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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming (relatively) soon.

Covid  

As with the article cited on aerosols yesterday, we're now beginning to see the predicted retrospective overviews of the pandemic and reactions to it. Here's one such article from the Lancet medical journal,

Vaccines: Good to read that Europe's vaccine rollout is picking up the pace, though the process remains uneven. The highest percentages come from Eastern Europe, where recourse was made early on to the Russian and Chinese variants.

Spain: Here's how the jabbing is proceeding here in Spain. Good luck with the graph. 

Cosas de España 

If you want to make a Spaniard fall backwards in shock, try telling him/her that notaries don't figure in your life back home or that you don't have a 'family book'. On the latter, it seems that very soon Spaniards won't have these either. Well, not in their present form, as another bit of Spain somersaults the 20th century and enters the 21st. Everything will be on a computer, meaning, of course, that nothing at all will go wrong.

Here's a useful report on the tax implications of home-working for a foreign company in Spain. I endorse the advice that: Both employees and businesses need to be wary of the Spanish tax authorities. This is probably because they can be as arbitrary as anything else in Spain and getting a clear official opinion on, say the application of Model 720, can be a fruitless task. Which is very possibly why it's said only a very small percentage of people covered by it have actually complied with it. Plus the fact the EU Commission has declared bits of it to be illegal.

April 1 saw the earliest date on which Brits without official residence in Spain could be deported for exceeding the time now allowed to them, post Brexit. But the Spanish government has pooh-poohed tabloid claims it's targeting Brits without the right bits of paper. And during April there've been no reports of deportations or targeted searches here. Which is a shame, as there must be some shady Brits on the Costa del Crime who merit being sent back to Blighty.

Cousas de Galiza

Portugal will open its border with Spain tomorrow. Pretty academic for us, though, as the Galician government will fine us if we try to cross it.  Contrast those in Valencia and Andalucia. Maybe from May 9 for us.

After chasing both my medical centre and the Galician health authority, I'll finally have my first jab next Monday. If this blog doesn't appear on Tuesday and thereafter, you'll know why . . .

The UK

The UK has cricketing metaphors where a written constitution ought to be. Pit British democracy, with its reliance on good manners and fair play, against a landslide majority won by a smash-and-grab prime minister who drives out permanent secretary after permanent secretary and the fight is hardly fair. Stage it against the backdrop of a global pandemic, which requires decisions to be made without the usual scrutiny, and it stands no chance whatsoever. Instead you get the VIP lane to provide expensive PPE that turns out to be unusable, texts from No 10 to tycoons offering favourable tax treatment for ventilators and a former prime minister messaging colleagues on behalf of his new employer. The same bunch who pretended to hate the state now try earnestly to leech off it. Careless people, as Fitzgerald portrayed them, although he could add one qualification. They care a lot – just not about you and me.

Of course, Trump showed that a paranoid narcissist could do the same sort of thing even where there's a written Constitution

AEP is positive about something - Scottish economic success after independence. But only if it doesn't join the EU.

The UK and The EU 

UK citizens in the EU: What you need to know.  

Germany

The Greens to the fore. Maybe. Months to go before the test.

France

Emmanuel Macron has unveiled a phased lockdown exit plan, aiming to fully reopen the country by June 30. but medics warn it is way too ambitious, given the current infection rate. Not to mention 300 deaths per day.

It's reported that Brits with a 'health pass' will be able to visit France from June 9. Not sure I'd want to.

The Way of the World 

Watching this TV ad, I wondered how long it'd be before carrot eaters- like wine buffs - insist on knowing exactly what field the produce was grown in. And others will want to know that all the cows have had their own 'personal vet'.

Finally  . . .

Both the sparrows and the greenfinches have again all disappeared from my garden. Is this down to the (pregnant?) cat which is trying to get me to adopt it, and which presented me with 2 dead shrews yesterday?

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming (relatively) soon.

My thanks to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for a couple of today's items. 

Covid

So . . . Are you most afraid of surfaces, droplets or aerosols? Read here how you really should think.

A few stats:-

Looking good

UK: Pop. 60.2m. Current moving-7-day-average of daily deaths: 22

Sweden: Pop. 10.2m. Current moving-7-day-average of daily deaths 3 - down from a peak of 98 in December (UK equivalent 20)

Portugal: Pop. 10.2m  Current moving-7-day-average of 2 - daily deaths down from a peak of 291 in January (UK equivalent 13)  

USA: Pop. Current moving-7-day-average of daily deaths down to 727 - from a peak of 3,443 (UK equivalent 152)

Not so good

France:  65.4m. Current moving-7-day-average of daily deaths: 291

Italy: Pop. 60.4m. Current moving-7-day-average of daily deaths: 325

Germany: Pop. 84m. Current moving-7-day-average of daily deaths: 230

India: Pop 1,391m. Current moving-7-day-average of daily deaths: 2,656 (UK equivalent 130) but rising very rapidly 

Cosas de España

Says El País: The Madrid election campaign is descending into a toxic battle. The debate has given way to a series of ever-more-concerning criminal incidents and regular clashes over fascism and the rise of the far right.

Here’s an article on the quality of 15 large cities, with Vigo emerging as the best. But it’s telling that all 3 friends who live there have immediately suggested their ‘crazy’ mayor bribed the researchers . . .

Less seriously . . . Ana Rosa Quintana leads the most popular day-time talk-show at TeleCinco. Just as she did when I arrived 20 years ago. And the funny thing is that she looks younger now than she did back then . . .

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has so far authorised the reunion of over 4,000 foreigners with their Spanish partners despite the closure of borders. Spanish consulates will issue a visa to those who can prove they maintain a stable liaison with a Spaniard. The ‘Love is Not Tourism’ site has information on this. Possibly not up-to-date.

Oh, dear . . .

Cousas de Galiza

In Pontevedra city, the street named after the self-exiled disgraced ex king, Juan Carlos no longer exists. Sic transit gloria mundi, as they say.

María's Level Ground: Days 24 and 25

Portugal 

I erred when citing stats the other day. The deaths were not per million but the current moving-7-day-average of daily deaths. But still very low in the case of both Portugal and the UK. Which was my real point.

The UK

A terrific article, with some lovely lines, on The Court of King Boris. You don’t have to be left-of-centre to agree with it.   

The EU

Europe's leaders are betting everything on red with their re-opening gambit. The vaccine debacle tore EU politicians' credibility to shreds. To open up only to spark another wave would be the final straw. They are taking big risks in opening up their economies before vaccine rollouts are anywhere near delivering herd immunity and while infection rates are still relatively high. But do they actually have any choice in the matter?

France

So close but so far apart . . . Imagine for a moment that an open letter to the British people has just been published in Country Life. In it a former commander of the Royal Marines, an ex-commandant at Sandhurst, a Parachute Regiment colonel who served in the Falklands, two admirals, the retired chief constable of Borsetshire and a dozen other pensioned soldiers warn of an imminent race war in Britain. Unless Boris Johnson takes action to avert it by getting a grip on Black Lives Matter protesters and Muslim immigration, they claim, their comrades serving in the forces will have little alternative but to intervene and save the country. Within days the letter threatening a coup has been endorsed by hundreds of members of the military and police. It’s unimaginable, of course, but it has just happened in France. Not only that but the analysis underpinning the letter has been supported by the country’s main opposition party, the National Rally (which used to be the National Front) of Marine Le Pen.

Finally  . . .

A good way to get shut of scammers who phone you? Hello. This is Scotland Yard. Please hold.

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming (relatively) soon. 

Covid

Continental Europe: This is the opening bit of an article below, in which AEP again takes the EU to town, endorsed by at least some 'experts' in the countries targeted: Europe is frighteningly close to another Covid blunder. If Boris Johnson really did say “let the bodies pile up in their thousands”, this was not in fact Government policy. But it is the current policy of France, Italy, and several other EU states, and a number of impatient German Länder as well. 

Spain expects to be on the UK’s green list by June and is gearing up to reopen its borders to vaccinated travellers with a digital health certificate. Those who have not been jabbed will be required to present a negative test on arrival.

Cosas de España

Lenox Napier talks of the political divide here.

And here’s an insight from El País into the propaganda techniques of the egregious far-right Vox party. Which will probably sink even further into the mire ere long. It's the nature of the beast.

In the article on the Ñ that I cited, there was a suggestion that this Spanish innovation wasn't truly respected until recently. This complaint reminded me of regular Hispanisation of names, as in: Príncipe Guillermo; Enrique de Inglaterra; and Isabel II. And, of course, of the rendering of English film titles into Spanish ones that bear no resemblance to the original. 

Cousas de Galiza

Here's a story about what we Brits call 'crisps', Americans call 'chips' and Spaniards call 'fried potatoes'(patatas fritas). Which phrase they also use for what Brits call 'chips' and Americans call '(French) fries'. This particular brand is made here in Galicia and - according to this - sells for more than €37 a kilo. For bloody potatoes . .  

Portugal 

Portugal could soon be added to the UK government's green list, allowing travel to and from there in May. But this isn't much use to us next door neighbours, as the 2 governments have recently agreed to keep the border closed sine die. Probably because of Spain’s - not Galicia's - higher case rate. 

The UK

A view here of the Scottish one-party state which hopes to rejoin the EU.

The Way of the World 

There's a boom in sales of impotence pills, as wives slip them to their husbands. We’ve come along way from the belief that women who enjoyed sex had to be whores. Thank god. Well - come to think of it - not Him/her actually. Quite the opposite.

Quote of the Day

For those in the know . .  Carrie Symonds' taste in home decor only marginally outshines her taste in partners.

Finally  . . .

As an ex left-footer who regularly 'debates' with a very pious RC sister, I was pleased - nay thrilled - to see articles here and here on an ahead-of-his-time 13th century Pope. Sadly, he still merits that accolade. Not too sure about the hemlock idea.

THE ARTICLE  

Europe is frighteningly close to another Covid blunder: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Telegraph

If Boris Johnson really did say “let the bodies pile up in their thousands” in a moment of exasperation, this was not in fact Government policy. Bar the language, it is the current policy of France, Italy, and several other EU states, and a number of impatient German Länder as well. While it is a different story in every country, and none are callous, Europe tolerated the “pile up” of 3,000 bodies a day during the peak of the third wave earlier this month.

The region mostly refused to follow the UK into another full lockdown earlier this year even though it had weeks of prior warning and the British experience of the B117 variant before its eyes. It acted too late. Now one country after another is reopening in a rush, against scientific advice, before cases are under control.

Professor Andrea Crisanti from Padova University, the epidemiologist behind the vaunted Veneto containment last year, foretold what would happen in Italy this spring if the country dropped its guard, and he is now warning that decisions are being made that threaten the summer as well. The underlying picture is scarcely different in France, or Spain. “Reopening is an epic stupidity. The numbers are not low enough to open safely,” he said.

If he is broadly right, Europe’s second tourism season is in the balance and full recovery may be pushed out for several more months, with an ever rising risk of economic scarring and pent-up insolvencies, including sovereign distress.

Prof Crisanti contrasts the careful step-by-step reopening in the UK with the headlong dash in parts of Europe where intensive care units in hospitals are still near breaking point. The daily death toll is running at an Airbus A320 crash every day in several countries.

“Look at Great Britain. It has relaxed restrictive measures in a similar way to Italy, with the difference that England has 30 deaths a day, cases are down to 2,000, and 70pc of the (adult) population is vaccinated. We have vaccinated 15pc, with protection at around 12pc. May we ask, which government has shown greater respect for health?” he told the L’aria che tira TV programme.

This is not to say that Europe’s leaders are necessarily wrong in principle. France’s Emmanuel Macron took an explicit decision last January to reject the demand of the French scientific council for an immediate lockdown, and more broadly to reject zero-Covid ideology tout court. “France is not governed by scientists” was the Jupiterian word from the Élysée Palace.

Events forced him into a partial lockdown anyway. But he was weighing up the conflicting variables: the collateral damage to body and mind; the loss of education; the economic damage; and the insidious effect of allowing the suspension of civil liberties to become routine.

He knew that pandemic fatigue was undermining social consent for lockdowns and that curbs were becoming unenforceable. Like his technocrat twin, Italian premier Mario Draghi, he is now gambling that rising vaccination and immunity will pull down the death trajectory and vindicate his latest decision just in time.

What is striking is how many commentators in France regard this as a legitimate policy choice based on a subtle intertemporal reading of forward-looking curves. But while I agree with them that a zero-death policy in a large Western European country is posturing and intellectual infantilism, I think Mr Macron, Mr Draghi, and others, are jumping the gun by several weeks and making an unforced error that will do further economic and social damage. It is their credibility as clever technocrats that is on the line.

Europe ought to be poised for a V-shaped economy. Fiscal relief is coming and the huge transatlantic gap in stimulus is narrowing. Mr Draghi is cashing in his immense (but perishable) prestige to launch a spending and investment blitz that would never have been tolerated by Brussels or the markets if it had come from any political party in Italy.

He is pushing the budget deficit to almost 12pc of GDP, higher than last year and the highest since the creation of the modern Italian republic. This too is a gamble, or a Hail Mary throw as they say in American football. It assumes that targeted investment will pay for itself with a leveraged multiplier, bringing down the debt ratio over time rather than driving it up, as occurred with the austerity shoved down Italy’s throat during the Trichet-Schauble Lost Decade.

Germany is opening the spigot. The deficit will jump to 9pc this year. The Netherlands has abandoned its earlier plans for premature tightening. Some €500bn of excess savings is pent-up and ready to go in the eurozone. All the stars are aligned for an imminent boomlet, even if it is weaker than the roaring recoveries in the US and the UK.

But for the reopening gamble to pay off, European states must first control the virus. A chorus of scientists has been warning in Gothic tones that to let rip now is to risk a repeat of the last three cycles of botched Covid management. “It is much too soon. There are not enough people vaccinated to stop the virus,” said Prof Catherine Hill, doyenne of French epidemiologists. “We’ve passed the case peak of the second wave and we’re at 300 deaths a day, and now they’re lifting the controls. It’s a catastrophe.” Covid patients in intensive care in France have been hovering near 6,000, and even risen slightly over the last two days. She disputed that there can be any plausible trade-off between health and the economy. “We will lose on both,” she said.

Premier Jean Castex said on Sunday that the Brazilian and South African variants were scarce and in “regression”. He was ill-advised. These P1 strains are surging in greater Paris, rising from 4pc to 9pc of all cases over the last two weeks. The rise has been exponential in the Creuse (21pc) and Haute-Saône (23pc), see chart below.

The figures may be higher by now because France does less genomic sequencing than Wales. While alarmism over new variants can be overdone – there is still T-cell immunity from vaccines and past infections, even if antibodies fall off – it is courting fate to let them spread unchecked. Judging by the spontaneous rave party at the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris over the weekend, spread they will.

The French scientific council has called for stockpiling of the Moderna vaccine – seemingly the best so far for these strains – warning that cases could get out of hand over the summer. Prof Mahmoud Zureik from the University of Versailles said the French government is making up policy on the hoof and is “in denial” in lifting curbs at a time when critical care demand exceeds capacity in 60 French departments.

So is Mr Draghi, who opened up on Monday across 15 of Italy’s 21 regions taking what he called a calculated risk. “Unfortunately, as I have to keep repeating: the virus doesn’t negotiate,” said Professor Massimo Galli from Milan’s Sacco Hospital. Prof Crisanti is harsher, accusing Italy’s leader of dilettantism.

Premature reopening is particularly hazardous in Italy because large numbers over 80 years old have still not been vaccinated. The former Conte government steered the doses to front-line workers instead, a valid choice had they been able to control who really was on the front-line. Instead doses went to friends of friends in their forties and thirties.

Angela Merkel’s Germany is pulling in the opposite direction to the Club Med bloc, activating the country’s “emergency brake”. It is tightening measures with a clear goal of pulling the seven-day incidence rate below 100 new infections per 100,000 people. Germany is effectively biting the bullet through to the end of June and deferring recovery until the second half. I suspect that Chancellor Merkel will be rewarded with a better economic outcome as a result. It is Mr Macron, Mr Draghi, and euro-technocrats who may have some explaining to do if their calculated bet goes awry.

As for Boris Johnson’s loose tongue, one thing I have learned over 40 years in journalism is never pay much attention to what people say. Watch what they do. 

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid

Portugal: The death per million 7 day average has fallen to 3 from 300 in late January. This is even more impressive - pro rata - than the UK's fall from 1250 to 22. 

The latest (UK-biased) overview from MD of Private Eye is below. Good on the blood clot issue.

Cosas de España

Our depressingly tribal politics get a little dirtier.

Cousas de Galiza

The inconsistent pedestrian lights I use 2-4 times a day continue to cause confusion for both drivers and pedestrians, especially when the lights for the former are flashing amber but those for the latter are off, so neither red nor green. Yesterday morning, a driver who didn't stop and with whom I remonstrated pointed to the pedestrian lights in vindication. Which was rather self-defeating, I thought, as they were off. And yesterday evening I was confused by a driver who stopped even though the pedestrian lights were on red and then annoyed a bus driver coming the other way as I moved to his side. Mea culpa this time.

Which reminds me . . . This chap is cutting granite without wearing safety glasses. Or a shirt. A good example of the attitude to risk I mentioned the other day:-

Spain's accidents at work number is high. But, then, so was the road accident rate when I came here 20 years ago and it isn't now. So, things do change.

I still await my first jab, even though the talk is of doing younger folk as of this week. I went to the health centre yesterday to check if they had my correct phone number but was put off by the 30+ folk milling around outside while a doctor called out the names of patients who had appointments with her. As usual, several were no-shows. Anyway, I later called and established that:- 1. They only had by old landline number, but 2. They hadn't yet tried to call me. So, I await an SMS on my mobile phone.

María's Level Ground: Day 23

The UK

It's rather ironic that a man who's achieved his lifetime ambition of becoming prime minister should so debase the office once he got there. But he’s probably neither the first nor the last to do so.

It's not terribly surprising that he's now being reported to be ‘isolated and at risk of becoming uncontrollable’  

The EU

Both France and Germany are effectively nationalising their airlines. Which is supposed to be illegal. But, then, we're talking about France and Germany. One of which has perpetually broken the deficit rules, with total impunity. 

A propos . . Twenty retired generals have created a political storm in France with a call for a military takeover if President Macron fails to halt the “disintegration” of the country at the hands of Islamists. As if M Macron didn't face enough problems, with the Covid death rate still not falling. Inter alia.

It's reported - not to my surprise at least - that the Belgian government was warned that the EU's contract with AstraZeneca 'lacked teeth'. In short, it 'didn't include harsh consequences if the company failed to deliver vaccines on schedule'. Other governments probably received the same advice.

The Way of the World 

Baroness Boothroyd is the 91 year old ex-Speaker of the House of Commons and 'the personification of diversity in public life'. She's being investigated by some committee or other for failing to attend a compulsory course for members of the House of Lords called “Valuing Everyone”.

English 

The estimable chap who does the History of England podcasts cites 'children' as one of the very few words which still have the Old English plural ending of the letter N. In Old English, he adds, the plural could be formed using S, R and N but the latter two lost out to S in Middle English. Hmm. I'm sure I read that 'Children' is a very rare example of the use of both R and N. Child to childer/childre to children. A double plural, then. As is 'brethren'. By the way, the podcast chap says no one knows the origin of 'child'. 'Possibly from the Sanskrit for 'womb'. . . .

Finally  . . .

The answer to that Anglo-Saxon riddle is . . . An onion. 

I lost my water last night, thanks to yet another leak in the pipe under my garden. I have to report that coffee made with a mix of mineral water and tonic water is not a complete success. Must get more mineral water this morning.

COVID OVERVIEW: MD of Private Eye

Good news 

On 6 April, there were no Covid-19 hospital deaths reported in London, East of England or the South-West, and just 2 deaths in people aged 80-plus in all of England. New infections are very low or zero in large parts of the UK. More than 60 percent of the adult population has received one vaccine dose and more than 10 percent both doses. UK vaccines are estimated to have prevented 6,300 deaths, and many more hospital admissions with far fewer side effects than lockdown. 

Vaccine benefits v risks 

In the last year in the UK, 4.4m people have been infected with Sars-CoV-2 and there have been at least 127,000 deaths as a result. Imagine these 4.4m people had been fully immunised with the Oxford-AstraZeneca (OAZ) vaccine at the outset. At least 100,000 Covid deaths could have been prevented, and there would have been around 22 cases of a rare combination of blood clot and low platelets, with five deaths. 

Compared to risk of a clot after vaccination you are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightening in your lifetime, 11 times more likely to die in a car accident each year and 100 times more likely to get a blood clot if you use an oral contraceptive. If you are hospitalised with Covid, your risk of a clot is one in four. 

Three of the 19 who died from thrombosis following 20.2m doses of the OAZ vaccination were under 30, and those aged 29 and under will now be offered a different vaccine (though other vaccines may have similar tiny risks). In future, vaccine supply may be sufficient for people to choose which vaccine they have, but not yet. 

Will this put people off having a vaccine? With infection rates currently very low (thanks to vaccines), some may decide to wait for more safety data to emerge or hope the shield of herd immunity will protect them without a vaccine. This strategy is much riskier than having the vaccine, particularly in the long term. 

Many of those who volunteered for vaccine trials when the risks were unknown were under 30. Some volunteered to be deliberately infected with Sars-CoV-2 to help improve our understanding. Many are likely to have a vaccine not just for personal protection, but to protect friends and family, open up society, boost the economy, allow travel and encourage further medical advances from the new vaccine technology. Some people get unpleasant temporary side effects from the vaccines. But the overall chance of dying, as with just about every modem vaccine, is around one in a million. Paracetamol is much more of a risk. 

European differences 

Why did, say, Germany spot and act more quickly on the rare risks associated with the OAZ vaccine? The mistaken belief that the vaccine was less effective in the elderly meant it was diverted to younger age cohorts where the risk of clotting is more evident (though still very low). Their better-resourced health system may also be more meticulous in picking up and reporting adverse reactions. The UK has a Yellow Card reporting scheme anyone can access, but it's a bit hit-and-miss. Rare, life-threatening events tend to be picked up, but less serious effects depend on people reporting them. The Germans may be more thorough and risk averse. Hence they, and other EU countries, are recommending a wider age range for OAZ restriction. But if it means people are denied an available lifesaving vaccine during a third wave outbreak, the approach may do more harm than good. 

Out of Africa 

African nations, with younger populations, may also move away from the OAZ vaccine; but it is cheap, easy to store and currently available. If the opt-out delays vaccination in areas with large outbreaks, this too is likely to result in far more deaths. The UK is much safer now than in winter, which saw 1,300 Covid deaths a day. Brazil has just hit 4,000 deaths in 24 hours: The good news is that China's Corona vaccine has 73.8 percent efficacy against the Brazilian variant which accounts for 80 percent of Brazil's cases. 

Chinese takeaway 

As predicted, the World Health Organization (WHO) fact-finding team returned from China without all the facts. Its aim was to find the origin of the Sars-CoV-2 virus based on information the Chinese government shared with it. 

The very long report places the start of the outbreak "in the months before mid-December 2019", when the virus could have been spreading undetected. It thinks it likely it was introduced to humans via an unknown animal that acted as an intermediary between bats, but it wasn't able to find that animal or a specific lineage of bats. 

The Sars-CoV-2 virus can infect a very large number of animals, which is bad luck for humans because it gives it multiple opportunities to reinvent itself in future. It also means the "follow the animals" studies to find the original source will be lengthy and complex, and will need to extend to countries beyond China. 

Bats v labs 

Bats are beautiful, they carry lots of viruses and they can fly long distances. They are also mammals, and the Sars-CoV-2 virus didn't have to adapt much to spread to human mammals, which is again bad luck for us.     . 

The virus picked up its infamous spike protein en route, but whether that was a pangolin or a laboratory is currently impossible to say. The WHO says the lab-leak hypothesis is "extremely unlikely", but it has happened before. The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was in 1977, but the last recorded death was 1978. Janet Parker, a medical photographer, contracted it while working at the smallpox laboratory at Birmingham Medical School, which the WHO had commissioned to research the disease. 

