.

One of the pluses of Covid - are there, in fact, any other? - is that deaths from flu are way down this winter. I can’t see shops and businesses being willing to dismantle screens - or even to cease compelling masks - in future post-Covid winters. There’ll surely be a litigation risk, at least in Anglo-Saxon countries.

Spain

1. Given how free the 17 regions are to decide on restrictions, it surprises me they can’t ignore Madrid on the hour of the curfew, having leeway of only an hour. At least 5 regions want this brought forward from 10/11 to 8 or even earlier. But Madrid says No, at the moment. The regions are also not free to dictate home confinement. These things have to be done under the national State of Alarm. 2. The value of vitamin D administration displayed down in

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

Spain has always been - surprisingly - a heavy consumer of water. Possibly all those golf courses in the hot, dry South. (As in Portugal too?). Here’s the per capita use in use in cubic metres, showing widely different stats. See the USA v Luxembourg:-

USA 3794

Finland 3407

Greece 2373

Portugal 2371

Spain 1924

Norway 1757

Italy 1546

Belgium 1515

Netherlands 1447

France 1244

Germany 855

Sweden 785

Switzerland 686

Ireland 461

UK 348

Denmark 318

Luxembourg 208

I raise this to ask what effect all the hand-washing is having?

Those electricity charges and bills: ‘El Salto Diario advises: Three presidents, more than twenty ministers and several dozen secretaries of state have gone from creating the rules of the electricity market to collecting millionaire salaries on the boards of directors of the main companies in the sector’. It’s the ‘revolving doors syndrome’ which blights Spanish politics. In short, corrupt oligopolies meet corrupt Spanish politicians.

Oh, and Correos: An American wife in Barcelona: My husband just went to check the mail and found a pile of Christmas cards that arrived well over a month late, which is par for the course with our international mail situation here.  Nearly half of the packages sent to us never make it out of customs, cards always arrive very (very) late, and any mail we send out is always a bit of a gamble.  Ah, expat life.

María's New Year, Same Old: Days 20&21 

The UK & The EU

Richard North today: The post-referendum debate was hampered by the binary nature of the discourse. You were either Leaver or Remainer in a rigidly binary confrontation, where the 'moderate' middle way got squeezed out, shunned by the main protagonists. In the post-transition era we're back in the same territory. As tales of woe are garnered by the media, responses have largely stratified into two camps. On the one hand, there are those, former Remainers for whom the events support their view that Brexit is 'a bad thing'. On the other hand, there is the Leaver tendency, which sees the problems as evidence of the rule-bound 'pettiness' of a 'vindictive' EU, thus confirming their decision to leave as the correct one. As before, nuance has been drowned out by the shouting match between the warring parties, aided and abetted by a venal, superficial media.

The EU

Click here for a review of A devastating indictment of the EU by a leading Left-wing intellectual. It certainly seems to endorse my view that the EU won't survive in the longer term. Unless it changes out of all recognition, which seems unlikely. As Perry Anderson puts it: Europe is stuck in a ‘trap’, unable to move forwards or backwards, and held together principally by ‘fear of the unknown.’

Recommended for both Remainers and Leavers. Though I imagine most of the former won’t bother to read it.

The USA  

Scales falling from (the wrong) eyes: Trump’s support among fringe groups that were among his most ardent followers has begun to fracture amid disillusion at his departure from office. He's been branded a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak” in discussion forums of the Proud Boys, a group of far-right nationalists who often showed up armed to his rallies. In the same Telegram channel on Monday the Proud Boys said: “Trump will go down as a total failure.” Took their time. As unforgiving as their (ex)man.

Likewise . . . The QAnon conspiracy community is also turning on Trump and the mysterious “Q” figure who started the movement online, as adherents voice concerns that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. Who'd have thought it?

The Way of the World

The three wise monkeys have been a cultural trope throughout the world for centuries as a symbol of seeing, hearing and speaking no evil. Academics at the University of York have now decided that they are, in fact, an oppressive racial stereotype. Who'd have thought it?

Finally . . .

On cutting electricity bills . . . I read a recommendation that you keep the fridge light switched off. I’ve never had the choice. My Samsung fridge light has never worked. Unless I unplug it at the wall socket. Then it works until I’ve closed the door, but never again - until I re-unplug it. Which ain’t worth the effort. Now even less than ever.

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

Just to confuse us further . . . A team of Stanford University researchers recently published a study in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation concluding that harsh lockdown policies have had minimal impact on preventing the spread of Covid-19 compared to lighter policies.

This is a nice essay on the damage done to scepticism by Covid. Bottom line: At times of crisis, scepticism can be unnerving and the temptation to try to silence dissenting voices is understandable. But which is the bigger danger? That people are allowed to question the orthodoxy and potentially get things wrong but are held accountable in an open debate? Or that sceptical voices are censored for  “misinformation”, and no one dares dissent? Everyone loses when doubt becomes a vice once more.

Spain:  Two reports. 1. The over 70s will start being vaccinated in March - if there are enough doses. 2. The ministry of Health says those over 80 will be vaccinated from March. Spain currently has more than a million doses but only 15,600 people have been fully vaccinated so far. I am not confident of March.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

The horrendous Modelo 720 law was (very quietly) introduced in late 2012, allegedly causing many expats to flee Spain. Within a couple of years or so, the EU Commission declared aspects of it illegal and demanded a response from Spain. Which never came. More than a year ago, the issue finally reached the European Court of Justice but we still await its decision. With some interest, given the nature of possible fines and the size of them. Whatever the decision is, Spain will doubtless appeal against it, taking uncertainty - and quite possibly more interim arbitrary taxation - into further years of delay. God help those, like me, who eventually seek repayment of a huge fine for as little as a day’s delay.

HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for this - accurate - comment from our Voz de Galicia: The monthly statement from the power company, an indecipherable hieroglyph for most, continues its climb towards the clouds. A single piece of data is enough to corroborate it: the price of the megawatt hour has multiplied by five in ten years. What was €20 in 2010 is now more than €100 today. An expert, probably paid by the electricity companies, explains it in four words: "It's the market, amigo.” And then there's the issue of the very high fixed costs, which penalise single folk like me. Easy money. A profitable business to be in.

Hardly a surprise . . . There's a trickle of stories about politicians of all parties around the country jumping the jab queue. They're not known to be a highly principled group of people.

A classic Spanish tale from Maria yesterday. Spain, she says correctly, is a country pushing online communication to the nth degree for everything, but not guaranteeing good connection outside the cities and larger towns. I guess this is related to my comment that Spain is sometimes in the 19th century and sometimes in the 21st century, having missed out on the 20th.

The USA  

An interesting observation from AEP: Overzealous Democrats in Congress have made it more difficult for the incoming White House to reach out across the aisle for compromises. They missed a trick in not agreeing to a deal with House Republicans for a motion of censure against Donald Trump rather than impeachment. That would have been a healing ritual. There is no need to ban Trump from future office. His brand is spoiled beyond repair.

Can it be true? Riley June Williams is suspected by federal authorities of stealing a laptop computer or hard drive from Nancy Pelosi's office and trying to sell it to the Russian foreign intelligence service.  

The Way of the World

Book reviews here not what they were: Woking the dead. See below.

Finally . . .

From my hijo político:-  Una curiosidad: Hoy a las 21:00 h. Será : la hora 21 del día 21 del  año 21 y del siglo 21.

THE ARTICLE

Woking the dead: Bookman, Private Eye

Back in the bad old days, the specimen literary biography was nearly always faintly censorious in tone. Basically, you lined up the book-world titan of your choice - Kingsley Amis, say, Philip Larkin or Iris Murdoch - and took pot-shots at him (or her) on grounds of sexual infidelity, neglect of significant others or general all-round egotism. 

Here in 2021, on the other hand, the moral compass has shifted a bit. Gone are the complaints about serial bonking - pretty much a lifestyle choice these day - and in come offences against the prevailing liberal orthodoxy. 

For hard evidence of how this moral climate has shifted, one need only take a look at Richard Greene's compendious new life of Graham Greene. This is much less hung up on the subject of Greene's sexual peccadilloes. But that doesn't stop the ethical framework against which Greene the man is periodically held up for inspection from being a very peculiar piece of architecture indeed.  

As early as page 4 tor example, Richard Greene is shocked to find that one of his namesake's remote ancestors owned 255 slaves on St Kitt's ("a discreditable episode in the family history"). A page or so later we encounter the subject's father the Berkhamsted headmaster; Charles Greene, and his work for the Cavendish Association, a late Victorian ginger-group founded with the arm of promoting a better understanding between social classes - all very well-meaning, the biographer decides, but of course "cautious and paternalistic" by today's standards. 

The tocsin of today's standards chimes quite a bit through the next 200 or so pages. Visiting post-Great War Germany, the teenaged Greene is ticked off for "accepting uncritically the complaint that the presence of black soldiers failed to respect the sensitivities of the Germans". Back at university he is further rebuked for writing an article in an undergraduate magazine called the Oxford Outlook lampooning the homosexuality of his student contemporary Harold Acton "in a phrase that makes the contemporary reader cringe". 

And so the reprimands stack up. There is more "cringe-inducing" in Land Benighted, the title chosen by Greene's cousin Barbara for her book about the pair's exploits in Liberia. Greene himself is excoriated for hiring some local porters whom he describes as "boys" (" a condescending term endemic to imperialism"). Meanwhile, Stamboul Train, published in 1932 and the novel which set him on the path to success, is found to contain a character who is referred to as "the Jew" rather than his given name, a habit with which Greene persists until as late as 1941. 

And all this, it should immediately be said, is fair enough. This is not our world and some of its casual racism and class-bound assumptions may indeed grate on the ears of the contemporary reader. At the same time, Richard Greene, so eager to criticise his subject for failings he very probably wasn't aware of, so punctilious in referring to the man-eating African tribes among whom Greene ventures as, er, "anthrophages" rather than plain old "cannibals", takes hardly any interest at all in the behavioural shortcomings of the husband and father. 

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

Maskless chats indoors spread coronavirus more than coughing: It is far more likely to spread through chatting than coughing and it can travel farther than 2m within seconds in a poorly ventilated room, a study suggests. Researchers from Cambridge University concluded that social distancing alone does not protect against infection. Ventilation and masks are also needed to slow the spread.

Germans will be obliged to wear medical-grade masks in shops and on public transport until Valentine’s Day under tighter lockdown measures. Cloth masks, which seem to be less effective at blocking the virus, will no longer be regarded as acceptable mouth and nose coverings in enclosed public spaces. Instead people will be required to use either “OP” surgical masks or those that meet Europe’s FFP2 standard, which means they must filter out at least 94% of airborne particles.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

We rarely get snow here on the Galician Atlantic coast but they certainly do up in the mountains, where there’s actually a ski resort, in Cabeza de Manzaneda. The Big Apple?

Covid has naturally hit the Camino very hard. In Santiago, there's only been 42 'pilgrims’ in the first half of January, compared with 'thousands' last year. And this is the result, in an office you often (always?) have to queue for to get your Compostela certificate confirming you walked at least 100km.

Thanks to the Voz de Galicia we know that Covid has done for the last brothel in Rúa Pombal, a few metres from the camino on the edge of Santiago's old quarter. Not quite the worst thing to have happened so far this year.

María's New Year, Same Old: Days 17 & 18

My apologies to those who read my mistake yesterday on the time limit for non-resident Brits here. It's 'up to 90 days in any 180 day period'. I suspect I confused 3 months with 30 days. 

Germany

In his own inimitable way, AEP says farewell to Mrs M in the article below: Taster: Given the blizzard of superlatives over recent days - bordering on hagiography - some dissent is in order. Personality must be separated from policies. 

The USA  

What could be more monarchical than the power to issue pardons to your favourite crooks, however bad they've been? 

It’s reported that Tump is obsessed with Charles Foster Kane, the star of Citizen Kane. In this film a failed presidential candidate has his newspapers headline its page one report, not Election Lost, but Fraud at Polls. Who'd have thought it?

I very much look forward to seeing one day a list of all the things Trumps said of: They've never seen anything like it before. And They say that . .  

One view of his legacy. There’ll doubtless be others, e. g. from his lickarse, Nigel Farage.

English

A new word for me: Merkin:  First seen in writing in 1617. Click here if you’re not prudish.

One newspaper reported that the US National Guard was venting their 25,000 soldiers ahead of the inauguration. I think they meant vetting. Venting is something quite different.

Finally . . .

The director of The Birth of a Nation of 1915 produced another epic the following year - Intolerance. Said to be an attempt to counter criticism of the former as shockingly racist. It’s considered his masterpiece and one should at least glance at it to see the stupendous reconstruction of Babylon. And, they say, a remarkably authentic-looking beheading.

THE ARTICLE

Angela Merkel’s disastrous legacy is Brexit and a broken EU: ‘Mutti' is a canny and tactical politician but leaves a trail of wreckage behind her after running Europe's biggest economy for 16 years: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Angela Merkel is more responsible for Brexit than any other political figure in Europe, on either side of the Channel. She bears the greatest responsibility for the ‘Japanisation’ and austerity bias of monetary union. She exalts the German mercantilist trade surpluses that render the whole euro project ultimately unworkable.

We all feel fond of Mutti as she winds down her 16-year reign and ushers in her chosen successor: Armin Laschet, the "continuity candidate" and folksy operator who narrowly won the Christian Democratic leadership contest over the weekend.

The Chancellor is immensely popular. The low-key style of the vicar’s daughter has caught the German mood. She is one of the few European leaders still trusted over the handling of the pandemic. It is hard to think of any figure in Berlin better able to mask German hegemony and throw a reassuring comfort blanket over Europe.

But given the blizzard of superlatives over recent days - bordering on hagiography - some dissent is in order. Personality must be separated from policies. Her Christian Democrat alliance (CDU-CSU) suffered its biggest defeat since the Second World War in the elections of 2017. The German political landscape fractured. Votes splintered in all directions. The hard-right Alternative fur Deutschland became the official opposition in the Bundestag. Merkel held onto power because the two great Volksparteien - Christian Democrats and Social Democrats - clung to each other on the shrinking raft. 

Her own personal standing is not transferable to Mr Laschet, the coal miner’s son still living in the coal age. He opened a new coal-fired plant (Datteln-4) last year, asserting with a straight face and Trumpian surrealism that it would be good for climate change. There goes Europe’s net-zero authority.While Merkel has presided over an era of economic outperformance within Europe, it is not a Wirtschaftwunder by global standards. Germany has had one of the slowest growing economies in the OECD over the last quarter-century, slower even than Japan. Productivity growth has averaged 1.2pc annually since 1995, compared to 1.7pc in the US, or 3.9pc in Korea (OECD data).

Angeline Germany has echoes of the Brezhnev era. The immobilism is remarkable, a point made by both Marcel Fratzscher in Die Deutschland Illusion; and by Die Welt’s Olaf Gersemann in his book The Germany Bubble: the Last Hurrah of a Great Economic Nation.

The country was for a while able to ride the "China wave" as a supplier of capital goods for Asia. But China’s catch-up phase has since turned into import substitution at home, and mid-technology conquest abroad, more or less destroying the German solar industry in the process. Germany has not made the digital switch in time – unlike Korea – and this is becoming existential as cars metamorphose into computers on wheels. Tesla is worth three times as much as VW, Daimler, and BMW combined. Apple dwarfs the entire market capitalisation of the DAX index.

Deutschland Inc is not worth much any more, a fate it shares with UK Limited. Merkel has presided over this structural decay. It is not her fault but nor has she done anything about it.

The German economy looks good only within the regional beauty contest of Europe. Others are in worse shape. The deformed structure of monetary union has had the effect of leveraging relative supremacy. Germany gained eurozone competitiveness in the early 2000s through an "internal devaluation". It compressed real wages through the Hartz IV reforms.

Once southern Europe had slipped behind within the closed deflationary structure of the euro, the only way to claw back ground was to carry out their own internal devaluations, a near impossible task against the German anchor. The effect of hairshirt policies in so many countries at once was to tip the whole system into a contractionary vortex. Merkel did not create this structure but she has never questioned it either, or explained to the German people why it has to change. Her government imposed austerity overkill on Club Med through its control over the key bodies in the EU apparatus. The burden of adjustment fell on the debtor states, not the creditors. This cannot work.

She let the eurozone debt crisis (actually a capital flow crisis) fester for three years before contagion to the Italian and Spanish debt markets forced her hand in June 2012. Only then did she agree to let the European Central Bank assume its role as lender of last resort. It took direct intervention by Barack Obama to extract this concession. Merkel then reneged on a summit deal for full banking union. The sovereign-bank "doom loop" remains in place and is even larger today. She resisted the necessary move to fiscal union at every stage. When the pandemic hit she agreed to a one-off Recovery Fund that reverts to the status quo ante over time, heading off permanent debt mutualisation. In short, she has spent 16 years refusing to rebuild the euro on workable foundations. Her idea of fiscal union is fiscal surveillance: the Stability Pact, Two Pack, Six Pack, and the Fiscal Compact. She bequeaths a broken system to her successor.

This mismanagement of monetary union altered British perceptions of the EU before the Brexit Referendum. It also led to the migration of several hundred thousand economic refugees from Southern Europe, and displaced flows from Eastern Europe into the UK. This combined into a perfect storm with Merkel’s precipitous decision to go it alone in 2015 and open the floodgates from the Middle East, ignoring David Cameron’s counsel that the Syrian refugee crisis was best handled in the Levant.      

By then, of course, the Chancellor had already sown the seeds of British exasperation. It began in earnest when she resuscitated the European Constitution – rebranded the Lisbon Treaty – after it had already been rejected by the French and Dutch people in referenda. Her motive was obvious. It increased the German voting weight in the EU institutions.This was a legitimate step to reflect Germany’s increased population after East-West reunification. But it also changed the EU’s character. Germany was no longer primus inter pares in an intergovernmental confederacy. It became primus sine pares in a proto-federation. Chalk and cheese.

France strangely allowed this loss of sacred parity to slip through. Nicholas Sarkozy was fobbed off with a few baubles. Tony Blair pretended it was just a cleaning-up exercise. The treaty was rammed through the EU Council by executive fiat. Nobody wanted to face voters again. Only the Irish were given a referendum. When they voted no, they had their feet held to the fire, and were made to vote again.

Merkel’s Lisbon Treaty was a watershed moment. It is one thing to advance the project by the Monnet method of stealth, it is another to do so once major proposals have been explicitly rejected by electorates. It further undermined the EU’s legitimacy among a coterie of British politicians, commentators, and financiers, and these people would later matter.

The treaty gave the European Court of Justice jurisdiction over all areas of EU law for the first time, upgrading it from an economic tribunal into a supreme court. The Charter of Fundamental Rights became legally binding. The ECJ suddenly acquired the means to rule on anything. It has since used that power expansively, as the German constitutional court, ironically, protests with irritation. 

The Common Law protocol in the treaty exempting British courts from such encroachment was ignored before the ink was dry. The European Court began to strike down British laws on criminal procedure or data sharing with the US intelligence agencies. Another slice of influential British opinion peeled away.

Chancellor Merkel persisted. She circumvented a British veto of the Fiscal Compact, ramming through the treaty by other means, and visibly isolating the Prime Minister. All Britain had asked for was a safeguard clause for the City. She installed ultra-integrationist Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission chief against British objections. This violated the Brussels convention that no major state is ever overruled on this key post. She refused a compromise despite warnings from David Cameron that a taste of Junckerism would further erode British consent for the EU, as proved to be the case.

If it is in Germany’s national interest to keep the UK tied deeply into the European system – and few Germans dispute that – one can hardly argue that she made a good fist of it. She meddled enough with the constitutional machinery of Europe to irritate the British, but not enough to sort out the EU’s real problems or to make monetary union fit for purpose. 

"Mutti" is an admirable person and a canny, tactical politician but she will leave a set of unstable equilibria, a polite way of saying a trail of wreckage. If Laschet is the continuity candidate, Europe needs help.

