Don’t you just love the destruction of the English language by PR ‘spokespeople’ and spin doctors? In a news item today, some joker from the booze industry described bouncers as ‘door supervisors’. And what some of us would call the ‘nightlife’ [or even ‘binge drinking’] he termed ‘the night-time economy’. Makes it all very harmless and beneficial, doesn’t it? Though not, I suppose, for those who’ve been punched in the face by a tired and emotional ‘contributor to the night-time economy’. Or ‘drunken slob’ as we used to call them.

Gibraltar has decided to follow the example of Catalunia and seek separate ‘national’ status in the world federation of ‘hockey on skates’, whatever that is. Needless to say, this has sent the Spanish government into a paroxysm of fury as it is already trying to get the Catalunia decision rversed. If this process of separate identification continues - as it surely will - within a hundred years every little hamlet in Europe will be a satrapy of Rome. Sorry, Brussels.

After a few years’ experience now, I’ve concluded that most Spanish companies take the view that you’re important until you’ve been bribed to become a customer and then don’t care a fig how much they annoy you after that. The latest example of this is the difficulty faced in changing broadband providers. As with getting rid of your leased phone, you are presented with an obstacle course which will exhaust you both mentally and financially. In the worst case, you're left without any service at all for 6 months. I don’t suppose Spain is the only country in the world where suppliers lock you in and then rely on sloth and inertia to keep you, however hacked off you are; but they’re assisted here by the fact that consumer advice bodies are, as yet, poorly developed. And newspapers don’t go in for such things as comparing the tariffs of all the mobile phone companies and warning you of the hidden – and possibly illegal – charges. By the time you’ve been hit with these, it’s a tad too late. I’m not, of course, suggesting that British or American companies are virtuous by nature; but in the never-ending battle between supplier and consumer, they do have fewer cards stacked in their favour.

And finally, a plea for help. An advert in El Mundo today for a Smartcar tells me that it is a ‘forfour’ and that it has ‘fliping’ with this feature. I guess that ‘forfour’ means ‘4x4’ and is favoured because it’s both English [almost] and snappier than ‘todotereno’. But I’ve no idea what ‘fliping’ might be. Any experts out there?