What makes a lab leak less likely is that SarsCoV-2 was unknown before the pandemic, and there is no trail in public databases or research articles of any lab virus like it. If it was being researched or modified, it had not been logged and declared, which could be administrative laxity, or the virus got to the researcher before they had a chance to log it, or it was a secret project. 

The WHO wants more investigation and says "all hypotheses remain on the table", including the very unlikely ones. We may never find a smoking gun/bat/lab, but the closer we get to the origin, the better shot we have at prevention in future. Closing off outbreaks at source is the goal.

The dirtiest of bombs 

Evolution is far better at producing bioweapons than laboratories are, and it would be hard to design one as destructive, divisive and disruptive as the Sars-CoV-2 virus. It spread silently and quickly among the young and healthy to start with, before detonating in the elderly and those unlucky enough to be susceptible. 

Covid has killed 3m people and caused an extremely unpleasant chronic disease in millions more. But its management has harmed the lives and livelihoods of billions and led to a massive spike in waiting times for non-Covid illnesses. Yet - more than a year later - there remain huge divisions among politicians, public health experts, the press and the public about how to manage it. Many people are still living in fear - the overarching aim of a terror attack. Nature, and the dangerous games we play with it, has done the extremists' job for it. Vaccines will help us return to a semblance of normality. But do we need mass testing on top? 

Moonshot a-go-go 

Boris Johnson's enthusiasm for mass testing is understandable. When the pandemic first hit Europe and the WHO (and MD) was screaming "test, test, test", the UK wasn't up to the task and abandoned community testing. Stung by this, Johnson committed up to £37bn - of which £20bn might have been spent so far - on an outsourced test and trace programme that did more testing than other countries but struggled with contact tracing and supporting isolation. We weren't able to stop further lockdowns or a second wave killing nearly double the number than the first. 

A further complication is that around 30 percent of viral spread is asymptomatic. So Johnson's solution of offering bi-weekly self tests to all asymptomatic adults in the UK, with results back in 30 minutes, sounds compelling. It could get some asymptomatic shedders off the street and provide mass reassurance to others, though some of it false. Like vaccine passports, a negative test doesn't guarantee you aren't infectious, it just reduces the likelihood. 

Also, the public like the idea of having rapid access to rapid tests that give rapid results, and that - along with vaccines - should play well in local elections. It's also a great opportunity for someone to make a profit from up to 80m tests a week. . . 

Self-testing on trial 

The ritualistic bi-weekly self-testing of asymptomatic adults has its potential downsides. 

• Up to 40m people with no symptoms become medicalised for uncertain benefit. 

• Johnson has put up to £100bn into the Moonshot pot, when there are millions of patients waiting for treatments that have been proven to work. Could the money be better spent? 

• Mass asymptomatic testing is unlikely to pick up many infections when rates are so low. 

• We don't know how many people will do the tests properly when unsupervised at home, and log in the results online (which is a fiddle). 

• Many people don't follow isolation rules even if they have symptoms, so expecting people to isolate unsupervised when they don'tt have symptoms is a stretch. 

• Tracing contacts and persuading them to isolate is already a struggle. There is no point massively ramping up testing if we can't cope with the extra tracing work it triggers. 

• Lateral flow tests (LFTs) aren't nearly as good as PCR tests. A Cochrane review found LFTs pick up only 58 percent of asymptomatic cases and 72 percent of symptomatic ones. This may encourage risky behaviour in people who tested negative but are infectious. 

• Millions of tests will be sent by post or click and collect, for an unspecified period. That's a big carbon footprint of plastic in the kits. 

• Once people have been vaccinated, and infections rates are low, will they still self-test when they feel fine and don't need a test to enter a venue because they have proof of vaccination? 

Lateral thinking 

The most accurate way to use LFTs is to help speed up existing test, trace and isolate services for those with symptoms. It will pick up many positives immediately - with a back-up PCR test - allowing immediate contact tracing and support for isolation. We might manage to get more infectious people out of circulation that way. If we continue to use them to screen staff n higher risk settings (schools, hospitals and universities), this needs to be part of a study. 

Whatever we do with our warehouses full of LFTs, the programme should be properly designed and evaluated but almost certainly won't be. Johnson and health secretary Matt Hancock are fans of disruptive innovation. Instead of meticulously designing a mass testing programme with lots of pointy-headed academics asking hard questions about risks, harms and value for money, they would rather just empty the warehouses and give it  a punt. 

An experiment in control 

For all nations managing the pandemic has been a huge bio-psycho-social experiment in control. During an outbreak, pragmatism rules. But when infection rates are low, we should properly design and evaluate interventions to learn if benefits outweigh risks. Instead, the government is advertising for "an interim head of asymptomatic testing communication who will primarily be responsible for delivering a communications strategy to support the expansion of asymptomatic testing, that normalises testing as part of everyday life", Instead of doing a controlled experiment, Johnson is continuing the experiment in control with huge spend, little consent and no way of ' knowing the consequences. 

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming (relatively) soon. 

Cosas de España

Here's an article on ‘La matanza casera’ - A centuries-old Spanish tradition of raising and slaughtering pigs on small farms in the countryside. As it's in the Telegraph, you possibly won't be able to get past the paywall but you might be grateful for that, as the fotos are pretty graphic. I was left feeling glad I'd passed up the chance to see one. Anyway, here's some of the text: These black Iberian pigs were fed on kitchen scraps and farm waste and roamed freely in the forest feeding on acorns for several months prior to slaughter. Traditionally, extended family and neighbours gather between November and February to slaughter a pig.  Over the course of a weekend they process all parts of the animal for consumption throughout the rest of the year.

A Spanish dentist friend tells me that her already-tough challenge of getting her UK qualifications and experience accepted for homologación here has hit the bumpers of a particularly petty bit of bureaucracy. The dates of her work experience give only the start and end of her jobs in the month and the year. What is demanded is the exact day of these, though not the hour. She has only 10 days to correct her application, which depends on action in the UK and then the mail system. If she fails, her application will be binned and she'll have two start again in another calendar year. Say, 2022. Or 23. I wonder if she’ll also be expected to give the euro equivalent of her salary to 3 decimal points.

My daughter sent me this foto with the caption: Madrid in the grip of Covid.

The city has the second highest rate of infections in the country butt the right-of-centre regional government prefers 'a light touch'.Possibly in the interests of corporate friends.

Cousas de Galiza

María's Level Ground: Days 21 and 22

The UK

While the right-of-centre papers report in great detail on the Johnson-Cummings spat and then loftily declare we should be far more interested in matters they don't report on, the left-of-centre Guardian makes the obvious point here that the worth of the comic opera lies in proving Johnson't unfitness for office. Take your pick. I go Left on this one.

Here's a nice Politico article on Johnson’s ‘belligerent optimism’.

The Way of the World 

As if we weren't assailed enough already . . . Producers can now put a different billboard for a brand still relevant today behind the characters in a film from the 90s that is being shown on TV, or a different bottle of beer next to a character in a TV show that came out years ago. 

Spanish 

From El Pais . . The letter ‘Ñ’ is the identity of Spanish the world over. The character has its origins in the Middle Ages, and is the only one to have been created in Spain. Despite this, it was omitted from the Spanish Royal Academy dictionary until 1803.

Quote of the Day

The Observer has called for significant tightening of rules around political lobbying and a strengthening of the ministerial code, but the sad truth is no set of rules in the world can inject integrity, selflessness and leadership into the character of a man who has none. Guess who.

Finally  . . . 

This is a fruity Anglo-Saxon riddle from The History of England podcast. Apparently they liked this sort of thing. Who said the Germans lack a sense of humour?:-

I’m a wonderful thing, a joy to women,

to neighbours useful. I injure no one

who lives in a village save only my slayer.

I stand up high and steep over the bed;

underneath I’m shaggy. Sometimes ventures

a young and handsome  peasant’s daughter,

a maiden proud, to lay hold on me.

She seizes me, red, plunders my head,

fixes on me fast, feels straightway

what meeting me means when she thus approaches,

a curly-haired woman. Wet is that eye.

Answer tomorrow, after I've got it from the next episode.

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid

These are the latest deaths per million and deaths per day numbers. Only the UK's are falling:-

Italy  1,971 360/day (7 day average)

UK 1,869 22/d

Spain 1,659 87/d

France 1,567 300/d (10+ times more than the UK and not showing signs of reducing)

Germany  977  221

The USA's numbers are 1,759 and 790/d.    5.5 x Italy pop.   18% of US

The country most in the news today is India. The d/m number there, at 138, is low but cases and deaths are rising very rapidly and the vaccination rate is low at only 10%.

In the UK, there is talk of ending the mask-wearing injunction by early summer. Unlikely elsewhere, I guess.

Cosas de España

Desperate times, desperate measures as Florentino Pérez goes from respected to ridiculed in Super League debacle. Click here for the article from the very estimable John Carlin in Madrid.

It's significant that the only 2 of the 12 teams still on the same sinking craft with him are both Spanish. They know how things are done here.

Cousas de Galiza

The weather here . . . Well, it really is raining today, falling from the Atlantic Blanket that occasionally smothers us. The north western tail of Storm Lula, I suspect, which hit the South East on Friday night 

The UK

Richard North: Normally, the machinations of Dominic Cummings & Co are of very little interest. But when two of the most odious people in English politics[Cummings and Boris Johnson] start to fall out, one can only sit back, order industrial quantities of popcorn and enjoy the fireworks. If Johnson is not to be brought down by the substance, let him fall to the perennial soap opera that English politics has become. In case it's not clear, RN - after working with them on Brexit - detests both DC and BJ. And their dreadful Brexit deal.

The UK population as a whole though, still gives Johnson a net positive approval rating. And this despite a large section seeing him as the most corrupt member of a corrupt government. 

The Conservative party continues to lead the Labour Party by some margin in the polls. On which RN pronounces: This confirms that Johnson's corruption has been "priced in". That he is a congenital liar with the morals of a retarded tomcat is regarded as a given and, for the moment, has no electoral impact. 

RN puts his faith in 'the switch'. This occurs when a government which, for a while, can do no wrong reaches a point after which it can do no right. That's democracy - and herd instinct - for you. But we will see. Especially as the (very embittered) Cummings* is reported to  be preparing a dossier of evidence that will attempt to blame Johnson personally for the tens of thousands of deaths during the second wave of the pandemic. 

* Hell hath no fury like a Special Adviser scorned. And humiliatingly sacked.

The Way of the World 

Is Wokeism a new religion? See the article below.

Spanish

To vent one’s spleen: Desahogarse, desfogarse, vaciarse, aliviarse. I'm told.

Quotes of the Week 

All from John Carlin:-

- Pérez failed to realise that football [not Wokeism?] is the world’s biggest religion.

- He was blinded by the white. [the colour of Real Madrid¡s strip]

- The intentions of Pérez and his unlikely sidekick at Barcelona were less ignoble than those of the foreign moneybags who own the Premier League clubs. 

- But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. 

Finally  . . . 

Spooked by my mention of a hair-dryer, the flowers in my garden - French meadow rue brought from the UK - immediately bloomed yesterday.

THE ARTICLE  

The denunciation of Richard Dawkins shows that wokeism has become a new religion. Humanists pride themselves on their rationality yet they won't give the author freedom to ask uncomfortable questions and push boundaries: Michael Deacon, The Telegraph.

The Chinese authorities have created an app that will enable citizens to report those who express “mistaken opinions”. Personally, I can’t see why they’ve gone to such trouble. They could have saved themselves a lot of time and effort by simply lifting their ban on Twitter.

After all, that’s what we in the West use it for. If anyone over here tweets a mistaken opinion, we make sure they soon regret it.

The latest in the never-ending list of offenders is Professor Richard Dawkins, author of atheist bible The God Delusion. A couple of weeks ago, he posted a tweet in which he recalled the uproar about Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who in 2015 was vilified for saying she identified as black. He then wrote: “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”

After the inevitable outrage, Dawkins insisted that he “did not intend to disparage trans people”; he had simply been inviting debate. “I see that my academic ‘Discuss’ question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this,” he wrote. “It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in the US now exploiting this issue.”

These words, however, were not enough to satisfy his critics – or even some of his admirers. This week, the American Humanist Association (AHA) announced that it was so appalled by Dawkins’s comments, it was immediately rescinding an award it had given him.

“His latest statement implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient,” it said. “Consequently, the AHA Board has concluded that Richard Dawkins is no longer deserving of being honoured by the AHA.”

For my own part, I do think the Professor’s original tweet was tactless. I’ve no doubt many people were offended. But even so, I find the AHA’s actions somewhat puzzling.

Partly this is because the award of which Professor Dawkins has been stripped is Humanist of the Year 1996. By rescinding it, the AHA is in effect arguing that the Professor’s tweets in 2021 mean that he wasn’t the world’s best humanist in 1996 after all. But that can’t be right, because he hadn’t posted the tweets then – not least because Twitter hadn’t been invented yet.

In my view, therefore, the AHA’s action betrays a profound misunderstanding of how time works. Normally, humanists tend to pride themselves on their rationality, so this is an unexpected lapse.

The other thing on which humanists tend to pride themselves, of course, is not being religious. And to me, this makes the AHA’s attitude all the more disconcerting. Because in this instance, they’re behaving as though they’re very religious indeed.

Historically, it’s been the highly religious who make a great public show of denouncing heresy. It’s been the highly religious who condemn any supposed failure to conform to the orthodox beliefs of the day.

Yet look again at that statement from this group of American humanists. The Professor’s “subsequent attempts at clarification”, apparently, “are inadequate and convey neither sensitivity nor sincerity”. As a result, he is “no longer deserving of being honoured”.

Fascinating, isn’t it? So sanctimonious. So pious. So holier-than-thou. No mercy. The heretic must be punished, or at least excommunicated. Maybe the real reason these people haven’t taken to religion is that they’ve never found one strict enough for them.

Then again, maybe they have. Wokeism: the glorious new religion of our time, whose evangelists preach their dogma with a ravening zeal from their social media pulpits, while sinners are furiously decried until they repent.

Dawkins himself doesn’t seem especially bothered by the loss of the AHA’s award. “Thinking to do my duty by deleting the entry, I opened up my CV,” he told a newspaper, “only to discover that there was nothing to delete.”

Of course, he’s quite used to people getting cross with him. Doubtless he can handle it. But, on this particular occasion, I’m just surprised that the AHA joined in with such righteous fervour.

No matter how thoughtless and insensitive the Professor’s tweet might seem, I would have expected a humanist group to respect the freedom to ask uncomfortable questions, the freedom to test the boundaries of socially acceptable thought, the freedom to cause offence.

Without that freedom, after all, there might well be no humanists.

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid

The UK: 

1. The pandemic over in Britain, say experts. The vaccine rollout has led to drop in symptomatic infections by up to 90%, data show, leaving virus at controllable ‘endemic’ levels. So . . . what next?

2. Meanwhile, there’s confusion about whether people will be able to travel to, inter alia, Spain this summer. This is because the Ministry of Health and the Foreign Office take differing views and: Most tour operators will refuse to run holidays in countries to which the Foreign Office does not advise travel. Disregarding FO advice also invalidates most travel insurance policies. A mess, then.

Cosas de España

You don't have to be in Spain long to realise the attitude to the risk/benefit equation is different here from, say, Northern Europe. That said, things are inevitably moving towards the French/EU obsession with precaution and the UK’s health and safety. But we still have people with no seat belts, no helmets, and no car insurance, for example. And lots of drivers on their phones. And the police still seem unwilling to enforce laws about idiots on bikes or scooters on the pavements. But, overall, I still prefer the more pragmatic, common-sense Spanish approach. Except when I have to drive at 20km on a country road with no houses and little traffic on them.

Talking of people on bikes . . . This put me in mind of my walk into and out of town, across a bike path along the riverside:-

Here's the Guardian on the celebrity of the week - Florentino Pérez. Who's been forced to realise this week that Spain is different and that things are not done in other countries the way they are here. Which has very much suited him to date.

Spanish wine for under nine.

Cousas de Galiza

 Here comes that ‘perpetual rain' myth once again . . . Galicia Noir. You heard it here a hunred times: The rain falls mostly in winter. Or perhaps in spring. And occasionally in summer. But don’t tell anyone, please.

María's Level Ground: Day 20. I get the same question from young Spanish visitors.  

The UK

Britain could make millions from cannabis oil as ministers consider ditching EU laws.  Well, someone has to/is already doing so.

The Way of the World 

A product of which pre-launch consumer research was the worst ever seen for a proposed new product has made its inventor a billionaire. It's the energy drink Red Bull, which I've never drunk and about which I know nothing virtually nothing, as I've only read the first line of this.

English

'Plans going forward' . . . Which 2 words in this phrase would you say are redundant? And what would be the opposite of 'plans going forward'?

Finally  . . . 

To my surprise, the internet confirmed I can hasten the blooming of some flowers by using a hair-dryer on them, albeit gently. Now I just need to get a hair-dryer. Where are my daughters when I need them?

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Cosas de España

It's hard-to-impossible to keep track of what countries say they're going to be doing re travellers from other countries, and when. The latest reports say the UK will put the Balearic Islands on its green list, even if the mainland is orange or red. Which means, I think, you won't have to quarantine when you return from Ibiza, etc..  

Spain yesterday began to use the J&J/Janssen vaccine for 70-79 year olds. It's said.

Spain's toros bravos are reported to be furious they're not considered to be pets, which means they won't benefit from this development.

So, where are all those foreign young homeworkers going to be living in Spain, assuming they get the required visa(s) if they're Brits or other non-EU residents? This article has some thoughts on this.

Need I say that the notoriously greedy president of Real Madrid has struck a defiant tone, saying the European SuperLeague project was not dead but on stand-by? The president of Barcelona FC said something similar. Not exactly true democrats. Which is par for the Spanish course.

Cousas de Galiza

Correction: The TV episode I saw being shot the other day doesn't take place in Argentina - blame the film poster they were putting up - but here in Galicia. For a series called Un Asunto Privado, which I’ll now have to watch. If I ever get Amazon Prime. Filming takes place  in both Pontevedra and Vigo, of the ‘1940s'.

There's a track in the forest behind my house which goes up to the radio masts at the top of the hill. Twenty years ago it was just about possible to use it in a 2-wheel-drive car but the rains since have forged rock-strewn ruts which make this impossible now. So, one of my little joys in life is to watch cars pass me on their way up and then to bet with myself how many seconds it'll be before they turn round. Here's yesterday's car going up:-

And coming down, 27 seconds later:-

María's Level Ground: Day 19. A taxing experience.

The EU

Let's hear it for little Sweden. Which also used to have a large empire: No carbon cutting without pain? Let Sweden set you straight.  

The EU is preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls. EU governments have told the Commission they support its plan to sue AZ for failing to hit delivery targets of its vaccine. Sticking my neck out, I'd bet that the case never reaches court. Or, if it does, that it eventually fails. It's surely a political gesture which will waste vast amounts of brainpower, time and money. Only the lawyers will be happy. Let's hear it for these maligned folk, who can’t be blamed for the stupidity of others .

Italy

Italy’s legal process is one of the slowest in the EU and can take more than 3 years on average to enforce commercial contracts, which is regarded as a factor in deterring overseas investment into its sclerotic economy. Blimey, even worse than Spain?

The Way of the World

Preface: NFTs - non-fungible tokens - are essentially files containing links to a server where the 'actual' digital images are stored. OK, now read these and bear in mind there's no typos: 

1. Last month an unnamed punter paid $69m for a non-fungible token for a digital artwork that was available online for free.

2. Earlier this month, hackers took over a number of accounts on a digital art marketplace, stealing NFTs valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Causing the owners to thereby lose something that never actually existed in the first place.  Doubly painful, then.

3.  NFTs  exist only on servers. If these go down, the NFTs are effectively gone. 

4. According to a specialist website, many highly priced NFTs are inaccessible already - in fact, most of those that it checked returned a "504 Gateway Timeout" error message. As time goes by and exchanges go bust,  this will be the case for more and more. 

5. So, if forking out millions for a link to a picture sounds mad, how about paying that for an error message? 

*By someone called Beeple, who is really a clever chap called Mike Winkelmann.

All this suggests that, to some folk at least, the concept of money/wealth is meaningless. And gaining or losing it has no significance whatsoever. But Mr Winklemann is probably bot unhappy or worried about this.

Finally  . . . 

Yesterday, I wanted to complement a woman by saying that she looked even prettier in a mask because of her beautiful eyes. But what I actually said was  "You look fantastic in a mask". Didn't go down well . . .

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon.

Covid

A useful article from El País.

Cosas de España

Another odd Spanish court decision.

And another odd thing . . . Unesco threatens to withdraw world heritage status for Burgos cathedral over new doors

Cousas de Galiza

Vigo's Urzaiz railway station is still a building site for a massive shopping mall. It takes 5-10 minutes to get out of it - via several escalators - to an exit 5-10 minutes further away from the city centre than the old one. But that wasn't my biggest frustration yesterday . . . Returning to Pontevedra, I made 5 abortive attempts to get the machine to give me a discount on the tickets of myself and a confused woman I was trying to help. Each time, the instruction on the screen was to go to the ticket office. But there wasn't one. A desk by the side of the 3 machines was unpersonned and there was no sign of an office elsewhere. So I gave up and paid the full price. Only to later find that, shortly before departure, they set up a temporary ticket desk near the gate on the floor below. Not great customer service, then. But the Renfe staff are always pleasant when you do speak to them.

María's Level Ground: Days 17 & 18

The UK and The EU 

Good news. A divided European Union that is slow to reach messy compromises on climate change targets welcomes British competition in the “race to zero” on greenhouse gas emissions. In a tempestuous period for relations between Britain and the EU, especially since the coronavirus vaccine “war” in February and March, climate change policy has been an area where co-operation has quietly deepened.

Returning Brits . . .

Germany, Spain and the EU

What on earth is happening? AEP: The ascendant Greens will turn Germany and Europe upside down. With Germany and southern Europe swinging in opposite directions, sharing a monetary union is about to become even harder. The full article below.

The Way of the World

Name your poison. Which form of greed do you prefer? Uefa and Fifa’s hypocrisy is astonishing; their greed ruined this game long ago. Listening to the Uefa president, thundering about “greed” and his Fifa counterpart, citing “self-interest” and former players wailing on TV about an assault on football as a “community asset”, I couldn’t help but giggle. When we look back on this incident, we will marvel at mankind’s capacity for hypocrisy. Not a unique view. More here.

A propos  . .  The [aborted] European Super League: Lame apologies do not begin to repair owners’ reputations. They’ll be back. For all the stirring opposition Operation Greed will return. John W Henry, the principal owner of Liverpool, is a businessman, not a benefactor. His show of contrition and attempt to make peace with fans may have been genuine, but so is his desire to make money. As with the even more loathsome Joel Glazer at Manchester United and arrogant Stan Kroenke at Arsenal, these are men wanting to monetise the emotion filling famous English clubs. 

An amusing news item:-

Quote of the Week 

I can relate . . . I am 'triggered' by scissors that come in impenetrable plastic packaging requiring scissors to open. Would I be buying scissors if I had scissors? 

Finally  . . . 

On British TV there's an ad for a decking company called Trex. Are they really unaware that Trex is a large blog of vegetable fat used in baking, as with Crisco in the US. 

There's also an ad for an air freshener which the company puffs as a 'limited edition' for spring. As if it were a bloody work of art.

THE ARTICLE 

The ascendant Greens will turn Germany and Europe upside down. With Germany and southern Europe swinging in opposite directions, sharing a monetary union is about to become even harder   Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Expect 130km speed signs across the German Autobahns, with 30km per hour becoming the general rule in all towns. Expect a ban on sales of combustion engines by 2030, and a regulatory squeeze on overpowered trophy cars. Expect a halt to domestic short-haul flights wherever trains are viable. 

Prepare for a German carbon tax of €60 a tonne in two years, and perhaps a wealth tax, a Tobin tax, a supertax on high incomes, and an end to corporate tax deductibility for pay above €500,000. Dream no longer of an EU-US trade deal (TTIP) or any other trade deal unless the ideological principles of German ecologists are satisfied.