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

Positive news re immunoglobulin therapy. Which . . . Stops the virus in its tracks and prevents its developing into a more serious condition, even in the very clinically-vulnerable for whom contagion would almost certainly be fatal, easing pressure on hospitals, and could help control outbreaks in places where Covid vaccines had not yet started or the double dose not yet given. 

Spain: The country is beginning to struggle with a 3rd wave of the coronavirus, as infections have tripled and hospital admissions doubled in the past 3 weeks. There was a record rise in infections over the weekend. The government said it would not impose a total lockdown but 4 regions have asked for one. Well, not just yet. Here in Pontevedra, they’ve scrapped the federados exceptions I complained about last week. The power of the pen . . .

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

In an article primarily about PM Sanchez, the estimable Guy Hedgecoe uses the following words in respect of Spanish politics: hyperbole, histrionics, instability, and highly fragmented. All of which, he says, has made for great progress in recent years in emptying language of its meaning. The PM himself has been accused of being - in the case one of these by someone in his own party - as a traitor of Spain, a kind of Charles Manson of Spanish politics, a psychopath, the biggest criminal in the history of Spanish democracy and a sinister-yet-confused half-wit. Not a career for the thin-skinned then, Spanish politics.

If you’re a rich Brit who - post Brexit - wants to be here for more than 30 days a year without being resident, don’t worry. You can get yourself a Golden Visa - a procedure originally devised to cater to affluent Russian, Chinese, and Iranian nationals.

The UK

Britain is delivering more doses per head than anywhere except the United Arab Emirates and Israel. Which makes me wonder why it’s not in the LH box here:

An ignorant cartoonist? Or because it doesn’t fit the post-Brexit ‘plague island’ schadenfreude currently popular on the Continent?

I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get my job before April here in Spain, as against next week in the UK. A couple of people have raised the good question of whether it’s worth flying there just to get the jab.

British divorce lawyers have been given a list of 50 terms used in on-line dating, so they can better contextualise the communications between a victim and suspect to ensure they avoid sexual stereotypes and understand the nature of consent. These include:-

Vulturing 

Thirst-trapping 

Roaching' 

Side-barring 

Doxxing

Eclipsing

Exoskeleton-ing 

Fleabagging  

Birdboxing

Netflix and chill 

Instagrandstanders 

These are today’s. There’ll be more along tomorrow.

The USA

Biden’s mega-stimulus widens the staggering gap in fiscal support between US and the eurozone. While: Europe risks repeating its mistakes from the last crisis. See AEP’s article below.

The Way of the World

It’s a strange world where murderers are published, yet academics are cancelled and shut down. Our social and cultural moral compass condemns people for using the wrong personal pronouns, yet glamourises serial killers. Specifically, the British serial killer, Dennis Nilsen, whose autobiography, written in jail, is to be posthumously published. See the 2nd article below.

Spanish

I was going to cite more odd Spanish nicknames and diminutives but there are just too many. Click here for a list and find your favourite. 

Finally . . .

In the 14th century Piers Plowman, the author gives all sorts of odd (usually allegorical) names to all sorts of characters - Kind, Wit, Conscience, Imagination, Peace, etc. . Perhaps none weirder than that of a certain knight . . . Sir Piercer-of-your-private-places. For what it's worth, the translator's note is: This name refers to the text of 2 Tim 3:6*, with a deliberate sexual innuendo brought out in Peace's recollection of a previous encounter with the man.

*They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires.

BTW . . . The Camino and Spain feature quite a lot in this famous book. The first because it was, 700 years ago, already the 3rd most revered place in the Catholic world. And Spain because of England's involvement - the Black Prince etc. - with the Franco-Spanish wars of that era. Anyway looking to know more about this blood-soaked, death-ridden century should head for this book.

THE ARTICLES

Biden’s mega-stimulus widens the staggering gap in fiscal support between US and eurozone.  Europe risks repeating its mistakes from the last crisis: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 

The trans-Atlantic gulf in fiscal stimulus has widened into an immense chasm. The Great Decoupling of 2020-2022 is accelerating.

America is letting rip with relief and recovery spending on a scale unseen since Franklin Roosevelt’s war economy. Europe risks repeating its post-Lehman error, reverting to the EU’s default policy of austerity and Ordoliberal debt brakes. It is setting the stage for a second Lost Decade.

Joe Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” tops $1.9 trillion and is the country’s fifth successive pandemic package. It lifts the accumulated stimulus - transfers, not just guarantees - to near 25pc of GDP. It is underpinned by a central bank willing to run the economy hot. If this cannot generate V-shaped reflation, nothing can.

Ralf Preusser, head of global rates at Bank of America, said the Atlantic region is splitting into two camps. “The Biden plan is huge and it highlights the diverging fortunes. The US did $3 trillion of stimulus last year and it looks like another two to three trillion this year, pushed through proactively,” he said.

Bank of America has just upgraded its US growth forecast to 4pc in the first quarter, and downgraded the eurozone to -3.7pc by the same annualised measure. “We’re already starting to see the effects of the last $900bn stimulus (agreed just before Christmas) in our credit card data,” he said.

“The US economy is going to recover much faster than in Europe as Biden fires up the bazooka,” said Professor Charles Wyplosz from Geneva University. “I am afraid that the initial bounce in Europe will fade and then there will be a very slow, muted, recovery. You can’t impose a second decade of misery on the Greeks or the Italians, or southern Europeans. This is my worst nightmare,” he said. “If it happens you’ll see populist governments rising across the Mediterranean. The whole landscape will change drastically.”

Prof Wyplosz co-wrote the International Monetary’s Fund’s blistering mea culpa on its role during the eurozone debt saga.

The Biden administration is led by Obama-era veterans, battle scarred by the global financial crisis and its destructive aftermath. This time they are determined to “go big” early and blast the US economy out of its low-growth deflationary malaise. Their assumption - supported by Moody’s Analytics and Oxford Economics, among others, but not all economists - is that the debt will pay for itself over time through higher growth.

Jan Hatzius from Goldman Sachs says Mr Biden will not secure all of his $1.9 trillion package once Congress has picked it apart. This assumes that the White House opts for bipartisan cooperation rather than trying to ram most of it through with a wafer-thin majority by “budget reconciliation” - a high-risk strategy.

But the White House is still likely to get around $1.1 trillion on top of the $900bn already flowing, a combined package worth 8.4pc of GDP. This is still a tidal wave of money and will hit more or less as the vaccine roll-out reaches critical speed.

This will be followed within weeks by the outlines of Mr Biden’s parallel Build Back Better Plan, a further $2 trillion blitz on green energy and infrastructure to sustain the recovery past the point of “escape velocity”.

The US is not yet out of the woods. The economy is still almost nine million jobs shy of pre-Covid levels and there may be a submerged iceberg of distressed debt. Spraying money indiscriminately is a wasteful way to help those who need it.

On the other hand, the US is not trying to prop up decaying industries, such as Old Autos - or in the case of France, preventing a Canadian takeover of the Carrefour supermarket chain because of potential job cuts and cheaper Canadian food. America is letting the money flow, leaving it to flexible labour markets and digital disruption to sweep away the dead wood to bring about Schumpterian renewal. Talk of another Roaring Twenties is not far-fetched.

What is striking is how little is being done in Europe as the first phase of fiscal stimulus peters out, even though the economic shock and output loss from Covid-19 so far has been roughly twice as big. “We don’t detect any renewed vigour,” said Bank of America’s Mr Preusser. “No additional stimulus is being discussed in any major country in the eurozone.”

There is no fresh rescue plan as the second wave engulfs Germany, Austria, Portugal, Greece, and Eastern European countries, which weathered the first wave in good shape. Protracted lockdowns loom across Europe as contagious variants gain a foothold. (Few states do much genomic sequencing; most are flying blind.)

The vaccine roll-out has been painfully slow. Debt moratoria and furlough schemes in some states are unwinding. Bank of America estimates that the cumulative and permanent loss of income last year was 7pc of GDP, implying lasting structural damage and inadequate repair. “What they need is discretionary fiscal support in excess of 10pc,” said Mr Preusser.

The EU’s putative €750bn Recovery Fund is more totemic than real. Only €390bn is genuine fiscal support in the form of grants. This is spread between 27 states and stretched until 2026. It is nothing like the front-loaded Biden stimulus.

The loan component will be used sparingly because it comes with Troika-like conditions. Where used, it chiefly displaces borrowing that would have happened anyway. It lowers debt costs a smidgeon - and has confidence effects - but it is not a fiscal boost.

The total net transfers to Italy add up to just 0.7pc of GDP a year stretched into the mid 2020s. “Italy is going to need ten times that,” said Princeton Professor Ashoka Mody, the IMF’s former deputy-director for Europe.

“People are patting themselves on the back in Europe but I am very sceptical about this Recovery Fund. Money has been promised but the first wave of the crisis has come and gone, and nothing yet has actually happened. The idea that Europe is going to reach escape velocity and live happily ever after is a fairy tale. “If you look at Biden’s stimulus it is going directly into people’s pockets and to local authorities where it is needed right now. There is a real multiplier effect.”

The Recovery Fund clearly needs to be much bigger - and involve instant transfers, paid for by joint Eurobonds - but that is to cross a political line in the sand. EU leaders oversold the fund as Europe’s transformative “Hamilton Moment” when it was agreed last June. They would struggle to explain to German, Dutch, and north European taxpayers why they must dip into their pockets yet again.

It is up to member states to conjure up their own fiscal stimulus. Yet it is not happening anywhere at scale. Germany is going the other way. Its council of economic experts wants to reinstate the German debt break and return to rectitude as soon as next year, implying a lurch back into net fiscal contraction.

Those hit hardest by the economic shock - chiefly Club Med - already have the highest debt ratios and are the least able to risk counter-cyclical spending. They know that EU budget limits will bite hard again when the Stability Pact comes back into force in January.

For now the European Central Bank is soaking up Covid bond issuance via quantitative easing, crowding in private funds with leverage. This has suppressed the danger signals and is allowing Italy to continue borrowing at near-zero rates even though the government is in crisis and public debt has rocketed to 160pc of GDP.

This is an unstable equilibrium. Once inflation picks up - for mechanical “base effect” reasons - the ECB’s bond purchases will look increasingly like an illegal rescue for insolvent states rather than genuine monetary policy. “There is no doubt any longer that this is monetisation of public debt. To pretend otherwise is to fool yourself,” said Prof Mody, also author of the The Euro Tragedy: a Drama in Nine Acts.

“The eurozone doesn’t have a proper fiscal mechanism so it is using a monetary mechanism instead, but can this go on forever? There is going to come a point when ECB’s northern governors react. The US will undoubtedly recover sooner than Europe but I am even more worried about the internal divergence within the eurozone. France, Italy, and Spain are going to fall even further behind Germany. That will make it harder to run any kind of monetary policy.”

Prof Mody said the core design flaw of post-Maastricht Europe remains unaltered: the EU built a federal monetary union on the foundations of a fiscal confederacy. It is politically untenable. Something has to give.

It is often forgotten today but the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties was essentially American. It was not a shared experience. The restored Gold Standard had perverse and contrasting consequences on each side of the Atlantic.

Britain remained stuck in the deflation doldrums. Germany, France, Poland, and others, spiralled into hyperinflation and political crises of one sort or another. The decade of the 1920s was a tale of malign divergence of varying kinds. The 2020s will not be a repeat, but it may rhyme.

2. It’s a strange world where murderers are published, yet academics are cancelled and shut down. Our social and cultural moral compass condemns people for using the wrong personal pronouns, yet glamourises serial killers: Celia Walden 

In Dennis Nilsen’s forthcoming autobiography the late serial killer admits that he toyed with the idea of feeding his dog, Bleep, a “small chunk” of human flesh. Elsewhere in the 6,000 pages of typewritten notes – which have been edited by a friend, Mark Austin, since Nilsen’s death two years ago – the mass murderer reflects on the “culinary possibilities” of those he killed, likening one part of the anatomy to “beef rump steaks.”

How do the relatives of his victims – the 12 boys and young men strangled and drowned between 1978 and 1983 – feel about the publication of History Of A Drowning Boy this week? “Horrified.” “Disgusted.” “As if he’s still laughing at us from beyond the grave.” Julie Bentley, whose brother, Carl Stotter, survived a murder attempt by Nilsen and “fought all his life” to stop the memoirs’ publication, went so far as to call the book “morally wrong” – yet even that is an understatement.

But their feelings matter only so much in that they can be used to ramp up excitement around History Of A Drowning Boy. And any talk of morals is laughable in a world where serial killers are given free rein to publish murderous pornography, but Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at Sussex University, who dared to question the safety of ‘gender-neutral’ toilets and male sex offenders being placed in women’s prisons, must be silenced and ostracised.

Think about that for a moment. Think about what the face of our social and cultural moral compass looks like at the start of this brand new year. It’s blank, isn’t it? There are no cardinal points; no way of establishing which direction is north. Because all that matters in our proud, progressive new world is adhering to the right ideologies: condemning people for using the wrong personal pronouns (shame on you Lorraine Kelly for accidentally ‘misgendering’ Eddie Izzard earlier this month), reacting violently to the “criminals” selling cheese made with cow’s milk (branded “rapists” by the vegan militants who vandalised a Paris shop last year), and withdrawing platforms from the likes of Professor Stock, so that her “harmful rhetoric” can no longer reach our sensitive eyes and ears.

Curious how that sensitivity vanishes when it comes to celebrating evil like Nilsen’s, Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s (who was featured in all his Jim Morrison-like glory on the front of Rolling Stone, three months after killing three people and wounding and maiming 260), or that of Ted Bundy. So inundated was social media with comments praising the serial killer’s “hotness” when Netflix aired The Ted Bundy Tapes documentary series in 2019, that the streaming service was forced to ask viewers to stop “swooning” over the man who raped and killed at least 30 women in the 1970s. As for hit BBC One show, The Serpent, the glamorising of French serial killer Charles Sobhraj seems to have been overshadowed by concerns that the drama “promotes smoking.” Then there’s the blue plaque erected in honour of Jack the Ripper on London’s Kensington High Street. It’s a joke, of course, because the British serial killer active in 1888 was never identified. And because while you can still joke about murderers, a one-liner about nut allergies will get you cancelled.

Curious too how today’s university students – who celebrated the removal of “offensive” Fanny Hill from reading lists – find nothing offensive about the impaling of heads on pikes in millennial TV favourite The Walking Dead, and watch more violent pornography than any generation in history.

But if there’s one thing the moral-compass-free are skilled at, it’s defending their right to climb inside the minds of the warped and wicked. It’s an intellectual right, you understand. Far from capitalising on the bloodthirsty thoughts of a murderer, RedDoor Press is hoping to offer “some insight into how such horrific events could have happened.” Rolling Stone wasn’t playing to our most ghoulish instincts by giving a terrorist celebrity status, but trying to comprehend. Because Tsarnaev was “in the same age group as many of our readers,” it explained in a statement, “it makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens.”

The same subtext is there in both statements: only through a greater understanding, open-mindedness and yes, empathy, can we not only stop these tragedies from occurring but become better human beings ourselves. There’s the sweet spot. Allowing someone to indulge their basest impulses whilst promising spiritual growth. You’ve got to admire the work.

When it comes to figures like Stock, however, who claims a book of interviews she had contributed to “was dropped by Oxford University Press, partly because I was going to be included,” or indeed the US author Abigail Shrier, who was prohibited from advertising her book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, on Amazon, despite it being ranked No. 1 in multiple categories on its site, the will to understand is notably absent. For them and anyone with thoughts running counter to liberal ‘groupthink’ any hint of empathy would be considered an abomination. Minds are sealed shut. But go on, Mr Nilsen, tell us more about your cannibalistic fantasies.

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

Why TF are  (at least) British footballers still allowed to touch and hug each other? And not just members of their own team but also those of the opposing team at the end of the match. Though all this, of course, pales against their illegal private parties. Sometimes with each other, sometimes with women who aren't their wives. 

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

It surely didn't have far to go but the ex king's stock has fallen even further, on these developments.

Which sort of reminds me . . . A Spanish tale. Behind my house is a development of 15 houses, built - during 4 very long years of immense noise and dust - on what used to be a high granite escarpment. Sadly for the shortly-to-go-bust developer, they came on stream in 2008, just as the phoney construction boom was collapsing, leaving 13 of them unoccupied. These are still empty, and are presumably on the books of the banks who foreclosed on those who'd bought off-plan and defaulted on their mortgages. In the past few weeks there's been work on the land alongside the road up to the houses. This - along with 4 of the properties - was declared illegal several years ago and yesterday my neighbour explained to me that, not only had this issue not yet been resolved, but some of the development's land was now being given back to its previous owners. This means that an old path that used to run up to and along the top of the escarpment will be restored, giving me back a shortcut to the forest I used to take with my dog. Not before time.

Inevitably, the pre-Lenten Carnaval festivities have be cancelled in all Galician towns and cities, including the best known in Laza, Verín, and Xinzo de Limia. I've always wanted to see the events in the last-named but I'll clearly have to wait another year to enjoy watching these gentlemen besport themselves:-

María's New Year, Same Old: Day 16

The USA  

I wonder how many people know that Bartholomew Gosnold was the first Englishman to set a colonising foot on North American shores, naming Martha's Vineyard after his deceased daughter. And Cape Cod after . . . cod.

Having seen it referred to, I took another look at the bizarre, shocking, fascinating, laughter-engendering 1915 film The Birth of a Nation - Perhaps the most famous silent movie and the most controversial film ever made in the United States. One reason for its notoriety is that it not only portrays African Americans (many played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women but also presents the Ku Klux Klan as an heroic force necessary to preserve American values and a white supremacist social order. Should you have 3 hours to while away during confinement, you can see it all here. 

The Way of the World

Why are free societies sinking into an anarchic pit of social media hate? See the article below.

Spanish

A HT to young Adam Aleksic, a student of linguistics and government at Harvard University, for this info:- The nacho is named after a Mexican cook called Ignacio Anaya, who invented the dish in 1943. The Spanish language is actually full of really unusual nicknames. A few more:

Diego - Santiago

Lola - Dolores 

Lalo - Eduardo

Concha -Concepción

Pepe - José. Because it was tradition to add P. P after San Jose's name. For Pater Putativus.

Paco - Francisco. Because he was the PAter COmunitatis. 

Finally . . .

Early this morning, I emailed 2 religious friends about Evangelicals in the USA. An hour later, there appeared on my screen an invitation to apply for the position of CEO of the Diocese of Chelmsford in, I think, Kent. Failing that, the COO of Bristol Cathedral. A coincidence? I think not.

THE ARTICLE

Why are free societies sinking into an anarchic pit of social media hate?

Big Tech’s legal obligations are a sideshow: the bigger question is where the bile and venom come from?: Janet Daley, Daily Telegraph,

Is it right to deny people who incite violence a public platform? You bet it is. All free societies do this to a greater or lesser extent. Open democracies which guarantee freedom of expression have always drawn lines. You cannot attend a civic meeting, or even stand on a street corner, and shout death threats without being arrested. The obvious charge would be of threatening behaviour or causing an affray. Scarcely anyone would be likely to dispute this. So that’s the easy one. There are far more difficult questions to examine in what is becoming a major political issue for our time. So while we wait to see if the Trump mob will turn up at Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday to test the principle once again, perhaps we can examine the more difficult problems, some of which are new and others of which are not new at all in spite of their technological dimension.

This is not really a debate about “free speech”. What that properly entails was established long ago and is (or was) accepted by general consensus: it involves respecting the rule of law and the rights of others to hold differing views – which is to say not threatening the safety of people you disagree with. But something peculiar has happened to public discourse in the last few years. It now has a dimension – or an arena – in which participants expect to ignore all the previous understandings of what constitutes acceptable conduct.

