Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, November 02, 2008

It's still hard, of course, to find much positive in the press, especially because - following on from a largely artificial boom - Spain's economic statistics are now among the worse in Europe. Hard times. And now those major international companies such as Repsol, Telefónica and Banco Santander which have 40% or more of their investments in South America face additional problems resulting from the less-than-expected downturn there. Perhaps Telefónica will now give a higher priority to villagers in Spain waiting for a phone line. Talking of companies some of us love to hate, I see that BT is also suffering and that El Corte Inglés could face a fall in sales next year. I must pop into their Gourmet Club in Vigo and help them out by handing over a king's ransom for some ground spices.

Later this week, I'll be giving a talk on blogging to the eager students of a local language academy. Or perhaps only to the two ladies who were kind enough to invite me and to organise it. We shall see. Meanwhile, it provides me with an excuse to follow up the recent comment about professionals taking over the blogosphere with a few more apercus on this subject. These are taken from a Prospect article on Ariana Huffington and her 'progressive news blog', the Huffington Post. This was set up in 2005, when "the blog form was seen by publishers as little more than an intellectual curiosity - a narcissistic conceit on which only geeks, political crazies and unpublishable writers wasted their time." And when "traditional newspapers didn't see these one-man affairs as a threat". Well, three years on, the Huffington Post - described as a 'a hybrid of traditional newspaper, a news blog and a curated search engine' - has 5.5m unique viewers per month and is worth 80m dollars. I must take a look at it. Traditional newspapers, on the other hand, are "experiencing steady declines in circulation" and "facing a future that looks bleak."

So . . . Does any place remain for the personal blogger, when every struggling newspaper employs a raft of professional journalists to attract readers and, in the process, to crowd us out? Time, as I'm fond of saying, will tell. But I certainly hope so, of course.

For years now, Denmark has headed every list of happy societies produced by researchers in search of headlines. In a recent Leicester University Map of Happiness, for example, its number one position compared with these rankings for a random selection of alternatives for the rest of your life:-
Ireland 11
USA 23
Germany 35
UK 41
Spain 46
France 62
Zimbabwe 177
Apparently, it's got a lot to do with solidarity, social cohesion and taking pleasure out of the small things in life. I can't disagree but it's still hard to take it too seriously. If we did, I guess Denmark would get pretty crowded. And quickly lose a lot of its social cohesion.

So, Lewis Hamilton sneaked the Formula 1 world championship on the penultimate bend of the ultimate race of the season. I was impressed to hear the commentators on British TV heaping praise not just on Felipe Massa but also on Fernando Alonso. Who was described by one of them as the best driver pound-for-pound right now. It will be interesting to see whether Hamilton is accorded similar respect in tomorrow's Spanish papers. But I won't even be bothering to check the Brazilian press.

Galicia

We had yet another kamikaze driver here this weekend. A man joined the A55 near Tui at 7.30 in the morning on the wrong side of the motorway. And promptly hit a car coming the other way. At least the brown bear hit on the A6 last week was heading in the right direction.

Elections Watch:
- The President of the Xunta has accused the opposition PP party of wanting to sabotage the development of the AVE high-speed train in Galicia. Taking into account how often he's assured us everything will be ready by 2012, my guess is he's getting his defence in first.
- The Galicia Bilingúe Association is touring the region's cities in a double-decker bus, to highlight what they say the Language Normalisation policy actually means in practice.
and
- The President of the PSOE party [Sr Pot] has accused the president of the PP party [Sr Kettle] of having been in election campaign mode 'for some time now'.

Finally . . . If either of my daughters is reading this, a collection of Orwell's works might be just the thing for someone with an upcoming birthday . . .

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