The Curmudgeon

What are our local councils playing at! What we need is some Common Sense.
Saturday, February 18, 2023

By The Curmudgeon

We all know that local councils start spending money on vanity projects in the run-up to an election. It happens everywhere, in the UK, in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Probably also in Ukraine.

This diatribe is specific to Ronda, but I’m sure it is relevant to other places.

Ronda Council is taking the mickey, isn’t it? I don’t usually get involved in politics, but I have looked on in horror at the huge amounts of money being ploughed into all kinds of projects in the town, by the ruling Partido Popular.

Local councils in Spain have elections this May. Ruling councils tend to invest in a range of vanity projects to try and get re-elected. Opposition parties make promises they cannot hope to fulfil.

This activity demonstrates a lack of common sense on the part of our local politicians.

Look at this list of disastrous, extremely costly and environmentally damaging projects currently in progress or recently completed in my town: photo-voltaic farms, new outdoor pool near LIDL, new bus station, huge multi-storey car park in Barrio San Francisco, demolition of existing swimming pool to create a new sports area on Avenida de Malaga, new road layout at the Recinto Ferial.

The Council trumpets its environmental credentials, with its plan to do away with paper and transfer to digital means of communication, but this is just playing at being eco-friendly.

Not a single council building sports a solar panel! Lights in council buildings are on all day whether needed or not. Fiestas and ferias continue as before with a huge waste of electricity on lighting. I could go on, but I’m getting cross ….

Back to the list of vanity projects. Where is the common sense?

100 acre photo-voltaic farms in Cuevas del Becerro are insane. Where’s the common sense?

Why build a brand-new outdoor swimming pool that is only open for three months of the year? Particularly when there was one already on Avenida de Malaga. It would surely have been cheaper to renovate that one. It makes common sense.

Why do we need a new bus station? The current one is well-located. It would have been far cheaper to renovate that. It’s not as if there are that many buses that come to Ronda. No common sense.

As for the monster multi-story car park being built on a greenfield site in the Barrio San Francisco, well, words fail me.

The old swimming pool at the bottom of Avenida de Malaga has been razed to the ground, in order to create a sport zone. Sorry, I thought they were planning one of those on the site of the old Mercadona store, where there is already an indoor pool, an all-weather pitch and other facilities.

The latest headline in the local paper informs us that the council is going to spend half-a-million euros on re-arranging the road system at the showground. The work will take four months. Where is the common sense?

There appears to be no joined-up thinking going on at the council. Where is their common sense?

Right, my rant is over. I’ve probably missed other projects that make no sense, but I hope I’ve made my point.

I shall be exercising my right to vote in the May local elections and I hope other guiris got registered in time so that they too can have a say. I shall be looking for an alternative to the Partido Popular, which has presided over 12 years of waste and a lack of basic common sense in the town. PSOE is a possibility, but there are two other parties, I understand. Contigo Ronda and Ronda 100 por 100.

I hope you will make your vote count also. Vote for COMMON SENSE!

2 Like Published at 8:26 PM Comments (3)

Spanish Beer report
Thursday, February 16, 2023

Spanish lagers have never had a good reputation, especially amongst real ale drinkers like The Curmudgeon. However, the rich offering of craft beers in the UK isn't sufficient for him to want to live in the land of his birth.

I no longer wish to live in the UK, which has been ruined by that country’s exit from the European Union and the incompetent handling of the process by Boris Johnson, Michael Gove et al. And BoJo’s two successors as prime minister have not improved matters one jot.

Not even the superior range of beers on offer in the UK is enough to lure me back.

Spanish beer

One of the few things I truly missed when I emigrated to Spain back in 2008 was decent beer. As a former CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) member, I was a fan of cask ales.

However, I have to admit that in the last few years here in Spain some better tasting beers than Cruzcampo and Heineken (same company, by the way) which dominate in Andalucía, have come onto the market, and new craft beers are emerging all the time in places like Madrid, Toledo and even little old Ronda.

The adjacent photo I took recently in a bar in Sevilla, but there are other places around Ronda that offer a fabulous selection of tercios and botellines. Bar Alegre in Ronda, Bar Ankanita in Estación de Benaoján, and Venta El Puente in La Indiana spring to mind.

El Águila (Madrid), El Alcázar (Jaén) and Turia (Valencia) are widely available in the Serranía de Ronda, and beyond, both in supermarkets and in bars.