All of this is in the draft manifesto of Die Grünen, the German greens, and right now there is no conceivable combination in which they will not be a central pillar of the next coalition. The likelihood of a Green chancellor has soared after the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) picked the back-slapping Armin Laschet as the “continuity candidate” in a leadership stitch-up – blocking Bavaria’s disruptive rising star, Markus Söder, so clearly preferred by the grassroots and the German people. 

To insist on Mr Laschet was a fateful decision for a stale exhausted party so badly in need of a makeover after 16 years in power: an era when Germany began to rest on its laurels, neglecting digital technology, cutting public investment to the bone in pursuit of balanced-budget shibboleths, doubling-down on 20th century industries.

It also mistook the mercantilist advantages of the euro system (an undervalued synthetic D-Mark) for a second Wirschaftswunder. Only later will it become clear that Angela Merkel has presided over “peak Germany” and the onset of decline.   

Annalena Baerbock, the trampolinist and newly chosen Green candidate, has vaulted into the lead at 28pc following her party’s smooth leadership contest. It is a movement on the march, hungry for power. “They are disciplined and extremely well-run,” said Giles Dickson, head of renewable lobby WindEurope.

The hapless Mr Laschet has collapsed by six points to 21pc. The Social Democrats (SPD) have crashed to 13pc and risk going the way of the French Socialists. The two great Volksparteien that have run the country since the Second World War cannot muster more than 34pc between them. The Germany that most of us have known all our lives is about to change in radical and unpredictable ways.

The Green Party was born in 1980 with a mission to tear down capitalism and end the affluent way of life. The Fundis - the fundamentalists – like to ban things. The origins of the movement could hardly be further removed from the Ordoliberal spirit of Ludwig Erhard, economic father of modern Germany, who lived by the motto “if in doubt, always choose the freer path”.

Ms Baerbock is from the pragmatic Realo wing, which has captured the leadership. “She has spent the last three years talking to business and she understands that you have to use the free market to steer the economy in a green direction,” said Holger Schmieding from the German bank Berenberg.

While the vested interests of Deutschland Inc are horrified by the prospect of a Green victory, there are even more powerful interests in the new economy and finance that can see the lucrative opportunity. They think the great fortunes of the 2020s will be made in green tech and data analytics, and that any country clinging to the metal-bashing fossil age will be left behind as the US and China run away with the prize.

Erstwhile sinner Volkswagen has changed sides, betting all on electric vehicles with €30bn of investment under the new management of Herbert Diess, who warns of a “Nokia Moment” for companies that fail to make the switch in time. “German business has seen the light. They know they have to go green,” said Mr Schmieding.

The difficulty with the Greens is that the unreconstructed Fundis dominate the party base and shape its character, more so than Labour’s defeated Corbynistas. As a political culture, they are inimical to free enterprise.

If a Chancellor Baerbock went into coalition with the Christian-Democrats reduced to a junior partner – as in Baden-Württemberg – she might be able to keep her hot-headed troops in line and force them to accept centrist compromises. But the Fundi youth wing aims to block any deal with Mr Laschet, a coal supporter and closet-climate denialist. 

What might emerge instead is a Red-Red-Green coalition with the ex-Communists of Die Linke and a broken SPD party lurching leftwards in search of its lost soul.  

This is the stuff of nightmares for the German establishment. “The party base will pull the Greens to the hard Left if they are in coalition only with other left-wing parties,” said Mr Schmieding.

What the Greens cannot do is fund a vast Bidenesque fiscal expansion by tapping the bond markets, much as they would like to. That would breach the constitutional debt-brake. It takes a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament to change the Basic Law. 

The Greens would have to raise taxes or cut spending elsewhere to pay for lavish welfare spending and their plan to lift public investment by €50bn a year (an extra 1.5pc of GDP), comparable in scale to Joe Biden’s infrastructure push. That would rob it of its stimulus effect. 

Nor would they be able to ram through their plan for an EU treasury or fiscal capacity, or transform the European Parliament into Germany’s supreme legislative body at the expense of the Bundestag. Such a transfer of power to the EU crosses constitutional lines and cannot be imposed by simple majority. 

For Britain, a Green Germany would be a chilly adversary. The party is supra-nationalist, inclined to scapegoat City ‘speculators’ for the world’s ills (an atavistic reflex), and above all ideologically hostile to the concept of the sovereign nation state. 

Die Grünen want a European federal state, on alleged grounds that environmental disaster knows no borders and that the only way to save the planet is to avert a race to the bottom by competing states. They are an extreme millenarian pro-EU party even in their new technocrat guise, like Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche party but without his mitigating Gaulliste streak and regalian idée de la France.

If it were just a matter of ecology, Boris Johnson would get on swimmingly with Annalena Baerbock. The UK’s plan to cut CO2 emissions by 78pc from 1990 levels is just as ambitious as the Green’s 70pc cut by 2030 and it will be committed to law much earlier. 

The UK’s coal phase-out by 2025 is five years ahead of the Green target, though the date scarcely matters since rising EU emissions contracts – now €46 a tonne – will price coal out of the German market long before 2030.

But the rift over identity politics trumps climate unity. The UK is a Westphalian state under the 1648 settlement, or trying to become one again, and the Greens are the fer-de-lance of the Holy Roman Empire in its modern form. 

Which raises an intriguing question since southern Europe seems to be swinging in the opposite direction from Germany: what happens if Marine Le Pen takes France next year, as she well might if the centre splits and Mr Macron is knocked out in the first round? Her party has dropped the anti-euro clause from its platform for tactical reasons but it has not become federalist.

What if Giorgia Meloni takes Italy a few months later at the head of a hard-Right alliance of Fratelli d’Italia and the Lega? And what if the Spanish conservatives (PP) take Spain with supply and consent from the rising neo-Franquista Vox party?

We may have Red-Red-Green Germany facing a triple nationalist front across the Latin bloc, obliged to share monetary union across the North-South divide, and agreeing on almost nothing. Good luck with 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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid

Spain: Mixing vaccines. 

The UK: 

A couple of Anglo views to contrast with that of the EU on the issue of sensible caution:-

1. Over 40 years, the precautionary principle has mestasised from a fringe worldview propagated by environmental lobbyists to a groupthink mantra incorporated into everything from the Maastricht treaty to pesticide control. Despite its unscientific principles, demanding a level of certainty about safety that can never be reached and replacing trial and error with the elimination of error by banning trial, a weird synergy with predictive modelling has lent it academic credibility. Its intrusive hyper-caution has an aesthetic appeal for big-state politicians. This is a recipe for disaster. If Johnson accepts that variants are an intolerable and infinite risk, the precautionary principle demands that he has no choice but to keep us in some form of lockdown until the UK has zero Covid cases. Which is lunacy. This is not to argue that there's no risk of a dangerous escape variant. But there is a better way to manage that risk: the principle of As Low As Reasonably Achievable (Alara). This underpins many aspects of British innovation that the precautionary principle has yet to reach. It states that you mitigate risk as far as you can, and accept when you have done all that is possible. Its sensible influence on risk management is epitomised by the Government’s response to AZ clots – which has sought to minimise the potential risk to young people, by continuing the national rollout with a view to eventually offering under-30s an alternative. 

2. The vaccine programme has been a signal success but the Minister of Health has said that, although concerns remain of a mutation finding its way around the protections offered by vaccines, they were the “way out of this”. He added that he still hoped this would happen by June 21 but anything approaching normality was still a long way away. The fear is that an obsession with fighting against the inevitable new variants will actually make a return to normal life impossible. 

As I've warned, be prepared to be ordered to distance and to wear masks for at least the next northern hemisphere winter. And don't expect to see gel dispensers disappear anytime soon. We’ve been seriously spooked. Time will tell whether this was justifiable or not.

Cosas de España

A bit of a surprise? The Spanish state has been ordered to return stuff to the Franco family and to financially compensate them for paying for the upkeep of a place which didn’t belong to them. Friends at court??

Germany was the main champion of austerity during the last financial crisis and it's now starting to talk about a re-tightening of European fiscal policy, with Spain as its primary target. Naturally, the Spanish government is less than happy about this. 

Cousas de Galiza

There was some sort of film being produced in Pontevedra city yesterday. Apparently set in Argentina decades ago, it involved a few classic cars and several well-dressed extras:-

One thing was confirmed . . . Filming involves both a lot of waiting around and more ancillary people that you can probably imagine. Not to mention the closing of my regular lunchtime terraza. I assume all masks were removed before the cameras rolled, raising the questions of whether the actors had a dispensation in respect of the law and how many would pass on Covid. 

The UK and Brexit 

The Brexit exodus will fundamentally reshape the UK economy, it's said by one observer. . .  The dearth of EU workers due to lower rates of immigration will be the biggest force in the economy over the next decade:-

First, wages will start to accelerate significantly. 

Secondly, we'll see huge investment in automation. As workers become more scarce and more costly, there'll be a huge incentive to invest more in machines.

Finally, there'll be a squeeze in profitability, especially in labour intensive industries. Whole industries have been built on the back of an endless supply of cheap labour. Many of these will have to scale back, most obviously in the already tough retail sector.  

Inevitably, the sudden shortage of people will produce some winners - mainly lower paid workers - and some losers - mainly company owners and shareholders. But it will surely play out in ways that are unpredictable.

France

As you'd expect . . . France has urged the European Commission to assume new powers to regulate football. . .  Ministers pressed their case for the EU to wrench football in particular and sport in general out of the hands of capitalists and to place it under bureaucratic control. In short, more power to the Brussels technocrats, managed by France.

English

Is it the idiosyncratic spelling or the grammar which is the main problem for students? See the article below.

Finally  . . . 

It seems there's a 4th type of coffee - The Stenophylla bean from Sierra Leone. This country is next door to Liberia but it this bean isn’t the Liberica vaariety. It's yet to make it to Wikipedia but here's something on it. It turns out there are 124 varieties of coffee bean.

THE ARTICLE  

Grammar, not spelling, is the true impediment to clear expression. Many are those who have wished to simplify English, but their efforts are misguided. Education is the correct answer:  Jane Shilling, The Telegraph.

Prince Philip’s remarkable range of causes and passions has been exhaustively anatomised in the past week. But one that seems to have been largely overlooked was his interest in language reform. A former patron of the Simplified Spelling Society (now the English Spelling Society), he expressed his views in a 1964 interview: “I would like very much to see a simplified version of spelling introduced for English… as a medium for international communication.”

Over the years, the bee of spelling reform has buzzed in a host of highly distinguished bonnets, including those of Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell. But one of the impediments to a more rational orthography is that even within the reform movement, no one seems able to agree on what Simplified English should look like. This month the International English Spelling Congress settled after lengthy discussion on Traditional Spelling Revised (TSR). A “further period of consultation” is planned, so it may be some time before Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale appears thus in our poetry books:

’Tis not throo envy of thy happy lot,

But being so happy in thine happiness,

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodius plot 

Of beechen green, and shaddoes numberless,

Singest of summer in fuul-throated eez.*

Among the babel of world languages, English is unusual in having no academy to regulate its written form. But even where such institutions exist, the process of reform can be subject to sturdy resistance.

One way and another, the chances of a comprehensive overhaul of English spelling seem slim. Which is not to say that our language is fixed; only that it is more likely to change by evolution than revolution. There was a good deal of huffing over the recent decision by Hull University to challenge the “homogenous North European, white, male, elite mode of expression dependent on a high level of technical proficiency in written and spoken English”. Having spent much of my working life involved in various ways with ideas of correct language, I was inclined to join the chorus of huff, only to reconsider.

Aside from the fact that language is a living entity, as mutable and adaptable to changing circumstance as any living thing, during my work over the past few years with university students on their academic writing, spelling has never proved a significant issue. Their problems are invariably with grammar and here, it strikes me, is the crux of the matter. Unorthodox spelling is rarely an impediment to clear expression; bad grammar invariably is.

The mastery of basic grammar is a superpower that every child should possess. If the rackers of orthography were to give up dancing on the pinhead of spelling and turn their campaigning energy to ensuring that every child left school with the ability to construct a correct sentence, the world of written English would be a better and (to borrow Hull University’s terminology) more inclusive place.

* The original.

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,—

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

 Covid

Spain: Not good news, especially for those of us senior citizens still waiting for our first jab.

Cosas de España

A worrying development.

Not very surprising to see the proposal for an exclusive European super-league being driven by the infamously greedy president of Real Madrid. He claims that there's a crisis in football, meaning that he and his billionaire colleagues aren't making enough money. Unlike the obscenely-paid players and their agents. Pérez is described in this article on the 12 men who've ruined football as 'the seedy face of a greedy game'.

Yesterday I cited 2 articles on reduced ethics in British public life. These were both from right-of-centre papers. Here's one from the left-of-centre Guardian, in which reference is made to (long-standing) Spanish corruption. Born of the system, not Catholic indulgence says the author.

A positive, if optimistic, development.

Cousas de Galiza   

I have 2 favourite local restaurants. Or, rather, non-restaurants. I've discovered their true status from the fact they're only allowed to stay open until 9pm, whereas true 'restaurants' in Galicia can now serve until 11pm, the hour of the curfew. The owner of one of  the places told me they'd missed out on the higher status because they couldn't meet just one of the numerous criteria. So, it’s classified as a tapas bar, which it demonstrably isn’t. As we know, the Spanish love their bureaucracy. Well, Spanish bureaucrats do, if not the rest of us. 

Incidentally, if restaurants can serve until 11pm, how do clients and staff avoid breaking  the curfew which starts at the same hour?

María's Level Ground: Day 16

Portugal

Portugal have gone up and down and up again in the Covid performance stakes. Right now - after a massive post-Xmas surge - it's again achieving a low level of infections and deaths. As is Galicia. So why, some ask, is the border between us being kept closed?

English

Centuries ago, Italians in the same building began to work together in business and then eat together. These became known - in the English version - as 'companies'. From the Latin and Italian for ‘bread-mate/with bread' - companio and con pane. 

Quotes of the Week 

On the proposal to form a breakaway super-league of top European football clubs:- 

1. This foetid rapacity is entirely consistent with the spirit of much modern football.

2. If the European Super League is too greedy a plan for an organisation as notoriously mercenary as Uefa, then it’s odds-on that it pretty much crosses the line for everyone else. Even MPs, whose tolerance for things venal has been known to be on the high side.

Finally  . . . 

Youtube's algorithm has introduce this singer to me, for which I am grateful. Here she is with an old standard, in 'gypsy jazz' style. Of which this is a better example. Zoom concert early next month.

Gypsy jazz was a feature on British TV during my youth, when Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli were regular performers. Bear in mind Reinhardt only had two fingers on this right hand. Plus a thumb.

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid

Passports: A valid point? To understand the dangers of Covid passports, simply imagine an obesity equivalent. The Government should not let its drive for health certification stall at Covid-19 passports. If it is serious about saving lives and promoting personal responsibility then it must target the avoidable and identifiable disease of obesity. It’s an absurd idea, of course. Yet as a thought experiment, it perfectly illustrates the dangers of handing such powers over to government. . . . Please, given what is at stake in the complex relationship between citizen and Government, let us all tread cautiously and be careful what we wish for.

Spain: Goodish news: The 4th wave is progressing slower than the previous 3.

Cosas de España

You’ll need to quarantine if you come to Spain from any of these 12 countries.

Lo and behold . . . Suddenly there's been a lot of Brits wanting to regularise their legal situation in Spain - the ones who'd learned what Brexit was bringing down the track. But the number is small compared with the total believed to be living below the horizon. Perhaps the others didn't see the warnings. Or just ignored them. If they're still here, it'll be interesting to see what happens to them. The Spanish government has said, understandably, that there won't be a witch-hunt. But what it says and what it does are not necessarily the same thing. As we've seen with residence papers and the right to re-enter Spain after an absence in the UK. Here and here are relevant articles from The Olive Press.

Spain's most celebrated foreigner right know is probably the Madrid-based concert pianist James Rhodes, who avers that everything in Spain is better than in the UK. And then there's this. I recently cited this piece on JR by the rather more experienced/balanced/nuanced Guy Hedgecoe, who also lives in/near Madrid.

Cousas de Galiza  

Spain and Portugal have again prolonged their border controls, this time until at least May 3. But that's not too far away, so fingers crossed I can go there again soon.

María's Level Ground: Days 14 & 15

The UK

Even chimps grasp guilt. Shameless elites need to follow their example. See the full article here and another one on the same theme below, both from high-of-centre newspapers generally supportive of Conservative administrations.

I guess the opening pitch of the Times article applies at least equally to Spain.

Another good question: Can Northern Ireland survive Brexit?     

The Way of the World

How cheering that a gym worker has won £6,000 after her boss bragged in front of her that he and his partner “go for it every night of the week”. An employment tribunal her awarded compensation for the injury to her feelings. I’m now off to my solicitors because I’m clearly due a bumper payout.

English

In the 14th century, the suspension chains of wagons were replaced my leather straps, invented in the Hungarian city of Kocs. The wagons were known as kocsi szekér, the origin of the word 'coach'.

Finally  . . . 

The famous film ‘High Noon’   . . .  in Hispanoamérica: A la hora señalada. In Spain: Solo ante el Peligro.  Why??

US regulators have warned parents and pet owners that Peloton machines pose a “serious risk” in homes, after 39 'incidents', including one death. Is it too much to hope this presages the death of the TV ad which annoys me so much?

ARTICLES  

The conduct of David Cameron is a case study in shamelessness. It appears that personal interests have been allowed into the heart of government under the guise of public service: Nick Timothy. The Telegraph.

Having set out to “detoxify” the Tories, and disassociate himself from the shame of many Conservatives in the 1990s, David Cameron increasingly exemplifies what he once sought to purge. His recent conduct is a case study of the rapaciousness and shamelessness he used to condemn.

The Greensill affair, and the controversies spinning out from it, is complex. But the theme that runs through each subplot is the abuse of the supposedly noble calling of public service. There remain many unanswered questions and much information we do not yet know, but the facts established tell a miserable story of public servants tempted by the prospect of private gain, and private interests masquerading as public service.

Lex Greensill, a wealthy business figure, was invited into government by the then Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Heywood, who had worked with Greensill in the City. Mr Greensill promised to sort out the problem of the public sector making late payments to suppliers using “reverse factoring”. His firm would pay suppliers on behalf of public sector customers, early and in full, and retrieve the cost – with fees charged to the taxpayer – from those customers later.

Questions remain about Mr Greensill’s appointment, including about the process, who approved it and to whom Mr Greensill reported. But we know a series of conflicts of interest followed and that a position of supposed public service was abused. Mr Greensill was given a desk in the Cabinet Office, a government phone number and business cards describing him as “Senior Adviser, Prime Minister’s Office”. David Cameron singled him out for praise at a business conference. Downing Street officials introduced him to White House counterparts. Government departments and public services were encouraged to participate in his scheme. Senior officials were authorised to work for his business while still in government employment.

All of these facts are unusual and suspicious. Even aside from the special access and favours awarded to Mr Greensill, why was his solution to the late payments problem accepted with so few questions? As Iain Martin, a chronicler of the financial crash, has pointed out, 85 per cent of invoices are now paid by Whitehall within five days, and more than 97 per cent within 30. The problem that supposedly could only be fixed by Mr Greensill was fixed anyway without him.

Ministers and officials ought to have known that supply chain financing has been connected to egregious examples of accounting tricks and alleged fraud. The outsourcing company Carillion, for example, used supply chain financing to disguise its debts and deployed reverse factoring to hold on to income for longer, allowing it to report higher cash flows and inflate executive pay without justification.

Amid a great scandal, Carillion went bust, and something similar appears to have occurred with Greensill. Investigations suggest that the company did not only lend to its clients against the security of invoices for work already completed or even contracted, but against “prospective receivables” that the company had not yet generated, and indeed might never generate. Lex Greensill used this “creative accounting” to win the confidence of international investors, buy a bank and run four private jets.

He also used it, at some as yet unknown stage, to win the confidence of Mr Cameron, who really should have asked questions, if not about how this young business could sustain four private aircraft then about why, in any normal scenario, he might make up to $60 million – and make regular personal use of those jets – in return for 25 days of work a year.

It is probably unreasonable to expect Mr Cameron to have known the details of the more worrying aspects of Greensill’s financing. But it is not unreasonable to think he should have asked questions, and had qualms, about his mission. This, before the company started to collapse, was to help achieve the needless financialisation of various public assets, and to make a profit doing so from public funds.

For it was not just supply chain finance at stake. Mr Cameron justified lobbying on behalf of Greensill’s Earnd scheme because it helped public sector workers access their pay daily, rather than waiting until payday. He called this an “antidote to exploitative payday lending schemes”, but it was just a posh version of the same thing. Participants would not have paid interest on their advances in wages, it is true, but Greensill would have taken a cut from their employer – which could only have come from the overall wage bill or other publicly funded budgets – and converted the future payments into bonds it could sell on to banks. When Cameron pitched Earnd to Australian ministers, they rejected it, reportedly because it was too similar to a payday lending scheme.

This needless financialisation of public assets was purportedly motivated by propriety and public service, but in reality the motive was profit and personal wealth. And this is the real problem with the Greensill affair. Yes, there are questions about the accountability of the civil service, about lobbying, the professional roles taken by former ministers and officials, and decisions made by ministers and officials as Mr Cameron lobbied them. All these questions need to be answered and the issues and problems that arise must be addressed.

But the true scandal is about the corruption of public service for private gain. It is about how public servants appear to have made decisions because of the prospect of personal advantage. It is about how private interests have been allowed into the heart of government as they pretended to be motivated by public service. And it is about an attitude towards public assets – including even NHS employment data and the wages of public sector workers – that sees those assets reduced to a commodity that can be bought and sold, at a profit, and not just without public benefit but at the cost of the taxpayer.

Thanks to this culture, the legacy and reputation of one former prime minister lies in tatters. If Boris Johnson wants to avoid the same fate, he will need to investigate the Greensill affair without fear or favour, make sure his own ministers, advisers and officials are whiter than white, and eliminate the spectre of corruption from British public life. There are few things more serious.

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid

Is it really necessary to wait for your café/bar/restaurant table to be cleaned before you can even sit next to it? Apparently not. But is it, nonetheless, one of those things that'll  probably take a long time disappearing.?

A glint of hope -  Israel's Health Minister declared that starting today, the wearing of masks outside will no longer be required.

Another analysis of Sweden's record.

https://unherd.com/2021/04/did-sweden-get-covid-wrong/

A criminal opportunity? The pandemic and the potential economic and social fallout expected to follow threaten to create ideal conditions for organised crime to spread and take hold in the EU and beyond. Click here for more on this.

Meanwhile . . . Vicarish resistance to vaccine 'passports' in the UK.

Cosas de España

A Covid negative: Beware graphite.

A Covid positive: Home-grown vaccines
Isabella of Castilla is said to be known in these parts as Isabella the Smelly. Could be worse.

There's an awful lot of Romanians in Spain. Sadly, a handful of them seem to specialise in selling children. Giving the rest of them a bad name, of course. As drunken Brits (hooliganes) do for us Brits.

Cousas de Galiza  

You don't normally associate Don Quijote with Galicia but there is a latter-day connection. Click here for a tale of Oseira, O Carballiño and As Regadas, inter alia

I've cited the Oseira monastery thrice - here, here and here.

The UK

The crumbling faith in No10’s lockdown strategy is turning the public into conspiracy theorists. See the article below.

The EU

Things might be looking up on the vaccine front.

But down for Airbnb.

The Way of the World

We may be seeing the end of nearly three centuries during which free thought, reason, science, education, commerce and technology seemed to have given Europe and its offshoots not only material power but also intellectual leadership.  . .  . Now we are playing with fire. Instead of the Enlightenment narrative of progress, we see a nihilistic rejection of history and culture, creating an intellectual and moral void. See the 2nd aarticle below.

Quotes of the Week, both about the British prime minister: 

1. The political crisis is yet to be invented that doesn't allow Boris Johnson to imagine himself a hero of history or classical myth.

2. It’s hard to lose trust when no one trusted you to start with.

Finally  . . . 

See the 3rd article below for more on the Colin the Cake war. 