The hot topic has become: are the Big Tech outfits, which make available wildly irresponsible messages, publishers or simply platforms? If the former, then they are liable for what appears, if the latter they are not. The tech giants are clearly terrified by this debate since a judgment that they are, in fact, publishers would involve them in an enormous and hugely expensive extension of their duties to monitor everything that appears on their sites.

Add to this that it is precisely the uninhibited lawlessness of these venues that is part of their appeal, and a decision to classify them as publishers would pretty much put them out of business – or at least, not make it worth their while to carry on. So they are now attempting to make some concessions to these demands for social responsibility which will almost certainly end in an unsatisfactory dog’s dinner of compromise.

But this is the less interesting problem, being simply a matter of legal definition. What really needs to be asked is, where on earth has all the hatred and murderous intent come from? Why should the appearance of a new, uncontrolled medium have produced this peculiarly ugly thing? Has it always been there – vicious and bloodthirsty – simmering away in secret corners, unable to find an outlet for its frustrations?

There are those who would claim that indeed it has – and that social media performs a useful function in revealing its existence by permitting to be said what was once socially unacceptable. Established governing classes can no longer take their smug assumption of moral authority for granted. Many apologists for the Trump riots argue in this way. The assumption here is that, however wicked or criminal an impulse may be, it is better to have it out in the open than hidden.

But until very recently we believed something quite like the opposite of this: that it was the proper business of responsible government to teach people to restrain their most malignant, destructive inclinations for the sake of the greater good. That was the basic requirement of a civilised, tolerant society. Have we changed our minds about this? If so, why? Is there a complacent post-Cold War belief that the world is no longer perilous, and that the future of Western democratic values is no longer tenuous – so why not cut loose? That would, of course, be a very dangerous delusion. The threat from social disruptors has arguably never been greater now that they are nihilistic and indiscriminate rather than coherent.

There may be a significant historical point here about the anarchic forces of hate and division which proliferate on social media. Many of them (particularly the conspiracy theory merchants) make use of the techniques of Cold War political subversion. But back in the day, political activism was a quasi-professional occupation strictly controlled and disciplined by the Communist party or its dissident tributaries like the Trotskyist movements.

Now the tactics are unfettered by any need for clear objectives or understanding of arguments. And their purveyors do not even have to identify themselves: I am convinced that the anonymity (or pseudonymity) of social media has a great deal to do with the miasma which has overwhelmed it. Not only is it impossible to know who is responsible for any statement: it is impossible to determine whether that individual actually exists, or whether an apparent army of commenters is just one person posting under a great number of different identities.

What seems to be a large popular movement can actually be a small number of very busy agitators providing (as the old Cold War activists used to do) a sense of momentum that draws the discontented or confused into their orbit. Coupled with the legitimising of violent action, this weaponising of inchoate grievance is terrifying in its possibilities: it may be the greatest threat to political stability that the West has encountered.

What of the otherwise rational people who go along with this fashion? We all know of sensible people who take on a persona of gratuitous venom in their social media guise. A high profile figure on the Guardian recently tweeted a demand that all Telegraph columnists be buried alive. As you might expect, I took this rather personally – especially as not long ago, I defended the Guardian to the death over the Edward Snowden affair even though the paper’s political orientation was very different from mine.

When the then-editor wrote to thank me, he began by saying, “We may not agree on many things…” That was how grown-ups, especially in our contentious trade, used to talk. They might exchange accusations or insults in the heat of debate, but they did not call for each other to die – not even as a puerile joke. Whatever happened to that?

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

Below there’s another (long) dose of informed common sense from the medical correspondent of Private Eye.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain 

This is another article on the plight of those Brits in Spain who never took out the residence they should have. And who perhaps should have been more aware of what was coming down the track.

And the second article below sets out some of the tax consequence for those non-residents who’ve got property here and rent it out. It’s one of the few I’ve read saying the real number of Brits here is (was?) between 800,000 and 1 million.

María's New Year, Same Old: Day 15

The USA 

So, there really might be a god? Experts say events of the past week has made Trump’s reputation toxic. He might leave the White House poorer than when he entered - a feat not matched by any of his recent predecessors who went on to earn millions from after-dinner speaking and book deals. 

But, of course, None of this will stop Mr Trump pursuing new ventures, with speculation rife that he will launch a media company.

Finally . . .

An epitaph to die for? Patricia Highsmith was an execrable human being but a writer of genius. Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Price of Salt/Carol.

THE ARTICLES

1.  COVID 10 REVIEW.  ‘MD’, Private Eye.

Seasoned adversary 

Much is still unknown about how this pandemic will play out, but from the outset two predictions were likely to come true; I. We would need vaccines to outfox the virus; 2. The times of highest risk for further waves would be the autumn return to school, university and work. And winter. 

The good news is that we now have two vaccines approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). lf we stay afloat until the spring physically, mentally and economically- the purgatory could finally end. The bad news is the winter surge is as bad as we could have predicted, and we are behind the curve again. 

Pandemic rules 

The first rule of pandemics is tough: there is no option that won't cause significant harm. The second rule sounds simple; the sooner you act, the less the harm, both from the virus and the measures put in to control it. But no politician likes causing significant harm, even if it prevents greater harm. So over-optimistic dithering is too often the norm. 

Home secretary Priti Patel claims the government has been "consistently ahead of the curve in its response to the coronavirus", but the evidence suggests otherwise. There is a subtle but important difference between acting fast to prevent a crisis and acting fast having precipitated a crisis through inaction. 

Two schools 

Two schools of thought emerged at the start of this pandemic; a) do whatever it takes to suppress the virus to an absolute minimum; and b) contain the virus at a reproductive rate less than I. Had we known in March we would have vaccines in December, it would have been easier to sell suppression. It requires harsher measures earlier, but once numbers are low they are much easier to keep there with test and trace. Containment measures are less harsh but there is much less margin of error. Miss a surge and you get caught out by exponential growth, test and trace can't cope and you end up in harsh measures anyway, but with far more deaths. We're here for the third time now. 

Made in the UK 

MANY other countries are struggling to contain winter waves but, as in spring and autumn, our current outbreak is one of the largest. And variant strains are most likely to thrive in countries that have long-standing poor control and plenty of opportunity for natural selection (eg the UK and South Africa). 

The advantage of being an island is that you can control your borders to keep the virus out. But if you nurture a new variant, other countries can control their borders to keep you out. Alas, for many of the 40 countries that promptly isolated the UK, the variant had probably already arrived. 

Hello, B.1.1.7, aka VUI 202012/01 

UK science is very good at spotting and sequencing new strains, if not naming them. The variant under investigation (VU1 first emerged m September and has spent months competing for dominance. It appears to have a transmission rate that is 71 percent higher than for other variants, so no wonder it has been selected to thrive. It may also pack a higher viral load, be harder to test for and be more transmissible by children. On the upside, the vaccines should still work.     .    . 

Even if we hadn't spotted this new variant, it was clear from rising hospital admissions m early December that we had a big problem. 

Winter woe 

The NHS is always overloaded in winter, not least from the consequences of respiratory viruses. We now have more hospital admissions with Covid than we did at the spring peak, With the effects of Christmas mixing yet to be felt. Our treatment has improved, but that als~ means people are staying in hospital for longer, m wards and units that are more spaced out. 

On 29 December, 23 hospital trusts had more than a third of their beds occupied by Covid-l9 patients, and occupancy was rising across the UK. Our safety net was to spend £220m on Nightingale hospitals with more than I0,000 beds to relieve the pressure. Alas, we can t staff them and they have been barely used. 

Christmas message 

With admissions rising in early December, we could have used the good news of imminent vaccines to tighten restrictions further, move Christmas to July, postpone non-essential pleasures and reduce the obvious risk of mixing indoors. When the vaccines kick in, there will be a massive rebound in fortunes and goodwill for the tourism, travel, art, retail, entertainment and hospitality sectors. They should be supported to survive until the spring. We are delaying gratification, not ending it entirely. Most people would have understood that message. 

But we relaxed and carried on mixing. Boris Johnson even declared it would be 'inhuman' to cancel his five-day, three-household Christmas spread-fest, days before a sudden U-tum. It was a gift for the virus. 

Mutant on the loose 

Words are how we change the world, and if  you want people to panic in a pandemic 'mutant' is up there with 'zombie' and 'flesh-eating'.Tell people a mutant strain of Covid 19 is rampaging through London and the South-east, as health secretary Matt Hancock and Johnson did to justify their last-minute reversal, and they're as likely to pack like sardines on the last last train out of St Pancras as to isolate sensibly indoors, increasing spread across the UK rather than reducing it. Cries from Hancock that this was  "grossly irresponsible'' had little effect given his prior support for Dominic Cummings. 

With citizens fleeing the mutant and countries isolating from us, we tried a linguistic downgrade from "mutant" o "variant". But the spreading was done and we'd labelled ourselves Plague Island to boot, at precisely the time we were selling ourselves to the world as a nation. Come trade and plague with us! 

Personal responsibility 

Many people gave up listening to John matters pandemic when he nearly died a, round of hospital handshakes. Many had to cancel Christmas, or curtail it, long be 11th-hour reversal. Many have followed rules religiously throughout. And some h ended up in hospital with Covid. Others I caught Covid in hospital. 

Irrespective of the competence of our political leadership, a virus that spreads quickly and silently can only be slowed if enough of us stick to the rules. We haven't. The British thirst for freedom, individualism and ignoring experts gives us great art and comedy, but dreadful infection control. We can resist everything but temptation. We will always find selfish excuses to bend break the rules and justify our risky behaviour.

The wide variation in Covid deaths per head of different populations tells its own story. In countries of at least 20m inhabitants, deaths range from more than one in every 1,000 (UK and US9 to one per 2,500 (Canada, Germany), one per 29,000 (Australia), one per 65,000 (South Korea), one per 325,000 (Kenya) and one per 3,400,000 (Taiwan).  In the lowest-risk countries, a major incident is declared if a handful of cases emerge and rapid action is taken to isolate. In the UK, we tolerate tens of thousands of new cases a day. Why? 

First among unequals 

If the Sars-CoV-2 virus harmed everyone equally including children, more people would take it seriously. Some young, fit patients have suffered but the virus has predominantly harmed the elderly, the disabled, the poor and those with pre-existing conditions. Some of those at low risk argue that they should be free to go about their business while those at high risk are shielded. 

The moral debate on shielding could outlast the pandemic, but it was never workable. The has huge numbers of people at risk of premature death or harm not just from Covid but all manner of non-contagious diseases. There are 25m people in the higher-risk vaccine categories by dint of age, disease or disability. It would be impossible to shield them all even if it were desirable. 

More pertinently, the UK has tolerated these alarming health inequalities for decades. Covid merely highlights them. If you don't mind living in a country where the poorest die a decade younger than the richest and suffer 20 more years of chronic disease, you're probably not too fussed if the same people die from Covid or aren't able to get care for their other diseases because Covid has overwhelmed the NHS. Even after vaccination, the inequalities will remain. There is a vast amount of levelling up to do. +

Vaccination roll-out 

Ww were first to approve a vaccine, but Israel has quickly overtaken us in the roll-out. While our vaccines sat in fridges over the festive break, it managed 11.55 vaccination doses per 100 people (the UK is at 1.47). By 2 January, 41 percent of Israelis over 60 had already received their first vaccine. Well done. 

Approval of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine gives grounds for optimism, in the UK and across the world. It is much easier to transport and store than Pfizer BioNTech 's vaccine and will be far more affordable globally, where it will be sold at cost price in perpetuity. Thank you. 

With infections rising fast, the aim in the UK is to give the most benefit to the most people in the shortest time, and the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI) believes the best way to do this is to give most of the higher-risk individuals a single dose of either vaccine before giving anyone a second dose (up to 12 weeks later). Their view from the trial data is that a single dose will confer significant protection, although we don't yet know if it reduces transmission. The logic is sound but delaying a second dose too long could make it less effective or increase the risk of a resistant strain emerging. 

It's also a disappointment for a million people who will now have their second Pfizer jab postponed, and a time-consuming pain in the arse for the staff who have to phone them. The rest of us will join a queue and be offered whatever vaccine is available at the time. I would happily have either and be grateful. 

Thousands of vets, dentists and retired doctors and nurses have volunteered to vaccinate but are being held up by ludicrous bureaucracy. If they make it through the paperwork, they also need to be vaccinated (especially those over 50) before putting themselves at risk. Indeed, anyone whose essential work is high-risk should be vaccinated as soon as possible. 

Testing in schools 

Having cried "MUTANT!" and while waiting to discover if the new variant spreads faster in children, the government should not be surprised that many teachers and parents would rather adopt the precautionary principle and keep schools closed. Mass testing of pupils with lateral flow tests is an unproven experiment. You should always act on a positive result (likely to be accurate) but not be reassured by a negative one. Analysis suggests they pick up only half the active infections, which is better than nothing but hardly fool-proof. And you need to trace and isolate contacts, which we're still struggling with. 

As one Tier 3 contact tracer told MD: 'Many people who should be self-isolating don't find out until Day 7 or later. We publish 'the percentage of contacts traced', but if they're traced so late, what's the point? 1 spoke to someone today who'd just discovered they should have been isolating nine days earlier.'

Long and short of it 

It took us 2.4bn years to evolve from single cells to the most dominant species on the planet, yet microorganisms that evolve in our destructive wake can still outfox us. Mutations occur at random, but we create the context that allows microbes to cross species to us. We cut down forests to displace animals from their natural habitats, and we transport, rear and slaughter them inhumanely. We are ultimately responsible for our predicament. 

But whatever tier we're in, we can still read, nap, watch, walk, talk, taste, hope and help those who are really struggling.

Homely New Year.  

2. How much tax will I pay in Europe after Brexit? David Byers, The Times  

Spain

The biggest single tax danger concerns hundreds of thousands of Spanish holiday homes that are let for at least some of the year when their owners are back in the UK. Non-EU citizens who own Spanish property must pay 24% on rental income rather than the 19% that applies for owners from EU nations.

Spanish tax authorities do not allow non-EU property owners to deduct any expenses — a benefit that is granted to EU citizens — so they must pay tax on their gross rental income. This could trigger a huge increase in tax bills. If an income of €1,000 a week were generated for six months over the holiday season it would produce gross income of €24,000 for the year. If expenses of €14,000 were incurred, a tax bill of €1,900 would have been due before Brexit. Now that Britain is no longer part of the EU, the payment will triple to €5,760, according to Robert Pullen, a partner at the accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg.

If you are an expat selling your main home in Spain, you would have a capital gains tax (CGT) rate of 19 per cent. When Britain was in the EU, there was a CGT exemption provided that the seller relocated within the European Economic Area. Now that Britain is not in the EEA, the tax must be paid.

Spanish rental income must be reported and tax paid a month after it is received, while taxes on property sales must be handled by a Spanish property lawyer when the transaction happens.

Between 800,000 and 1 million British citizens live in property they own in Spain or have a second home there.

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'.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain 

One thing that Spain doesn't lack is police forces. Yesterday, on the Poio-Pntevedra border, the new restrictions were being enforced - simultaneously - by the Guardia Civil, the national police, the regional police and the local police forces of both municipalities. So, five in all. Each with their own colourful cars. IGIMSTS.

Those infernal federados . . . I've now learned that these even include boxers and triathletes who belong to the respective national organisations. These are allowed to move freely between Poio and Pontevedra for 'training' purposes. Reader Maria has advised that, to qualify for freedom of movenent denied to the rest of us, you just need to play an organised sport which has a competitive league. IGIMSTS.

There've been reports in UK media outlets about British 'expats' being outraged at the UK government lying to them about 'no changes after Brexit'. Causing much schadenfreude amusement in the EU. One I read featured a couple who'd been living in Andalucia for 20 years but had only applied for Spanish residence last December. So, they'd been here illegally all that time and had ignored - until the very last moment - the constant British Embassy advice to regularise their situation before the end of 2020. They're now having problems coming back to Spain from the UK because they're not 'resident' here. One's forced to ask who's fault that might be.

I wonder if those who've had to admit to living here more than 6 months without taking out residence will be getting a visit from the Tax Office re back-taxes and the (massively fined) failure to report global assets. The Hacienda is, famously, not the most sympathetic organisation in the world. As I've said, fear of this might have influenced many who've decided to go back 'home'..

The more interesting reports are of a surge in Brits wanting to buy property here, so that they can work from home in Spain, rather than in the UK. Makes sense and will, as noted, lead to a change in the profile of the average Brit here. Especially if those retired folk who've been living here under the wire can't return for more than 30 days at a time and so decide to sell up and leave. There should be a lot of property available in the South.

Sadly, Valencia's Fallas festivities of May-July have been cancelled again this year.

Déja vu: November 16 2001: The reports on TV last night were of unseasonal bitter cold in the North and East of Spain, including a great deal of snow. Most of the reporters looked frozen stiff and one of them spoke of a temperature at or below zero. I suspect reports of cold weather come as a shock to Brits who think Spain is all sun but it's the second most mountainous country in Europe and many of the cities are at high levels, making for very cold winters. I smiled to see Lenox Napier making the same point in this week's Business Over Tapas bulletin. Almost 20 years later. It seem Brits are still ignorant of these facts.

María's New Year, Same Old: Days 12, 13 and 14. Continuing connection challenges. I hate Telefónica too. But have moved to their cheaper O2 option. 

The UK

Never in Spain . . 

Finally . . .

Is it just me ageing or are TV ads increasingly banal and unimaginative - not to mention invariably ‘inclusive/multicultural’? In Britain at least. Perhaps all the creativity now goes into internet ads.

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain 

It’s a very cold spell and the price of electricity has soared. Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas cites Public: Facua (the consumers’ organisation) denounces that the rise in the price of electricity has already reached 36% during the cold wave. The agency asks the Minister of Ecological Transition to "act against speculation and to fulfil the commitments adopted in the Government’s agreement to lower the electricity bill."

A reader has advised me that Galicia is no longer considered the second poorest region in Spain. I’m sure it isn’t along The Atlantic coast and wonder if all the drug profits have raised our average income. Must have, even if not declared.

I saw this in my (ex)parking lot in Lérez yesterday, at 13.00. Might explain postal delays . . .

On this, last night I read in my diary of 2001: I'm rather glad August is over. Apart from the fact the weather is better in September and the tourists have all gone home, it seems life is returning to normal after the 'holiday month'. Mail, for one thing, is arriving after the normal delays, whereas in August the system just seems to collapse. One week my Spectator arrived with the following week's edition, which itself was 4 days late. So, 11 days late in all. Maybe I can house-swap with someone who likes beaches next August. 

Federados/as - the folk who are free to move between Poio and Pontevedra. I’m told most kids today who do sport come under this rubric, not just adult tennis and golf players. I looked up federado/a in the dictionary of the Royal Academy and got:- Dicho de una organización superior a otras de carácter público o privado tales como sociedades, fundaciones u otros organismos. ‘Said of an organization superior to others of a public or private nature such as companies, foundations or other organizations’.

Then I looked up superior:-

1. Higher and in a preeminent place with respect to another.

2. More than something/someone in quality or quantity.

3. Excellent, so good.

So, I still have no idea what qualifies. There will/might be a concert staged by the Pontevedra Philharmonic Society next week, of which I’m a member. So, am I federado? Can I go to Pontevedra for it? Do I need a certificate?

Paul Preston’s new book - A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence, and Social Division in Modern Spain- is finally out in English. Lenox Napier gives us this review from From Foreign Affairs: For all its success at consolidating democracy, the country has often been held back by the staggering corruption of its political class. This affliction is exhaustively detailed in Preston’s book, which offers an unvarnished indictment of Spanish elites, including those who have shaped the current democratic regime. Preston approvingly quotes the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: ‘Starting with the monarchy and moving on to the Church, no national authority has ever thought of anything but itself.’

Germany

A German friend has told me a new word has been created there - SCHMERZENSFREUDE: Pain is welcomed with lots of joy. Getting the Covid jam.

