Iberia are complaining about the assistance being given by the Galician government to Ryanair and Easyjet. Like the local politicians with the loss of EU funds, they are whingeing about the unfairness of it all. Since Iberia’s strategy todate has made it more expensive for Galicians to fly to Madrid than to Hamburg or even New York, there’s not a lot of local sympathy for them. Especially as the low-cost operators will now do vastly more for the local economy than Iberia has ever done. Meanwhile, the state airline has threatened to retaliate by cancelling its one [expensive] daily flight between London and Santiago. This strikes me as being as futile a gesture as my moving my shopping from a churlish checkout girl this morning.

I see that, following a 60% increase in operations in 2004, the UK Medical Council has decided to impose stronger regulations on the cosmetic surgery industry. I confidently predict that not only will this example not be followed in Spain but also that we‘ll have TV ads targeted at men by the end of 2005. We already have them in the newspapers. Thank God I’m too old to care.

Trying to get a squash court in the UK can be a challenge as you must book ahead. Here, things couldn’t be simpler. You just turn up and walk on the court. This is because booking ahead is simply not allowed as they know that people would ignore their own reservations and never call in advance to cancel.

Driving into the railway station car park yesterday, I noticed this plea, hand-painted across the barrier - Don’t take up two spaces. I suspect the next one will be Don’t park across the access lanes. These are strategically placed every 50 metres or so down the length of the car park, to allow you to exit without driving down to the end and back. Of course, neither injunction will have any effect whatsoever.