ARTICLES 

1. Crumbling faith in No10’s lockdown strategy is turning the public into conspiracy theorists. It was baffling when the Prime Minister decided to trash the British vaccine programme, which is seen as a modern miracle: Janet Daley 

So which is it? Is the UK vaccine rollout a stunning, world-beating success – resulting in the radical reduction of cases, hospital admissions and deaths which can be seen clearly in the daily recorded figures? Or is it largely irrelevant to what progress has been made in defeating the spread of the virus? Is it actually the case (verbatim from the Prime Minister): “that the reduction in hospitalisations and in deaths and in infections has not been achieved by the new vaccination programme”? It depends on whether you listen to Boris Johnson before or after the middle of last week.

Until Black Tuesday, when the Prime Minister, for reasons known only to himself and presumably the person (or people) who told him to say it, decided to trash his own Government’s greatest triumph – thus not only committing a bizarre act of political self-harm but, more seriously, attempting to undermine public morale and national pride – the British vaccine programme was seen as a modern miracle.

It was an unprecedented achievement not just of scientific research, but of the dedication of medical staff, the public-spirited voluntary efforts of thousands of ordinary people, and the willing cooperation of the great majority of the population who made the rational, responsible decision to accept vaccination. Not only was what Mr Johnson said on that last fateful Tuesday damaging to confidence in this most crucially important Government policy, but it was factually wrong – as any number of public health officials and medical experts queued up immediately to make clear.

What on earth was he thinking? And since he does not make pronouncements of this kind without consultation – what on earth were the motives of those presumed “experts” who must have advised him to make it? (Who were obviously not the ones who leapt into the arena to contradict him.) The context is important: the Prime Minister was comparing the impact of the vaccination programme with that of lockdown, claiming that the former was negligible (indeed, virtually non-existent) by comparison with the latter.

Maybe this is the key. He was trying to rescue the viability of lockdown which might otherwise have lost its force in the great vaccine rollout exultation. That argument might have been convincing if he had said that, in the legitimate national celebration over vaccinations, we must not lose sight of the need to maintain those lockdown restrictions which are still necessary at present...blah-blah. But he didn’t say that.

What he did say seemed to imply that no vaccination programme – however comprehensive – could provide a solution to the problem and a return to genuine (not “new”) normal life. And that is a direct contradiction to what was popularly understood to be the promise from the medical and scientific experts who told us – way back in the era when our lives were first taken away – that the only ultimate answer to this dilemma lay in finding a vaccine.

Now we have not just “a vaccine” but a quiverful of them, all of which seem to be remarkably effective – more so than most of the vaccines used against other diseases (even though the broadcast media insist that every new variant may, just possibly, prove resistant, etc etc). Could this be part of the problem? Were the experts taken by surprise when this sudden avalanche of vaccines arrived on the scene so quickly that they felt in danger of losing control of the discourse – and their ability to hold down public expectations?

The most charitable explanation of Mr Johnson’s comment, and presumably the advice that drove it, is that some of the people in charge believed there was a real risk that the optimism would get out of hand and the whole apparatus of regulation would collapse. In their panic, they urged him to say something that was misleading, illogical and self-defeating: in effect, encouraging vaccine scepticism and undermining the Government’s own “get the jab” campaign.

But in the longer term, this unfortunate and gratuitous intervention could do greater damage than any immediate effect it might have on vaccine take-up. (In fact, this appears to be negligible: people are just as eager for the jabs as ever, partly because they have been told they might not be able to travel or get into the pub without them.)

In the last week, I have heard more people express serious suspicion about the Government’s authoritarian motives than at any time since this whole crisis began. Because the Prime Minister himself seemed to fling the whole question of vaccine efficacy out of the window – when it had once been presented as the be-all and end-all of pandemic solutions – there is now grave disquiet among sensible, thinking parts of the population about where this is all going and what is driving it.

What would once have been thought the stuff of cult paranoia is now commonplace conversation in socially enlightened circles. The most common refrain is to the effect that either the Government and its experts were lying then, or they are lying now: that there is something sinister about their desire to maintain a pretext for totalitarian measures.

For what it is worth, I personally do not believe that there is a cabal of Maoists at the top level of the Government who wish to maintain repressive social controls forever. But I am finding it harder and harder to argue with the people who do. There is now a real sense that frightening the population into obedience is more important than telling the truth, and that faith in the Government’s promises – even in a crisis – is for mugs.

There is one possible explanation which is less diabolical but equally destructive: that the Government has taken account of the fear that still prevails in the country and wants to address it. To those who tell the opinion polls that they do not want to be set free yet, reassurance is being offered.

But anxiety is a natural (indeed, essential) part of the human apparatus. It cannot be extirpated but it can be inflamed to levels which eventually destroy the prospect of social well-being. Cancelling optimism is a dangerous game.

2. The West is playing with fire by rejecting the Enlightenment values that created it. British intellectuals are now at pains to deny that Western ideas or culture can claim any universal validity or special importance: Robert Tombs, the author of ‘The English and Their History’ and ‘The Sovereign Isle: Britain, Europe and Beyond’

Those of us who associated Prince Philip with a life of pomp, deference, polo and palaces have learnt that his early life was one of danger, disruption and tragedy. At the time of his birth, an influential best-seller was Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West – our present-day worries are nothing new. The First World War had shattered a two-century story of rising European power, wealth and cultural primacy. Revolution destroyed the Continent’s cosmopolitan aristocratic society. Economic turmoil undermined social stability. Fascism, a toxic hybrid of archaism and modernity, took hold in the cradles of European culture, shaking its moral foundations. For many intellectuals, the liberal order was doomed.

But of course it wasn’t. The hard-fought victory of 1945 brought a period of relative stability. Though overshadowed by the Cold War stand-off between the United States and the USSR, it was a time of unequalled peace and prosperity for Britain and Europe. The collapse of the Communist bloc in the 1980s and 1990s created a short period of euphoria, when the apparent triumph of Western liberalism even seemed to herald “the end of history” through “the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”, in the words of the historian Francis Fukuyama. Only Western ideas, it seemed, provided a coherent blueprint for human progress.

But almost at once, instead of global harmony there began another phase of challenges to Western assumptions, not least from within.

We may be seeing the end of nearly three centuries during which free thought, reason, science, education, commerce and technology seemed to have given Europe and its offshoots not only material power but also intellectual leadership. The Industrial Revolution gave them the means and the confidence to extend and sometimes impose their model as the universal standard of modernity and progress.

Though forms might vary (the British and French empires were significantly different as was the later American hegemony) they had in common what has been called “liberal imperialism”: the belief that the West, which had been first in discovering Enlightenment values, had the right and even duty to spread them in what the French called a “civilising mission”.

Though it has become common to describe these empires solely in terms of conquest, exploitation, oppression and resistance, they could not have functioned without a wide degree of acceptance and even eager collaboration among their subjects. When those subjects eventually threw off imperial rule, it was usually in the name of the West’s own proclaimed values of democracy, liberty and equality.

Europe shrank, as its imperial structures unravelled in the 1950s and 1960s. But at first, this seemed less than revolutionary. It could even seem to be the fulfilment of Western ideas. The British Crown presided over independence ceremonies designed to celebrate former colonies becoming fully fledged members of the Western world. The Commonwealth was the expression of this aspiration. Leaders of new nations in Africa and Asia stepped into the shoes of colonial rulers, inheriting their institutions, laws and infrastructure, and maintaining close ties. Even for its enemies, empire had been the route to modernisation and statehood.

Moreover, the United States took over the role of the European empires in maintaining a liberal world order, based on new post-imperial institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation. The European Economic Community seemed to reinvigorate the ambitions of a defeated Europe. Even the Communist enemy, from South America to China, was motivated by a rival variant of Western universalism born of the French Revolution and German idealist philosophy, and equally based on a rationalist view of progress.

In short, from the 18th century to the end of the 20th, the history of the world seemed to have merged into the history of the West. When I read history at Cambridge in the early 1970s, one of the most popular papers, covering world history, was unashamedly entitled “The Expansion of Europe”. The Enlightenment provided a universal narrative, in which it was assumed that sooner or later every people would embrace the model of modernity.

That intellectual world has vanished. We have entered into another “Decline of the West”, in which again external and internal forces are engaged. The West has lost the technological, economic and organisational advantages it had enjoyed for two centuries as a result of early industrialisation. The rest of the world has largely caught up, not least due to a Western policy of encouraging economic development. Hence the total inability to impose order on the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, once acquiescent in Western authority.

Moreover, the self-confidence – arrogance if you prefer – of the West has been rejected by much of its own intelligentsia. This is the real meaning of the vogue for cultural and intellectual “decolonisation”, and the reason why it is extended beyond history and literature, to music, science and even mathematics.

What is being denied is that Western ideas or culture can claim any universal validity or special importance. Instead, they are attacked as hypocritical, morally corrupt and oppressive: John Locke, theorist of political rights, benefited from the slave trade; David Hume, a founder of modern ideas of the self, was a racist; Mozart and Beethoven wrote during “the age of slavery”.

Our museums are products of empire, our National Trust treasures are the fruits of slave labour, and our universities, churches and charitable foundations, tarred with the same brush, make fulsome expressions of shame.

If these were just academic games, they might give rise to lively seminar discussions and even provide some insights of value, discovering other intellectual traditions and realising that Europe was not the source of all knowledge or wisdom. That process, indeed, has been going on for generations.

But now we are playing with fire. Instead of the Enlightenment narrative of progress, we see a nihilistic rejection of history and culture, creating an intellectual and moral void.

Is progress a myth? In many ways, yes, but it may be a myth we need. Without it, human rights, social justice, racial equality and ecological responsibility would be among the first casualties.

Britain and its allies may have to navigate something like the pre-Enlightenment world in which great regional powers – still largely the same ones today – lacked any sense of cultural affinity and had nothing in common but mutual suspicion and rivalry. Growing forces in the world, including Chinese nationalism, militant Hinduism, and fundamentalist Islam, are not merely resistant to Western ideas, but indifferent to them.

For the first time for more than two centuries, the world is not being led by some version of the Enlightenment. Instead of enjoying “the end of history”, we are threatened by what Samuel Huntingdon called the “clash of civilisations”.

Was Spengler just a century before his time in announcing the West’s decline? Certainly, we can no longer assume that the world is moving inevitably in our direction. If we continue to spurn our own history, culture and ideas, how could we expect it to be otherwise?

3. Colin the Caterpillar vs Cuthbert, Curly and Wiggles: we decide which tastes best. In the battle of the chocolate caterpillars, M&S has stiff competition from all the supermarkets. Let the taste test begin...

In the tale of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, along with an ice-cream cone, a pickle, a slice each of Swiss cheese and salami, a lollipop, a wedge of cherry pie, a sausage, cupcake and a slice of watermelon, our ravenous protagonist devours a piece of chocolate cake. 

It is perhaps no coincidence that the latter has become synonymous with the insect (and visa versa), and subsequently that a caterpillar-shaped sponge is often the most familiar guest at birthday parties and office celebrations across the land. 

Nor is it surprising that the news of Marks & Spencer taking Aldi to court in a bid to protect its Colin the Caterpillar cake has provoked such an uproar.

The retailer has accused the discounter chain of riding on its reputational coat-tails after Aldi began selling its own Cuthbert the Caterpillar cake, which looks very similar. But since M&S launched Colin (a chocolate-coated sponge cake bearing buttercream, topped with sweets and fronted by a smiling white-chocolate face) some 30 years ago, similar critters have emerged, and not only from the German discount store.

From Cuthbert and Wiggles to Curly and Carl the free-from caterpillar, there are cute-faced chocolate Swiss rolls in almost every supermarket – and each has a band of fervently loyal supporters. 

But how do they compare to each other? Does Colin hold the gold standard when it comes to softness of sponge and flavour of edible boot? Are the sprinkles on Curly superior to those adorning Morris? 

While Aldi has not stocked its Cuthbert cake since mid-February and so was sadly unavailable for review, we netted the best of the rest and put them to the test.  

Colin the Caterpillar, £7, M&S

With reassuring heft, thick, white-chocolate feet and a slightly unsettling button eyes, Colin’s iconic look remains, in my eyes, unbeaten. His ridged back, decorated simply with green and yellow sugared chocolates, has a good chocolate-to-cake ratio, the thick shell revealing swirls of Swiss roll and rich chocolate buttercream. He tastes light, moist and gloriously chocolatey.

Taste test score: 5/5

Looks: 5/5

Wiggles the Caterpillar, £6, Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s cake is perhaps the closest in resemblance to Colin among today's line up, featuring a white-chocolate face with milk-button eyes, and even a little tongue poking out. The body, decorated with similar chocolate sweets and the addition of hundreds and thousands, looks a little less luxurious than Colin, and the feet are considerably smaller. The taste is lacklustre; thin chocolate, dry cake and little flavour beyond sugar.

Taste test score: 2/5

Looks: 3/5

Curly the Caterpillar Cake, £6, Tesco

I won’t lie; I am quite partial to a fondant face. Curly’s rather cute, almost bashful little smile is set in a thick orange fondant – great for kids. He’s adorned generously in chocolate sweets, white chocolate stripes and little coloured chewy things which get stuck in your teeth. The flavour, sadly, is lacking. The chocolate is rather thin, the cake dry and the buttercream granular, sugary and dull. 

Taste test score: 2/5

Looks: 4/5

Carl the free-from Caterpillar Cake, £6, Tesco

One has to pity the recipient of this gluten-free caterpillar. Covered in chewy fondant icing and sporting a, quite frankly, terrifying orange fondant face, this larva must be that of a moth. Cutting into it reveals that the cake is a conventional layered chocolate sponge with a buttercream centre, rather than the usual Swiss roll swirl. That said, it doesn’t taste awful, especially for a gluten-free cake.  

Taste test score: 2.5/5

Looks: 1/5

Cecil the Caterpillar, £7, Waitrose

With a thick, white-chocolate face and expressive fondant eyes, a generous chocolate-coated body (longer and thicker than Colin), and decorated with chocolate sweets and white chocolate stripes, Waitrose certainly means business with this caterpillar. Decapitating it reveals an extra layer of buttercream coating the light chocolate Swiss roll, wonderfully rich and smooth. Colin, you have competition in the taste stakes. 

Taste test score: 5/5

Looks: 5/5

Morris the Caterpillar cake, £6, Morrisons

Morris wins a point for the most (or should that be least?) inspired name. I also like the swirl of chocolate-coated buttercream that snakes down his body, studded with sweets and coloured sugar, providing an extra mouthful of rich buttercream. The cake is a little dry and the white chocolate face and feet are no match for Colin’s (in terms of both taste and size), letting him down. 

Taste test score: 3/5

Looks: 2/5

Clyde the Caterpillar cake, £5.92, Asda

Clyde seems a gentle soul; you can tell by the sweet little fringe (or droopy antennae, possibly) that frames his face in green fondant. He’s certainly dressed to the nines, sporting funky orange fondant boots and multicoloured sugar decorations. Though the chocolate isn’t the best quality and the cake is nondescript, he’s generous on the buttercream, and everyone knows that’s the best bit. 

Taste test score: 4/5

Looks: 4/5

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid

The EU is working on a ‘Digital Green Certificate’. The regulation on this is currently on its way through EU institutions and is expected to be approved in June, to be operational by the end of that month. It's expected to show that EU citizens have been vaccinated against Coronavirus, or have had a negative diagnostic test, or have proof of having recovered from the disease and have antibodies. It will come in the form of a free QR code. It is, of course, expected to ease free movement within the EU and the Schengen Area. 

Spain has said that, if EU citizens they can show this certificate, they won't be required to provide proof of a negative PCR test or to quarantine upon arrival. Tourism is expected to benefit from the development.

Cosas de España

El Pais asks a good question here re a Spanish success story.

Until today I only knew of Arabica and Robusta coffee beans but this article cites a 3rd type - Liberica. Another article advises that Arabica beans - more expensive on the world market - have a milder taste and contain c.70% less caffeine than Robusta beans. And that they come mostly from South American countries. As I know from living there, a major producer of Robusta beans is Indonesia (of Java Coffee fame). Another thing I didn't know is that Spain is the only European country in which coffee - of the superior Arabica variety - is grown. See the estimable Max Abroad on this here.

Cousas de Galiza  

During my first 20 years here - and despite driving thousands o kilometres around Spain -  I was never breathalysed once. But, in the last 6 months, Ive been done twice, each time negative. Both tests took place around 9m, an oddly early time for the patrols to be set up. I strongly suspect at least one Covid factor at work - a 10pm curfew - but there might well be others. Such as the police having a lot less to do right now.

Way back in the 1370's a son of the English king Edward 3 - John o’ Gaunt - made a claim to the crown of Castilla, by virtue of his marriage to a Spanish lady. The real king -  John of Trastámara - declined to agree, so they decided to fight it out. JoG sailed with his army to Iberia where JoT prepared to face him on the Portuguese border, after a landing in that country. But  . . . he was wrong-footed by John's decision to invade Galicia, the most distant and disaffected of Castile's then kingdoms. There . . . JoG set up a rudimentary court and chancery in Ourense and received the submission of the Galician nobility and most of the towns of Galicia, though they made their homage to him conditional on his being recognised as king by the rest of Castile' . Which, sadly, never came to pass and so the Galicians never became British . . .

María's Level Ground: Days 12 & 13   

The UK

Astonishingly, The latest YouGov poll gives the Conservatives a commanding lead of 43 %, with Labour’s share of the vote slipping to its lowest level under Keir Starmer yet, at 29%. Possibly even more surprising is that Boris Johnson still leads in the “best Prime Minister” stakes. A third of respondents say he would make the better head of government than the Labour leader.

Which reminds me . . . An ex-Conservative minister published his diary last week. He tells us that Johnson once asked him why the world's leaders thought he was a fool. To which he replied, sin pelos en la lengua: 'Just look in the fucking mirror'.

English 

Can you have English as the de facto language of 446 million people following Brexit?, asks Lenox Napier here.

Quote of the Week

Re the negotiations between the UK and the EU on revision of the troublesome Northern Ireland Protocol: The latest meeting “took place in a constructive, solution-driven atmosphere”, which is diplomat-speak for "The parties were restrained from ripping each other’s throats out". 

Finally  . . . 

I've learned 3 cake facts this week:-

1. There's something called the Colin the Caterpillar cake, possibly originally brought out years ago by Marks & Spencer(M&S)

2. All the major UK supermarkets sell a version of this, and

3. M&S are suing Aldi in respect of its knock-off of the cake. Which presumably makes sense to M&S, if not to the rest of us

See here for the details and images.

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' 

NOTE: Info on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid

Clots: Scientists insist that he risk of severe cerebral blood clots following Covid-19 is about 8 times greater than that associated with having the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Researchers said the figures, taken from a database of more than half a million Covid-19 cases in the US, should help regulators and the public to better understand the “risk-benefit question” when looking at the side effects of vaccines.

Denmark: Has suspended use of the AZ vaccine. As with all other related decisions, could this possibly be because it’d be easier to sue for negligence, say, in respect of a clot death than a Covid death? 

Spain

1. Bad news: Spain reports more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases as the 4th wave takes hold

2. Less bad news: While contagion rates are rising in most regions, they're falling in Valencia, Galicia and Murcia, where the epidemic is more under control

Click here for more on this.

Analysis: A few days ago. I wrote that: Some time in the future, hard lessons will be learned from the last 15 months. The biggest, perhaps, is that it must never be allowed to happen again. Quicker, better action will be necessary the minute a new dangerous virus emerges. Probably based on Asian models. Now, the Chief Economics Commentator of the Financial Times has written: After this is over, we need to learn further lessons to ensure such a disaster is not repeated. But the big lesson when dealing with such a highly infectious disease is already clear: suppress it quickly, by controlling both the borders and the domestic spread. This is the way to return quickly to a relatively normal life. If one fails to achieve this, all options become horrible. Nice to be endorsed. Not that it’s a hugely unique view.

See a couple of relevant - and opposing? - views below.

Cosas de España

Our State of Alarm will end on May 9 but what happens thereafter is none too clear. National restrictions will end but regional restrictions won't. On the other hand, the government will take regions to court if they exceed their authority, whatever that actually is. My big questions: Will I be allowed to leave Galicia and will my daughter be allowed to come here from Madrid? No one currently knows, of course. And I fear the Galician government will want to retain - legally or illegally - its current 'superior' position. Meanwhile, several regions are calling for the State of Alarm to be extended, presumably because they aren't legal allowed to implement what it entails. All very confusing. A reflection, I guess, of the fact that this is a pseudo federal state. Lawyers  of the Constitutional variety look like being kept happy,

Mark Stücklin 

1. Good news for spouses of EU citizens re the need for a Spanish visa.

2. Another pot at ‘Spain’s squatter-friendly judicial system’.

Trivia: I bought J&J/Janssen product yesterday and noted the price had tripled since the last time I did so. Apparently because the company attained price freedom after the government  - as an austerity measure - dropped it from its schedule of subsidised medicines, 

Cousas de Galiza 

I'd like to re-do the camino from Tui, on the border with Portugal, first done in 2009. Trouble is - there's no direct train or bus service to Tui, 46km from Pontevedra. Normally, I'd take the Oporto airport bus and alight in Valença in Portugal on the other side of the river Miño and then walk back to Tui across the bridge between the towns. But this option isn't on the cards right now. And probably won't be even when/if the State of Alarm is lifted on May 9. So, I'll go to Vigo and cadge a lift from a friend there. Tough times.

An Irishman who’s just taken up residence in Pontevedra had an article yesterday in the Voz de Galicia on Ugliness(Feismo) in Pontevedra city. Ironically, I’m not aware that anyone Spanish in Pontevedra knows I’ve been writing about the place for 20 years. Which must say something . . .

The UK

Horses for courses. If your country had crises with the EU, Ireland, Scotland and a pandemic, would your first choice of Prime Minister be an inveterate liar with the image of a buffoonish scarecrow?

As regards Scotland . . . A couple of nice questions: Will an independent, 'democratic' Scotland allow its Border Counties to have a referendum on returning to Cumbria and Northumberland in England? If not, why not?

Here in Spain, I'd guess the same questions would arise in respect of Navarra in an independent Basque Country. Or Pontevedra Province in an independent Galiza . . .

Religious Nutters/Crooks Corner

A few days ago I wondered if John Wycliffe had been the first victim of cancel culture. It turns out that the televangelist and scam artist Jim Bakker thinks he was . . .

Finally  . . . 

I’m re-seeding the lawn ruined a few months ago by the JCB that went into my neighbour’s garden. The volume of small stones led me to get this explanation of their ubiquity: Stones are better conductors of heat than soil, so a stone conducts heat away from the warmer soil beneath it. Over a period of time this repeated freezing, expanding, upward push, and filling underneath eventually shoves the stones to the surface. More on this here.

COVID OVERVIEWS

1. Lessons brutally learned: Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times

Few in [the UK] government come out of this story well. In particular, there was a failure to understand what the Chinese, New Zealanders, South Koreans, Taiwanese and Vietnamese understood—namely, that there is no trade-off between suppressing the illness and the health of the economy. 

The evidence on this is quite clear: other things being equal, countries that suppressed the disease were also more economically successful. As I pointed out in the FT, the explanation for this lack of a trade-off is also reasonably evident. People will not go back to their normal lives in the midst of a raging pandemic, especially when there is also a high death rate. The idea that the economy could ride this out while we sought “herd immunity” was ridiculous.

After this is over, we need to learn further lessons to ensure such a disaster is not repeated. But the big lesson when dealing with such a highly infectious disease is already clear, in my view: suppress it quickly, by controlling both the borders and the domestic spread. This is the way to return quickly to a relatively normal life. If one fails to achieve this, all options become horrible.

2. Striking the balance: Charles Goodhart, emeritus professor, LSE

The essay that you [Prospect magazine] published on Covid-19 did not mention the failure [by the UK government] during the first few months to protect care homes—by far the most scandalous occurrence of the epidemic.  

But the real question is how far there is a trade-off between shutting down the economy and society on the one hand and defeating the virus on the other. Of course there is such a trade-off. The decline in output in the first half of 2020 was the most severe in living memory. If there had been no trade-off, we would have maintained the most severe lockdown right from the outset until everybody was vaccinated. But that would have been even more disastrous.  

Partly in order to encourage people to maintain lockdown, the media has focused on regular league tables of hospitalisations and deaths. That, in turn, meant that it became politically and socially almost impossible to countenance a less locked down, “Swedish” approach. 