The USA 

Yet another non-surprise from the Trump stable, You have to laugh.

The Way of the World

I wasn’t aware until this morning of Cultural Marxism. This blatantly antisemitic conspiracy theory of Marxist culture war is promoted by right-wing politicians, fundamentalist religious leaders, political commentators in mainstream print and television media and white supremacist terrorists. A nice mix. See Wiki here and this article from The Guardian.

The 2 of articles below address major problems of our times.

Finally . . .

Yesterday I had Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable You going round in my head. But with the word Unimpeachable substituted. I looked on YouTube and, needless to say, there’s this.

THE ARTICLES

1. The sinister attempts to silence gender critical academics: Kathleen Stock

Academic freedom is vital in a functioning and healthy democracy. But when it comes to questioning and debating ideas around gender identity and sex, many of my colleagues in academia do not appear to agree.

The latest glaring example of this came last week. An open letter, signed by over 600 of my colleagues, primarily in academic philosophy, suggested I was personally responsible for ‘transphobic fearmongering’, helping to ‘restrict trans people’s access to life-saving medical treatment’, and serving ‘to encourage the harassment of gender-non-conforming people’. Their pretext was my OBE for services to higher education and academic freedom, awarded in the New Year’s Honours List. Since 2018, I’ve written several pieces criticising the idea that an inner feeling of gender identity should overrule facts about biological sex in nearly all policy contexts. I’ve also written extensively about the fact that many academics agree with me, but are too intimidated to say so. This has made me a particular target for abuse.

It did not matter to those who signed the open letter that there was no evidence for their outrageous defamatory falsehoods; nor that I regularly affirm the right of trans people to live lives free of harassment and discrimination. Never mind as well that as a six-foot tall lesbian, working in a male-dominated academic discipline, I’m fairly gender-non-conforming myself.

The authors of this letter clearly believed they could see into my soul – perhaps even without actually reading my views. Amusingly, the authors of the letter were later forced to add a correction to their claim that I am best known ‘for opposition to the UK Gender Recognition Act’ (In reality, I have no objection to the existence of the Act, and have objected to proposed reforms to it in favour of gender identity).

The spectacle of paid thinkers, whose entire training emphasises the importance of sober argumentation, signing a document which wouldn’t look out of place in the Salem Witch Trial archive, makes one question particularly pertinent: what’s actually going on here?

How can these academics look at the parts of the gender identity debate that concern me – for instance, vulnerable female prisoners being housed with male sex offenders; young lesbian women like Keira Bell regretting the effects of puberty blockers and voluntary mastectomies by the time they are 20; a loss of academic data about sex-associated patterns of discrimination, and so on – and conclude that I’m not only wrong, but that I should be publicly shamed?

Though many of the signatories of the open letter against me were based overseas, 11 of the founder signatories were at UK universities. UK universities are at the forefront of trans activism in at least two ways. One is that relatively many students – otherwise known these days as paying customers – are trans activists, and this alone will tend to affect weaker-minded academic faculty. It also makes it harder for dissenting academics to push back firmly against the latest pronouncement from Student Unions about the existence of 100 genders, or about how objecting to larger male-bodied athletes in women’s sport amounts to ‘body-shaming women’. This lack of obvious dissent encourages zealots.

The second point is that universities themselves, via enthusiastic participation in Stonewall schemes like the Diversity Champions scheme and the Top 100 Employers Index are now, effectively, trans activist organisations at a managerial level, with Stonewall-sponsored policies to match.

For instance, an HR policy at Queen’s University Belfast tells staff to ‘think of the person as being the sex that they want you to think of them as’ (policies at Edinburgh and Leeds say something very similar). UCL tells its staff: ‘If a trans person informs a staff member that a word or phrasing is inappropriate or offensive, then that staff member should take their word for it, and adjust their phraseology accordingly’.

‘Good practice’ at Oxford University includes avoiding the phrase ‘identifies as a woman’ for a trans woman, because this suggests trans women aren’t ‘“real” women’. Policies at several universities, including Sussex and Aberystwyth, mandate that ‘any materials within relevant courses and modules will positively represent trans people and trans lives’ – so, not much room to discuss male sex offenders placed in women’s prisons there then.

The costs of this intimidation of academics sceptical about gender orthodoxies – whether via savage open letters or managerial policies controlling speech and thought – are high. Knowledge is lost and public understanding diminished. In my view, there’s a pressing need for academics to take a cold hard look at the havoc wreaked by pretending, on a national scale, that gender identity is more important than sex in nearly every context. This includes a need for philosophers: for a lot of current trans orthodoxy has very particular philosophical underpinnings, seeming to give it intellectual credibility where, in my view, there is little.

Take the academic writings of Bernadette Wren, who was head of psychology at the NHS Tavistock, which operates the Gender Identity Development Service for children, until 2020. They are steeped in her version of French post-structuralism. She has described the clinic’s work with children, partly involving the prescription of potentially life-altering drugs, as ‘making meaning’, and socially ‘constructing transgender in the intimacy of the therapy room’.

Or look at the evidence presented by Oxford sociologist Michael Biggs, that – almost fantastically – the English prison service’s move to prioritising gender identity over facts about sex has been influenced by what’s known as ‘queer theory’ – which means supposedly natural categories like ‘male’ and ‘female’ are nothing but fictions propping up pernicious power imbalances.

A world in which philosophers could have freely and aggressively interrogated these decadent abstractions and public policies which involve vulnerable women would surely have been a better one for detransitioners like Keira Bell or the victims of Karen White. Unfortunately, far too many academic philosophers are more concerned about silencing their colleagues for woke points than having any meaningful, evidence-based debate.

2. Can we trust Twitter and Facebook to help curb misinformation?  John Kampfner, The Times

The pandemic has spawned a new lexicon. One of the more bizarre terms is “information hygiene”. It is ominously Orwellian. It is also a necessary tool in combatting the “infodemic”, the spreading of fake or tendentious data with catastrophic consequences.

There are, says the World Health Organisation, four essential elements for informationally hygienic citizens: Do they stay informed? Do they avoid information echo chambers? Do they avoid assuming something is true simply because it supports their point of view? Do they check information veracity before forwarding content to others?

If your answer is “no” or “probably not” to any of the above, then you are potentially a super-spreader. If you do so deliberately, then you are a combatant in the broader culture war in which Covid-deniers and Covid-sceptics, and now vaccine-deniers and vaccine-sceptics, have sought to undermine the credibility of public health responses.

The issue of trust has been more fiercely contested over the past 12 months than ever before. The latest annual survey on trust, commissioned by the PR company Edelman and published this week, makes for sober reading. Deploying a plethora of graphs (the now-essential accessory for all reporting), it shows that around the world confidence in information disseminated by governments, media and non-governmental organisations has fallen to dangerously low levels. The one institution that is trusted in the public realm, the report said, said is business — something, I must admit, I find a bit of a stretch.

Governments, it said, briefly seized the high ground, emerging as the most trusted institution around May last year, in the height of the first wave. But they then “failed the test and squandered that trust bubble, having lost the most ground in the last six months”. The statistics vary from country to country, region to region. They differ according to political allegiance and socio-economic group, but many people now believe only what they want to believe, and only from sources they side with.

Hence the bifurcation in America, hence the two versions of the presidential election result (one factually correct, the other not), hence the astonishing scenes on Capitol Hill and the double-impeachment of the Inciter-in-Chief, Donald J Trump.

Now what? Jack Dorsey, Mr Twitter, encapsulated the problem when he described his company’s decision to block the president from its platform as both right and dangerous. Do we trust Dorsey or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to take these crucial decisions on our behalf? The social media companies, which for years insisted they were not publishers, appear finally to have dropped that conceit.

But if they are to start preventing people from saying things (which is, after all, the prerogative of the publisher) then what criteria will they use, and who will decide? Perhaps it should be entrusted to a committee of trusted public figures, but who would agree on its composition?

The crisis of truth will take years, decades even, to solve. Maybe the best one can hope for is that it can be mitigated. Tech firms claim that they now understand the broader societal dangers, but the business model of financial reward for exciting (for that, read extreme) content is as strong as ever.

Earlier this week, the Conservative Tom Tugendhat (one of a disappointingly small number of MPs with impressive reach on international issues), urged the Prime Minister to use the UK’s hosting of the G7 to launch an initiative that would seek to come to a global agreement on the use of data. That might previously have sounded nerdy, but as the pandemic has shown, it dominates every aspect of our lives.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant. 

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain 

Our Covid restrictions were duly tightened yesterday. So, as of midnight tonight, I again won't be able to cross the river to go into Pontevedra city. But members of the tennis club in Poio can come the other way. And Members of the golf club up in Meis are also permitted to ignore the travel restrictions. I guess it can't be simply because, on average, they're richer than the rest of us. But who knows?

Anyway, today I'm setting up a Yoga club in my attic flat, a table tennis club in my basement, a wine club in my kitchen and an athletics club in my garden. I believe this will allow people who are federados/as to come and visit me, so long as not more than 4 of us sit round a table. In so far as there'll be any sitting at all. IGIMSTS.

Talking about houses . . . An odd survey suggests - rather surprisingly - that these are the percentages of European folk living in 'homes that are too large for their household needs’:-

Malta 73%

Cyprus 71%

Ireland 70%

UK 56%

Spain 55%

Luxembourg 54% 

Belgium 54%

Netherlands 53%

At the other end of the scale:-

Romania 7%

Latvia 10%

Greece 11%

Bulgaria 12% 

Croatia 12% 

Slovakia 14%

Italy(!) 14%

Details here.

The UK

I've been known to claim the concepts of customer orientation and genuine customer service are not well advanced here in Spain. This week I've had the example of service at the other end of the spectrum - from the UK subsidiary of the German company, Miele. About a vacuum cleaner I bought in the UK in late 2019. So rapid, helpful and personalised was the reply (from Amanda) to my email, that I was too shocked to respond immediately. A Dutch friend and I share the opinion that neither of us has seen anything like it in 20 years here. Which was the reason that I eventually told Amanda that, given the option of dealing with Miele here or with Miele UK when I'm next there, it was a no-brainer. No matter how better Miele Spain might be than the average Spanish operator, I was bound to face problems and delays.

The USA 

Trump should be punished for inciting the Capitol violence but Democrats would be wise to prioritise national healing.  Easy to say but . . .

Arnold Schwarzenegger makes some pertinent points in this impressive video.

The Way of the World

An American commentator: The concept of a 'Just the facts' newscast designed to be consumed by everyone has died out. We have an informational system that profits from division and conflict.  . . .It’s time to admit this is a failed system. You can’t sell hatred and seriously expect it to end. . .  We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party, where those financial pressures to maintain audience are absent. Sounds rather like the BBC to me. The full article is here.

Finally . . .

A tale to melt your heart. Or something.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant. 

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

Spain. Most predictable statement so far: España tiene garantizadas dosis suficientes para vacunar a toda la población aunque sin garantías de cuándo se administrarán. With aother grandchild due late March, I'm hoping to be done by then so that I can get to the UK without too much difficulty. But am not very optimistic.

Galicia: Our restrictions will be strengthened today, to deal with the totally predictable spike in infections following 3 big family celebrations within 2 weeks. Roll on the vaccinations.

Germany: Bit of a surprise . .  National media and politicians have spent weeks alleging there has been a "planning disaster" around the purchase and distribution of vaccines. With Germany stuck in its second coronavirus lockdown, which was further tightened last week, critics have accused the European Commission of bungling the joint European procurement process. They argue Brussels did not purchase enough of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine — the first available jab on the market and an object of national pride because it was developed in Germany. Strong denials from Brussels and Berlin have cut little ice.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain 

Here's the BBC in the dilemmas being faced by Brits along the Costas. 

On this . .  This is my message to the blog of a chap who claims British 'expats' were lied to during the Brexit campaign about nothing changing. If I'm wrong on this, I really need to know!:-

I'm new to your blog so don't really yet know where you're coming from. And I'm a tad confused by what you write,

Vis a vis Spain, there are 5 basic groups of Brits:

1. Tourists who come to Spain on holiday

2. Those that have property here and used to visit for less than 6 months

3. Those that have property here and used to visit for more than 6 month but - illegally - didn't register as residents

4. Those that have property here and used to visit for more than 6 months but did register as residents

5. Those that have property here and live here all the time and are officially resident here.

Not all of these can be considered expats/emigrants from the UK/immigrants into Spain. But those in group 5 certainly can be and I am one of those

Before the Brexit deal, there was considerable concern about what would change for us. Indeed there is/was a highly vocal group representing us, led by Sue Wilson. But I gauge that there's much less concern now and, to be honest, the only real change that I'm currently aware of for us in group 5 - and probably group 4 - is that we'll have to use the Non-EU line when arriving by air. I'm not aware there'll be different lines from the ferries, as there never have been,

So, as the gravamen of your post is that we real 'expats' were lied to, I'd be genuinely interested to know what other changes will affect me and other members of groups 4 and 5.

Of course, I have no doubt that things will have changed for those in groups 1, 2 and 3 - unless they've by now complied with the British embassy advice to obtain Spanish residency before 31.12.20, with all its tax implications. Perhaps it's fear of the latter which worried all the people reported to be leaving Spain, especially those who had been living below the line, not complying with the legal requirement to register with the padrón and to take out Spanish residency. Those who made the official number of Brits here c.300,000 when the unofficial number is nearer one million. Quite a lot of them, then.

I suspect the BBC report is correct on the profile of the average resident Brit in Spain changing, for one reason and another.

Reader María has commented on the issue of the postal service, saying that it's certainly deteriorated where she lives. She wrote that things had gone missing, which reminded me that years ago I told UK friends and relatives to stop sending things to me. They weren't arriving, though we had no idea in which country they were going astray, of course,

Well, I have an answer to the EHIC/GHIC card question after finding this via Google Images:-

It seems that EHIC cards issued in December only had a (new) Union Jack in the top right hand corner, whereas the GHIC (allegedly) being issued now has it as the entire bloody backcloth as well. Which is not to my taste.

The UK

I'm astonished too see reports of the police declining to compel mask-wearing in supermarkets. In my favoured supermarket in Pontevedra, if your mask slips a fraction below your nose, the staff jump on you. The police don't come into it. Are there really people walking maskless around British shops?

More optimism from Ambrose Evans Pritchard below.

More parochially . . . I learned only yesterday that the Wirral peninsula featured in the late 14th century epic, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as the wilderness off wirral(þe wyldrenesse of wyrale). As it says here, it's changed a bit since then.

The UK & The EU

Northern Ireland residents applying for the new Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC) will be able to choose one without the (jingoistic) union flag background. Because they're both in the UK and in the EU, I guess. The Protestants will probably go with it but the Catholics without it.

The USA 

US politics: In 1961 the novelist Philip Roth wrote: Actuality is continually outdoing our talents. The culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist. And that was way before Trump.

Trump has defended his speech to his followers before the assault on the Capitol as “totally appropriate”. Well, he would, wouldn't he? Possibly believes it.

One wonders how many of those who for 4 year have attributed Trump Derangement Syndrome to critics have now changed their minds. There must be some. Surely. And not just the companies who've ceased donating to the GOP. Interestingly, the term is now  being used - far more accurately - re Trump supporters who don't accept the 2020 election results. 

Finally . . .

Here's another spoof small ad:-

THE ARTICLE

Britain will break free from economic Covid long before Europe. 

With vaccinations underway, the UK should be able to start dialling down restrictions from February: Ambrose Evans Pritchard.

Once British care home residents and the over-80s are vaccinated, two thirds of potential Covid deaths will be covered. That will come into view within ten days.

The figures have been crunched by Yifei Gong and Stuart McDonald from the Covid 19 Actuaries Response Group, based on analysis of death certificates. It validates the Government strategy of break-neck speed vaccination rather than the European precautionary policy of dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’. 

Some 88%of avoidable deaths will be covered by the time we reach the mid-February target of 13m vaccinations, in principle saving 55,600 lives. These include all the over-70s and the clinically extremely vulnerable, as well as frontline health and social care workers.

* Assuming 1:1 ratio for carers.

Needless to say, this is a theoretical model. Some will refuse a jab, although UK acceptance and trust in scientists is the highest of any major country in the developed West.

Whether the efficacy rate of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab is 70% or 80% is a distraction. Not a single volunteer in the group’s clinical trials died or became critically-ill from Covid. For all intents and purposes the vaccine has 100% efficacy against mortality. Personally, I would be equally happy to receive any jab approved by the MHRA.

We are about to go through a lacerating phase where the headline picture keeps getting worse. The death toll will keep rising mechanically into late January as a result of infections dating back to December – when, let us not forget, the Education Secretary was forcing schools to stay open even in zones where cases were spiralling.

Yet at the same time the underlying picture will be improving very fast. My guess is that the atmosphere will change dramatically at the beginning of February as it becomes clear that early vaccinations are progressively pulling down the mortality ratio.

There will then be a flowering of optimism as the UK becomes the first major Western state to approach herd immunity among the vulnerable, clearing the way for post-Covid social and economic revival.

Behind the scenes, the policy debate has already moved on the exit strategy, just as planners switched their focus in early 1943 after El Alamein and Stalingrad to what the world would like after the defeat of Fascism. The exit is what now matters for markets.

The new conflict is between those pushing for eradication, and those arguing that the greater public good is to end coercive restrictions and open up the economy as soon as we reach tolerable levels of immunity.

It is a clash within countries and between them. Simon Powell and Michael Chiang from Jefferies say the world is splitting into two camps: ‘eliminators’ in East Asia, Australia, New Zealand; ‘suppressors’ in the Americas, Europe, and above all the UK, which will embrace freedom sooner.

Acceptance for social repression will drain away in the West “when mortalities from Covid 19 start to resemble influenza in a typical year.”

The zero tolerance states will in a sense be trapped by their own pristine status and absolutist rhetoric, though it is an enviable problem to have. Singapore will have to decide whether it really wants to hold the World Economic Forum in May, or stay closed as far out as 2022, at rising cost to its position as an open global entrepôt. Tough choice.  

The same split is going on internally within the UK. Devi Sridhar, Edinburgh professor of global public health, is leading the push for elimination, arguing that there is “no acceptable level of infection” and that we must keep tight controls in place for most of this year, or risk drifting into another series of lockdowns next winter.

Prof Sridhar has been a prophet of this pandemic – right at almost every stage – and I am loath to disagree now. But there comes a point when zero-risk does more harm than good. You cannot keep nations shut once 88% of potential deaths have been averted.

It is even harder to justify doing so once the over-60s have been vaccinated and the figure rises to 97%, which should be the case by early March. At that point you really are talking about a health dictatorship.

So when should we dial down the restrictions? Time-lag effects obviously pull in opposite directions. Trial data shows that protection is largely gained within ten days of the first jab. After that further delay is icing on the cake. Those ten days extra mean that the top four priority groups are largely safe by Feb 25.

On the other hand, it will take a couple of weeks for infections to pick up again after this lockdown. All told, the Government’s plan to start opening up in the middle of February looks well-calibrated.

Hedge funds and investors will pull this moment forward as soon as the ‘second derivative’ starts to turn, which is probably from now onwards, although they will first want a better sense of whether the NHS is going to topple over and whether the Government can withstand the political trauma of the next month.

Assuming that the worst is averted, prepare for a surge of pent-up investment and a robust rally in sterling. The pound has not seen a relief bounce against the euro since the Brexit deal.

The drama over exploding cases of the B117 variant has obscured the more relevant market story of an early, fast, and extremely successful roll-out of the vaccine.

The UK has gained a potential lead of two months over Europe. The EU’s painfully slow start and its shortage of future doses almost guarantee rolling lockdowns and curfews deep into the spring.

Most EU governments are still in denial about this. They do not have a handle on the extent of the B117 variant in their countries, or other variants, since most of them do almost no genomic sequencing.

They are putting off the inevitable, just as the UK did before Christmas, and just as the whole Western world has done at every juncture since last February. They are understandably alarmed by a fractious political mood.

