Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, March 06, 2005

A victory against the Post Office’s stamp machine yesterday, albeit entirely pyrrhic. I entered the fray armed with a pocket-full of small coins, only to be confronted by an alleged willingness to give me whatever change was appropriate. Having decided to test the validity of this claim, I then had to walk away with even more trouser-stretching ballast than I’d arrived with.

Talking of time-wasting, Spanish productivity is forecast to grow by 0.9% this year, the lowest rate in Europe after Malta’s. Even so, this is 50% higher than the rate of the last two years. This must be profoundly worrying for the government. And it probably helps to explain why they’re fighting tooth and nail to keep Spain’s EU subsidies for as long as they can. This will probably make the problem even worse in the long run but which politician ever worried about the long term?

I may have hit upon the reason why the Spanish local press flourishes to an extent not true of the UK at least. The national papers here are undeniably heavy and carry little by way of ‘human interest’ stories, which are left to their local brethren. Happily these acquit their responsibility without stooping to tabloid levels of reportage. Long may this continue.

On this, I’m sad to say The Spectator hasn’t seen fit to print a letter from me about ‘politoids’ in the UK [blog of 24.2] but I see that their Political Editor has a column on this theme this week. Just a coincidence, I suppose.

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