The correct statistic, however, is not the overall number of those dying after a positive test, but the excess deaths beyond those that could be expected at the time. The Covid deaths this winter have probably been somewhat offset by lower than usual deaths from ordinary flu: if you look at the figure for excess deaths over this period, it has been considerably less dramatic. 

Your authors imply that the politicians failed to introduce lockdown sufficiently early and severely. But given the enormous costs of lockdown, it is very difficult to be sure where the balance of advantage actually lies. Indeed, we cannot begin to make such estimates until the full consequences of all the measures undertaken have played out. It will be for historians to estimate whether what was done went too far in one direction or the other. It is far too early to jump to any such conclusions now.  

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' 

NOTE: Information can be found on Galicia here. Detailed info on Pontevedra in due course. 

My thanks to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for several of today's items.

Covid

The UK: 

1. Boris Johnson claimed last week that the reduction in infections, hospital admissions and deaths owed most to the lockdowns. But data analysis show this to be untrue. The rate of Covid-related hospital admissions fell by 75% in vaccinated 80-83-year-olds within 35 to 41 days of their first dose of the Pfizer jab. The rate of people getting Covid dropped by 70%, with the number of positive tests falling from 15.3 per 100,000 people to 4.6. The conclusion: The nationwide vaccination of older adults in England with the [Pfizer] vaccine reduced the burden of Covid-19.

2. A single case but  . . . Covid may have caused the tumours of a Hodgkin's Lymphoma  patient to vanish. Doctors said it could have sparked an "anti-tumour immune response" in the man.

Vaccine passports: Seven reasons why we should be worried about these.

Cosas de España

Good news for jobs, though possibly optimistic.

The role of new technologies in Spain's economic growth.

To give you an idea of how bad Vox is . . . The party is demanding removal of plaques commemorating the role of the International Brigades in defending the Spanish republic again Franco's nationalist fascists, assisted by Germany and Italy.

After Rome’s final collapse, a Visigoth city rose in Spain amid the resulting chaos. Click here for more on this.

Here and here are a couple of videos on a building which I feel everyone should see before they pop their clogs. Though not the cathedral plopped in the middle of it.

Cousas de Galiza 

In 1924, a young American photographer arrived in Vigo, Galicia, and she spent the next 2 years travelling around Galicia and taking pictures for The Hispanic Society of America. Click here for more on this. 

María's Level Ground: Days 10 & 11   Sad but true: At the rate vaccination is going, the lifting of the state of alarm practically guarantees another strong wave of contagion, especially in Madrid.

The UK

AEP goes full triumphal here . . . Britain’s economic resurgence has caught the whole world by surprise. The numbers all point to blistering growth as the hit from Brexit continues to diminish each month. You might be able to see the full article here.

The UK and Brexit 

From that source: It will take a generation to reach a useful economic verdict on Brexit. What is clear already is that the incessant high-decibel negativism of the London opinion machine has been exposed as ill-informed and hysterical. The British economy is doing just fine.  

  The EU

Ditto: Europe will rebound too, eventually. There is €500bn in pent-up household savings waiting to be spent. But vaccination paralysis in December and January is inflicting its long-tail damage today. April has turned into a lockdown wipe-out. Virologists in Germany, Italy, and France say politicians are fooling themselves in thinking they can reopen fully in May. The erratic on-again, off-again treatment of the AstraZeneca jab probably delays final reopening by yet another month due to the slower rollout and damage to vaccine confidence. The EU is now trapped by its zero-tolerance policy on rare blood clots, as if it had the luxury of treating vaccines like a routine drug when 3,000 Europeans a day are dying from Covid, many from blood clots caused by the disease itself.   

English 

The word ‘liberal' has  many meanings. That in Liberal Arts descends from the Latin for ‘Free’. As free men were allowed to study these in the Middle Ages.

Quote of the Week: A primary problem in our western cultures is that most people read news not for information but for affirmation. 

Finally  . . . 

When Chaucer penned this paeon of praise to April, there was no bloody Covid to worry about. But certainly fleas and lice and even the plague. I might have to confine my next camino to Galicia - Tui to Santiago - as I won't be able to travel to Navarra and Aragón.

The first bit of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

Middle English

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour,

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye

(so priketh hem Nature in hir corages),

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

Modern English

When April with his showers sweet with fruit

The drought of March has pierced unto the root

And bathed each vein with liquor that has power

To generate therein and sire the flower;

When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,

Quickened again, in every holt and heath,

The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun

Into the Ram one half his course has run,

And many little birds make melody

That sleep through all the night with open eye

(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-

Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage.

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' 

NOTE: If you want to know more about Galicia, click here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid  

Vaccines: Johnson & Johnson have announced they are going to now ‘proactively delay’ the rollout of their one-shot Covid-19 vaccine in Europe. It follows the USA regulators’ recommendation to pause its use because of possible links to rare blood clots.  

Spain: Spain’s immunisation goals face a new challenge, as the J&J/Janssen vaccine is put on hold.

The UK: New official figures show that almost a quarter of registered Covid deaths are people who are not dying from the disease. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 23% of coronavirus deaths registered are now people who have died "with" the virus rather than "from" an infection.

Sweden: The country which shunned the strict lockdowns that have choked much of the global economy, had a smaller increase in its 2020 overall mortality rate than most European countries. Infectious disease experts caution that the results cannot be interpreted as evidence that lockdowns were unnecessary but acknowledge they may indicate Sweden’s overall stance on fighting the pandemic 'had merits that are worth studying'. Especially in view of the country's current very low rates of cases and deaths, I guess.

Cosas de España/Galiza 

The highest number of foreigners here is of Romanians, followed by Moroccans and Brits. The ridiculously low official number for the latter is 381,448. This compares with the 350,000 who belong to just one local association.  Click here for more on this.

Having read often enough that Spain’s judiciary is not politically neutral, I was surprised to read here that: Three of the four Spanish judges’ associations, representing half of Spain’s judges, have denounced with Brussels the risk of violation of the rule of law posed by the legislative reforms promoted by the socialist PSOE government. But I guess it makes sense if the majority of Spain's judges are right-wing.

The UK and Brexit 

A common portrayal of Brexit is that it was a manifestation of Britain’s foolish view that it can stand alone, born out of a myth about how it won the Second World War. But it wasn’t as simple as that. Another way of looking at it is that the fears that led to the creation of the EU had simply lost their power for a lot of people.  

The EU

Not good news 1: Europe has only vaccinated 22% of its population, compared to 56% in the US and 59% in the UK. It must pick up the pace on vaccinations or risk losing out on a crucial second tourist season. European nations are struggling to open up their economies in the face of a 3rd Covid wave that has forced France and Germany to tighten restrictions.  If Europe continues at its current pace, it will only succeed in vaccinating three-quarters of its population by the end of July, with potential fallout for the euro as well as the region’s suffering tourist sector.

Not good  news 2: . . . Europe's plans to introduce "world-beating" apps to track and trace coronavirus cases was a disappointment. Vaccine passports are heading down a similar path. As European governments - in a bid to facilitate travel within the bloc for the summer - set about developing their own bits of tech to check whether people are vaccinated, tested, or recovered, familiar concerns over how those bits of tech will interact with each other are resurfacing.  Click here for more on this.

The USA

The actor who voiced the shopkeeper Apu on The Simpsons has offered an apology to “every single Indian person” amid claims the character had racist undertones. I guess we can now expect the same from the makers of Family Guy for all the stupid British accents and for portraying every Brit with crooked, buck teeth . . . Not.

China

The success of Beijing's lockdown pushed the West into an existential crisis. Now the capitalist world is winning. See the interesting article below.

The Way of the World/Social media

Looking backwards. . . Was Wycliffe the first famous person to be cancelled by his woke opponents? In his case, the Catholic Church.

Looking forwards . . . The certainties of the postwar world are ending.

English 

A nice new word flirtationships.  A product of Covid, it’s claimed

Finally  . . . 

For a short while in the 14th century, England had 3 universities - Cambridge, Oxford and Stamford. Not to be confused with Stanford in the USA. But only 2 survived, of course. Here's stamford's story.

ARTICLE

The success of Beijing's lockdown pushed the West into an existential crisis. Now the capitalist world is winning: Sherelle Jacobs, The Telegraph

China won the first half of the Covid Cold War decisively. It executed lockdowns with immaculate precision, cuffing dissenters to balcony railings and sealing citizens in their homes. Having near-enough eliminated Covid within its own borders, it fired up its industrial engines to meet roaring demand for Chinese goods. A diplomatic coup over the United States followed, as the World Health Organisation ruled out the Wuhan lab leak theory. Most powerful of all was China’s psychological victory; as Beijing exulted in the liberating discipline of the Chinese Way, the locked down West brooded over the selfish inadequacies of freedom.

Now, though, a lousy vaccine strategy and a counterfeit economic recovery are coming back to haunt the Chinese Communist Party. A Western world that has spent a year luxuriating in existential crisis might dare to wonder: is the brute force of the authoritarian, centralised state no match after all for the innovative agility of a free capitalist society?

In an astonishing admission of weakness, China’s top disease control official has confirmed that the efficacy of the country’s Covid vaccines is low. With trials abroad suggesting that protection rates could be as poor as 50 per cent, the country’s regulator is now considering whether to mix jabs to boost their effectiveness.

This is a catastrophe for China. The country is stuck in an unsustainable zero Covid trap, only able to maintain an upper hand over the virus by closing its borders to almost all foreigners and limiting domestic travel. Beijing could be left behind within months, as rival countries reach herd immunity and reopen for global business. On this point, even the Chinese commentariat has been remarkably candid. State epidemiologists have taken to the airwaves, warning that China’s vaccine rates are insufficient to reach herd immunity by the end of year, let alone the end of the summer. Newspaper column inches that usually foam against the “putrid ambitions” of anti-Chinese forces are instead analysing the progress of Britain, Israel and the United States with sober dread.

Nor are China’s vaccine woes the only threat to the country’s apparent Covid advantage. Doubts are starting to grow about Beijing’s miraculous economic recovery. A recent IMF forecast stirred controversy, projecting that while Western economies would almost completely avoid permanent scarring – and US GDP in 2024 would be even higher than it was anticipated to be before Covid – China’s economy will end up 1.59% smaller than pre-pandemic expectations.

This exposes the drawbacks of a Chinese model that prioritises ambition over invention, saving face over doing the groundwork, and scale over quality. Perhaps in all those official Maoist castigations of Chinese backwardness in the 20th century, the country lost a sense of its essential Self. The pioneering civilisation that gave us the wheel and the compass has “renewed” itself by becoming a piracy powerhouse that cannot innovate. This, it turns out, is a handicap in a pandemic.

China’s biopharma industry has remained small and low-grade because it is not possible to thrive in cutting-edge science by copying rivals (unlike with smartphones and solar panels). Beijing has had to rely on outdated technology to churn out vaccines that are not only less effective than their Western equivalents but more expensive (the cost price for the Sinovac jab is $30 per dose, compared with AstraZeneca’s $3). The state subsidises such mediocrity through an overly centralised procurement process that promotes a race to the bottom. The modest global growth of the Chinese pharma industry in recent years has been mired by corruption scandals and the recall of hundreds of thousands of vaccines.

It is in this troubled context that Chinese firms rushed out Covid jabs for the CCP. Having given the coronavirus to the world, Beijing had hoped to rehabilitate its image through vaccine diplomacy. It is a strategy that may be about to backfire calamitously.

Not that the West is perfect. AstraZeneca’s woes show that developing and rolling out a highly effective and cheap vaccine is a challenge. As the Anglo-Swedish firm’s recent run-in with US regulators also demonstrates, Western Big Pharma is not immune from legitimate criticism over data transparency. Still, there is something in the fact that profit-driven Western companies have used Covid-19 as a selfish PR opportunity for themselves, rather than for the selfless greater good of their nations. With their reputations on the line, they have aimed to develop vaccines that work as quickly as possible – rather than as quickly as necessary.

The Chinese economy’s post-Covid path invites similar scrutiny. The country’s crushing debt levels – worsened by uncontrolled public sector “recovery” spending – may not be as sustainable as mainstream economists claim. Its “mass entrepreneurship and innovation drive” has stifled competition with garbage subsidies. The CCP’s “new development model” to unleash domestic consumption seems predestined for failure, given that it depends on the distribution of real financial power to ordinary citizens. After slinging hundreds of millions of peasants from the fields into factories, meanwhile, China has run out of low cost labour just as its population has begun to age rapidly.

To solve these massive long-term problems, the CCP needs to liberalise and open up. Instead, Xi Jinping has doubled down on building an isolationist totalitarian superstate. By contrast, European and American firms are set to power unexpectedly buoyant recoveries; a more dynamic capitalist environment has forced them to adapt to the new post-Covid world, shedding costs and changing their business models as required. Centre-Left politicians who have convinced themselves that recovery can only be engineered by generous handouts and aggressive state projects should take note.

There is much we can learn from China's values – its hunger and energy and innate investment in the future, rather than just the present (which share the same tense in Mandarin). But if it fails to learn, in turn, from the West that freedom is crucial to progress, the resurgent Middle Kingdom may yet turn out to be a stillborn superpower.

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'

NOTE: If you want to know more about Galicia, click here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid 

See below for the latest solid - but UK biased - Overview from Private Eye’s medical columnist.

I learned yesterday that: There are risks associated with both smoking and oral contraceptives, and mixing the two can be a deadly combination. Smoking is known to restrict one's blood vessels, causing blood clots that lead to cardiovascular issues. If you are taking one of Bayer’s birth control pills (Yasmin, Yaz, Beyaz, Safyral) or a generic version, you will want to know these pills have higher risks of side effects than other types of oral contraceptives. Bayer’s oral contraceptive products and their generic versions contain drospirenone, a type of progestin hormone not found in most other oral contraceptives. Rather than taking the drugs off the market, the FDA decided to change the labels for Yaz, Yasmin, Beyaz and Safyral to warn patients and doctors about the increased risk for developing blood clots. One wonders how many young women are happy to takes this risk while rejecting the AZ vaccine.

Spain: Those 70-79 ‘soon’. With the J&J(Janssen) product. Which some say, like the rest, isn’t really a vaccine.

Cosas de España/Galiza 

In a country in which both consumer protection and corporate ethics are lower than elsewhere, one can run up against unexpected problems/issues. Unannounced new or increased bank charges being the most obvious. This morning I've been trying to change car insurance companies, having been advised last week that, even if the premium had been paid yesterday, I could get the bank to cancel it and get back my money. Not necessarily, it seems; if the payment was made against a credit card, this can't be done. Now I know why offer a 5% discount for (automatic) annual renewal via a card.

More here on the government's decision to open the Valley of the Fallen graves holding 30,000 bodies the from civil war.

During said war, a British brigade, composed largely of communists, advanced up a hill SE of Madrid during a hot day. Feeling the heat, the men decided to discard what they didn't really need. So . . An extraordinary variety of objects was found later among the debris – hand grenades, ammunition, machine-gun spare parts and clothes and equipment of all kinds. But the personal items which had been jettisoned provided the strangest part of the collection. There were books of all kinds. The Marxist textbooks, which were large and heavy, lay fairly near the bottom of the hill. The rest were an amazing variety, ranging from third-rate pornography to the sort of books which normally fill the shelves of the more serious type of undergraduate. There were copies of the works of Nietzsche, and Spinoza, Spanish language textbooks, Rhys Davids’s Early Buddhism and every kind of taste in poetry. Some things hadn't been discarded. One volunteer still carried with him his mandolin. Another was equipped with Shakespeare’s Tragedies.

María's Level Ground: Day 9. Swab discomfort.

The UK

The National Scarecrow has had a haircut. Apparently done by his cat.

Which reminds me of a question which came to my my mind yesterday . . . Is 4 more years of Boris Johnson a hairy prospect?

The Way of the World/Social media

The 'right-wing' view? It isn’t oppression to ask for the right answer. . . . It derives from the post-modern replacement of objective truth by subjective opinion.

Finally  . . . 

To my astonishment, Jerry Lee Lewis is still bashing the ivories aged 86. Here he is - uncharacteristically slow - when he was 70. Start at 0.58. 

If you click on nearby links, you can see him performing with other stars. Allegedly: On October 27, 2020, to celebrate Lewis' 85th birthday, a livestream aired on YouTube, Facebook and his official website. The livestream special, Whole Lotta Celebratin' Goin' On, featured appearances and performances by Willie Nelson, Elton John, Mike Love, Priscilla Presley, Joe Walsh and others. 

COVID OVERVIEW: MD OF Private Eye

Remembrance day 

23 March, the anniversary of the first lockdown, was as good a day as any to remember those lost to and harmed by the pandemic. 

Research by the Health Foundation estimates the true figure for UK Covid deaths so far is 146,000 and that each life was cut short by up to 10 years (6.5 years for the over-75s). People in the most deprived parts of England were twice as likely to die from Covid-19, and they also died at younger ages. Many had pre-existing health conditions. 

This is sadly unsurprising. Before Covid, the richest in the UK lived a decade longer than the poorest, who suffer 20 more years of chronic disease. Covid has exacerbated existing inequalities. The rich have been able to stay safe at home thanks to the poor delivering to our doors. Instead of just focusing on Covid, we need to focus on preventing all premature death and disease, whatever the cause. Covid has also taught us that no amount of healthcare can reverse an unhealthy environment or self-destructive behaviour. 

Early deaths happen not just from environmental exposure to SARS-Cov-2, but cigarettes, drugs, air pollution, alcohol, junk food, sedentary lifestyles, accidents, abuse and despair. Globally, nearly 3m people have died from Covid, but 57m have died from causes that didn't get a daily death update. Millions of these lives could have been saved with decent public health measures and universal healthcare. Far from being a drain on the economy, investing in and protecting health are fundamental to it. Another key lesson of Covid. 

Bug's Law 

The International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR 2005) were agreed by 194 member states of the World Health Organization after the SARS outbreak of2002/3, placing a legal obligation on them to urgently report to the WHO any event "which may constitute a public health emergency of international concern". Outbreaks of 4 named critical diseases have to be reported in all circumstances. Smallpox, poliomyelitis due to wild type poliovirus, human influenza caused by a new subtype, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). 

Many legal experts believe the Chinese government violated this law by delaying reporting of the initial SARS-CoY-2 outbreak in December 2019, perhaps by a month. China argues that it took a while to confirm the virus type, and it provided the entire genomic sequence on 12 January 2020, allowing vaccine development to start immediately, and a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) virus test to be developed on 16 January which should have allowed all countries to stop the outbreak, as China did. The UK, US and many others were simply not prepared. 

Sanctioning China and keeping it on board to stop the next outbreak is problematic. And IHR 2005 also applies to any SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. 

Border control 

Now that vaccines and lockdowns have got infection rates right down, the government must decide if it wants to keep UK borders as virus-tight as it can without inviting economic ruin. This might mean compensating the travel industry but cautiously opening up domestic sports stadia, entertainment venues, shops, pubs, restaurants and holiday venues. 

Worryingly, a large South African trial has found that two doses of the Oxford/ AZ vaccine "did not show protection against mild-to-moderate Covid-19 due to the B.1.351 [South African] variant". There were no cases of serious disease or death among trial participants, who were largely young. South Africa needs to keep using the vaccine in the elderly to see how much it reduces death. 

Clearly vaccine tweaks and boosters will be needed, and we may not now be holidaying abroad this summer. Evidence suggests all the variants travel by plane. But how much border control will UK citizens tolerate? 

Scotland has touted a zero-Covid policy, and almost got there last summer. It has done better than England on excess deaths but hasn't been able to maintain zero. The virus has spread so widely as to become firmly embedded. It has so many global feeding and breeding stations to develop and select new variants. Vaccination will reduce deaths, but the virus is likely to remain one step ahead. 

Vaccinating to the max 

The UK is "vaccinating to the max" to minimise the harm of the virus, but that won't reverse health inequalities. Some of those at highest risk are still declining a vaccine by arguing: "The state has screwed me over many times before, so why should I trust it now?" Public health works best in an environment of public trust and consent. Vaccines should remain voluntary except in jobs or situations where the risk of transmission is very high. 

UK uptake overall has been impressive. Uncontrolled spread of the Kent variant earned us the moniker of"Plague Island" in December and January. Now it is the rest of Europe that has become "plague continent", thanks to their poorly executed vaccine plan and super-spread of the, er Kent variant. 

We are all in this together. We have now given more than half our adult population half the scheduled dose, with a few million having both doses, and none yet to children. So there is still plenty of potential for UK spread and variation. But once we have vaccinated our most vulnerable citizens twice, it's entirely right that the rest of Europe, and the world, should be allowed to catch up. If not, we may soon re-import a Kent-meets-Bruges variant. 

The EU claims the UK "has given it nothing", but we helped install bioreactors at the Halix vaccine factory in Leyden, Holland; we supply a crucial component of the Pfizer vaccine; and we invested heavily in developing the Oxford/AZ vaccine using UK taxes, expertise and trial volunteers, made available to the world at cost price and easy to store in a fridge. Alas, even if the EU had enough AZ vaccine for all its citizens, many would now refuse to have it. 

Vaccine safety 

In the midst of a third wave, thousands of EU citizens will die and be harmed by refusing a life-saving vaccine which may, but probably doesn't, harm a tiny fraction of them. The balance of benefit and risk is greatly in favour of urgent vaccination, yet millions of doses are unused. Why? 

Having already (wrongly) judged the AZ vaccine to be ineffective in the elderly, some EU countries temporarily suspended its use because of an alleged increase in clotting risk. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) found no increase in clots overall. Indeed, there are more clots in those unvaccinated. The EMA did find the vaccine may be associated with a very rare type of blood clot, but the risk of clots overall, long-term harm and death is far higher if you get Covid. In the UK, 20m AZ doses have been safely given and it has already led to a 60-70% risk reduction in symptomatic Covid and more than 80%decrease in severe cases. 

Alas, once you damage a vaccine's reputation, it rarely recovers. Angela Merkel knows this. She will also know that lifting the suspension and belatedly agreeing to have the AZ vaccine herself, having decried it on two counts previously, won't change many minds. "The British vaccine" has been declared second-rate in Europe. AstraZeneca's shares have tumbled. 

Risk communication 

It's clearly important to monitor any new vaccines that use new technologies and will be given to billions of people. The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the EMA should give regular public briefings on vaccine benefits and risks as they unfold: how many vaccines have been given; our best estimate of their contribution in reducing death, disease and spread; recorded adverse events; and the adverse events we would expect in a population that hadn't received the vaccine. 

They should do this for every one of the Covid vaccines, not just pick on the British one, whenever important new data emerge. Far better for people who understand the science to communicate the science, rather than protective EU leaders bitter about Brexit. 

Greed not so good? 

The UK wasn't prepared for a pandemic and so splashed £12.5bn on PPE in 2020 that would have cost £2.5bn at 20I9 prices, and was largely imported from, well, China. The government will not disclose the contracts or profits made by deal brokers, despite a legal obligation to do so. For all this hugely expensive "personal protection", 900 health and care staff have died after contracting Covid (though not all at work}, more than 450 people a day caught Covid while in hospital in January 2021, and more than 40,000 in total. Clearly, we need to rethink healthcare-acquired Covid. Better ventilation and barriers may be needed. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson's paltry 1% pay rise for NHS nurses (4% in Scotland) will drive more into agency working, where they can earn 3 times as much per hour, doing the same job. The NHS also has to pay a large slice to the agency, with a total cost of up to 6 times that of a salaried nurse. 

Long Covid 

MD works in an NHS service for young people with ME/chronic fatigue syndrome and knows how they can struggle to be believed. Long Covid could repeat this prejudice or be a golden opportunity to research the long-term damage a viral infection can inflict on the body, and to develop new treatments. It will be a very heterogeneous condition, with some sufferers having end organ damage after intensive care, and others with extreme fatigue but normal routine investigations. 

No one can say how long any individual's long Covid will last, but we need to learn from those who are fortunate enough to recover fully. A professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, caught Covid and blogged about it for the British Medical Journal: "I felt so unwell I thought I was dying. The rollercoaster that followed lasted for months However, he has since made a full recovery by increasing his activities when he felt ready, and not suffering severe payback. Yet others in his situation are finding any such increase leaves them with profound post-exertional malaise. This is also true of the ME/ CFS patients I see. Some make a full recovery, some reach a plateau and stay there, and others appear to recover and then get relapses. 