Public approval for the handling of the pandemic has fallen sharply in almost every state – except Italy, an unexpected paragon of efficiency. It has collapsed in Spain, Belgium, and France. If a view takes hold that leaders have badly botched the vaccination strategy on top of everything else, this mood will become mutinous.

The rating agency Moody’s warned this week that the credit standing of EU states is now a function of how well they manage the next stage of Covid. Public debt levels are already in the red zone in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, and Belgium, but so is private debt in some of these countries. It has exploded to near 350% of GDP in France.

Moody’s said contingent liabilities from Covid debt guarantees and from the banking system could be “crystallised”. This is being masked for now by the bond purchases of the European Central Bank but that is not politically or constitutionally tenable over time. In short, the cost of letting this pandemic run for an extra quarter due to incompetence is likely to be exorbitant.

It is hard to be exact about timing because Brussels has been stonewalling about its vaccine strategy and the delivery schedule of doses. The daily noon briefing for journalists has become a battleground, reaching levels of acrimony not seen since the downfall of the corrupt Santer Commission in 1999.

The Liberal bloc in the European Parliament is demanding “precise answers” to avoid lasting damage to the EU institutions. There are mounting calls for a parliamentary inquiry.

It is a surreal situation. Far from offering answers, Ursula von der Leyen has opened a probe into member states – above all Germany – for violations of a “legally-binding” accord by all 27 members not to order extra vaccines on the side. Berlin is in the dock for trying to secure adequate doses of its own home-grown BioNTech vaccine in order to save the lives of its own citizens. If you want to undermine German political consent for the European Project, you hardly find a better way.

We do not yet know exactly how bad the vaccine shortage in Europe is going to be. A string of states have made such a mess of the roll-out that they are far from exhausting their doses. But Denmark is already running low after its fast start, and has decided to delay the second BioNTech jab to six weeks. Others are following.

The Pfizer-BioNTech doses are coming in dribs and drabs. The Moderna supplies are symbolic at this point. The European Medicines Agency has not yet approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. It will make a statement on Jan 29. The weeks slip by.

For now the UK is Plague Island and attention is riveted on the harrowing ordeal of the NHS. But that is a snapshot in time. The shape of British and European politics may look very different in a month.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant. 

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain 

A couple of weeks ago, I posted - from a café above our fish and seafood market - a foto of the back of a pazo(mansion) that used to have a vista over the river and the fields beyond. I mentioned its lovely facade, in the quietest square in Pontevedra:-

On the left you can see a small house in a poor state of repair, whose portal is used by at least one sintecho(homeless person) as a place in which to sleep. I might already have said my guess is no one knows now who owns it. Or there's a family dispute about selling it, leaving it to fall into greater and greater disrepair. Which happens quite a lot here in Galicia, where title to property can one exceedingly complex.

Hence my longstanding advice, always use a lawyer here and NEVER rely on the notary and - God forfend! - the ever-so-charming-and-helpful estate agent who will accelerate your purchase. This is the best property lawyer in Galicia. And she is fluent in English and operates throughout Spain.

Reading my diary of 2000 and 2001, it's clear I gradually became inured to the vagaries of the Spanish postal system. Back then, I used to get several magazines from the UK and I knew what date they were published in the UK. So it frustrated me when they didn't arrive here for a couple of weeks. But less and less over time, as I obeyed my own advice to others, viz: Lower your expectations. Have things improved? Well, I think so, possibly because there are a lot fewer items sent in the mail these days. But July and August are still disaster months and yesterday I finally received the edition of Prospect issued in mid December, along with the letter I mention below dated 24 December. So, it depends on the time of year, I guess. 

In this, the second poorest region in Spain, we have one of the costliest toll roads in the country, for the AP9, which runs along the coast between Vigo and La Coruña. As usual, the fee rose this month, in contrast to elsewhere in Spain, where regional governments have reduced or even abolished fees. I'm not sure anyone know why. But there  are suspicions, of course.

María's New Year, Same Old: Day 11  

The EU: Life Post Brexit

Well, I'm even more confused than ever about my EHIC card. Despite being told in December I couldn't have 2 cards, I received yesterday a second one with a letter dated 24 December. This was before my exchange of emails of last week on whether I needed to apply again before or after the first expired - almost immediately - in late January. Unlike the first, the second has an expiry date in December 2024 and a hologram of the Union Jack in the top right hand corner. So, is it the new GHIC, even though it's labelled EUROPEAN HEALTH INSURANCE CARD or EHIC? I might know the answer if and when there's a follow up to last week's email exchange. Or if I apply now for a GHIC, I guess.

The Way of the World

The company Peloton, which sells snazzy, expensive exercise bikes, is now valued on the crazy US stock exchange at more than the Ford motor company. 

English

Had to believe but it's said English is the only language in the world which capitalises the first person singular - I. Other than at the start of a sentence, I guess.

Spanish

Reader Perry has introduced me to a new world portainjerto, meaning 'rootstock'. As in: El que quiera tener el fruto sin dificultad, debe plantar el árbol sobre portainjerto enano. But I don't supposed I'll be using it much. If ever.

Another couple of words new to me: trasmallo(trammel net) and fisga(trident) in a report about salmon poachers. Also not terribly useful.

Plus Escarmentar: To punish; teach a lesson to. In a report about parents prosecuted for hitting their kids.

English/Spanish Refrains/Refranes

More less common examples:

Never too late to do well: Nunca es tarde si la dicha es buena.

No one will notice in the dark: De noche, todos los gatos son pardos.

Nothing goes on for ever: No hay mal ni bien que cien años dure.

Finally . . .

Every Xmas, Private Eye publishes a page or two of spoof small ads. Here's one of this year's crop:-

You should know that sometimes one of the satirical inventions actually makes it to the market . . Life imitating Art, as it were.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant. 

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

According to one study, four-fifths of people admitted to hospital with the coronavirus are obese or overweight. Fat people’s blood is “stickier”, meaning it clots more quickly in the lungs. The diaphragms of fat people are pushed up by belly fat, so they are literally suffocated by their own flesh as they struggle for air. Fat leeches into their organs, compromising immunity. If this is true, I wonder whether analysis will ultimately show a statistically valid correlation between deaths and national obesity rates. 

The roll-out of the vaccine doesn't seem to be efficient in France, Spain nor - of all places - Germany. The UK is doing better but did, of course, have a head start of more than 2 or 3 weeks. Maybe more. See here on this. 

For Germany, one factor seems to be the decentralised nature of the healthcare system. Something that, ironically, served it well with the track and trace challenge of early last year. 

This factor is relevant for Spain as well, where the regions - to whom healthcare is devolved - are said to be performing differentially. And few impressively.  

Although it's constantly cited as a justification for repeated lockdowns, I don't believe the absolute number of deaths is the principal concern of governments around Europe. It's far more likely to be the political fallout from the collapse of the healthcare system for causes attributable to them. In the UK, for example, the looming collapse is really down to the reduced numbers of healthcare personnel, not to inadequate hospital facilities. And this reflects cutbacks over recent years and the more recent failure to provided adequate PPE. Governments don't ban cars or close roads, for example, simply because of deaths. And they don't invest in reducing these unless and until an acceptable ratio to cost is exceeded. Así son las cosas.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain   

Some beautiful snow scenes around Spain from El País. It might be another 50 years before we see the like again. Possibly 500.

Up here in the North West, we've escaped the snow, if not the cold. At least along the coast, though it's fallen in the mountains, near Lugo for example. But it always does up there.

For those new to driving in Spain - no, not roundabouts - I need to repeat that, when you get tyres replaced here, they'll always be over-inflated. And perhaps not to the same excessive level. Of the two I got last week, one was over-inflated 25% and the other 50%. Not good for wear. And possibly dangerous. 

Here's María's New Year, Same Old: Day 9 and 10.

The UK

Someone's leaked Boris John's speech matrix:-

The USA 

I knew that California had once belonged to Mexico but didn't know it was Spain who had in 1532 entered what's now called California. And then proceeded to claim and ‘acquire' the land and to eradicate all its numerous Native Indian tribes, so as to create New Spain. Later to become New Mexico, before it was lost to the USA. (Never a colonial power, of course. Other than on a vast, continent-wide scale. That’s apparently morally different from cherry picking in Africa or Asia.)

English/Spanish Refrains/Refranes

I haven't posted any of these for a while and can't recall where I was up to with the lesser-known ones. Hope these aren't repeats:-

- Each person knows where his/her problems lie: Cada uno sabe donde le aprieta el zapato.

- He that would have the fruit must climb the tree: El que algo quiere, algo le cuesta

- It's the same under a different name: Es el mismo perro con diferente collar.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant. 

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain   

My daughter has sent me nice pix of the thick snow and icicles on the Madrid roofs outside her window. They took me back to the days of my primary school - and even later - when these were a common sight during British winters. Or that's what I recall, anyway.

I guess everyone's seen the videos of the guys skiing and dog sledging on the streets of Madrid and the huge snowball fight in Sol. Where there wasn't much social distancing to be seen. The Covid virus is said to like the cold . . .

One of the relics of the Franco era is the Association of Christian(i. e. Catholic) Lawyers. Público recently reported that this very right-wing organisation had ramped up its judicial offensive, initiating more than 20 court cases against everything it considers offensive to its religion and its concept of family. This includes abortion, civil partnerships and assisted dying, of course. One can't escape the feeling they're swimming against a pretty strong tide. Didn’t Argentina just legalise abortion? Following Ireland a year to two ago.

This differential treatment of local statues looks like a bit of sex discrimination to me:-

The UK

Sadly there's been no follow-up to the quick response to my complaint that I couldn't call the NHS Business Unit re my EHIC card. So, I still don't know what to do when the card renewed only in December expires in a few days' time. Just another victim of Brexit, I guess.

The USA

The 2 articles below - both by right-of-centre American commentators - hit several nails on the head. But don't leave one optimistic about the near term. 

Nutters Corner

Two suspected burglars were arrested in the UK after accidentally calling the police when one of them sat on his phone and dialled the emergency number 999. Officers said they listened as the men carried out the burglary and could even hear their colleagues arrive to arrest them.

Finally . . .

Is this the original emoji, from around 1938? It was a British thing - usually asking a question like Wot, no eggs? but, during the war, was combined with the America line Kilroy was here, to make a composite cartoon, plastered everywhere by GIs:-

THE ARTICLES 

1. Donald Trump's despotic mania is a threat to democracy itself: A functioning body politic requires not just institutions and laws, but rationality and the expectation of civil behaviour    Janet Daley. The Telegraph

Scarcely twenty-four hours after telling the mob who trashed the Capitol on his behalf, how wonderful they were and how much he loved them, Donald Trump disowned them and called their actions “heinous”. Which of those statements do you believe? The first one which was uttered in a garden and seemed quite spontaneous, or the second one delivered from the White House podium and recited robotically with the aid of an autocue?

Never mind, what matters for the official process is that he has now accepted that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States, and that there will be an “orderly transition” to the new administration - even if he won’t attend his successor’s inauguration. That’s the legal bit taken care of. But in case you thought his nerve had been broken by the prospect of permanent disgrace, he made it clear that some things have not changed. He promised his faithful supporters (the people who trashed the Capitol) that “our journey is just beginning”. God help us, he will be back.

I have to say that almost nothing that has happened over the past week has surprised me – although I was rather startled by the total ineptness of the security response at the Capitol. But from that moment in January 2017 when Trump emerged on the steps of the Capitol for his inaugural, waving his fist in the air like a comic opera dictator, I was convinced that this was very, very bad news. The sophisticated view among many of my Republican friends was that his absurd, puerile behaviour during the election campaign had been an act designed to make a point about the smug liberal establishment and its contempt for the ordinary people of middle America. Once he became president, they assured me, that would all fall away and we would see the serious political mind at work.

What happened next? He ran through successive waves of Cabinet appointments, busloads of expert advisors and exasperated White House staff, quite a few of whom wrote books chronicling their adventures. And still, so many intelligent, highly educated, Republican supporters told themselves (and me) that it was alright. At the height of Wednesday night’s horror show I emailed one of the most erudite of them to say, “Please tell me that you are appalled by these scenes. Otherwise we are on different planets.” His reply was less than robust.

Yes, Trump’s administration did get some things done. But surely the actual achievements - tax reform, progress in the Middle East, pulling away from the Iran nuclear deal – could have been accomplished by any sound, confident Republican president who had control of both houses of Congress? Mitt Romney or Marco Rubio, for example, could almost certainly have done remarkably similar things without legitimising this hideous societal warfare. But what Trump did surely, I can hear my friends retort, was to draw attention to what he called (plagiarising Franklin Roosevelt) the “forgotten man”.

He spoke to the new poor of the Rust Belt whose jobs had gone abroad along with the industries that had been the source of regional livelihoods for generations. Theirs were certainly grievances which had been ignored, or worse, despised by the metropolitan liberal elites who had taken over Washington. Trump’s protectionist solutions were not original but they were presented with an energy that obviously captured something that needed to be addressed. That is what a lot of Republicans saw and were prepared to support. Maybe they thought that this was something bracingly new: a refreshing and genuine form of authenticity.

But the price for embracing that well-aimed pitch was too high and it rested on a fatal mistake: the idea that Trump was a brand new, revitalising phenomenon, a brash antidote to the decadence of identity politics which had become the most fashionable form of modern electoral campaigning. In fact, what he represented was something that was not new at all, something that is as old as politics itself: the demagoguery which exploits and manipulates grievances as a means of acquiring power. There are inevitably legitimate dissatisfactions in any society. But using them to ignite the incipient alienation and frustration that is always present in human affairs is wicked. It is what constitutional democracy was designed to prevent.

It was truly shameful that the political parties in the United States had abandoned the post-industrial wastelands to such despair that an obnoxious ignoramus could capture their loyalty. The glorious self-righteousness of the Democrats, whose historic responsibility this once was, must not be permitted to erase the truth. Trump stepped into a vacuum which they had left. Led by Nancy Pelosi, the House Democrats will almost certainly vote to impeach him (again) but this will be purely symbolic and rather pointless. What they should be addressing is their own future relationship with what used to be their blue collar base.

What happens now? The Republican party is laid low. It has lost its hold on the Senate, almost certainly because Trump persuaded some of its voters not to bother turning up in Georgia (since the election would be rigged anyway), or because traditional Republicans were so repulsed by his behaviour that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote. Now they will be powerless in federal government for at least two years. Some of them – like the odious Ted Cruz – will try to keep the Trump flame alive in the hope of inheriting his following.

The rest will know that they must repudiate this bizarre episode if they are not to be reduced to a wacko cult on the fringes of American life. There is a truth here that should be grasped before it slips away in the myth-making of political history. What has happened before our eyes was as old as despotic mania: something much more permanent in the political psyche than democracy which tries – not always successfully – to hold it down. For democracy to win requires not just institutions and laws, but rationality and the expectation of civil behaviour.

2. Trump has brought us to the brink. Now conservatives must reclaim our cause: Andrew Sullivan, The Times

For anyone with eyes not blinded by tribalism and ears not deafened by denial, what happened in Washington last week was always going to happen. Donald Trump’s character and profound psychological deformation always, always meant he would not relinquish power without an almighty struggle. We elected an instinctual tyrant, preternaturally incapable of understanding the give and take of democratic politics, for whom losing in any contest threatens the core of his very being, and who has no effective control over the roiling emotions that course through his thickened arteries.

Some of us were ridiculed for saying from the very beginning that there would have to be some kind of violence to remove him if he were to lose the next election. We still are. We’re called victims of TDS — or Trump derangement syndrome — as if this were not the only sane position when a delusional, malignant, tyrant-wannabe has an entire political party in his grip, aided and abetted by tribal media tools. For myself, from the beginning, having examined Trump’s past and observed his plain-as-day pathology, I just couldn’t envision how this figure could psychologically, voluntarily leave the Oval Office. Every single day of his presidency has confirmed this. He has blown through every guard rail against presidential abuse that exists.

Trump is now and always has been delusional. He lives in an imaginary world. His insistence that he won the last election in a “landslide” is psychologically indistinguishable from his declaration on his first day that his inaugural crowd was larger than his predecessor’s. For four years, the actual evidence did not matter. It still doesn’t. Any rumour that helps him, however ludicrous, is true; every cold fact that hurts him, however trivial or banal, doesn’t exist.

For four years, any adviser who told him the truth, rather than perpetuating his delusions, had an immediate expiry date. For four years, an army of volunteer propagandists knowingly disseminated his insane cascade of lies.

And Trump really believes these fantasies. He is not a calculating man. He is a creature of total impulse. As I wrote, five years ago now, quoting Plato, a tyrant is a man “not having control of himself [who] attempts to rule others”; a man flooded with fear and love and passion, while having little or no ability to restrain or moderate them; a “real slave to the greatest fawning”; a man who “throughout his entire life ... is full of fear, overflowing with convulsions and pains”. For the ancients, a tyrant represented the human whose appetites and fantasies had no form of rational control.

This is dangerous in normal times. In an emergency such as Covid-19, it turned catastrophic. For Trump, the virus could not exist or would disappear all of a sudden because it might threaten his re-election. Anything in the press that did not reflect his own reality was, in his mind, invented. Dozens of lawsuits that failed to prove any fraud in the election were simply proof the conspiracy against him was even bigger. His vice-president, the most shameless lackey of them all, eventually could not force himself to do something that was feasible only in Trump’s imagination, and so he too became a traitor in the bitter, bunker end.

The storming of the Capitol last week to stymie, prevent or postpone the certification of the election results was therefore, in some ways, a metaphor for the entire four years. It was both absurd and terrifying. It was a violent insurrection against democracy, but it was also a scene from a bad dream about the Burning Man festival. Wild-eyed men wandered around carrying the Confederate flag; fanatics talked of how to execute Mike Pence for treason; and a QAnon crazy, dressed in furs and Viking horns, with a painted face, commanded the floor of the House. It was sedition as some form of cosplay. It was deadly, but also performative. It was as if the storming of the Bastille ended with selfies.

The pièce de résistance was captured, as so often, by the political journalist Olivia Nuzzi, who reported that Trump, after cheering the mob on, telling them he would join them, refusing to tell them to call it off and trying to hold off the National Guard, eventually soured on the riot as “low-class”. He didn’t mind the insurrection — he just objected to the aesthetics!

The hostage video he put out last week — which some of his followers, of course, believed was a deep fake — was obviously an insincere attempt to avoid legal liability for the insurrection he had just incited. Now, however, he is back to normal, repeating his claims of fraud and acknowledging he will not attend the inauguration of Joe Biden, his last act of contempt for democratic processes that help heal the divides from fiercely contested elections.

There is a temptation to believe that this is finally over. But, for as long as this man exercises the powers of the presidency, it isn’t. He has used the power of the pardon these past few years to obstruct justice, to prevent vital testimony in a legitimate investigation and to reward friends and relatives. In recent weeks, we’ve been told, he has also discussed the possibility of a prospective pardon for himself and his family that will only cement his legacy of a presidency beyond the reach of any checks and balances. The next 10 days, as he is cornered, are among the most dangerous. He could do anything. I favour a second impeachment, swiftly executed. The goal at this point is to get him out of there before he does even more damage, to keep him on the defensive and to bar him from running for office again. This is where we are.

It pains me to say it, but last week was, in many ways, the essence of American “conservatism” in 2021. It has morphed from a political to a theological movement to a personality cult. It is a threat to the very foundations of liberal democracy. It is nihilist, performative, incoherent and bristling with the certainty of fundamentalists and the corruption of grifters.

