Dawn

Dawn

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Moving on from his proposal for a European sovereign fund, President [Emperor?] Sarkozy has now suggested the EU continues to benefit from his frenetic leadership by extending France's presidency beyond the end of the year. This hasn't gone down well with a number of his [theoretical] peers, especially the president of Czechoslovakia, who's due to take over then. Apparently, Sarko thinks France is well-placed to manage the financial/economic challenges facing the continent. But Mrs Merkel, amongst others, strongly disagrees. As for President Zapatero, he needs as many allies as possible for his campaign to get to New York next month; so I suspect we'll hear little from him on this.

My impression is it's almost impossible now to call any private or public service provider in Spain without having to use a premium-rate phone line. Though Galicia's cable company, R, is an honourable exception. As - to be fair - is Telefónica. I read today that these numbers are even used for doctor appointments and, needless to say, the same applies if you call the Traffic Department to talk about an alledged motoring offence.

Which reminds me . . . The Traffic Department in Lugo which sent me the speeding notice this week is now under investigation for corruption. Rather a lot of fines, it's said, have been cancelled by calling the right [premium-rate] number, asking for Manolo and offering to make a contribution to his benevolent fund. If true, I guess it means a lot of replacement fines have had to be issued to maintain revenues. It's a rum world.

Galicia

Fifteen of Pontevedra's central streets are to be repaved, only a couple of years after the last set of roadworks were completed. I can't imagine why this is necessary, though it's reported that one objective is to raise the zebra crossings by several inches above the tarmac on either side. Which can't be a bad thing. Unless you're a driver.

A few months ahead of the regional elections, the Galician Nationalist party [the BNG] is naturally cranking up its efforts to force the PP right-of-centre party to admit it doesn't accord Language Normalisation the highest possibile priority ranking. And so is not a truly 'Galician' party nor a stout defender of the Galician people. In short - and naturally enough - it's playing the nationalist card. Inevitably there's much local discussion of the 'linguistic policy controversy' that surrounds the attempts to supplant Spanish by Gallego. But, this said, it appears to be controversial to even suggest the controversy exists, as the BNG insists it doesn't. Nor the supplantation policy itself. Against this, there was a letter in El País earlier this week setting out chapter and verse to prove that it does. So you pays your money and takes your choice.

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