ME/CFS diagnosis, research and treatment are hampered because we don't yet have a diagnostic blood test. The same is true for long Covid. It needs a definition agreed by patients and doctors, and national guidance body NICE needs to develop guidelines for treatment. 

Bugs and us 

Infectious diseases have altered the course of history far more than war, but they are not all bad. Their evolutionary challenge has helped us evolve, and many technological advances will follow the Covid challenge. 

Our bodies contain trillions of microbes living harmoniously in huge communities in our gut and respiratory tract, and on our skin. Our relationship with them is both essential to our existence and highly complex. Environment, as ever, is the key. Microbes thrive and help us thrive in one part of our body, but kill us if they end up in another. Gut bugs in the gut, good. Gut bugs in the blood or brain, dead. 

Over the centuries, our struggle with microbes has delivered some haymaker blows but as yet no knockout, apart from smallpox. We should be in awe of the evolutionary ingenuity that has allowed microbes to adapt, survive and flourish in the face of all we've thrown at them. SARS-CoV-2 doesn't have enough genetic material to be "evil" or "malign". It exists only to spread, and we have given it the opportunity. 

Yes, it can kill us, but largely because our fickleness, selfishness and short memories have allowed it to. We didn't learn the lessons of SARS-CoV-1 in 2003. Nearly all our health is determined by our environment, and 7.8bn hungry humans determine that environment more than any other species. We habitually destroy habitats that bring bugs and their animal hosts closer to us. In a sense, we get the bugs we deserve. And they usually win. 

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'

NOTE: If you want to know more about Galicia, click here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid 

The UK: Opens for business today. Sort of. And . . . A Covid third wave is no longer expected in the summer, government advisers have said.

Spain.

1.In contrast, we're into our 4th wave here. But the good news is that I might get a jab (AZ's) before the end of a month. The start of a process which could allow me to see my latest UK grandchild this year. And maybe the penultimate in Madrid.

2.  Some of us have enjoyed tourist-lite Majorca but it’s a guilty pleasure.  

Some time in the future, hard lessons will be learned from the last 15 months. The biggest, perhaps, is that it must never be allowed to happen again. Quicker, better action will be necessary the minute a new dangerous virus emerges. Probably based on Asian models.

Cosas de España/Galiza 

What to plant this time of year around Spain.

Which reminds me . . . Down the hill, the wisteria's been in bloom for weeks now. But my trees - planted 3 or 4 years ago - are yet to produce any flowers, despite me fertilising them in November. Lots of new thin branches and leaves but no flowers. Until this appeared last week. Which looks like being the only offering this year. In line with the advice that it takes 7-15 years for the plant to come into flower. Wish I'd known that when I bought the saplings.

Doubtless they'll blame Covid but this year I've received no information or documentation whatsoever from my car insurance company re renewal of a policy which expired a week ago. On the phone just now, they've assured me the policy is live and that proof for the police will be the payment in my bank account. Of which as yet there's no sign. So, lucky that I wasn't asked for it when stopped at an alcohol control point on Saturday night.

Talking of companies . . . I can't say I was totally surprised to hear that some Spanish bodegas are being investigated for falsely claiming that their cosecha wines are reservas. I've often wondered about controls.

Driving back from the supermarket on Saturday - down the narrow one-away street that used to be one-way in the opposite direction - I noted the huge arrows hadn't been removed or at least reversed. Which must confuse some drivers.

María's Level Ground: Day 8.

The USA

As expected, Trump has launched a withering attack on two senior Republicans - Mike pence and Mitch McConnell - using a speech in Florida to cement his position as the party’s kingpin. These 2, of course, were his most faithful endorsers when he was in power. Pence - averred the would-be éminence orange - is ‘disappointing’, while McConnell is a “dumb son of a bitch”. 

The Way of the World/Social media

One way to deal with the cancel culture.

UK University tutors are being told not to dock marks for spelling mistakes because requiring good English could be seen as “homogenous north European, white, male, elite”. Several universities are adopting “inclusive assessments” as part of an effort to narrow the attainment gap between white and black, Asian and minority ethnic students and to reduce higher dropout rates among those from poorer backgrounds. Click here for more on this.

Feminism used to be about principles, not looking sexy. Like Khloe Kardashian, many influencers use their bodies to sell beauty products or get famous, but it’s hard to see how this is empowering. Too true. Not the feminism of the mother of my feisty daughters.

Religious Nutters

Leave exorcisms to priests, says the Russian Orthodox Church. Seems like a very good idea to me. You don't want to be messing with devils without professional help from “spiritually strong” clergy. Especially after several deaths and injuries from DIY exorcisms.

Spanish 

Desmadre:  I saw this word applied to Spain's 19 regional variations on vaccine policy and implementation. Dictionaries give 'mess' as the English meaning but I wonder whether 'mare's nest' wouldn't be better. Even within any single region. There's a lot of confusion. 

Finally  . . . 

Interesting to know this about Lundy Island in the Bristol channel: In 1627 a group known as the Salé Rovers, from the Republic of Salé (now Salé in Morocco) occupied it for 5 years. These 'Barbary Pirates', under the command of a Dutch renegade named Jan Janszoon, flew an Ottoman flag over the island. Slaving raids were made by the Barbary Pirates, and captured Europeans were held there before being sent to Algiers to be sold as slaves. From 1628 to 1634, in addition to the Barbary Pirates, the island was plagued by privateers of French, Basque, English and Spanish origin targeting the lucrative shipping routes passing through the Bristol Channel. These incursions were eventually ended but in the 1660s and as late as the 1700s the island still fell prey to French privateers.

Jan Janszoon, by the way, was accused of having 'turned Turk'.

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'

NOTE: If you want to know more about Galicia, click here. Detailed info on Pontevedra coming soon. 

Covid 

Side-effects:

1. The Economist: With millions vaccinated, rare side-effects of jabs are emerging: The challenge is to sort them from the medical emergencies that happen every day. See the 1st article below for more.

2. The Telegraph: It's all in the telling: Why Europe's approach to the AstraZeneca jab differs from ours. Different circumstances and regulatory judgments about risk explain more than politics and a clash of nations. See the 2nd article below if you can't access this.

The UK: A huge ‘side-effect’ which perhaps only rapid effective vaccination can ameliorate: NHS England data shows there's been a ‘shocking’ rise in cancer patients not being treated due to Covid-19 concerns. Fears have been raised that survival rates are going backwards. 

Cosas de España/Galiza

More trouble for Brits trying to get to Spain without a TIE.

And possibly why this is happening.

The Spanish Stonehenge - The Dolmen of Guadalperal. 

Directly opposite my house on the other side of Pontevedra city, there’s a massive horizontal gash in the hillside. This is the future - unnecessary? - A57 by-pass. On  which work hasn’t been done for months. Possibly more than a year. This seems to because there’s a spat between the regional and national governments as to when work should re-start. So, it could well be Pontevedra’s version of the AVE high-speed train and I might not see the completion of the road in my life-time. After all, the A54 from Santiago to Lugo still doesn’t arrive there, years after it reached wherever it currently ends.

María's Level Ground: Day 7.

The UK

Richard North on the recent royal death: The excessive coverage diminishes the event. Gone are those two crucial elements of dignity and restraint, the exaggerated response inviting irritation and even ridicule in what should be a solemn occasion.  So marked is the retreat from anything resembling a news agenda, that it has prompted the Independent to publish a piece headed: “All the news you missed amid wall-to-wall Prince Philip coverage”

A Times columnist: A death turned into a circus. How he would have hated all this flannel. What, she asked, was the point of it? Her own reply: Arse-covering mostly.

Here in Spain, there was less reverence. Here, for example, is a chap in El Mundo: Philip of Edinburgh: the hedonist and womaniser who realised his role was to inseminate the Queen and take a step backwards. Perhaps Philip is the example of the perfect consort of our time, more so than  the late Henrik, former husband of Queen Margaret of Denmark and, of course, the disgraced Prince Claus, who ended up as a victim, as he was the husband of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

Elsewhere, El Mundo reports that: For more than 7 decades, the marriage between Elizabeth II and Prince Philip has been rock-solid, although at various times there has been talk of problems between the couple and some alleged infidelities on the part of the Duke, which have always been denied in public. Despite living under guard, it is said that he always found the opportunity to satisfy his desires, even to share women with a friend. He was linked to women such as Daphne du Maurier, married to a man who worked in the prince's office; Hélène Cordet, his childhood friend and mother of one of his godchildren; Pat Kirkwood, one of the most beautiful and reputed artists in London with legs so beautiful they were known as 'the 8th wonder of the world'. One of his most talked-about affairs was, in the 1970s, with Susan Ferguson, mother of the Duchess of York, Sarah, ex of his son Andrew.

I haven't read even a line of the hundreds of articles/eulogies in the British press* and - like most viewers - have switched off the wall-to-wall coverage on TV but I must admit I don't recall ever reading of Felipe’s affairs. So, I have no idea whether the reports are true or not. They might well be. But - given the egregious conduct of ex King Juan Carlos - I guess it's comforting for the Spanish to be able to make the infidelities of the royals of other countries the main tack to take on reporting of his death.

* But I have just read this: Philip, the equal opportunities offender: I think my favourite Prince Philip moment came when he was talking to a group of deaf youngsters, while a loud steel band played nearby. “Deaf? No wonder,” he said, thus in about 3 words managing to enrage the more sensitive souls in both the deaf community and the Afro-Caribbean community. Perhaps, with his sad passing, we should elect someone whose job it is to be rude to anybody who feels they should never be offended. We will miss Phil the Greek for his sense of duty and loyalty too. Especially when you look at what we’re left with.

Spanish 

It's feature of life in Spain that all Anglo names are hispanised. So ‘Phillip Duke of Edinburgh’ become Felipe Duque de Edinburgo. In contrast, it's impossible to imagine Juan Carlos being labelled John Charles in the British media. Seems just basic respect to me . . 

Finally  . . . 

Yesterday there were hundreds more hits than usual here, possibly because these were Russian bots picking up on a mention of the Crimea. If so, today's 2nd mention should produce another crop. On reflection, perhaps it was many of the wealthy Russians down on the Cost del Crime.

ARTICLES

1. With millions vaccinated, rare side-effects of jabs are emerging: The challenge is to sort them from the medical emergencies that happen every day.

Chris Witty, England’s chief medical officer, vividly recalls a nerve-racking moment on December 8th 2020. That was the day when England became the first country to roll out a covid-19 vaccine, a jab developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. Near midnight on vaccination day one “We were discussing it and just thinking ‘What are we dealing with here? These are small numbers and we’ve already had several dangerous near misses’,” said Dr Whitty in a recent talk at the Royal Society of Medicine. In some people, it had turned out, the vaccine sets off anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction. But this is rare. It occurred just once among the 22,000 or so people vaccinated in the trial, which could have been by chance. Now, with hundreds of millions vaccinated, the rate at which it occurs is clearer: five per million.

Fortunately, this side-effect is not only extremely rare but shows up soon after the jab. And treatment for it exists. Everyone who receives the Pfizer vaccine is now asked to stick around for 15 minutes, just in case. There have been no deaths from anaphylaxis related to the vaccine.

As millions of jabs of various covid-19 vaccines are administered every day, such rare adverse reactions will inevitably emerge. On April 7th both Britain’s health officials and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which regulates drugs in the European Union, said there is strong evidence that AstraZeneca’s covid-19 vaccine may be linked with very rare blood clots, often in the brain or the abdomen. The EMA experts reached their conclusion based on a review of 86 reported cases, 18 of which were fatal. Britain’s experts reached the same conclusion from data on 79 cases, 19 of which were fatal. Both the EMA and Britain’s drug regulator concluded that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh the potential risk of the clots. But Britain’s officials, armed as usual with some nifty charts for their televised briefing, said that for people under 30 the risks and benefits from the vaccine were “finely balanced”, so a different jab may be preferable.

The investigation of the suspected clots from the AstraZeneca jab has been a prime example of the challenge of sorting the signal of a vaccine’s side-effects from the cacophony of medical emergencies that happen to millions of people every day. Vaccine-safety experts have two ways to untangle whether a rare medical problem is caused by a vaccine, says Kathryn Edwards of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, in Nashville, Tennessee. They can compare its rate in vaccinated people against the “background” rates of it that are observed in the unvaccinated. And they can look for unusual features of the medical condition being investigated.

The first signals emerged in late February, when doctors in several European countries noticed clusters of blood clots in people recently given the AstraZeneca jab, some of whom died. Most were women under 60, which was not terribly surprising because many EU countries were, at first, not convinced that the jab worked in the elderly and used it largely for essential workers, such as nurses, teachers and social-care workers—professions in which most employees are women.

The EMA’s data as of March 22nd suggested that the rate of brain clots in people under the age of 60 who had had Astra­Zeneca’s vaccine was one in 100,000—higher than would be expected normally. Precisely how much higher, though, is hard to tell. The rates of such rare and difficult-to-diagnose conditions vary a lot by country, age and sex. Estimates of the incidence of such brain clots have ranged from 0.22 to 1.57 cases per 100,000 people per year, and they are more common in younger people and women.

As doctors began to look more closely, something curious emerged. Many patients with suspected clots from the vaccine had unusually low levels of platelets. These are fragments of special precursor cells that float in the blood. Their job is to form blood clots (they rush to the site of a cut or other bleeding). Low platelet levels therefore usually result in uncontrolled bleeding, not clots.

With this new information to hand, Britain’s medical regulators searched their data on vaccinated people for the unusual tandem of clots and low platelet counts. They found four cases per million people vaccinated, a rate several times lower than in the EU. One explanation is that Britain, unlike the rest of Europe, had used the jab primarily in older people. The rate at which the clots occurred in Britain declined steadily with age. Importantly, Britain’s experts found that the clots occurred as much in men as they did in women.

This combination of blood clots and low platelet counts is something that doctors know how to diagnose and treat, says Jean Marie Connors, a haematologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston. It resembles a condition seen in some people who are given heparin, a drug used widely to treat blood clots. For unknown reasons, some people develop an immune reaction to heparin, which results in blood clotting so profound that it depletes their platelets. The same reaction appears to be provoked by the vaccine.

Medical societies in several countries have already issued guidelines to doctors on how to spot and treat this rare reaction to the AstraZeneca vaccine. With vigilance and appropriate care, the extremely rare deaths that may result from it will become even rarer.

2. It's all in the telling: Why Europe's approach to the AstraZeneca jab differs from ours. Different circumstances and regulatory judgments about risk explain more than politics and a clash of nations

We humans like nothing better than storytelling - and the more familiar the book the better. It’s why the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet has been told a thousand times. Explaining things via common narrative is one of our many tricks for making sense of the world quickly.

The oldest story of them all is the clash of nations and it’s through this prism the story of the AstraZeneca jab in Europe is oft told. How else to explain why the European Union began by limiting the vaccine's use in the old only to reverse ferret, prioritise the elderly and then restrict its use in the young? 

The truth, of course, is more complicated. The bumpy ride the AstraZeneca vaccine has had in Europe (and North America) has much more to do with the different ways in which regulators approach evidence and judge risk than politics. Differing circumstances have also played an important role.

The initial decision of some countries, France and Germany included, to restrict the use of the vaccine to younger age groups stems from the fact the vaccine was not well tested among older cohorts in the original trials, where only 13 per cent of participants were age 65 and older. Add to this the fact that the tolerance and effectiveness of many vaccines falls away in older age groups and the argument for prudence becomes apparent - even though it was never clear cut. 

As The Telegraph reported at the time, the European Centre For Disease Control (ECDC) was making this point long before any vaccines had been licenced. In a paper published on October 26 it said: “Before pursuing this [age-based] approach, acceptable levels of vaccine safety and efficacy need to be demonstrated among older adults. At this stage, this information is not known”.

Instead, the ECDC recommended an “adaptive” approach - one which would flex as more was learnt about the jabs. 

With a glut of AstraZeneca vaccine coming our way and a second wave of the virus brewing, the UK authorities emphasised the other side of the risk-reward equation. Yes, there was a lack of evidence for the vaccine in older groups, but there was plenty of data to show Covid-19 kills older people at a much higher rate. 

The risk of death from Covid for during a surge in the virus is 1-in-1,848 for a healthy 70 year old man, according to Oxford's QCovid calculator. This compares to 1-in-250,000 for a 30 healthy year old - a 135-fold difference.

With hindsight, the UK authorities made the right call. The AstraZeneca jab and others have turned out to be extremely effective in older groups and the decision to prioritise them is estimated to have saved about 10,000 lives in the UK to date. Following its “adaptive” strategy, Europe has rightly followed suit.

But what of the decision in parts of Europe and Canada to now restrict the vaccine to older groups - those above 55 or 60. How to make sense of that?

The same culture of caution - shaped by differing circumstances - may again help explain it. Europe was hit disproportionately hard by scandal following the 2009 swine flu pandemic when the Pandemrix vaccine, widely distributed to health care workers, was linked with rare cases of narcolepsy. Some 1,300 people have been affected among the roughly 30 million vaccinated across Europe, but with only around 100 in the UK. 

Scientists in Germany and Scandinavia, in particular, have become black-belts in pharmacovigilance in the wake of the scandal; few if any are as good at analysing the thousands of adverse reaction reports that flow in when a new drug is launched. They are expert at sifting the early signals of a problem from the mountains of incoming chaff.

It was Norwegian and German regulators who first spotted the rare blot clogging issue now linked to the AstraZeneca jab. The UK authorities last week said they have since identified 79 cases here, putting the estimated incidence risk at about 1-in-250,000. 

The reported rate “varies very much with how good the reporting system in a member state is and how good cases are being identified”, said a spokesman for the EMA last week. “In Germany, a lot of work has been done and I think there is a reporting rate of 1-in-100,000.

“We know that in the UK the reporting rate is much lower, so that can have many many causes, but for the moment I think it's safe to assume that the reporting rate is around 1-in-100,000.”

In the UK, we have now followed suit and offered a choice of vaccines to those under the age of 30. But in other countries the cut off is higher - 55 in Canada, for instance.

It is important to note that these decisions are not (for the moment at least) driven by the incidence of clots being higher in the young. There is as yet no firm data to show the risk varies with age, or indeed sex. Instead, the decision to restrict the use of the vaccine in the young comes from the other side of the equation - the much lower Covid risk in younger cohorts.

Why the difference in ages? Again that has more to do with circumstance than politics. In Europe, they currently have more of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine and so can offer more choice. In the UK, we are more reliant on AstraZeneca - for the moment at least.

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

NOTE: For about 18 years, I've had a page on Galicia and Pontevedra which is now defunct. I've got a new site for both my Galicia stuff and this blog but It's a work in progress.

Covid 

The EU: Europe's stuttering vaccine rollout faces multiple hurdles as EU regulators review side effects of the Johnson & Johnson shot and France further limits its use of the AZ jab.

The UK: 

1. British would-be holiday-makers look like being banned from going to both Spain and France this summer, leaving them with just Israel and, god forbid, Gibraltar. And maybe the Maldives and the Seychelles.

2. Meanwhile, back home . . The vaccines have worked better than anyone expected. British Covid deaths are now the lowest in Europe, having fallen faster than even in Israel. There are no more “excess deaths” – in fact, fewer people are dying now than normal. The data has for some time, been unremittingly positive. Several parts of the country have been virtually Covid-free for several weeks. The figure for herd immunity was initially 60% but other estimates go as high as 85%. As ever with Covid, no one is quite sure. But whatever the threshold is, Britain looks likely to hit it soon.

Italy: Deaths totalled 487 on Thursday and 718 yesterday.

France: Deaths per day there are 10 times more than the UK's 30.

Spain: The number is 149. Some of us senior citizens are still waiting for our first jab, most recently promised for this month. But the government insists it’ll achieve its target of 70% of the population having had 2-jabs by the end of August. Trouble is, no one here much believes the predictions of Spanish governments. And, on reflection, since nowt much happens here in July and August, the real target date is end June. Which is surely totally impossible, given the 3 month gap between the jabs.

Did someone question AEP's dire forecasts of the consequences of vaccine-approval delays?

Cosas de España/Galiza

The Spanish economy is improving but politics are getting worse, it says here.

Can anyone tell me what the logic of this development is?

A Galician chap arrested this week in Cataluña - after he'd fled into Spain pursued by French cops - was found to have the 2-3 week old corpse of his wife in the passenger seat. On her way to her burial in Switzerland. Or so he says.

Nearer home . . .  A resident of nearby Vilagarcia was fined this week for washing his car in the street at 1am. This is an offence in Spain and so I imagine he was done twice, the second being for disobeying the 10pm curfew.

María's Level Ground: Day 6.

The UK

It seems nothing happened there yesterday other than the death of some poor, 'rootless' Greek guy after a long innings as somebody's husband.

Talking of royalty . . . A poll this week revealed that more than half of Britons would prefer Prince Charles to not become king — wanting, instead, the crown to skip him and go directly to Prince William. So it looks like Prince Charles is suffering from . . . heir-loss. But the stats differ for those aged 18 to 25. In that demographic, the majority want the crown to skip Prince Charles and Prince William and go to Prince Harry instead. So it looks as if Prince William has, once again, inherited his heir-loss from his father.  . . . .The estimable Caitlin Moran.

The UK and Brexit 

RN Yesterday: As with the “completion” of the Single Market in 1992, there will be winners and losers from the Brexit process and the national media will tend to focus on the losers – when it can actually be bothered to report. Brexit stories are rapidly becoming an endangered species. A major exception is Northern Ireland, where a number of commentators pin the blame on Johnson for his clumsy Withdrawal Agreement and the Irish Protocol.

Russia 

Moscow is amassing elite troops and war material on its border with Ukraine and many expect a Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea type development. Against which the West is expected to deploy just words and, in Germany's case, to continue with plans for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to  Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Work on this is currently suspended because of the poisoning of Mr Navalny last year and the imposition of US sanctions against companies involved.

Social media

A hardline view? Criminal sanctions on social media companies are long overdue.

Finally  . . . 

Driving down to the Mercadona supermarket at 8.55 this morning, I took a short cut down a narrow lane, alongside one of our 2 gypsy settlements. As ever, I locked the car doors. And then wondered if, in these woke time, this isn’t racist. Or just wise. Or both. Take your pick,

Interesting - and surprising - to note that the carpark was virtually empty at 9.05 but full at 9.45. 

Mercadona have super new biodegradable plastic bags. But a single knot seems inadequate to close them. Explaining why a lemon and a mango ended on on the store floor. And broccoli on my kitchen floor.

By the way, if Mercadona really are trying to reduce plastic, why can I no longer buy a single lime but have to buy 4 in a plastic box?

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'

NOTE: For about 18 years, I've had a page on Galicia and Pontevedra at www.colindavies.net but I haven't revised it or added to it for several years and it's now defunct. I've got a new site - www.thoughtsfromgalicia.com - where I'll be adding stuff as and when I can, And when I've worked out exactly how Wordpress works. If you go there now, you'll find a work-in-progress. And also this blog in exactly the same format as here. Except it automatically give more detailD of cited sites which use Wordpress.

Covid 

The UK: A year of fear.  Has the government achieved widespread conformity with restrictions on liberty through the unethical use of covert psychological strategies — “nudges” — in their messaging campaign? . . . The covert psychological strategies incorporated into the state’s coronavirus information campaign have achieved their aims of inducing a majority of the population to obey the draconian public health restrictions and accept vaccination. The nature of the tactics deployed — with their subconscious modes of action and the emotional discomfort generated — do, however, raise some pressing concerns about the legitimacy of using these kinds of psychological techniques for this purpose. The government, and its expert advisors, are operating in morally murky waters. Click here for more on this

Personally, I'm getting tired of people telling me - in the open air even - that my mask has slipped a fraction below the tip of my nose.