My first desperate hope with this administration was it would plummet so far in popularity so quickly that it would cause a revolt within the Grand Old Party (GOP). Trump’s demagogic genius, the left’s radicalisation and the pull of tribalism soon put an end to that delusional hope. My second was a thorough repudiation of the GOP, as well as Trump, this past political cycle, in what I hoped would be a landslide Democratic victory. The rhetoric of the far left and the burning of US cities last summer scotched that one, as the congressional tally shows. So my third is simply that we will soon begin to treat these past four years as the quintessential cautionary tale in the narrative of America. In future, if a president refuses to be accountable to Congress in any way, or obstructs justice, or tells massive lies — or refuses to concede an election — he or she will be stigmatised as being a version of Trump.

My hope is that those who knowingly enabled mass delusion, insurrection and constitutional chaos — such as Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Lindsey Graham — have no serious careers ahead of them; that those who served and enabled this president retreat from public life in the ignominy they deserve. My hope is that a Republican Party emerges that is built on the anathematisation of the past four years, a party that can address the deeper issues that Trump viciously exploited, and build a multiracial coalition around actual conservative principles to address the clear needs of all Americans.

I can’t see this happening without a split, or an open internecine struggle. If the result is a deeper commitment to an ideology of stab-in-the-back neofascism inspired by a seditionist president-in- exile, then the GOP needs to be burnt to the ground. But if someone can emerge who can marshal the ideas that helped the GOP make gains in the House last year and excommunicate the seditionists and bigots and fanatics, then we have something to build on.

Biden has a massive task ahead of him, but last week may help him find common ground with those Republican senators who have begun to understand that the forces they have unleashed and enabled are deeply dangerous to the entire project of self-government in America. Since his election victory, he has struck the right note every time the country has needed him to. Steer us back towards a sane centre, Mr President-Elect. Save the soul of this teetering, torn remnant of a republic, before we lose it for good.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant. 

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain   

Bad economic news for Spain.

It sometimes happens in Spain, says Lenox Napier of Spanish Shilling (and Business Over Tapas) that a building can never be completed but can never be entirely demolished. Here he talks about the saga of the appalling Algarrobico hotel. A  very Spanish tale.

Pacharan is new to me. Max Abroard tells us all about it and its magical properties here. I hope to sample it in Navarra as soon as we're free to travel again.

Where are we Brits in Spain? Here, says the Embassy:-

More here - in Spanish - on this year's Año Jacobeo/Ano Xacobeo. Which will last more than   it's supposed to. Conveniently for everyone with a financial interest. And possibly a few concerned about their eternal soul.

Here's María's New Year, Same Old: Day 8 

The UK

The estimable columnist Caitlin Moran has also notice the mad flag feature of TV broadcasts . . . Someone has clearly told Boris Johnson to stop doing his usual thing of flinging his arms around like a puppeteer who’s had Punch and Judy stolen from his hands but hasn’t yet noticed, so his fingers were interlaced in a mad, angry ham fist on his desk. Someone had also, presumably, tried to think of the best way to visually represent the spirit of a newly Brexited Britain so had put not one, but two Union Jack flags on flagpoles behind him. We’re doubly British now, you see? I guess when Scotland cedes from the Union, we’ll have three Union Jacks; and when Ireland reunites, four — and so on, until “Great Britain” consists of just London and Woking, and the prime minister’s office looks like some mad flag museum, which will be a bugger for the cleaner to dust.

Interesting to note that: There is one key ingredient that the UK's greatest French chefs have relied on for 200 years: British money, usually aristocratic and often royal, combined with a willingness to spend it lavishly on supremely good food. The story of Anglo-French cuisine is a tale of Gallic flair and the recruitment of British disciples, but it is also about the British class system, culinary one-upmanship and cash. Behind every successful French chef in Britain since 1815 sits a discerning and hungry British toff, with a knife, a fork and a large wallet.

The EU

If you’re a Brit resident in Spain, you may already know that: Consumers in the EU have been hit with unexpected import fees when ordering goods from Britain since the end of the Brexit transition phase. Customs duties and maybe more taxes.

The Way of the World

In the UK at least, you can now take delivery of ready-to-cook meals not only for yourselves but also for your bloody pets. They seem to be advertised together. To very lazy (rich?) folk, I guess.

Finally . . .

Talking of ads . . . A friend asked me if I knew what ads came up on my blog page. No, I said, I never see any. So she sent me this one, querying whether it was her or me who was seen as the target customer.

I suggested Google had profiled her as a 50 year old lesbian. She countered that possibly they saw her as a client for the dating service, even though she's not 'mature'. i.e. above 40. Wrong in both cases. Someone is wasting their money . . .

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant. 

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

An excellent explanatory article from El Pais.

Very good news from The Times: An arthritis drug that cuts the risk of death for the sickest Covid-19 patients by 24% could save thousands of lives just as the NHS starts to be overwhelmed. Tocilizumab was also found to reduce the time that critically ill patients spent in intensive care by up to 10 days.

Galicia entra en la tercera ola con la incidencia creciendo a alto riesgo. Los contagios se concentran en el eje atlántico y preocupan especialmente A Coruña y Santiago. Prácticamente la mitad de los ingresados lo están en hospitales de estas áreas. Parece claro que la reunión del subcomité clínico de hoy optará por endurecer las limitaciones en ambas ciudades. 

For Spain as a whole . . El presidente de la Sociedad Española de Médicos Generales y de Familia habla claro: Es indudable que la gente le ha perdido el miedo al virus. Some will surely pay a high price for this insouciance.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain   

Articles here and here on Spain's current (very) cold snap. Outside my front door that last few mornings it's been comparatively mild one degree above freezing. Not that you'd know this from the ice on the cars. But today the temperature had doubled, to 2 degrees. And it’s forecast to rise as high as 3 this weekend.

As the El Pais article cited above shows, Spanish newspapers are terrific at graphics/diagrams. An English friend sent me that one, stressing that the days of the UK newspapers doing it are long gone. The Times Insight team of decades ago springs to my mind.

An opinion poll published by [right-of-centre] El Mundo this week suggested that 55% of Spaniards believe the [corrupt but ailing] ex king should be allowed to return from exile to live in Spain, with 31% opposed. I imagine it'll happen in due course. Social stigma is  less a factor here in Spain than in some other countries. 

Here's María's New Year, Same Old: Day 6 and 7 

The USA

Trump possibly needs a 2 week vacation.

The country certainly needs its president to take a 2 week vacation. Followed, possibly, by another type of holiday, in clink.

The agency which exists solely to protect Congress and which let the protestors into it has an annual budget of $460m and more officers than many US cities. One wonders why. Double standards?

The Times today has reports that, watching on TV, Trump was pleased by what he was seeing. By 2 accounts he was almost enthusiastic about the violence unfolding and rebuffed pleas to deploy the National Guard. If this is true, is anyone going to be surprised? Does anyone really refute that he has amply demonstrated what he always has been? Or are there some still some so willingly blind . . .? 

The New York Times has reported that - since he lost the election - Trump has discussed with close aides issuing himself a pardon. The next non-surprise?

The Way of the World

When did it become compulsory for politicians to have their national flag behind them for every interview? Or at least two in the case of the woefully incompetent Boris Johnson. As if it compensates.

If you’re unaware of how crazy conspiracy theories can get, read the article on QAnon below.

Finally . . .

There are conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories. One of the best is that Finland doesn't exist and that the space where it's said to be is actually a huge sea in which Russian and Japanese trawlers secretly fish. Possibly started as a joke but, of course, then taken seriously in the most asinine corners of the internet.

THE ARTICLE  

QAnon cultists believe they’re in a battle between the light and darkness: David Aaronovitch, The Times

QAnon is a conspiracy theory-turned-cult whose adherents believe that there is a deep state plot run by a paedophile cult whose leaders include the Clintons and the Obamas. This plot was “revealed” online a few years ago by someone calling themselves “Q”, supposedly a security establishment insider. Q has also let it be known that there is a counterplot by freedom-loving Americans and that this is led by none other than Donald Trump. Its supporters believe that the final showdown between the forces of light and darkness is now upon us. When the world is seen through such a warped lens as this, it’s little wonder that belief in democracy, in votes cast and the rule of law have been abandoned by adherents.

Last summer, researchers estimated that online Q sites were followed by about 1.4 million people, mostly in the US. But what starts online does not always stay there, and for the past couple of years Trump and Republican rallies have featured people wearing Q merchandise and waving placards with QAnon slogans on them. Marjorie Greene of Georgia, a Q supporter, was elected to the House of Representatives in November. The former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has urged the president to declare martial law and re-run the election in some states, has embraced the conspiracy theory and has even suggested that he needs to keep on the move to avoid deep-state assassins. Donald Trump has retweeted Q supporters, as have other leading Republicans.

If you believe what Q supporters believe, then the logic leads you to justify violence. In 2016 a man showed up with an assault rifle at a pizza restaurant in Washington where online fantasists claimed that child-abuse slaves were being held captive in a (non-existent) basement. He was disarmed but there have been other incidents since then. And it appears that the pandemic has encouraged the millenarian sense of the approach of the final battle, not least among underemployed people forced to stay at home because of Covid-19. They fully believe that they are in a life-and-death struggle with evil forces — and that any act, however violent, would be justified.

Inside the Capitol on Wednesday, Angeli was not the only Q supporter. One man who chased a lone black policeman up the stairs inside the building was wearing a Q T-shirt and a woman was pictured inside the Senate chamber holding a Q placard with the legend “Justice for the Children”. It has also been reported that the woman shot dead inside the Capitol was wearing a QAnon T-shirt. Outside, protesters waved placards proclaiming that Joe Biden was a paedophile and that the Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi was Satan. This is no metaphor and this cult is no joke.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.  

 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

Controversy in Sweden. Naturally.

And a surprising report from the normally-hyper-efficient Netherlands

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain   

A HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for this article, in which it's reported that El Tráfico - in its relentless search for new ways to fine drivers - have successfully pushed for an obligation to carry a blue light - costing €24 - to put on the roof of your car, should you stop. But at least this one has a good rationale.

Well, I got 2 boiled sweets and a tiny statue in my Roscón de Reyes yesterday, but no fava bean.

I thought it was of a medieval lady but was informed it was one of the Three Kings. In drag presumably . . .

The UK

The future belongs to the party that can answer the question -  What we must do to make sure lockdowns never happen again?

One immediate answer might be to take a gook look at how Taiwan managed it. 

Meanwhile, Michael Deacon takes a peek into the future, below.

And Effie Deans views Scots Nats as no better than the Trump mob. 

The USA

Will anyone be surprised if the lunatic Trump continues to insist he'll stand for president in 2024 - seriously damaging the prospects of the party he claims to belong to.

Or will he in the - interim - be reduced to the sick joke he really is?

More immediate questions:-

- Can the US heal after these shameful scenes?

- Can the GOP reclaim the moderate majority who will have been appalled by the desecration of the Capitol?

Spanish

Big argument between me and my Spanish friends last night as to whether the last E in esperaré is pronounced exactly the same way as the first two. Research established that the reason is that the Spanish E is midway between the English Es of 'bed' and 'café'. So, Spaniards 'mouth' the 3 Es in the same way but Anglos - and my Dutch friend - tend to hear both of the English Es -  the ‘bed’ one first twice and then the ‘café’ one at the end. Well, that's my view and I'm sticking to it! As in Iré and Haré, I hear a more 'acute' E . . . 

En passant . . . It's said to be hard for English speakers to master the Spanish E, being between both of theirs. Different mouth architecture . . .

Finally . . .

Simply can’t be ignored . . .

THE ARTICLE 

Fear not, folks! Boris says just another 47 lockdowns to go

We appear to be caught in an endless cycle, so let's take a step back – or is it forward? – and imagine the world in 30 years' time: Michael Deacon

The year is 2051. At the age of 86, Boris Johnson is now in his fourth decade as Prime Minister. Unfortunately, however, his premiership continues to be dogged by a familiar problem. On the first Monday evening in January, he instructs a TV camera crew to set up their equipment a minimum two metres from his desk, and prepares, once again, to address the nation…

“Folks! You join me on a major occasion for our country. A milestone in our great island story. An extraordinary landmark in our history.

“Because I can hereby confirm that, as of midnight tonight, the United Kingdom will be entering a world-beating 50th national lockdown.

“Naturally, I appreciate that this news may come as a disappointment. I know that many of you were hoping that the third lockdown would be the last. Certainly the fourth. Or at least the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the 10th, the 20th, the 30th or the 40th. Or indeed the 43rd, the 44th and the 45th, which, in a radical but vain attempt to fox the virus, we imposed simultaneously.

“However, I wish to take this opportunity to reassure you. This latest lockdown is definitely going to be our last. Categorically. Unequivocally. Fear not, folks: I’ve got a good feeling about this one. Fiftieth time lucky! The half-century’s the charm!

“Of course, I do accept that previous lockdowns have not been entirely successful. For example, the firebreak. And the circuit-break. And the firewall, the troubleshoot, the reboot, the restore-factory-settings, and the try-turning-it-off-and-on-again.

“I also acknowledge that we have not yet fully delivered on previous promises to flatten the curve. Or to squash the sombrero. Or to crush the camel’s hump, scalp the Alps, harpoon the Loch Ness Monster or break Mr Tickle’s arm.

“Nonetheless, I am absolutely convinced that this time we’re going to crack it. One more heave, folks! One last push! The light at the end of the tunnel is now positively dazzling! Why, it’s so bright I can hardly see! And that’s not just because the NHS is so badly overwhelmed that my cataract operation has just been postponed for the 38th month in a row!

“To ensure that this 50th lockdown is our most effective yet, I can tonight announce the introduction of three vital new measures. First, I can confirm that we’ll be enforcing the strictest possible controls at our borders. This will be crucial, given the discovery of the new Faroese variant – which our scientists believe is even more transmissible than the Easter Island variant, the Antarctic variant, the Martian variant, and the Narnian variant.

“Second, I can offer my most solemn guarantee that there will be no repeat of the mishaps that hindered our previous efforts to roll out the vaccine. Again, I can only apologise for the unfortunate misunderstanding that led to us storing 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit in an industrial kiln.

“Third, I have taken on board the various criticisms of Gavin Williamson’s performance as Education Secretary – and then, subsequently, as Health Secretary, Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Deputy Prime Minister. I am very clear that, at a time of national crisis, there can be no room in my Cabinet for ministers who underachieve. Which is why I am now sending Gavin to the House of Lords instead.

“As I’m sure everyone will understand, the decision to impose this 50th lockdown is not one that I have taken lightly. I recognise that the public’s patience will only last so many decades. And I know that you’ve all had to make the most enormous sacrifices. Especially those of you living in Tier 96. It must be incredibly tough, only being allowed out of the cupboard under the stairs for 23 minutes every Tuesday lunchtime.

“I also appreciate that in recent years, home schooling has become particularly challenging for parents. Not least because, owing to the lockdowns imposed during your own childhoods, none of you actually went to school yourselves. It has also, of course, been difficult for your children’s teachers, given that none of them actually went to school either. Which has, regrettably, meant that your children have ended up being set questions that they, you, their teachers and indeed their examiners don’t know the answers to.

“All I can do, once again, is to thank the British people for their astonishing fortitude. I know all too well what so many families have been going through. After all, I myself caught the virus in April 2020. And again in October 2022, May 2025, February 2028, July 2030, November 2033, March 2035, June 2037, August 2041, January 2043, December 2045, April 2047 and September last year.

“To lift our spirits, however, let’s all focus on the incredible party we’ll be able to throw once the virus is finally vanquished. It’ll be like all our Christmases have come at once. You remember Christmas. Christian festival, held annually on the 25th day of December. Traditionally celebrated by members of an extended family congregating for the day in a single household. Viewers under the age of 30 will find more information on Wikipedia.

“At any rate: I’m sure you’ll see what I mean soon enough. Because, with every fibre, vein and corpuscle of my being, I truly believe that this 50th lockdown will work. That’s right, folks – this time, things are going to be different!

“And if not this time, then definitely the next.”

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.

 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

Spain’s jabs so far.  

And a commentary on it:-

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain   

I don't go in for coffee capsules but, if you do, this will be of interest/value. 

Here’s Mac75 on how to enjoy cider in next-door Asturias.

And here’s my Asturian cider story . . . Years ago, my old friend Mike and I, en route to Santander and the ferry, stopped in Villaviciosa in Asturias because there’s a restaurant there which serves rabbit stew. While we waited for a table, we sat at the bar and ordered a cider each. This came in large, unlabelled bottles and the barman kindly poured each of us a centimetre or two of the stuff. As we drank down the bottle, we each poured more cider into our glasses, as one does. When we’d finished the bottles, we ordered another one each. At which the chap to the right Mike could stand it no more and told us, very politely, it wasn’t the done thing to pour our own cider. This was the barman’s job - as and when he perceived the glass was nearly empty. At which point. he’d pour the dregs into the metal channel which ran round the entire wooden bar, just below it, and aerate the cider in the way show in that article. Something which we were not permitted to do ourselves. Anyway, we enjoyed the second bottle even more than the first, if only because the other guys at the bar chatted to us and told us how they’d had to suppress their laughter at two guiris ignorant of the right way to go about drinking their cider.

Actually, I have another – shorter – story. Travelling along the Asturian coast with my then partner, we decided to have some of the famous Asturian stuff. Only to find the first 2 bars – to our amusement – didn’t have any. Third time lucky, though.

I post my blog in 2 places: on Blogger and in Eye On Spain. The readership of the later tripled during the 2 days I cited Spanish slang phrases. As some of these contained rude words, the conclusion is obvious. Sadly, readership yesterday returned to the normal level.

Here's María's New Year, Same Old: Days 4 and 5.

The UK

This (as-unkempt-as-ever) chap certainly seems to have aged a lot in 12 months . . .

One view of him . . .

The New York Times has a down on the UK. See the article below for someone’s - plausible - explanation for this.  

The USA

Finally . . .

Just in case you've never heard of Globish . . . Here and here.

THE ARTICLE  

What explains the New York Times's delusional view of Britain?

The NYT repeats a common view of the UK as a place that is, at best, quaint - at worst the ultimate perpetrator of injustice   Benedict Spence 

The New York Times continued its portrayal of these isles as a softcore Mordor last week, with a bizarre op-ed decrying Britain’s final departure from the EU, and a downright misleading story on its coronavirus vaccine strategy. Nothing new there — the NYT has become a running joke on these shores for the standard of its dispatches from Albion. Such is the frequency of the inaccuracies, one might almost think they were deliberate. 

Perhaps we have brought it on ourselves; heaven knows the British harbour unflattering views of the average American, existing on a spectrum somewhere between Homer Simpson and Eric Cartman. But the reasons for the NYT’s slanted view lie very firmly in the past, and its preoccupation with re-writing it to alter the present.

It’s not just its dispatches about the UK that the Grey Lady has come under fire for recently — for a paper of record, it has recorded some howlers. The NYT issued one article, following a two month investigation into its award-winning podcast series “Caliphate” stating the paper had “fallen short” of its standards for giving “too much credence” to “false or exaggerated” evidence. 

Then there was the fallout over a comment piece, written by Republican Senator Tom Cotton, on deploying the US military against protestors over the summer, which led to the resignations of senior editor James Bennet, and star columnist Bari Weiss, the latter claiming she had been the victim of targeted bullying. Staff at the Times had apparently claimed publishing the column represented a physical threat to their wellbeing.

Another NYT journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones, led the charge against the likes of Weiss, and said she was “deeply ashamed” of the paper for publishing the Cotton op-ed. But Hannah-Jones, too, has been at the centre of fierce criticism as the architect of the paper’s feted 1619 Project (for which she won a Pulitzer Prize last year), the stated aim of which is to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery … at the very center of the national narrative.”

Despite the accolades, the project has come in for intense scrutiny from an array of commentators and historians, amid claims it promotes factual inaccuracies to push an ideological agenda. The NYT initially defended it before later issuing several corrections — but it is through this last story that we can begin to understand the paper’s continued misreporting of life the other side of the pond. 