The major brands available on draft that are quaffable include: Alhambra, Amstel, Estrella Galicia, Mahou, San Miguel and Victoria Malaga.

Small wonder that San Miguel, which originated in The Philippines when those islands were still Spanish (Spain lost The Philippines, together with Cuba and Puerto Rico in 1898), is now on sale from London to Lima, from Cardiff to Caracas and from Edinburgh to Erfurt.

Marcas Blancas

When it comes to buying beer in the supermarkets, your best bet is to go for a marca blanca, an own brand label beer. Amazingly most are made at the same brewery, Font Salem SL in Valencia. Others are brewed in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Why pay 55 - 60c for a branded beer when you can get an equally good, I would say better, alternative, for 25 – 30c?

I particularly recommend Steinburg from Mercadona, Argus from LIDL, Karlsquell from Aldi, as well as own brands from Al Campo, Carrefour, El Corte Inglés, Covirán and Día, and, no doubt, other chains where I do not shop.

Foreign beers

A wide range of foreign beers are on sale in Spain nowadays.

Most supermarkets and some bars offer German Weissbier, such as Paulaner, Franziskaner and Oettinger. LIDL has its own marca blanca,

Occasionally the German discounters Aldi and LIDL have special offers of packs of English cask ales.

They all sell that famous black stout from Ireland, Guinness. You sometimes see Murphy’s also.

The Czech beer Budvar and the Mexican Sol are increasingly on sale, as well as Indian, Italian and Japanese lagers.

So, lots to be positive about with the current beer scene in Spain.

As for the UK, I can enjoy a decent pint or two of cask bitter when I visit family there, but that’s as far as it goes.

I’m staying here – Andalucía is for me!

Salud, Prost, Cheers, Skol!

© The Curmudgeon

Tags: 1898, Al Campo, Aldi, Alhambra, Amstel, Bar Alegre, Bar Ankanita, beer, bitter, Budvar, CAMRA, Carrefour, Cheers, Coviran, Cruzcampo, Cuba, Curmudgeon, Dia, El Aguila, El Alcazar, El Corte Ingles, Estrella Galicia, Font Salem, Franziskaner, Guinness, Heineken, Jaen, Karlsquell, lager, LIDL, Madrid, Mahou, Mercadona, Murphy’s, Oettinger, Paulaner, Philippines, Prost, Puerto Rico, Ronda, Salud, San Miguel, Skol, Sol, Steinburg, stout, Toledo, Turia, Valencia, Venta El Puente, Victoria Malaga

2 Like Published at 6:36 AM Comments (5)

What is going on here?
Tuesday, February 7, 2023

As you know, The Curmudgeon likes a moan. Today he is wondering what’s going on with bars here in Spain and also with political opinions.

Bars, etc

“When I were nowt but a lad”, most bars and restaurants in Spain were open all day until late. After they closed, you could go on to a bar de copas, pay double and enjoy the company of pretty young señoritas or even foreign girls on their travels.

It is often suggested that they were “prozzies”, but not in my experience.

But I digress…..

What has happened in Spain, is that, post-Covid, you’re struggling to find anywhere open, especially off-season. Bar owners shut when it suits them, often without notice.

A couple of recent examples spring to mind.

In the tiny village where I live (population 990), you’re struggling to find anywhere open in the evenings, unless there’s a local feria or it’s high season.

Thursdays are particularly bad. In the daytime only two places are open, but they both close around 4.00 pm. In the evenings, two other places open up, both bares de copas, where they only serve micro-waved pizzas and the like.

In the big town, Ronda (pop. 33,000 and falling) I haven’t got a clue what is going on.

The other week we booked a few days in advance a table for four for Friday night in one of the best new restaurants in town. Booking accepted. We were looking forward to eating there for the first time.

However, when we looked at their website on the Friday afternoon to check out the menu, we learned that the restaurant was going to be shut that night. They didn’t ring me to cancel. I rang repeatedly but no one picked up. Unprofessional, or what? We shan't be rushing to go there any time soon.

Fortunately, I managed to get a booking at one of our favourite long-established restaurants in town. As always it was excellent, if somewhat expensive.

To sum up, it seems to me that, unlike in the old days when bars, cafes and restaurants were a “service”, the owners are only interested in themselves and making money. At the first sign of an empty terrace, they shut up shop. We’ve even been hurried up to pay our bill because they wanted to close – at 4.00 pm!