Cosas de España/Galiza

A reader has has reminded me that Spain's birth rate is so low as to be insufficient to even maintain the population, never mind increase it. Thus, he/she/ze writes in respect of the 7m increase in population since 2000: All 7m are foreigners. [The alleged Spanish births of 1.5m] are the children of those migrants who've already acquired a Spanish passport. Had it not been for immigration, Spain's population would now be lower by at least a million, at 39 million or so. 

Guy Hedgecoe is an estimable British journalist, writing from near Madrid on Matters Spanish. He sort of went off my radar after the demise of the Spanish news website Iberosphere but I’ve been catching up via his blog page. Here are posts on subjects I cover from time to time, albeit more briefly . . .

May 2017: Corruption: Why so much here?

July 2018: The effusive Mr Rhodes

Feb 2019: The Real Spain. A personal view

April: 2019; The Editor. Ex, that is. Of El Mundo.

Feb 2018: The Brother-in-Law Part 1

June 2019: The Brother-in-Law Part 2

Jan 2020: The dreadful facheleco garment

April 2020: The blame game Appalling Spanish politics

Oct 2020: After the second wave, how about a second Transition? The need for constitutional reform.

Jan 2021: A Resolution

María's Level Ground: Days 4 & 5. Also on 'political slime' 

The EU

For those interested . . . At the end of this post, there's a list of EU benefits provided by reader sp but drawn up by someone else. Below that are my comments on it.

The Way of the World

Novelist Philip Roth was right about our online witch-hunts as he foresaw the modern mania for denouncing anyone who doesn’t conform to the new puritanism. As we moved away from censorship - he said - we gravitated towards censoriousness. A nice line. Click here for more on this.

Spanish 

An interesting site.

Less informative but more amusing . . .

Finally  . . .  En Cataluña fue detenido un emigrante gallego que circulaba en dirección contraria y con un cadáver en el asiento.

THE BENEFITS OF THE EU TO THE UK

What has the EU ever done for us?  

Shock horror - EU membership costs £9 billion a year. But that's 34p per person per day (1% of Government budget) and in return we get a mind-blowing amount of goodness back:-

- Longest unbroken period of peace between European nations in history

- Free trade deals with over 70 countries

- Just in time manufacturing that supports millions of jobs, thanks to no customs checks or complex procedures

- Scientific and academic collaboration

- Support for the Good Friday Agreement & active promotion of the Irish peace process

- Shared space exploration

- Participation in the Galileo GPS satellite cluster

- Driving licenses valid all over the EU

- Car insurance valid all over the EU

- Pet passports to make travel with pets simple

- Simplified fixed compensation scheme for flight delays & cancellations

- European Health Insurance Card (EHIC)

- Mobile roaming (calls, texts and data) at home prices

- Portable streaming services (can watch Netflix etc. all over the EU)

- Erasmus student exchange programme

- Simplified VAT reverse charge mechanism for those selling across the EU

- Safer food

- Clean beaches

- Enhanced consumer protection, including for cross-border shopping

- Horizon 2020 (funding and assistance for over 10,000 collaborative research projects in the UK as part of the world's largest multinational research programme.)

- Courses for the unemployed funded by the European Social Fund

- Disaster relief funding e.g. the 60 million euro we received for flood relief in 2017

- Free movement for musicians and their instruments, bands and their equipment, artists and their materials etc.

- Enhanced environmental protections

- Court of last resort (ECJ)

- REACH regulations & EU Chemicals Agency, improving human, animal and environmental safety around chemicals

- Pan-EU medicine testing and licensing

- Security cooperation and sharing of crime/terrorist databases

- European arrest warrant

- EURATOM for medical isotopes

- Support for rural areas

- Better food labelling

- EU funding for the British film industry, theatre and music

- European Capital of Culture programme, which has boosted cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool

- Service providers (e.g. freelance translators) can offer their services to clients all over the EU

- No UK VAT or duty on imports from the EU (great for online shopping)

- EU citizenship (it's a thing - look it up!)

- Cross-border collaboration on taxes, e.g. to hold huge firms like Amazon and Facebook to account more than we otherwise could

- Venture capital funding

- Legal protection for minority languages such as Welsh

- Mutual recognition of academic qualifications

- No credit and debit card surcharges

- EU structural funding (over £2 billion to Liverpool alone) with matched private funding requirement

- Supporting and encouraging democracy in post-communist countries

- A bigger presence on the world stage as a key part of the largest trade block in the world

- Use of EU queues at ports and airports

- Products made or grown in the UK can be sold in 31 countries without type approval, customs duties, phytosanitary certificates etc.

- Protection from GM food and chlorinated chicken

- Objective 1 funding for deprived areas and regions

- Financial services passport, enabling firms in the City to service the whole EU market

- Strong intellectual property protections

- Mutual recognition of professional qualifications

- Consular protection from any EU embassy outside the EU

- Minimum baseline of worker protections (which we can always improve on)

- Enhanced medical research prospects

- A friend to cosy up to against the might of the USA and China

After all that, do you *really* still begrudge 34p per day? If so, what's wrong with you?

MY COMMENTS

One overview I have is that the author is too young to have known what things were like pre-1973 and seems to assume that nothing can be done in cooperation with Europe unless one is a member of the EU.

Putting that aside, another general comment is that it would be instructive for the author - or sp - to divide the list into Essentials and Nice to Have, something done in business, to determine priorities and to provide perspective.

As to specifics . . .  I've said before that I don't subscribe to the major argument that the EU has saved Europe from war. Possibly one in which a (yet again) resurgent Germany invaded Belgium and tried to get back Alsace and Lorraine. Not to mention Prussia. It may well be, as sp says, that the founders of the EU forerunners had this as a motivation and aim - who the hell could blame them so soon after WW2? - but this is not a persuasive argument for events since then. Not for me, anyway. As the Romans put it - Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

A second way to divide the list would be:-

1. Those things lost to the UK which would have been retained if the UK had gone for an EFTA/ EEA model.

2. Those things lost to the UK which would have been retained if the UK had gone for Richard North's Flexcit, involving a gradual - and cooperative - exit over several years.

3. Those things lost to the UK because of Johnson's very poor and dishonest Brexit deal. These, of course, cover everything in the list above.

The purpose of this would to be show - admittedly academically - that it's not Brexit per se which has led to the current situation but the dreadful deal struck by the UK and the EU. It didn't really need to be this way.

The bottom line is that, with a bad deal done, no one really knows whether or not it'll prove beneficial to the UK in the longer run, whatever the near term hit on the economy (and my pension) turns out to be. As it is, Covid had considerably clouded the issue in the very near term, meaning that Boris Johnson is very much more lucky than competent. And that's something which surely must change. Possibly even before the next general election.

But, yes, some things have certainly been lost. For example the life enjoyed by Brits who lived here in Spain below the horizon and didn't seek residence and pay their Spanish taxes. As I've said, I find it difficult to feel sympathy for these folk. Likewise those who didn't live here for more than 60 days and rented out their property - tax-free - for much/most of the year. They've lost what they were never entitled to, it might be said. And they should have seen it coming and put their affairs in order before the deadline.

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'

My thanks to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for a couple of today's items. 

Covid 

Spain: The government says it doesn't extend the State of Alarm after its expiry on May 9. So, national mobility restrictions - such as curfew or perimeter closures - would no longer exist and  it will be for the 19 regional governments to decide on these

The UK: This a hard-hitting (and long) interview - of October last year - with an expert who doesn’t pull his punches in accusing a UK leading scientist  of being either a liar or negligent. He also rejects the prospect of a 2nd wave, dismisses government models, claims that 30% of the population had immunity from the start, that herd immunity had been reached in at least London by last October, that wide-scale testing is useless as misleading, and that the pandemic was already over by summer last year. The vaccine, he claims, is pointless for anyone  who isn’t old and at risk. 

I’m not qualified to asses these claims, so would like to see some other expert’s counterpoints. Meanwhile, it’s of huge concern that - what with the UK government giving everyone 2 free (dubious) lateral flow tests per week - it really does look like it’s bent on continuing the current assault on our humanity indefinitely. Or at least for well into this year. I’m pretty sure we’ll all be compelled to wear masks and distance ourselves next winter. To stop us dying from flu, if not Covid. Wouldn’t you want to enforce this if you were being criticised for running an under-resourced national health service?

For me - given that the case numbers might well be very wrong, the only real number is that of (true) Covid deaths. So, the backcloth:-

- The 2019 deaths per day in the UK was c.1,600

- The current UK daily deaths from Covid is c. 30. As a percentage of the population of 68.2m it’s 0.00004

- Compare (less restricted) Sweden, at 6 Covid deaths per day. Or 0.00006% of a population of 10.1m.

A major question arising is - Looking at the charts and graphs which certainly seem to show 3-5 waves around the word, would Dr Yeadon maintain all his claims?

Cosas de España

More positive news for the future. Spain's economy  Will Grow By 6.4% In 2021, says the IMF. Click here for more.

Ex king Juan Carlos’s quest to return home from exile may be complicated by a “dubious” €4.4 million loan from wealthy business friends that was used to pay off a tax debt. Click here for more.

A reader has said there’s nothing amusing about bullfighting. I’d agree as regards the industry as a whole but repeat that it’s funny to seem young bulls which aren’t injured of killed making idiots of both novilleros and young men from the audience. BTW: Lenox advises that: The novilleros have to cough up for the cost of the bull and the wages for the rest of the equipo, from the banderilleros to the vet. Plus a slice of the rental of the ring. It'll cost them each around 6,000€ for the privilege of showing off - or otherwise - their skills. 

Spain's population has grown by c. 7m since I came  here in 2000, of which 80% are immigrants. Including me, I guess. Of the 6.8m. net increase in population, domestic growth has accounted for only 1.5m, or 22%.   

Cousas de Galiza

A local-ish scandal.  

Portugal

Several warm countries are trying to attract home-workers from the UK but, as ever, Portugal is beating Spain on on this, via low tax-rates. Just as it did with Golden Visas and tax holidays for pensioners. What, I wonder, does this say about the 2 governments and their 'entrepreneurialism'

The UK and its Un-united Union

Scottish nationalists would be horrified if Boris Johnson gave them independence in May and the attempt to achieve it would fail.  Click here, if interested to know why.

The pathologies of Irish sectarianism and EU fundamentalism are on a collision course.  . . . The truth that the government can’t quite bear to face is that, unless a settlement is reached, Britain faces 2 devastating scenarios: either the Union becomes the price of Brexit, or Brexit becomes the price of the Union. Click here for more.

BTW: I heard the comment the other day: If you think you understand Northern Ireland, you haven't been listening. Very probably true. As surveys show, most English folk would happily hand it over to Ireland. And also tell the heavily-subsidised, whingeing Scots to piss off. So much for hankering after a renewed empire!

The Way of the World

The creator of a dating app that puts women in charge is among the new names to join the ranks of the mega-rich after becoming the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire. Whitney Wolfe Herd is worth $1.3 billion having co-founded Bumble, which allows only female users to make the first contact with a man. I wonder how one proves one is a woman. And if transgender women can use it. I guess so.

Talking of  women and feminism . . . Would you credit this?

Philip Roth was right about our online witch-hunts . . . The American novelist foresaw the modern mania for denouncing anyone who doesn’t conform to the new puritanism.  . . . From the 1980s onwards Roth detected a movement towards a new puritanism. As we moved away from censorship, we gravitated towards censoriousness. Click here for more.

Kevin De Bruyne has negotiated himself to £385k a week with Manchester City  

Religious Nutters/Crooks Corner

The good news is that televangelist Jim Bakker is no longer hawking (or defending himself against selling) a fake all-purpose cure for COVID, SARS, HIV, and “all venereal diseases.” The bad news is that he’s moved on to zombies. On yesterday’s show, Bakker brought along conspiracy theorist Steve Quayle to explain how COVID nasal swabs were somehow part of a nefarious plan to get your DNA in order to make weapons that will turn people into flesh-eating zombies. Click here for more.

Finally  . . . This reminds me of when I saw that SPOT had been painted at a Spanish junction . . .

P. S. For about 18 years, I've had a page on Galicia and Pontevedra at www.colindavies.net but I haven't revised it or added to it for several years and it's now defunct. I've got a new site - www.thoughtsfromgalicia.com - where I'll be adding stuff on Galicia as and when I can. And when I've worked out exactly how Wordpress works. If you go there now, you'll find a work-in-progress. And also this blog in exactly the same format as here. Except it automatically give more details of those cited sites which use Wordpress.

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: 

1. The future: Positive news re restrictions and jabs.

2. The past: Bad news re aid to companies hit by the lockdowns, etc.

Cosas de España/Galiza

The AVE-high speed train from Madrid to Galicia slows down to a crawl as it passes through Ourense. A route around the city is just being put out to tender. So, I imagine it will be at least another 10 years before there's a real AVE train ride to La Coruña/Santiago de Compostela. Making it 40 years later than the original promise. But, of course, the trip, at 4-5 hours, is already a lot shorter than the 7 or so hours it took when I came here in 2000. Or 12 at night. I'm not clear whether opening new stretches will reduce that further before the Ourense by-pass is ready.

En passant, I see that, since December last year, the name of the northern Madrid station has been changed from just Chamartín to Chamartín-Clara Campoamor, in honour of a famous feminist politician. Thank god the name comes up on the Renfe site after the first few letters, obviating the need to type the whole thing.

One of our biggest narcotraficantes is in court and facing both several years in  prison - though possibly not enough - and the confiscation of some of his vast assets. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Our bullring here in Pontevedra has a new status; it'll be a venue of the national league of Novilladas. Which are:  Bullfights in which novilleros (aspiring bullfighters) who've not yet attained the rank of matadorfight immature, overage, or defective bulls. I saw one once and it was  very amusing when the public was invited to have a go.

María's Level Ground: Days 2 & 3

Germany

Europe’s economic response to Covid hangs in balance as Germany presses pause, with judges at the Karlsruhe court refusing to ratify the Recovery Fund, the EU’s hands are tied.  An unassuming Bauhaus building on the banks of the Rhine is where Europe’s latest crisis is threatening to erupt. More here or here.

France

A majority of French people don't trust the EU, or the French government, to bring manufacturing back inside European or national borders. More here.

The Way of the World/The UK: 

Trying to resist online betting while stuck at home was impossible, say two gamblers seeking therapy  - "Every other advert will be for gambling".

Quote of the Week: Boris Johnson is very good at answering questions. Just not necessarily the questions that he’s been asked

Finally  . . .  Is there a more annoying ad on British TV that that for Peloton's bloody machine? Ignoring the ads for gambling companies, that is.

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  

France: People in northern France are refusing the AZ vaccine, adding further obstacles to the push to achieve national immunity by the end of the summer. The mayor of Calais said hundreds of doses had been left unused since reports a week ago in France of people suffering blood clots, then word of 30 similar cases in Britain on Friday. “It’s more than a wave of panic. It’s been going on for a week, and Friday was the final blow.“There really has to be a national campaign to explain that this vaccine has no more negative consequences than those from Pfizer or Moderna,” she added. Merci, M Macron.

Cosas de España/Galiza

Spain's economy is said to be in a coma. Here's some thoughts on how to extricate it.

Spain recovers part of El Cid’s skull for a sherry and a pastry.  En passant, Cela was Galician, with an English maternal grandfather. He wasn't universally popular.

Still as bleak and as closed as ever yesterday . . .

I recall now that, last week, the owner was sitting in the entrance and seemed surprised, shocked even, when I asked if the place was open. By pure coincidence, on Friday last I passed the Van Gogh café in Vigo that was the venue for a dinner in what I'd understood, over the phone, to be the Bangkok restaurant . . .

The UK

Covid: the insanity of Johnson: Richard North is less than impressed with the latest government  announcement. Nothing new there. Be warned that the first sentence could be clearer . . .    

The UK and Brexit 

Britons who live in Europe have been refused jobs, healthcare, bank accounts, university places and car purchases as they slip into a post-Brexit bureaucratic limbo, even though those rights and services are guaranteed under the withdrawal agreement signed by the UK and EU. More here in an article entitled British expats tell of a ‘Kafkaesque’ fight for residency rights in Europe. It seems that things aren't as bad here in Spain as they  are in France and Italy. Assuming you were on the ball enough to get your TIE last year . . .

The Way of the World

Academics are embracing gibberish studies: Social justice warriors on race and gender seem to prefer gobbledegook to persuasive argument. Prepare to laugh. And then weep.Max Hastings: I dislike feeling a coward but am grateful not to have to speak or write about LGBT, race, Greta Thunberg, Joanna Lumley, Chris Packham or his BBC programme Springwatch. This is because anybody who dares to swim against the tide about any of the above, or other contemporary icons and shibboleths, faces social media torture of a cruelty the Spanish Inquisition would think excessive. Matters are worse for university teachers, who must express opinions and face persecution if students dissent.

English 

Here’s  Lenox Napier on the subject.

Finally  . . . 

I knew that the British has regarded Ribbentrop in the 1930s as an imbecile but I hadn’t heard this . . . In the autumn of 1940, Ribbentrop made a sustained but unsuccessful effort to have Spain enter the war on the Axis side. During his talks with the Spanish foreign minister, Ribbentrop affronted him with his tactless behaviour, especially his suggestion that Spain cede the Canary Islands to Germany.  The Spanish came to the same conclusion. As had most senior Germans, other than AH.

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  

France: Having fallen on Saturday, yesterday's case number rose to 61,000, second only to 89,000 in early November last year. French hospital staff have warned that the country's latest wave of coronavirus infection is out of control and they will soon be forced to prioritise which patients to treat as the country entered its 3rd national lockdown over the weekend. With more than 5,000 patients in ICUs, critical care doctors are warning the next few weeks will be even more difficult to get through than the 1st and 2nd waves. No wonder Macron is worried about this job.

Cosas de España/Galiza

It's salutary to reflect on the point made in Giles Tremlett's book on the International Brigade that the Nationalist uprising failed in its first few days and would have been successfully put down but for immediate military help for generals Mola, Sanjurjo and Franco from Hitler and Mussolini. Followed by the creation by France, the UK and other powers of the Non Intervention Committee. Which was described by the American ambassador to Spain as The most cynical and lamentably dishonest group that history has known.

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism says she's confident Spain will have around 40m international tourists this year, compared with c. 84m in 2019. Something of an optimist, then.

Another friend in her 50s has been jabbed, while some of those those in their 80s and all of those in their 70s are still waiting. Of course, the Easter holidays haven't helped.

Maria's Level Ground: Day 1. She's no happier than I am at the 'vaccine fiasco'. Or with the ever changing (and 'dizzying') rules.

Maria notes something that, sadly, the vast majority of Spaniards would almost certainly agree with - There really are two sets of rules for Spaniards, depending on what your name and income is.

The UK

An excellent question: How did a free people become so relaxed about losing their liberty? See the first article below.

The EU/Germany

Vaccines, lockdowns, the economy, moral leadership: you name it, Europe is botching it. Click here.

A German columnist: At a time of crisis when a national response is needed, regional centres of decision-making can woefully undermine national cohesion. In fact, Mrs Merkel herself complained bitterly about just that on Sunday, roundly condemning the ensemble of “minister presidents” for failing to enact the “emergency brake” of lockdown measures that they had agreed shortly before, together with Berlin. Something very similar might well be said of Spain. Despite not being a true federal state, it has 19 regional presidents, each with significant devolved powers. The same columnist claims that Germany is ever more fractious and confused. 

And then there's the EU, which has more than once shown how bad supra-national 'government' comprising 27 nations can be at a time of crisis. As for the its mishandling of the Covid crisis, see the article from the (Europhile) Economist below.

The Way of the World

This is the article which supplied yesterday’s quote re truth.

Do we really need a war to force people to achieve more objective perspectives?

Spanish 

I wrote recently about the letters K and W in Spanish, the subject of this article.

English 

MAMIL: Middle aged man in lycra. Plenty of these in Spain, giving me a lot to smile at.

Quote of the Week: I think the government overestimated the intelligence of its opponents and underestimated the shallowness of the media. 

Finally  . . . An interesting article on local accents in France, where these don't seem to be as acceptable(obligatory?) as in the UK.

THE ARTICLES

1. How did a free people become so relaxed about losing their liberty? Whether we were altruistic or scared, we need to get to the bottom of the popular complicity with lockdown: Janet Daley

Before this bizarre chapter comes to a definitive end and life really does return to genuine (not “new”) normal, it is very important that we make a solemn promise to ourselves and the generations to follow. There must be a full and proper examination of what just happened.

In the euphoric relief that will follow on the great unlocking, it will be tempting to dismiss the unprecedented transformation of our social and political condition as a bad dream – a transitory venture into what would, only moments before, have been regarded as unthinkable by a free people. We will need rigorous discussion, innumerable historical studies, and limitless debate about the reasons not only for what was done by governments and legal authorities but for the popular acceptance of those measures and the public attitudes that they engendered. If we fail to do this, we will lose what might be the best insight we could ever have had into the nature of liberty.

There are broadly speaking two major interpretations of the events of the past year – the extraordinary powers seized by democratic governments and the reaction to those powers by national populations. The more optimistic (and flattering) is that there was a joint assumption of moral responsibility on both sides.

Governments and their agencies saw it as their absolute duty to prevent loss of life at whatever cost and they took whatever drastic steps were required to do that. Then their electorates, in a quite remarkable demonstration of altruism and social conscientiousness cooperated with those steps. This was, in effect, a willing renunciation not only of civil liberties as guaranteed by constitutional democracy, but of the most fundamental aspects of common humanity: a supreme act of heroic sacrifice for the sake of the greater good. It could be seen as the fruition of the great democratic revolutions which placed so much emphasis on the conscience of the individual as a member of society. That would be the good news.

Then there is the other possible analysis. Populations that have lived under democratic governance for centuries – whose everyday existence has assumed personal freedom to be an indispensable condition of life – were prepared to ditch their birthright overnight in the face of an alarming health threat. Even people who are not devout libertarians should have been provoked into asking the awful questions: just how deep does the commitment to freedom go? Do even the most intimate and instinctive bonds of family relations and physical affection become dispensable if enough fear can be generated?

There are plenty of lessons from the terrible ideological wars of the twentieth century to demonstrate the power of induced fear – and the awful lengths to which ordinary people can be led by the propagation of it. Did something like that happen here?

Of course, you might say, this was the very opposite: people were not being propelled into committing wicked acts by the orchestration of fear. They were behaving unselfishly and honourably, helping to protect others at all costs. Their decisions may or may not have been justified but they were made with the best of intentions. But even accepting that this is true, wasn’t it shocking (or at least surprising) how little resistance or doubt there was about it: how few people actually paused long enough to question the wisdom of shutting down most normal societal relations for an indefinite period, before submitting to the orders? Even if these measures were as good and essential as they were presented as being, they were startling in their severity – much more severe in their effect on private life than were wartime restrictions which never forbade embracing loved ones – and yet very few people seemed to be startled.

Isn’t that odd? Is it conceivable that the overriding impulse was not public-spirited generosity but self-preserving anxiety? That the modern obsessions with health and safety easily overwhelmed the principles on which our political system is supposed to be based? It is interesting to note here that the chief arguments used against lockdown have been on health grounds (the risk of other diseases, physical and mental, being ignored) rather than on moral ones (is it wrong to prevent children from hugging their grandparents?).

Perhaps the greatest irony in all this is that it occurred in the post-Cold War West which was, until very recently, busily congratulating itself on its bloodless victory over the totalitarian system of the East. The triumph of freedom over those forms of tyranny which specialised in the control and surveillance of day-to-day existence and social intercourse was supposed to be the seminal lesson of our times.

Given a choice, it seemed, people simply walked out from under the Soviet police state and brought about its collapse without a shot being fired. Such was the power of the natural human longing for liberty. Now here we were in the West consenting to a simulacrum of the surveillance and control that we had supposedly vanquished which was arguably more intrusive and limiting than anything the Stasi had contemplated. In the original plan, the post-Cold War discourse was going to be a fairly leisurely business. We would luxuriate in arguments about free market economics and social democratic values, on whether governments should aim for equality of opportunity or equality of outcome.

Then suddenly the questions became, should families be allowed to gather together, and, is it legal to have a sexual relationship with someone outside your own household? There must be very few (perhaps not any) tyrannies in modern history which have dictated such intimate things – at least not that survived long enough to be recorded. That, of course, might be part of the answer. These measures were always presented as temporary. Maybe all those generations of democracy have produced sufficient trust in government for populations to believe their assurances.

