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
Israel: The 'magic' has started. Early data shows the vaccination campaign is working. It took longer than expected but there is now 'real world' evidence to show the Pfizer jab is both saving lives and reducing infections.
UK jabs: Hmm. My old friends and my younger siblings are now being jabbed. Rather brings home the UK success in this area.
R&D: An interesting line of research on blood group correlations. . . Rh- patients may need to be more closely monitored and those whose blood-type is Rhesus Negative may be wise to take even more than standard precautions. More here.
Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain .
Spanish farmers are unhappy about 2 current developments:-
- Protection being given to wolves, here and here, and
- Protection proposed for jamón.
The police and taxation authorities can be arbitrary anywhere in the world. Here’s a current example from Barcelona. The city authorities are slapping €60,000 fines on anyone they catch renting out a spare room for less than 31 days, even though there’s no law expressly forbidding it. According to La Vanguardia, hard-up households, especially empty-nesters, in desperate need of additional income to help pay the mortgage, and avoid losing their homes, are being ruined by fines of €60,000 for renting out their spare rooms for 31 days or less. There is outrage at the disproportionate size of the fines for an activity that is not illegal, and causes no harm to anyone. See here.
Just loose change? Or a lot of money that could have been better spent? . . An art collection owned by a popular baroness is at the centre of a row in Spain after the government agreed to pay her nearly €100 million to keep it on public display. The deal envisages the state paying €6.5 million annually for 15 years to Carmen Cervera, the Dowager Baroness Thyssen-Bornemisza and a former Miss Spain. It would have the option of buying the 427 works after that period. It is linked to an agreement that would allow Cervera to remain domiciled in Andorra to avoid paying tax in Spain.
Another nice piece from Lenox at Spanish Shilling, on funny Spanish drinks. Including the hard to imagine creme de menthe-+lemon Fanta.
María's Tsunami: Day 5. Cronyism, she fears, is a Spanish disease that'll never disappear as long as there's a Spain. In my view, you could almost put 'blatant' before 'croneyism'.
The Way of the World
In the USA at least . . . The cottage industry of fact checking has turned itself into a system of Orwellian misinformation — one that uses fact-o-meters and Pinocchios to insist that war is peace and ignorance is strength. Rather than clarifying reality, fact checking is routinely used to hide the truth and shield the powerful from accountability. All in the interests of people who are already billionaires, it says here.
A couple of nice phrases from that article: The 24-7 news cycle’s miasma of disinformation. And: The entire “fact checking” brand is now the misinformation era’s single most deceitful weapon.
Being woke seems to be less about adjusting one's own behaviours and attitudes and working to protect minority and oppressed groups from systemic injustice than it is calling out others for getting it wrong, purely for the dopamine hit of online righteousness. See the article below.
English
Ninety percent of English words starting with the letters eu- come from an Ancient Greek word for 'good'. e. g. Euphemism. Eucharist??
Finally . . .
Gas meters: 2 contrasting UK experiences:-
1. Perry: We photograph the two meters and email them to the company each month. No estimates required. Nor an ID or copy of one or both passports, I suspect.
2. No need for readings. My smart meter is sending data incessantly.
Said meter:-
THE ARTICLE
I may be politically correct – but I am fed up with self-righteous wokeness. The cruel public shaming of transgressors is counter-productive: Emma Burnell, The Telegraph
I have always been proudly politically correct. I associate this with the simple act of politeness. I treat people equally and with respect. I don’t knowingly use terms I know are hurtful to minority groups. I work to try and address my own prejudices and those built into systems where I have the power or influence to make changes.
I was always deeply frustrated with the caricature some on the Right perpetuated of political correctness as anything other than this. Sadly, others seem to have adopted that caricature wholesale in the morphing of political correctness into being woke. Perhaps the Right’s latest triumph is to finally manage to define the Left’s approach to equalities as they have always wanted it to appear – and for the Left to believe them.
Being woke seems to be less about adjusting one's own behaviours and attitudes and working to protect minority and oppressed groups from systemic injustice than it is calling out others for getting it wrong, purely for the dopamine hit of online righteousness.
Woke is not kind even as it invokes the language of kindness. It is often cruel in behaviour seeking not to persuade through dialogue but simply to remove transgressors by public shaming and coercion. It does so not in a way that would lead to redemption. Instead it leads to a small group of people using the awesome power of their platforms to proclaim on others acceptability to society. People are praised and shunned on a whim. Little can be changed structurally through such superficial, individualistic actions.
I am a 45-year-old, middle class white woman. I am very aware both of my privileges and fragilities. I know where I am discriminated against and where I have advantages (and that the scales tip decisively towards the latter). Perhaps I am not supposed to be woke. So I’m happy to leave the terminology behind. Whether you call it woke or PC doesn’t matter – what does is outcomes.
Any sensible approach to both thinking about and actively tackling discrimination should not exclude groups who are so close to your way of thinking but have a different attitude or methodology. There should not be just one way of thinking, but different visions that reach the maximal amount of people and make the maximum amount of different. Equally, and this is the hardest part, they have to change the hearts and minds of those displaying the discrimination. Particularly those at the lowest end or with the least intent. Freezing people out and publicly shaming them is just about the least persuasive tool you could use. It fosters resentment, often not simply against those individuals who did the shaming, but towards the groups they purport to represent.
In the end, I don't think the woke moment will last. It is too good at hunting and finding witches. There will be too few of the pure left to sustain a movement.
But if enough people don’t simply question the effect this has on action against inequality, and if it brings a further backlash against the more established tradition of political correctness, that would be but deeply counterproductive to anyone fighting for a more equal society.