No money to be made? OK, we’ll shut, without so much as a here no there!

Let's call a spade a spade. The restaurant that let us down was La Tropicana, the one where we enjoyed a lovely meal was El Almocabar.

Political opinion

I had a conversation with a Spanish neighbour in our local bar the other day. Sergio is only in his 30s, yet he was longing for a return to the ideals of franquismo. Astonishing.

A few days later I bumped into his father, who is in his mid-50s. Esteban is of the same view as his son (or the other way round!), yet he was a mere infant when Franco died in 1975.

I cannot fathom it. It’s a bit like those Americans, British, Turks, Hungarians and Russians who still believe in Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Recep Erdogan, Victor Orban and “El hijo de Putin”.

It’s enough to turn you into a curmudgeon!

What’s going on?

© The Curmudgeon

Tags: Americans, bars, bar de copas, Boris Johnson, Brexit, British, Curmudgeon, Donald Trump, Erdogan, Hungarians, Orban, Putin, Recep Erdogan, restaurants, Ronda, Russians, Turks, Victor Orban

2 Like Published at 10:13 AM Comments (1)

Brexit Three Years On
Friday, February 3, 2023

We have just “celebrated” the anniversary of 'Brexit day', three years since the UK formally left the EU on 31 January 2020. The Curmudgeon, a devout Remainer, sums up some of the Press talk floating around at the end of last month.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) chose to mark Brexit day by publishing a report that said the UK was the only country in the G7 whose economy would shrink this year. Worse even than Russia, and we weren’t even hit by sanctions or engaged in a major war.

Brexit is a ‘complete disaster’ and ‘total lies’, says former Tory donor and private equity veteran Guy Hands, a leading City figure, says Boris Johnson ‘threw the country and the NHS under the bus’.

Speaking on the third anniversary of the UK’s departure from the EU, Hands, the founder, chair and chief investment officer of the private equity firm Terra Firma, said: “It’s been a complete disaster. The reality is it’s been a lose-lose situation for us and Europe. Europe has lost more [in financial services] but we’ve lost as well. And the reality of Brexit was, it was just a bunch of complete and total lies.

“The only way that the Brexit put forward by Boris Johnson was going to work was if there was a complete deregulation of the UK and we moved to a sort of Liz Truss utopia of a Singapore state and that was just never going to happen,” Hands, a former donor to the Conservative party, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Guy Hands founded the private equity firm Terra Firma.

Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

“The British population was never going to accept a state in which the NHS would be demolished, where free education would be severely limited, where regulation with regard to employment would be thrown apart. It was just complete and total absolute lies.”

He added: “The biggest issue about it, and you can take the Brexit bus as a good example, is the lies that Boris Johnson and the Conservative party told about the NHS. In fact, what they did was throw the country and the NHS under the bus.”

According to the polling expert John Curtice, on average polls now suggest that 57% people in the UK would vote to rejoin the EU.

The Brexit anniversary marks three years of political mayhem and economic calamity.

Ironically, it is also 50 years since Britain joined the European Economic Community, the fore-runner of the European Union.

Ten years ago this month, David Cameron made his shameless speech pledging a referendum to placate his party and Ukip-ers, who he had previously called “fruitcakes”, “loonies” and “closet racists”.

Cameron wrongly thought Brexiteers could be appeased, but they proved insatiable. The more harm their Brexit does, the more extreme versions they demand, chasing those impossible phantasms they mis-sold to the country.

Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee wrote on Tuesday: “ ‘Remoaner’ was a clever Brexit epithet for the 48% of us who voted remain. The heartbreak of this act of national self-harm left Remainers keening in grief, in a long moan for the loss of an ideal, along with certain economic decline.

“With the sorrow there was rage, white-hot and vengeful, against cynical Brexit leaders who knowingly sold snake oil and fairy dust”.

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, last week promised there would be a civilised friendship with Europe under a Labour government.

There was talk of reconnecting “a tarnished UK” with its closest allies, “for security and prosperity”; “reducing friction” on trade; unblocking the Horizon scheme; strengthening student links and pledging a “clean power alliance”.

"But there is to be no rejoining, no way back to the customs union or single market," Labour says, so as to deny Tory strategists what they yearn for: a re-run of Brexit at the next general election to distract from the economy, the cost of living crisis and collapsed public services.

The pollster John Curtice says that 57% of people are in favour of rejoining, with just 43% for staying out. 49% think Brexit weakens the economy.