But there is a darker possibility. The conceit of enlightenment and its sacred values of individual freedom which modern democracies now believe can never be vanquished, which even saw off the communist dictatorships, can collapse into compliant terror – without a shot being fired.

2. How Europe has mishandled the pandemic. What happened and what does it mean for the union? The Economist

Look around the world at the devastation wrought by the covid-19 pandemic and something odd stands out. The European Union is rich, scientifically advanced and endowed with excellent health-care and welfare systems and a political consensus tilted strongly towards looking after its citizens. Yet during the pandemic it has stumbled.

In the brutal and blunt league table of fatalities, the EU as a whole has done less badly than Britain or America, with 138 recorded deaths per 100,000, compared with 187 and 166 respectively—though Hungary, the Czech Republic and Belgium have all fared worse than either. However, it is in the grip of a vicious surge fuelled by a deadly variant. That underlines the peril of Europe’s low rate of vaccination. According to our tracker, 58% of British adults have had a jab, compared with 38% of Americans and just 14% of EU citizens. European countries are also behind on the other criterion of a covid-19 scorecard, the economy. In the last quarter of 2020 America was growing at an annualised rate of 4.1%. In China, which suppressed the virus with totalitarian rigour, growth was 6.5%. In the euro area the economy was still shrinking. A year ago Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, called covid-19 the worst crisis to afflict the EU since the second world war. How has its response gone so wrong?

Part of Europe’s problem is demography. EU populations are old by global standards, making them more susceptible to the disease. Other less well understood factors, such as crowded cities, may also make Europeans vulnerable. The cross-border mobility that is one of the EU’s great achievements probably worked in favour of the virus, and no one will want to curb that when the pandemic eases.

But part of Europe’s problem is politics. Jean Monnet, a French diplomat who helped found the European project, famously wrote that “Europe will be forged in crisis.” When things are at their worst, those words are seized on to suggest the EU will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Sure enough, during the euro crisis the European Central Bank (ECB) eventually saved the day with new policies; likewise, the migration crisis of 2015 greatly enhanced Frontex, the EU’s border-security force.

However, Monnet’s dictum is also a source of complacency. The civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s led to the declaration that “This is the hour of Europe”. Years of carnage followed. Likewise, last year’s decision to give the European Commission sole responsibility for buying and sharing out covid-19 vaccines for 450m people has been a buck-passing disaster.

It made sense to pool the research effort of 27 countries and their funds for pre-purchasing vaccines, just as Operation Warp Speed in America brought together 50 states. However, the EU’s bureaucracy mismanaged the contract negotiations, perhaps because national governments generally oversee public health. The project was handled chiefly by the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who gleefully called the decision to expand her empire a “European success story”.  Hardly. Her team focused too much on price and too little on security of supply. They haggled pointlessly over liability should vaccines cause harm. 

Europe dithered in the August holidays. It was as if the Monnet-like forging of an ever-closer union was the real prize and the task of actually running vaccination a sideshow. Subsequent bickering, point-scoring and the threatened blockade of vaccine exports have done more to undermine faith in vaccination than restore the commission’s reputation. Were she still a member of a national government it is hard to see how Mrs von der Leyen could stay in her post.

Europe has also fallen short economically. Again, it has used the pandemic to make institutional progress, by creating a meaty new instrument known as the Next Generation EU fund, or NGEU. Worth €750bn ($880bn), this is targeted mainly at weaker countries that need it most. More than half the money is grants not loans, lessening the effect on national debt. It is also being paid for by raising debt for which the union as a whole is jointly liable. That is welcome, because it creates a mechanism which severs the link between raising money and the creditworthiness of national governments. In future crises that could protect euro-zone countries from capital flight.

As with vaccines, however, triumph at the NGEU’s creation belies its slow execution. The first money is still months from being paid out, as member states scrap with the commission over their individual programmes. By the end of next year, only a quarter of the fund will have been disbursed.

This lack of urgency is a symptom of a much bigger problem: the neglect of the underlying health of Europe’s economies. Even with its new money, the EU budget will account for just 2% of GDP in the next seven-year fiscal period. At the national level, where governments typically spend about 40% of GDP, Europeans have been culpably overcautious.

The consequences will be profound. By the end of 2022, America’s economy is expected to be 6% larger than it was in 2019. Europe, by contrast, is unlikely to be producing any more than it did before the pandemic. True, Joe Biden’s $1.9trn stimulus after nearly $4trn in the Trump era risks overheating the economy, but Europe lies at the other extreme. Its budget deficits for 2021 average perhaps half of what America is planning. After the combination of the financial crisis and covid-19, the EU’s output will be 20%, or €3trn, smaller than if it had kept up the growth it managed in 2000-07. The EU has suspended its deficit-limiting fiscal rules. Thanks in part to the ECB’s monetary activism, European governments have the fiscal space to do more. They should use it.

Ever-smaller union

Europe can take comfort from the fact that the vaccination programme will catch up over the summer. Across the continent, Euroscepticism has been in decline during the pandemic, and politicians who used to flirt with leaving, like Matteo Salvini or Marine Le Pen, have changed their tune. But, inexorably, the EU is falling behind China and America because it fails to grapple competently with each successive crisis. In a dangerous and unstable world, that is a habit it needs to change.

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.  

Covid 

Pick the meat out of this:-

The 7 day average of daily deaths as of yesterday:-

USA: 913 and declining from a 2021 peak of 3,457

Italy: 438 and rising

France: 288 and level from a 2021 peak of 444

Germany: 162 and declining slowly from a 2021 peak of 905

Spain: 89 and declining from a 2021 peak of 488

UK: 37 and declining from a 2021 peak of 1421

Portugal: 7 and declining from a 2021 peak of 291

Sweden: 7 and declining from a 2021 peak of 98 

So, neither Italy nor France are achieving a decline in the death rate. In contrast, the UK has achieved the steepest decline. Everyone knows why, I guess. The better news for Italy is that its daily case rate - at c. 20,000 - is in gentle decline. In France, however it's risen from c. 11,000 at the start of December to 39,000 at the start of April, though yesterday's number fell to 33,000. For comparison, the UK's was c.3,400 yesterday. And Spain's was c.5,800.

Cosas de España

Here's the new editor of The Olive Press on what has changed in Spain during the 15 years she's lived in Madrid.

Those bizarre 'Ku Klux Clan' Semana Santa outfits . . . What you need to know.

It's a sunny, warm Easter here in Galicia and Pontevedra's tapas bars yesterday were doing excellent business, with 50-75% occupation allowed right now. Because they have to indulge their habit metres away from anyone eating or drinking, groups of smokers rather stand out. My impression is the high incidence of smoking among teenage and young women is no lower than it was when I  came here 20 years ago. Which I find very saddening. The question arises - Will some of these decline to be vaccinated because of a perception of risk, while ignoring the medical advice on lung cancer?

Another of those Only-in-Spain? experiences on Friday evening in Vigo. While my companions changed our return rail tickets, I went to the next window to renew my expired Renfe discount card. Only to be told I couldn't do this except when buying a ticket. I didn't bother to inquire about the logic of this but joined my friends and did it at their window with the ticket they'd just got for me.

As if Brits didn't - post Brexit - have enough to worry about . . . . Squatter horror from Mark Stücklin.

Mark writes here that Spain has a legal and political framework that encourages squatting, especially mafia extortion-rackets exploiting the system to shakedown property owners with the threat of a squat. So it should surprise nobody that Spain has a serious problem with the illegal occupation of property. I guess this will eventually be stopped but I doubt I'll live to see it. Especially if Spain's government continues to be a coalition involving a far-left party.

Cousas de Galiza

Maria's Tsunami: Days 60&61 An outing to the mountainous O Courel area of Lugo province.

The UK

Decades - or even just years - ago, we were told 'the government had decided to do this or that. These days it's 'Boris Johnson'. Or even just 'Boris'. Not even 'the Prime Minister'. Witness this Times headline today: Boris Johnson fears lockdown illiteracy surge. Which is a nice lead into this article on the caustic views of the man with the hairstyle of a yak. As Richard North says, these are hardly new. Or, one could add, based merely on his inept performance of the last year.

The Way of the World/Quote of the Week: Pit my truth against your truth and it’s a terrifying race to the bottom.

Finally  . . .  Who knew Liberace could do this? OK, I recognise many of you won't know who Liberace was. Here’s his last performance with Oprah - in 1986, just 3 weeks before he died of AIDS complications.

P. S. Just for info . . .  Ostara, otherwise known as Ēostre, is the Germanic goddess of spring and dawn. On the old Germanic calendar, the equivalent month to April was called “Ōstarmānod” – or Easter-month.

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.  

Covid 

Europe: The EU's vaccine bullying papers over some embarrassing facts. See  the full article below.

France: Paris gets desperate. Paris has launched an operation to convince residents to get vaccinations by knocking on doors or stopping them in the street. But . . . 'AstraZeneca? Non, merci' – sceptical Parisians decline the offer of an immediate Covid jabs. Hardly surprising.

Cosas de España

Such is the nature of politics in Madrid - ahead of a  regional election - that one observer has commented that words have begun to lose their meaning in the discourse there.

Around Spain, changing street names seems to be as popular as changing the direction of traffic is here in Pontevedra city. In Business Over Tapas this week, Lenox Napier gave us this info: The Memoria Histórica is the reason given to erase all reference to the dictadura of Franco. This means the removal of statues and street-names. The Generalísimo (often the name for the High Street) has long gone from the maps, but many names remain. In Oviedo, since Spain is different, the street names have gone the other way, with Francoist names being returned to the corners, and Calle Federico García Lorca becomes once again Calle Calvo Sotelo. Then in Belalcázar, Córdoba, they’ve followed the rules and changed the name of a street from Calle Capitán Cortés (a Francoist) to Calle Capitán Cortés (a local Republican officer). Everybody – for once – is now happy.  Things aren’t much better in Palma, however, where the streets honouring Admirals Cervera, Gravina and Churruca have been replaced; since those names aren’t in memory of Francoist sailors, but illustrious naval men from the XVIII century. I suppose making changes gives bureaucrats something to do and justifies their existence. At  least to themselves. But just confusing the rest of us. 

Cousas de Galiza

Our efficient/officious local police have been on the border with next door Asturias in the early hours of each mornings this week and and issued 67 fines to folk who've come into Galicia in motor-homes. Easy work, as there's only a few places where they can park. Like  rats  in a trap.

Looking ahead, the police have proudly announced, with fotos, that they'll be flying drones over our beaches this summer, to make sure you're distancing and wearing a mask at least most of the time.

Meanwhile, I assume the few camino ‘pilgrims’ I’ve seen this week can only have started their walk within Galicia, in Tui for example - 4-5 days from Santiago.

The San Salvador Community of the mountain is a group of people who seem to own bits of the mountains behind my house. A few years ago, they claimed they were owed compensation for the land on which houses were illegally built, they said, on the city side of 'my' hill. I think that case is ongoing. And now they say that someone has stolen from them the land around the chouza I featured recently, being visited by  the mayor  of Pontevedra. I'm guessing they're asking for financial compensation in this case too. They might well be justified.

The UK 

It's reported the government will soon permit holidays in countries with great vaccination rates. This should help many Brits find out how disappointing  Gibraltar is. If it's on list, I'd recommend Malta instead.

Meanwhile,  the CEO of NHS England, writing in The Times, lavishes praise on his organisation and points to the possible future successes of 'joined-up services'. Stand by for a (belated) war on obesity, said to  be a major factor in the Covid death rate.

The UK and the EU 

I've just finished the book I cited yesterday - ‘The Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe', by Brexiteer Robert Tombs. Who is the emeritus professor of history at Cambridge university and 'a brilliant historian of England and of 19th-century France'. Not surprisingly, I found little or nothing in the book with which to argue. So, what I'd really, really like is for for someone who disagrees with him to either 1. Convincingly address all his points and prove beyond reasonable doubt that the EU is a good thing and the UK should have stayed in it, or 2. Make a bloody good attempt at this which is at least half convincing. It's generally acknowledged this wasn't done by Remainers during the run-up to the Brexit referendum in 2016 and I've seen nothing of this sort since then. Meanwhile, the  Guardian  reviewer of Tombs’ book airily dismisses his stance as that of a historian and not of, say a political columnist - as if that were at all relevant - and basically accuses him of having nothing more than 'faith' in a post-Brexit Britain. As if this were different from a Remainer who retains faith in the EU's founding myths, its efficacy and its future. I've enough experience of people with a deep faith to know it's little use arguing with them. But at least Tombs admits his will be put to the test over time. I'd add that faith in the EU has been well-tested in the last 70+ years, justifying apostasy on the part of some of us who supported the UK's entry into the  EEC in 1973 and again later in the 1975 referendum on membership in 'the Common Market'. But we will see .  . .

Naturally, I recommend Tombs' book to (candidate) Remainers. But I have no faith I'll ever see what I really, really want from any of them. Of course, if anyone can nominate a relevant book, I'll happily buy it to check out the strength of the case. I don't suppose there's one out there called 'The EU, what has it ever done for all of us Europeans?'. 

 The Way of the World

The betting queen’s empire is founded on misery. Does she ever think about the addiction she profits from?  So begins an article on the woman I mentioned yesterday.

THE ARTICLE

The EU's vaccine bullying papers over some embarrassing facts. Even Michel Barnier has called for a cease-fire in this unnecessary, ugly fight. A Telegraph leader.

The EU has said that “zero” AstraZeneca jabs will be shipped from a factory in the Netherlands to the UK if the company fails to meet its commitments to the bloc. This is protectionism in tooth and claw. It shamelessly disregards contracts and it also overlooks critical British investment in research and production.

Our vaccine success is not only down to staying out of the EU procurement programme and signing contracts early – though both were a stroke of genius. We also spent heavily on research and upscaling production. As we report today, the UK invested more than £21 million to build up capacity at the Halix plant in Leiden, the Netherlands, before the Oxford vaccine was even proven to work.

Moreover, the Dutch government, and by extension the EU, was invited to join the project and secure doses for themselves – but chose not to take part. Unquestionably, this initial expenditure should entitle Britain to its fair share of the jabs made on the site (British engineers also travelled to Halix to improve production over Christmas). The UK has spoken of “sharing” inoculations; it is the EU that is being unreasonable.

Europe has paid a heavy price for failure when it comes to immunisation, as signalled by France’s humiliating extension of its lockdown, but the EU’s leadership is determined to paper over the cracks with bullying.

Even some of our old Brexit sparring partners are disgusted: Jean-Claude Juncker labelled the trade war “stupid” and Michel Barnier, thought to be a Gaullist rival to Emmanuel Macron, has called for a ceasefire.

Mr Barnier spent much of the negotiations lecturing us over the inviolability of the Single Market, giving every impression that its workings were logical and just. But the EU is not about free trade, as this sordid affair proves, but is really a political project, now betraying its authoritarian nature in a moment of self-imposed crisis.

The world is watching and can judge the facts. Had the Dutch joined the investment at Halix, they might have been able to reserve jabs for the EU. Instead, the UK signed a contract of first refusal in return for its investment,  fair and square. There are benefits to acting fast and acting strategically, an argument Eurosceptics made often – and for which they were ridiculed by their opponents.

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 UK: Coronavirus infections in Britain are lower than in all the main EU nations as the number of second vaccine doses administered reached a record high. The UK has lower daily infection rates than 26 of the 27 member states, despite being the worst hit in January. Only Portugal has a lower rate. 

Hungary is the worst-affected nation in the bloc, with a daily rate of 868 cases per million.

France: The weekly infection rate is about 8 times higher than in the UK, as a sharp rise in cases pushes intensive care units to breaking point. President Macron has blamed the “British variant” for the surge and announced a 3rd national lockdown. He’s been pilloried for this, with Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, saying he’d met his Waterloo in the delayed vaccination campaign.

Spain: With vaccinations being outpaced by a growing wave of new infections, the government has urged the public to increase precautions in order to “buy time.” This plea came as Spain surpassed 150 infections per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 days — which national authorities consider the high-risk threshold. “We are at a critical moment, with an upward trend in the virus in almost every region.”, said a MOH official. Spain had stabilised its contagion rate following a sharp uptick after the Xmas holidays. The government blamed the rise on the spread of the more contagious virus variant first identified in Britain, which now accounts for 60-70% of all case.s. The increase is sharpest in Madrid, and the northern regions of Navarra and the Basque Country. All three areas have more than 240 infections per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 days.

Cosas de España

The tourism industry is not well pleased with the nationally-imposed obligation to wear a mask when sunbathing - or even when in the sea.. The Times claims that some Spanish restores are so upset they're revolting . . .  Galicia is said to be deviating from the rule - ‘Pending clarification from Madrid'.

On Wednesday night, Spain's football team played one that didn't exist. That of Kosovo, which Spain -  for Cataluña-related reasons - doesn't recognise.. On TV, Spain’s national broadcaster disregarded protocol by not mentioning Kosovo as a country and using lowercase letters for 'kos' in its graphics, compared with ESP for Spain. Needless to say, without anyone to oppose them, Spain won the game.

Most countries which have a President make do with just one VP. Spain usually has 2 these days but I don't know why. Right now, it has 4 - 2 each from the 2 coalition parties which form the government. All 4 are women. I don't know why, other than on pure merit, but I do know 2 of them are Gallegas. To be completely honest, I also don't know what they do to earn whatever extra money goes with the title and (possibly) increased responsibilities. All I know is that, once again, Spain is Different. . . Café para todos, perhaps.

Good to read that the government has approved funds for exhuming graves at the dreadful Valley of the Fallen. A total of €665,000 has been allocated for the exhumation and identification of some 33,000 victims of the Civil War buried there.

Cousas de Galiza  

Cyclists are going to be banned from Santiago's old quarter. I wonder if this law will be any more obeyed or imposed than the one which bans them from pavements(sidewalks) in Pontevedra and elsewhere.

Did I joke last week about Spain being now a police state? At Pontevedra station  yesterday, a friend yesterday tried to buy train tickets for 3 of us going to Vigo today. She was denied them, as she couldn't give all our full names and ID numbers. To get a bloody train to another bloody Galician city . . . These details are obligatory when you buy on line but I've never been asked for them at a station.

This is not by any means the first time a stranger to Pontevedra has done this and, thanks to GPS technology, it certainly won't be the last. Best witnessed from the first floor window of the adjacent Savoy café:-

The UK 

How it works . . .The Scottish nationalist government that wants to end the subsidy paid to it by the rest of the UK is, in the meantime, using that same subsidy – plus the extra cash intended to fight covid – to fund electoral bribes in an attempt to persuade Scots to vote for independence and, therefore, a permanent end to high spending on services.  

The EU 

Historian Robert Tombs, writing in his book: 'This Sovereign Isle': The pandemic might in theory have galvanised the EU into improvising a workable confederation based on a suddenly realised European solidarity. This would have begun by raising an adequate fund to sustain damaged economies which, not being in control of their currencies, are dependent on joint action. Instead, it exposed the national, cultural and economic tensions behind the gold-spangled banner.  . . .  A senior American diplomat predicted more than a decade ago: The European Union is likely in coming years to be a theoretically powerful but crisis-prone second-rate power caught in an unending geopolitical tug-of-war between other poles in the international system … [It] is likely to resemble, not 19th-century Britain or Germany, but their palsied polyglot neighbor, the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

This, by the way, was written before the vaccine debacle.

Germany

Tombs again, on the EU's Covid bail-out: This episode gave another indication of the power of Germany to make or break European policies, and of the reluctance of the German state and many German politicians – whatever the views of the present German government – to allow fundamental decisions to be taken by ‘Europe’ when German taxpayers and savers stand to foot the bill. Germany’s enviable financial surpluses enabled it to launch a vastly greater fiscal stimulus package for its own economy than any other EU member, including subsidies to German corporations, which would inevitably increase its dominance of the Eurozone. As Joseph Stiglitz had warned, ‘Without a course correction, the euro will become little more than a tool for German prosperity".

Spanish 

New word for me: Disyonquey: Discjockey.

English 

I'm used to seeing apostrophe errors, mainly in the case of possessives, but today was the first time I'd seen theirs's for theirs. They don't even sound the same . . .

Quote of the Week

Old but good: No one should ‘never prophesy, especially about the future.

Finally  . . . 

Caitlin Moran: In Italy they have the word umarells. It describes those old, retired men who turn up at construction sites, hands behind their backs, barking out “unwanted comments and advice” to the men busily working there. Umarells are such a recognised phenomenon in Italy that you can even buy little umarell figurines — they are 14cm high and you put them on your desk “and let them watch over you as you work”, as the manufacturer puts it, wryly. Trump appears to be a full-time, real-life umarell — popping up wherever people are trying to get on with their lives and commenting on, basically, how he doesn’t have a clue how to get on with his.

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 

A retrospective: This column argues that by choosing a swift elimination strategy, several countries around the world have gained control over the virus. Cited are China, Australia, Cambodia, Iceland, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Laos, and Thailand. By contrast, most European countries have followed a stop-and-go logic that turned out to be more restrictive, more dangerous, and more damaging to the economy.

Belgium: A court has ordered the federal government to end all its coronavirus measures within 30 days because it failed to establish a proper legal basis for them. The court of first instance gave the government 30 days to retract the measures or else face penalties of €5,000 per day and up to a maximum of €200,000 in total. In practice, the ruling gives the government a month to find a proper legal basis for its measures, which include curfews, restaurant closures and limits on gatherings.

AZ is not the only vaccine supplier troubled by EU policies. Pfizer accuses Brussels of holding back Covid the vaccine effort.

The AZ vaccine: I tried this morning to explain to a visitor from Mars why there are so many differences between EU states on the attitudes towards and use of this. But gave up and simply referred him to this.

Cosas de España

A propos . . . Spain is going to use some of its stockpile of the AZ vaccine on essential workers aged 65 or more.

The latest national restriction I mentioned yesterday - re mask-wearing in public areas - means that you can't sunbathe on a  beach without a mask, no matter how far away you are from anyone else. Should leaad to some interestingly coloured faces.

Nick Corbishley recently wrote this article about life with his Mexican mother-in-law in Barcelona. And here she hits back, sort of. What intrigued me is her reference to a 170 square foot room. Do they still use imperial measures in Mexico? Or Barcelona?

Did you know that, in a true federal state - Germany and the USA for example - the regions/states are sovereign but have given some power upwards to the national state? Spain, on the other hand, only looks like a federal state. So here it's the national state which has full sovereignty, under which it devolves power to the regions/Autonomous Communities. I'm mentioning this as background to the fact that the Spanish state is taking the Galician Xunta to court, for exceeding its powers in the healthcare area. Possibly by imposing more restrictions than those nationally authorised. As for the UK, I doubt it's possible for the state to sue, say, Cheshire for acting ultra vires. As opposed to the private individuals on the Cheshire County Council. 

Cousas de Galiza  

The latest example of officious local policing is fining surfers at La Lanzada beach as they moved the few metres from their car to the sea without masks.

There's a bar down by Pontevedra's market that I pass 4 times a day and can't recall ever seeing open. But last evening it was and I had a drink there with a couple of friends. It's called Van Gogh, though the sign outside - apparently made of styrofoam - says AN GOGH. But, inside, on one wall, large letters have it as VAN GHOH. To say the place is basic would be a huge understatement. And we decided it was where drunken kids end up after boozing elsewhere. Which would explain why I've never seen it open in 20 years. We were the only customers, of course. 

Maria's Tsunami: Day  59

The Way of the World

As ads for (immoral?) gambling companies dominate the UK airwaves . . . Denise Coates, the joint chief executive of her family company Bet365 was paid a record £421m last year, taking her total pay over the past 4 years to more than £1.2bn. This comes from the pockets of an awful lot of punters who tried to beat her odds and failed. But she is Britain’s highest taxpayer and gives a lot to charitable causes. So, that's OK.

Another topical cartoon:-

Finally  . . .  

I read yesterday about 7 ways to keep a cat coming into your garden. I'm here to tell you that putting male urine on your property borders doesn't work. Or, more accurately, it's no good using British piss against Spanish felines . . .

A less-than-topical cartoon:-