Americans tend to view Britain as a quaint place at best; where everyone is either a cockney, an unemployed miner or a public school boy, where the food is bad, the teeth are worse, and we yearn for the days of red-coated flag-waving empire. For that last thing in particular, you can see why a certain animosity might exist at a newspaper bent on pushing a rewriting of history based on the transatlantic slave trade and historical injustice. 

Britain is the old colonial master — the birth place of the tyranny from which the patriots fought to free themselves, and the nation that brought liberal east coast America’s modern notion of evil “whiteness” to the continent. If slavery is America’s original sin (with an uncomfortable shuffle over questions on the fate of the natives) Britain is the serpent that despoiled this once tranquil Eden. 

Nor should we discount the fact that the NYT, based where it is, panders first to a community with deep Irish migrant roots, often away from the mismanagement and subjugation of their homeland by the British. All forms of Republican culture, from the country club sets and Ivy League networks to white trash and rednecks, are seen as Anglo-Saxon in heritage. Even the country’s hard Christian streak is typified by the arrival of the Puritan pilgrims aboard the Mayflower — so English that they broke with the Church of England for being a little too Roman Catholic for their liking. 

Britain, and specifically England, then, must forever be seen through this prism, as the backwards desolation America must leave behind - more a Troy to these Romans than a Greece. Combine that with the lazy comparisons between the Maga movement and Brexit, and the tenuous similarities between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, and their fates, and you get the full package: America endured Trump and overcame, while backwards old Britain is stuck with Boris and Brexit. Not just a warning from history, but a live action alternative of how much worse things could be. 

If that is the fantasy world the paper wishes to inhabit, so be it. From afar, we have already seen what divisive and delusional outcomes framing stories to suit your beliefs has brought to America in the past few years. Britain too has indulged in its fair share. But let us not pretend that it is anything other than fantasy, regardless of whether it’s a “paper of record” peddling it.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.

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

In every county where there's been a crisis, panic and and lockdowns, it's been about a fear that healthcare resources would be overwhelmed. Essentially because pandemic plans weren't followed at the outset and responses were too slow. Infections now seem to be rising in all such countries. Even the good news that the mortality rate has been reduced has its bad side. Fewer deaths means hospital beds being occupied longer, bringing a collapse ever closer.

Spain is no exception to the problem of rising infections, with the Xmas-New Year surge yet to come. Galicia and Navarra are said to be exceptions to this but for how long? Here in Pontevedra, bars are supposed to close at 5pm but at least some of them weren't at 6 last night. God knows how they can get away with it. Perhaps because the police seem to be concentrating on preventing inter-city journeys.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain   

Reyes ingenuity

The 6th of January used to be the time Spanish kids got their Xmas presents, not the 25th of December. But, as Spain's culture moves closer and closer to that of the rest of Western Europe, things have changed. Now, of course, they get gifts on both days. And on their birthdays. And on their saint's day, I suspect.

The UK

Well, my email of complaint actually produced a result. Someone in the NHS Business Unit emailed me late morning to ask now she could help. So I emailed her the text of the letter I was just about to post and now await a reply re my current and future EHIC. Or GHIC as it'll eventually become. If you're a Brit resident here and don't know what the latter is, you'd better get googling.

Confidence in government handling of the epidemic has plummeted from a hight of 72% in late March to a dismal 36% recorded just before Christmas. Much, of course, rests on the success or otherwise of the forthcoming vaccination programme, only there are probably many who are not entirely confident in the government's ability to deliver.  I’m astonished it’s as high as 36%.

The EU

There seems to be a lot of discontent re the slow approval and roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine, born of centralisation in the name of 'solidarity'. Fingers are pointing at Mrs Merkel because she drove this mid-2020, it's said . . . Angela Merkel blocked the bid to secure more coronavirus vaccine, forcing health ministers to hand over control to the European Commission last summer. For more recent developments, see here.

For whatever reason, France seems to have been particularly slow. Which is rather ironic, given the long-standing admiration of its public healthcare system. As of December 30, only 139 people had been jabbed there.

The USA

Stand by for peak madness in the Congress today.

The Way of the World/Nutters Corner

Democrat representative Emanuel Cleaver delivered the the opening prayer of the 117th US Congress on Monday, ending it with Amen and awoman. Wokism on steroids, then.

Amen is, of course, Aramaic and Hebrew for So be it. As a pastor, he should perhaps have known this.

Spanish

Ooof. Reader paideleo tells me I was wrong to change canita to cañita. The former was correct, as una cana/canita means 'a hair' and the phrase translates as 'to let your hair down' or 'to have a fling'. In other words, an affair. In contrast, una caña/cañita is a cane/rod/pole/fishing rod. And, of course, a smallish draught beer.

A bit of Spanish I noted earlier in the year in Jávea - casa piloto: the 'show house' among several new ones. 

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain   

The Ministerio de Sanidad calcula que el número de contagios derivados de las fiestas explotará a partir de mañana. I'll bet!

A cocktail of booze and drugs regularly causes bizarre traffic incidents and arrests here in Galicia - a  by-product of one of our main industries - importing and selling-on heroin, cocaine and hash. Yesterday, a 'youth'(about 30) crashed his car into another one at a petrol station, threatened a waitress in the adjacent café, sprayed a fire extinguisher around the place, damaged the waitress's car and was duly arrested. The Voz de Galcia hazards a guess he was drugged to the eyeballs. I'll bet!

Here's María's New Year, Same Old: Day 3.  A Clarification. I have the same problem, of course.  

The UK

Needless to say, problems with new technologies aren't confined to Spain. I called the UK government's NHS Overseas Healthcare unit this morning and - after first enduring a lot of machine-given info and then 'talking' to the 'virtual assistant' - I was cut off just after she said she was handing me over to a real person. Twice. There's no Enquires email for this unit but there is a Complaints email address. To which I've naturally written, in high dudgeon. Maybe no one's returned to work yet, after Xmas and NY. 

The UK & The EU

If what I read in the Spanish press is anything to go on, there isn't much understanding in Europe of the macro factors behind Brexit. The Economist article below does a good job of identifying these.

But ignorance isn't/hasn't been confined to Europe, of course - as this fulminating post from Richard North establishes. 

The USA

The latest Trumpism. Does anyone still believe he's not a crook? Sadly, the answer is, of course, Yes.  A lot of folk.  Said Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor at the impeachment trial: Trump’s contempt for democracy is once again laid bare.

I guess it's possible - though not very - that he'll end up in gaol. 

Spanish and Gallego

Going down the rabbit hole of tontolabas/tontolahabas/tontolaba, meaning stupid or foolish . . . There's no doubt its origin is linked to la haba, the fava bean. Indeed, reader DrNostoc has pointed out that these beans can trigger a particular condition. However, this site - which cites this one - tells us that the word stems from the practice of putting a fava bean in a Roscón de Reyes, which - by pure coincidence - is the traditional Spanish pastry for the Epiphany/Los Reyes of January 6.

Correction: canita should have been cañita.

Yet another Gallego word for idiot/fool/ingenue - Papán. 

THE ARTICLE

The story of a divorce: How Brexit happened

Britain went from enthusiastic commitment to the EU to an acrimonious departure on unfavourable terms

Britain’s history meant it was always ambivalent towards the European “project”. 

The vote in the House of Commons to approve Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community on October 28th 1971 was greeted with widespread jubilation. The “yes” vote was larger than expected, and it passed with a majority of 112. Leading politicians went off to celebrate in different ways—some to parties, while the famously buttoned-up prime minister, Edward Heath (pictured), returned to Downing Street in a mood of elation and played the first prelude and fugue from Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier”.

As Britain completes its departure from the eu half a century later, there is little celebration. Even determined Eurosceptics complain about the terms of the withdrawal treaty, particularly over fishing. Others are regretful if not furious: according to the latest poll, 48% of Britons now think the country should remain in the eu, while 38% think it should leave. There is nervousness, especially among the businesses that trade with Europe, about how the relationship will work. And there is residual puzzlement on both sides. How did it go so wrong?

For most continental countries, building European unity was a reaction to the horrors of the second world war and its aftermath. The Germans were escaping Nazism, the French defeat and collaboration, the Italians dictatorship, the eastern Europeans, when they eventually joined, Soviet domination. Britain was the only member that felt no need to escape from its past—indeed, in many ways, it preferred wallowing in the past to confronting the future. For Britain, unlike the rest of Europe, the nation state is something to be celebrated rather than transcended.

Britain’s imperial history also made a difference. Its empire was larger and more recent than other European nations’. Culturally, the British feel closer to America, Canada and Australia than they do to Europe. Two-and-a-half times as many British expatriates live in the English-speaking world as on the continent, and Britain’s main ethnic minorities are from Commonwealth countries. That English is the language of the world gives monoglot Britons the sense that they are at home anywhere.

Politics on both sides of the channel reflected this ambivalence; Heath’s passionate Europhilia was unusual. Charles de Gaulle famously vetoed Britain’s first application to join in 1963 on the grounds that Britain “is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries”. Most of Britain’s leading post-war politicians shared the general’s doubts. Harold Macmillan, a Conservative prime minister, worried about the emergence of a “boastful, powerful ‘Empire of Charlemagne’” and applied to join in part in order to change Europe from within. Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour leader, worried that a federal Europe would mean “the end of Britain as an independent European state…the end of a thousand years of history”.

Politicians’ doubts led a Labour government to hold a referendum on membership in 1975, only two years after joining. But strike-ridden Britain was a mess and Europe seemed to offer a more stable and prosperous future. Over two-thirds of voters wanted to stay. The establishment, too, had come round. The Economist put a picture of a young member of staff wearing a tight t-shirt, emblazoned with “Europe or bust”, on the cover. Margaret Thatcher, subsequently a Eurosceptic pin-up, campaigned enthusiastically for continued membership (pictured overleaf), and in the 1980s it was she who persuaded the union to take its most important step forward of that decade—the single market.

From the start, Britain was unhappy about the terms of its membership. Farming was the main point of contention. Committed to free trade in food since the abolition of the corn laws in 1846, Britain had a tiny agricultural sector compared with its neighbours and enjoyed cheap food. The eec kept farmers in business by imposing high tariffs, making consumers pay high prices and handing out subsidies. As a result, Britain was the second-largest contributor to the European budget, until Thatcher got “our money back” in 1984.

But it was supra-nationalism that most bothered the British. From the first Britain saw itself as the champion of a Europe of nation-states that came together voluntarily to make the business of the world easier to conduct. But in the eyes of its founders, Europe was a political project whose purpose was to bind the continent so tightly that future conflict would be inconceivable. As Europe moved towards an “ever closer union”, the tensions grew.

Two speeches and a treaty

In the 1980s Euroscepticism was confined to the extremes. Its leading champions were Enoch Powell, so far to the right that he had parted company with the Tories, and Tony Benn, a hard-left Labour man. Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, did much to change that. He gave a speech to the Trades Union Congress in 1988 in which he anticipated that most future legislation would come from Europe. Thatcher responded with her Bruges speech: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels.” Euroscepticism burgeoned inside her party.

The Maastricht treaty of 1992 drove the union closer together, and Britain and the other member states further apart. The eu’s residents became “citizens of the Union” with fundamental rights including the freedom to live wherever they wanted. The word “economic”, which had first attracted Britain, was dropped. The adoption of a single currency created pressure for ever-greater pooling of sovereignty. Optimists thought that Britain could have its cake and eat it by being half in and half out. Pessimists argued that the pressure to pool sovereignty would make this position impossible to maintain.

Those speeches and that treaty served to recruit young enthusiasts, such as Daniel Hannan, who joined the older hard core of Eurosceptic Tory mps such as Sir Bill Cash and Sir John Redwood. Outside Parliament, the movement coalesced into pressure groups such as the Bruges Group and Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party. The United Kingdom Independence Party (ukip), a bunch of provincials ridiculed by metropolitan Europhiles, got nowhere in Westminster elections but made ground in European ones.

Three men and an issue

The global rise of populism after the financial crisis poured fuel on these sparks. Britain proved especially susceptible, partly because of the size of its financial sector, and partly because David Cameron’s government slashed spending, hurting poor areas most. The Labour Party lurched to the left, electing Jeremy Corbyn, a hard-left Eurosceptic, as leader. ukip grew in strength, snapping at Mr Cameron’s heels, demanding a referendum. In order to weaken its position in the 2015 election, he promised one—believing, in his hubristic way, that if he actually had to hold one, he would be able to swing it. To his surprise, he won the election—having fallen into the trap the Eurosceptics had set him.

The Leave campaign’s victory was forged by three men and an issue. Boris Johnson, formerly mayor of London, provided a smiling face as the front for a movement that had usually worn a snarl. Dominic Cummings, the campaign’s ideologue, provided it with the brains it had previously lacked. But the Leave campaign’s most powerful weapon was perhaps Mr Corbyn. His lukewarm campaigning for Remain and known distaste for the eu probably tipped the result for Leave.

The issue was immigration. Britain had supported the eastward expansion of the eu partly on the ground that a larger Europe seemed like an alternative to a deeper one. But enlargement gave low-paid Europeans a chance to better themselves by moving to Britain, thanks to Tony Blair’s refusal to follow 12 other eu countries in making use of a seven-year brake on citizens of the new states exercising their right to work. The number of Polish-born residents in the uk increased from 56,000 in 2001 to 911,000 in 2016 and Romanians from 14,000 in 2004 to 310,000 in 2016.

In places into which eastern Europeans had flooded, the Leave vote was especially high. But immigration had a broader, more pervasive effect on the vote. The government’s failure to reduce the foreigners’ numbers, despite repeated promises to do so, contributed to the feeling that Britain had lost control of its destiny in the most important aspect of national policy—determining who lives inside your borders. To vote “out” was, in the Leave campaign’s slogan, to “take back control”.

Four players and a dangerous game

Even difficult marriages are hard to end. Over half a century, European legislation had become part of the warp and weft of British law and European and British business thoroughly entwined. Lawyers contracted thinking about rights to their European counterparts. Businesses happily embraced European regulations.

The nature of the referendum made leaving all the harder. Voters were offered a binary choice about a complicated set of relationships. There was nothing on the ballot paper about the single market, the customs union or how the 500km-long border between Northern Ireland and the republic of Ireland, freighted with history and fraught with tension, should be dealt with. The asymmetry between the complexity of the problem and the simplicity of the question ensured that the referendum debate was both shallow and mendacious.

Given how many issues the referendum left undecided, the terms of Britain’s departure could have been settled in any number of different ways; and the close result—48:52—argued for the “soft” Brexit that most mps favoured, with Britain remaining close to Europe. That the outcome has been a “hard” Brexit, with Britain leaving both the single market and the customs union, is a consequence of the way four interested parties chose to play their hands.

For Theresa May, a Remainer bounced into the premiership after Mr Cameron’s ignominious resignation in the wake of the referendum, offering a “hard” Brexit looked like a way of keeping the right wing of her party onside. The 2017 election shrank her majority and made her their hostage. When she softened her position on Brexit, they got rid of her and replaced her with Mr Johnson, who boldly sacked a bunch of recalcitrant Remainers, bringing the parliamentary party to heel.

For Mr Corbyn, opposing the Tories’ position was more important than achieving an outcome that kept Britain close to the European Union. For the Liberal Democrats, a purist determination to overturn the result looked like the best way of distinguishing their position from Labour’s, so they went into the 2019 election with the slogan “Bollocks to Brexit”. The clash of absolutes eliminated the middle ground.

The Europeans also contributed to the “hard” outcome. They could have compromised with Mrs May when she was desperately trying to sell her softer deal. But member states had their own particular demands—so, for instance, negotiations went to the wire over French fishermen’s insistence on continued access to British waters—and the eu wanted to make it plain that those who leave the club cannot enjoy the benefits of membership.

The vote to leave thus led to one of the most turbulent periods in recent British history. Careers, such as Mrs May’s, were made and destroyed with extraordinary speed. Precedents were broken. When the government prorogued Parliament to get its way it was slapped down by the Supreme Court. The Conservative Party, once the party of toffs and the middle class, was rebranded as anti-European and working-class. And a country which had been lukewarm about the continent saw the birth of a pro-European movement flying the European flag daily in Parliament Square.

The ructions are not over. The referendum has strained the United Kingdom’s bonds. Scotland voted for Remain by a large majority and Northern Ireland by a smaller one. To avoid creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the republic, a border has been established inside the United Kingdom, between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That will have consequences. A majority of Scots now want independence, and support for Irish unification is growing. The most striking consequence of that historic day in 2016 might not be Britain’s exit from a European Union that it never loved but the break-up of the nation-state whose sovereignty the Brexiteers sought to defend.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.

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

The deaths per million table for selected countries now looks like this:

Belgium 1691

Italy 1241

The UK 1096

Spain 1087

The USA 1080

France 993

Sweden 861

Portugal 692

The Netherlands 674

Ireland 454

Germany 415

The worsening of the German and Portuguese situations needs to be set against the earlier plaudits they got. This virus is a bastard. Or a jokester worse than Boris Johnson.

I should point out there are several East European and South American countries at over 1,000 per million. Some even more than Belgium.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain  

Naturally, the Pope has acceded to the request of the Galician president that this Jacobean Holy Year be extended into 2022. All those souls to save. And money to be made. At which the Catholic Church, after 2,000 years of practice, is probably the most efficient organisation in the world.

What you need to know about those bloody irritating e-scooters.

Here's María's New Year, Same Old: Day 2.  

The UK

British families spent a staggering £6.9 billon on pets in 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics, up from £3.34 billion a decade ago and this was pre-Covid, remember, before everyone went lockdown-mad for puppies.

The Way of the World

A very close friend has told me how cold he went reading the article I cited yesterday: 'Irreversible Damage' by Abigail Shrier. Reproduced below. He told me that 20 years ago, when his daughter was 15, she decided she was male. The psychiatrist identified it as a normal teenage identity crisis and she got over it within a year and is now married with 3 children. He says he dreads to think what would have happened only a few years later.

Mistakes don’t fade in this digital world — and they’re catnip for the cancel vultures. See the nice article below.

Spanish

OK, yesterday's words and phrases.  . .

Firstly, my thanks to reader paideleo who's provided some translations. He/she, incidentally, is (I think) a long-term Galician reader who's only ever commented or disagreed with me with the utmost courtesy, which I greatly appreciate. As I do the help on this subject:-

1. Echar una pajita al aire: I really don't know how this got transformed from Echar una canita al aire. To throw a candle in the air. To have an affair.

2. Comer conejo. Suffice to say that conejo(rabbit) is the equivalent of the English 'pussy'.

3. Estar hasta los huevos: Up to the balls. A ruder version of Hasta las narices. Up to the nostrils. Fed up.

4. Me cacheslamá. A corruption of Me caches la mar. You hide me in the sea. A polite way, avers paideleo, to say Me cago la madre que te parió. I crap on the mother who gave birth to you. Anger/Frustration. 

5. Lo que me sale de los cojones/coño. What comes out of my nether regions, male and female.  What I like.

6. Una pollada. This one confused a lot of people, who saw it as meaning a chicken house or similar. This valuable site gives it as an equivalent to Gilipollas (alway plural, I'm told). More accurately Gilipollez? Dickhead/Bellend/Plonker/ Dipstick-ness. 

7. Un follón.  From the verb Follar, to bonk/shag etc. A big mess/cock up

8. Acojonarse: From cojón, testicle. To be astounded, dumbfounded. Or to take fright.

9. Cojonudo. Similar origin. Very common. Great/The dog's bollocks

10. Burropeideira. Galician. A donkey who throws rocks. Stupid. (I wrongly changed this to the male form but it’s always feminine, I’m told by 2 friends.)

11. Tontolabas. Galician. Maybe, says paideleo, Tontolahaba. Fool

12. Paspallas. Galician. Quail. Stupid.

13. Tonto a la 1, 2 or 3: Galician(Ourense?). Very stupid.

14. Apampanao. Galician? A fool.

There seem to be a lot of fools in Galicia . . .

Finally, a Galician friend sent me a message yesterday with the word guasapo in it. It took me (and a few others) a while to work out this was WhatsApp . . . 