Toynbee continues: “Remainer grief eases at signs of a country reuniting against the liars who pulled off this trick. But it’s rash to imagine that even a 14-point lead means a pro-EU referendum would be won: we know what referendums do”.

But, is it not fair to suppose that egocentric Britain forgets that Brussels, with a war on its doorstep and its own economic woes, might shun yet more negotiations with the UK.

Let’s not forget the MEPs and envoys we insulted. The spite and mendacity spread by the likes of Nigel Farage and Daniel Hannan in the European Parliament or (Sir) David Frost across the negotiating table.

Hannan, the ex-MEP and arch-purveyor of Brexit fabrications, is trying to scare defecting Brexit voters back. “There really does seem to be a plot to overturn Brexit,” he warns Telegraph readers in an article.

He uses Lammy’s speech as evidence, plus Labour’s resistance to the EU deregulation law. “There is little doubt the Europhile blob is giving it a go,” he writes, “to hold Britain within the EU’s regulatory orbit pending an attempt at re-entry.”

He also warns: “For their plan to have the slightest chance of success, they need to convince the country that Brexit has been an economic disaster.”

Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult, Daniel! It has been and still is an unmitigated and self-inflicted catastrophe.

Look what Brexit has ‘achieved’:

a 4% shrinkage in long-run productivity relative to remaining in the EU, expects the Office for Budget Responsibility;
inflation and energy prices are higher than in the EU;
trade has fallen by almost a fifth;
while the government itself says the much-trumpeted Australian deal will raise GDP by less than 0.1% a year by 2035;
Brexit has raised food prices by 6% says the London School of Economics;
the workforce has been drained.

Did you know that Eurostar deliberately leaves a third of seats empty due to crippling EU/UK border delays?

The grim reality is that the country seems to be falling apart on almost every front.

All that is why Prof. Matthew Goodwin, Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, says that “Bregret is taking hold in Britain” with only one in five thinking Brexit is going well.

Brexiters are now in the minority.

Light at the end of the tunnel

A movement that started around the same time as we left the EU, Stay European, is a continuing pro-EU campaign for all of us who still feel European and are not going to give up.

Stay European has always been optimistic about the prospects of the UK rejoining the EU. Yet right now, the popularity of Rejoin is running ahead of even our expectations.

In 2020, Stay European expected that there would be a long road ahead in slowly persuading Britain of the benefits of EU membership. Support for Rejoin was not a majority in polls at the time – though it was a strong base, above 40%.

They simply did not expect that Rejoin would be polling an average of 58% by early 2023.

They cautiously predicted that the economic impact of Brexit would start to change minds. Yet we did not predict that soon a prime minister, Liz Truss, would drive the economy off a cliff, sparking a UK-only financial crisis that caused a rapid shift in public opinion.

Back then, the group thought that the next general election might result in a narrow defeat for the Tories. Whilst it would be foolish to count our chickens before they have hatched, the polls have clearly stabilised in a position where the government is facing a landslide defeat.

And in the past year especially, Rejoin has shifted bit by bit from being an outsider bet to being discussed even by Brexiters as a serious likelihood, with the Brexit-supporting Daily Telegraph saying "Britain is going to rejoin the EU far sooner than anyone now imagines".

Shifting sands

Now, on one level this can also be frustrating. A spokesman from Stay European says: “If Rejoin is coming down the tracks, why are the political parties still so slow to shift? Why is the media still stuck in 2016? Why does something with majority support still feel somehow 'niche'?”

But The Curmudgeon thinks we should take heart. All the shifts mentioned are continuing. Support for Rejoin continues to grow, up into the high 50s and breaking out over 60% now in some polls. Politicians are slow but will have to adapt.

Rejoin's support continues to rise. If you count from the end of the transition period instead of the formal leaving date, Britain has only been fully feeling Brexit's effects for just over two years. Brexit's popularity still has plenty of room to fall further.

Stay European is still here, having laid a solid base for its campaign, and that campaign is still growing. As Rejoin support spreads Stay European is proud to be part of the early days of a new movement. “The Rejoin campaign has begun,” they say.

“We believe we are on track to rejoin the EU by 2030. However long is still it takes, though, our campaign will continue. Be part of it”.

Acknowledgements:

John Curtice

Prof Matthew Goodwin

The Guardian

Guy Hands

Stay European

Polly Toynbee

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