Dawn

Dawn

Monday, March 08, 2010

Needless to say, no sooner do I say that national TV News channels don’t report on other country’s colonies when France 24 gives us a special on Pakistan.

At last, a comprehensive article on Spain’s much-criticised labour market. I finally feel I understand a bit about it. But am even less confident than ever that Sr Zapatero’s government will be able to effect much reform of it.

Which reminds me . . . Spain’s cosseted civil servants (cited in the above article as having received a salary increase last year way above the inflation rate) have been told they’ll all be getting a 500 euro payment in spring 2012, just a couple of months before the next general election. They must constitute the deserving rich.

Here’s some endorsement of my comment the other day about property abuses damaging Spain’s image abroad. Not to mention its domestic finances. By the way, one of the more (less?) amusing aspects of this situation is the way the British buyers are often represented in the Spanish media as people who deserve what they’re getting because they surely knew what they were doing when took advantage of Spain’s notoriously confusing and lax approval processes to buy or build an illegal property. Which must stick in the craw of both those who paid for independent legal advice and those who were gulled into believing they were.
                                                          
Everyone knows, of course, that the 6th or 7th century Welsh saint called Malo was the founder of the St Malo in Brittany. But did you know that the Malvinas Islands were also named after him by some of his followers who sailed west? Or at least that’s what I recently heard on the BBC. I suspect the truth lies closer to the claim on a Spanish site that they were named Les Malouines by 18th century French colonists who’d sailed from St Malo.

Finally . . . Don’t you just love it when you spend a fruitless hour and a half trying to make a flight booking on line? Three different cards and at least ten form re-iterations. All to no bloody avail. Portuguese Airlines TAP, just in case you’re wondering. But the good news is that there’s the alternative of paying through an ATM machine. Or, rather, there would be if I lived in Portugal and had a Portuguese card.

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