Finally, finally . . . Reader Perry has asked if there's a Spanish word for hygge. Suggestions?

THE ARTICLE

Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier review — resisting the ‘transgender craze’

This fearless book shows how girls’ bodies have become collateral damage in adult culture wars: Janice Turner

A thought experiment . . . Specialists treating a rare disorder observe a profound change in their patient base. Historically it is 90 per cent male until a recent sudden surge in female referrals who, within a decade, comprise three in every four cases as patient numbers swell by more than 3,000 per cent. Now instead of being singular cases they come in clusters and, strangest of all, this notably slow-building malady strikes later and without warning. The same shifts are noted across the world.

What happens next?

You would expect doctors, epidemiologists and academics to study patients, dig into data, publish Lancet papers, wonder if this isn’t perhaps a new condition requiring different treatment protocols. At the very least questions would be asked.

But they weren’t. Not about the global spike, as I describe above, in teenage girls who believe they have been “born in the wrong body”. In fact asking questions is regarded as “erasure” of trans people, research is “bigotry” and universities or journals that publish it are hounded into apology. And so while Californian girls as young as 13 have double mastectomies the American and British liberal media either cheerlead or keep shtum.

Unsurprisingly Irreversible Damage, a book about “teenage girls and the transgender craze”, has caused a storm. A Berkeley English professor wants it burnt, civil rights and LGBT activists want it banned. They say it is conservative Christian or far-right hate speech. In fact Abigail Shrier, a Wall Street Journal writer, does something simple yet devastating: she rigorously lays out the facts.

In both the US and Britain, Shrier shows, adolescent girls have record levels of anxiety and clinical depression, expressed in spiralling rates of self-harm, anorexia and suicidal thoughts. Overprotective modern parenting has rendered girls less resilient while the iPhone in their pocket tells them their bodies fail Instagram’s feminine ideals and shows them graphic pornography in which women are debased. No wonder the geeky or less “girlie” girls we once called tomboys, especially those who are becoming aware they are attracted to other girls, “flee womanhood”, as Shrier puts it, “like a house on fire, their minds fixed on escape, not on any particular destination”.

The girls she describes — like those I’ve met since I started reporting on this three years ago — show no discomfort in their female bodies until puberty. Then at secondary school, when gender roles turn starkly pink and blue, these non-conforming girls feel lost. Online they quickly find forums that diagnose their problem: their “gender identity” is really male. They are encouraged to assume he/him pronouns and boys’ names, which would matter no more than becoming, say, a goth, except for the insistent accompanying narrative that only after testosterone and surgery will they find happiness as their true male selves.

In the high court in November a legal action was brought by Keira Bell, 23, who as a depressed, isolated teenage girl was given puberty-blocking drugs then testosterone by the Tavistock Centre in London, but later regretted her transition. Judges ruled that children under 16 mainly lack capacity to consent to puberty blockers, which when followed by testosterone (as in almost 100 per cent of cases) lead to irreversible side-effects for girls like Keira of facial hair and masculine voice, plus infertility and impaired sexual function. NHS England has halted such prescriptions while a government review of child gender services has begun.

However, in the US paediatric trans medicine, private and unfettered, is driven by capitalism and activism. Fifty new child clinics have popped up to flog expensive hormones and “innovative” genital surgeries to lucrative lifelong patients. These doctors are enabled by an adult trans movement that insists any medical “gatekeeping” is wrong. A patient should not need proof of gender dysphoria; a trans person knows they are trans and must be “affirmed” in that self-diagnosis even if they are a troubled 12-year-old girl. Clinics boast approval for testosterone treatment after a single appointment.

Later come the surgeries, which Shrier describes unflinchingly. The operation to create (a non-functional) penis involves harvesting skin from the forearm right down to the muscle; infections are frequent, orgasm unlikely. This is activist-driven medicine evolving on the fly, governed by shoddier ethics than a basic boob job. As one doctor says of “top surgery”, ie radical double mastectomy which removes future capacity to breastfeed, “there is no other cosmetic operation where it is considered morally acceptable to destroy a human function. None.”

Yet only ten years ago children with gender dysphoria were treated with “watchful waiting”, an approach pioneered in Canada by Dr Kenneth Zucker, who believed “a child or adolescent in distress is not reducible to one problem”. He found that over time this dysphoria faded for about 70 per cent of patients. But Zucker was hounded out of practice by activists and now transition is presented as a universal panacea. Even in more cautious Britain probing a child’s underlying trauma is classed by the memorandum of understanding that governs gender treatment as “conversion therapy”, akin to the barbaric practice of trying to brainwash a gay person straight. Except, argues Shrier, homosexuality is innate, prevalent in the most repressive countries. But “gender identity” is fluid, malleable by peer pressure or social contagion.

Shrier argues that this wave of girls seeking treatment are different from the tiny number of children who know from early childhood they are trans. What has been termed “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) is a new manifestation of an old condition; fear and disgust around female puberty. You grow breasts, you bleed, suddenly men look at you sexually. Moreover, the vast majority with ROGD have prior mental health diagnoses, a third are autistic, some had been sexually abused. Anorexics shut down puberty by starving, now girls can block it with powerful drugs.

The question that makes me both sad and angry is why LGBT activists stubbornly refuse to concede that these girls represent a different psychopathology. Instead groups such as Stonewall, in the words of Dr Ray Blanchard, a world-renowned sexologist, “circle the wagons”. Why? Because to concede would rock the quasi-religious belief that gender identity is innate and unquestionable; the rise in “trans children” justifies greater resources for trans adults, and this movement is dominated by trans women and gay men, who have not endured the turbulence of female puberty. With few brave exceptions, they decry feminists (including many lesbians) who see in these tortured girls their younger selves.

None of this would matter if transition made these girls happy. But while initially testosterone makes them fearless and swaggering, the Tavistock GIDS (gender identity development services) clinic’s own report shows no long-term improvement in psychological wellbeing. This rare piece of research was published reluctantly only a few weeks ago, perhaps because it threatens an entire ethos. In clinics from Finland to Australia red flags are rising. “Detransitioners” are speaking out. Medical negligence class actions will begin.

Let’s hope grinning doctors posing with teenage breast tissue in pickle jars will be consigned alongside other collective medical madnesses such as false memory syndrome or 1950s lobotomies. And that girls’ bodies, as Shrier’s fearless book bleakly reveals, cease to be collateral in adult culture wars.

Irreversible Damage: Teenage Girls and the Transgender Craze by Abigail Shrier, Swift, 288pp; £16.99

2. Mistakes don’t fade in this digital world — and they’re catnip for the cancel vultures: Lionel Shriver, The Sunday Times  

Four years ago, Mimi Groves of Leesburg, Virginia, had just acquired her learner driver’s licence. Clearly elated, the 15-year-old sent a friend (who must also have been white, or the immediate hoo-ha would have been off the charts) a three-second Snapchat video declaring, “I can drive, n*****s.” Given this story’s worthiness for a column, I trust you can parse the hyphens.

Mind, Snapchat images promptly disappear, although recipients can, alas, rescue messages from oblivion. So the video seems to have circulated among a few kids at Heritage High School in 2016, if to little effect.

But Groves’s mixed-race classmate Jimmy Galligan, who claims he was sent the tiny clip only three years later, recognised the video as a mighty weapon. According to an extensive New York Times article run on Boxing Day, the young man tucked it away for public posting “when the time was right”. The time was apparently “right” when Groves had been accepted by the University of Tennessee and the Black Lives Matter movement hit fever pitch last June. Galligan hit send. Cue uproar.

Amid the gales of righteous huffing and puffing online, University of Tennessee administrators bullied Groves into withdrawing from the school, threatening to rescind her acceptance if she did not. She is now enrolled in a local two-year community college less likely to pave the way towards a promising career.

Fine, the girl’s use of the notorious n-word wasn’t advisable, to say the least. But does the punishment fit the crime? I’ve watched this minuscule moment of indiscretion, which is still on YouTube. Sitting in a car, the slight blonde teenager is wearing shades and listening to hip-hop. Her usage is clearly neither pejorative nor even racial. Obvs, as the on-trend would say: she is trying to be cool.

Although Groves now notes apologetically that the slur was “in all the songs we listened to”, a double standard has been writ in stone. Just because rap and hip-hop are awash with the word doesn’t mean that white people can ever, ever allow those two terrifying syllables to escape their lips. These days, when posting dance videos, clued-up white music fans singing along with black artists apparently put a finger to pursed lips whenever that word arises — like prim, shushing librarians from the days when those censorious biddies didn’t let us talk. It’s hard to imagine these prissy performances of purity improve the choreography.

I have written before about “the n-word”, a euphemism that I find off-puttingly precious, as if we can’t all spell it out. I dislike the imputation of magical powers to the pronunciation of the word itself, as if its invocation by folks who don’t have permission will suddenly install worldwide apartheid.

Superstitiously, the extravagance of the taboo implies that white people command fearsome witchcraft. Hypocritically, black singers and comedians gleefully fling the insult every which way, while their white audience members hysterically observe a no-touch rule — a rule that has, if anything, made the pejorative more potent.

It’s a dubious business to cast the slandering of one race as so much more egregious than the slandering of other groups, for no such shall-not-pass-these-lips taboo pertains to ugly names for, say, Asians, Muslims or Jews. By contrast, the triumphantly reclaimed slight “queer” has been given the green light for angst-free usage by everybody.

The New York Times window-dressed this story to make Leesburg seem a hotbed of bigotry — noting that the town was “named for an ancestor of the Confederate general Robert E Lee” and chiding that the region originally resisted court-ordered desegregation — about 60 years ago. Leesburg was the site of an early Civil War battle (er, 160 years ago). Slave auctions were once held in its courthouse grounds (at least 160 years ago). What the newspaper actually means: Leesburg is in Virginia.

Strip off the ideological bunting and this is a supreme example of the petty, unwarranted and gratuitous destruction of a young person’s life to no purpose. The newspaper dug up no other evidence that Groves holds racist views; on the contrary, she has posted enthusiastic support online for Black Lives Matter.

The fact that Galligan lay in wait with the video — looking for the juncture at which he could do the young woman maximum damage — is outright skin-crawling and belies his having acted from a burst of impetuous indignation. He concedes that his own relatives (his mother is black) sometimes throw around the same racial slur at family gatherings. Whatever grudge he might bear Groves personally is opaque, but one thing is clear. He wanted attention.

He’s getting it, if not perhaps the sort he hoped for. To be kind, in the wake of BLM fever, mixed-race kids insecure about their identities may have particular motivation to ratchet up their black credentials. (Galligan scolds his own father for “white privilege”.) To be less kind, despite the journalist’s justifying efforts, the young man comes across in the feature as self-congratulatory and lip-smacking.

“I’m going to remind myself, you started something,” he is quoted as saying “with satisfaction”. “You taught someone a lesson.” What lesson? White folks better not use that bad word? Hey, pal, that message was out already.

This is a classic instance of the “cancel culture” that its persecutors often claim doesn’t exist. What’s been cancelled is not only a young woman’s further education but also her reputation and her future in the workplace, because this story is bound to follow her. For we live in a digital world in which every mistake clings to us like a smell — a world not so different from one in which we’re never able to wash our clothes. Even Leesburg itself is eternally stained by the original sin of its naming and its segregation of half a century ago. Personally and historically, we now live without mercy.

Exactly how does such social skeet shooting make the world a better place? I’ve read sheafs of disgusted online comments. Touts are rarely popular, scheming touts even less so. The disproportionately harsh punishment for a 15-year-old’s momentary lapse of judgment reads loudly and clearly even to many black observers. Contrary to the young man’s probable expectations, this episode will not necessarily redound to Jimmy Galligan’s glory. Students of any race at his university might wisely give such a smug predator a wide berth.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.

 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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain  

Spain is a generally a superstitious country, says the writer of this article, adding that  New Year's Eve is probably one of the most superstitious days of the year. Practically everyone participates in one or more superstitious rituals. Details provided. It's all nonsense, of course, and the grapes challenge goes back only to an excessive harvest in the late 19th century. I refuse to try it but maybe next year. My lovely new neighbour, Leyla, kindly brought me a tin of very small grapes for this year but I'm saving them for next 31 December. When things will surely be more normal.

BTW . . . First-footing isn't exclusive to Spain. See here. Was it brought by Viking invaders?

This was going to be a very big (and profitable) year - un Año Jacobeo/Ano Xacobeo - in which the feast day of St James (Santiago, San Iago, San Tiago, Santyago, Sant-Yago, San Thiago) falls on Sunday and special indulgences are available to pilgrims. But Covid is still with us. So, the Galician government says it'll have an 'adaptable' approach to the Camino de Santiago this year. It's pretty hard to see how they could do anything else. The myth of St James is also Spanish nonsense, of course. 

In yesterday's Voz de Galicia there was an 8 page supplement on the Camino. Every word of it was in Gallego, leaving me wondering who on earth were the target readership and who financed it. My guess is Galician taxpayers, through the Conselleria de Cultura e Turismo - despite the fact that Galician 'pilgrims' must represent a small percentage of the usual total. Perhaps the aim is to massively increase that this year. In the absence of better targets.

My comment yesterday re the old tax declaration system of a few years ago and the problems of the new on-line one reminded me I've said that Spain sometimes seems to have passed from the 19th century to the 21st without bothering with the improvements of the 20th made elsewhere. The railway system is another example. Not to mention RENFE. Oh yes, and customer orientation, where Spanish companies - having previously eschewed it - have seized with 3 hands the opportunity cheap technology gives them to create the impression of believing in this. But, TBH, some companies have really got better at this. The banks, though, have gone in the opposite direction. 

I noted a while ago that - post the 2008 financial crisis and the collapse of the phoney property boom - there are at least 40 new(ish) houses lying empty within a radius of 500m of my house. Fifteen of these are right behind (and above) me and I noticed last night that the set of mail boxes at the bottom of the (steep) access road has been removed. But there's no sign of boxes being installed at the front of each house. Not economic, I guess. There's recently been a big effort by one or more estate agents to sell these (decaying) houses - presumed to be on the books of banks who foreclosed on them - but this doesn't seem to have been a success. Though there is a rumour that one has been sold at a price well below what my ex-neighbour, Ester, got for theirs last year.

I see María has stopped riding the wave and now entitles her blog New Year, Same Old: Here's Day 1.  

The UK

Excellent advice from a columnist to the buffoonish and vomit-inducing Boris Johnson: Cut out the words “alas”, “folks”, “bugle”, “pummel”, “prosper”, “mightily”, “prosper mightily”, literally anything in Latin and whatever else you feel might pep up the announcement of your 5th national lockdown. There’s a time and a place for this sort of pre-decimal language and unfortunately for you it’s 1958.

The Way of the World

'Irreversible Damage' by Abigail Shrier — resisting the ‘transgender craze’. This fearless book shows how girls’ bodies have become collateral damage in adult culture wars.

Spanish

Here's a few more slang/idiomatic words/phrases, some 'quite rude', provided by friends in Galicia and South America. Not all are in use elsewhere.

Echar una pajita al aire

Comer conejo.

Estar hasta los huevos

Me cachelamá

Lo que me sale de los cojones/coño

Una pollada 

Un follón, 

Acojonarse, 

Cojonudo

Burropeideiro

Paspallas

Apampanao

Tontolabas

Tonto a la 1

Finally . . .

How about a kind native/fluent speaker of Castellano ('Cristiano') giving us translations for all these? I guess he/she'd have to be at least familiar with Gallego. I do know some of them.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.

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'*  

Auto de fé. Two mistakes in earlier versions of yesterday's post:-

1. 'Surveillance capital' should have been 'Surveillance capitalism', and

2. 'sashay' should have been 'segue'. Can't imagine what I was thinking of . . .

Sashay: To walk in an ostentatious yet casual manner, typically with exaggerated movements of the hips and shoulders.

Segue: To make a transition without interruption from one activity, topic, scene to another.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain 

It's usually a mug's game to make firm predictions but, having seen Pontevedra's centre thronged with festieros/as yesterday, I'd bet my house on a Covid spikein the next 2 months.

'Tis the season of price increases.

There's a 21st century way of completing official forms here in Spain, for things such as your tax returns. It involves getting an electronic signature, through a site called Clave@PIN. I haven't availed myself of this option but my daughter in Madrid has done so, and so has what she requires to do things like apply on line for a Spanish driving licence in place of her British one. Which she did very belatedly last night, just before the deadline. It was only after trying 4 browsers and 2 computers that she got confirmation that she did indeed have a Clave@PIN number. She then filled in a form but was advised that, to complete the process, she'd have to download a special app called something like Autoform. Not being an IT nerd, she found this incomprehensible and gave up - after taking enough screenshots to present face-to-face to El Tráfico some time this new year, whenever she can get an appointment.

Of course, this saga has done nothing to convince me I should get a Clave@PIN. Though maybe it works better for La Hacienda than it does for El Tráfico. I'm just hoping that The Tax Office next June uses the same alternative as last year. In the past, they've had a habit of changing things. Making last-minute submissions even more fraught than usual, as one struggles with the new way of doing things. It was so much easier when you bought the forms, completed them by hand and handed them to your bank to process. Progress.

Spanishness and Spanish British relations. According to the writer of the article below, we need some lessons from Hillary/Hilaría Baldwin. Who's spent the last few days dealing with a huracán of scorn re her alleged Spanishness.

Here's María's Riding The Wave: Day 48  

Spanish

I'm told that the word pendejo in the slang phrase I cited the other day - meaning pubic hair - is really a South American term, not mainland Spanish. Or even more Mexican. The Royal Academy gives these more usual, colloquial, meanings for Spain:-

1. Tonto, estúpido

2. Cobarde, pusilánime.

3. De vida irregular y desordenada.  

And, in Peru: Astuto y taimado

Finally, in Argentina: Muchacho, adolescente.

So, do Spanish speakers call it Zoom or Thoom? I've just beent old Zoom.

Finally . . .

The numerous spam messages I get don't usually raise a smile but this one made me laugh:-

Compared to other girls I am not as skinny. I make up for it  . . .

It should  be compared with other girls, of course

THE ARTICLE

Hola! Here begins our crash course in Spanish culture. And we have a new teacher this morning. Let me introduce you to the expert in this field, Señora Hilaria Baldwin!

Wait, Hilaria Baldwin as in wife of the American actor Alec Baldwin? Celebrity yoga teacher slash social media influencer?

Si si, chicos, we are very lucky we have her in our classo today. 

I can’t believe she has time. She has spent the past few days fighting a social media storm questioning her real background, accent, name and heritage, after spending her adult life presenting as a bicultural Spanish-American, even forgetting the English word for “cucumber” in a cooking show, when in fact she was born and grew up as plain Hillary in Boston. Her “Spanish” identity comes from spending some time there as a child and the fact that her parents retired there.

Exacto. Hilaria may be muchos Hilarios for the entire internet this week, but for British people she has an awful lot to teach. 

Excuse me, I’ve never once adopted an accent. When I go abroad I stay British, in fact, I go 43 times more British than I’ve ever been.

Gracias, my little tortilla, this is the problem. We have about 300,000 British people living in Spain and 18 million going on holiday there in a normal year, and does it kill you to even learn how to say por favor? 

No need. Baked beans and Tetley teabags in the carry-on, and the Queen Vic pub in Benidorm serves a full English.

This is why we have put Hilaria in charge of Spanish-British relations. From now on, all British visitors will have to add an “o” or an “a” to their names when they arrive at Malaga airport. That includes you Derek-o and Mavis-a. 

Next, after passport control, comes the cultural test in the form of this multiple-choice question: Julio or Enrique Iglesias? Don’t dither, you have to pick one. Finally, anyone still making Fawlty Towers Manuel jokes is sent to the Hilaria Re-Education Camp. 

Because we know nothing?

Si, you gotta at least pretendo some Español**, it’s only polito.

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.

** Castellano/Católico