Our Ambrose penned a piece yesterday on concerns about the infamous stress tests for banks being too weak to convince anyone of underlying stability. Or as someone he quotes puts it - “If you don’t stress-test the worst-case scenario, it’s not going to reassure anybody.” Or “By trying to veil the problem in this way for political reasons the eurozone would merely twist itself into more knots.” I was interested to read the Comments on the article, particularly this one:- “We know the corrupt EU have probably bought FIFA off and ensured a Spanish victory to aid the EU and Spain's economy. I fully expect them to beat Germany and go on and lift the trophy. It is all arranged. Next Monday, after the event, remember where you first read the theory of Spain's turn to win the World Cup.” Euroscepticism at its daftest, even I would agree. So, possibly not serious.

I’ve previously mentioned two dreadful eyesores that have scarred the centre of Pontevedra for several years, one opposite the Post Office and one just inside the old quarter, in the corner of the main square. Well, the latter (the Café Savoy) is now being restored, after the council finally put some pressure on the owners, and currently looks like this. Given the pace at which projects proceed here, it may well look like this for some time.

The other blot on the urban landscape was a cake-shop/café that was closed and then just left to fall into disrepair. This has now been re-opened as a yet another upmarket tapas bar, going under the strange name of Los Castellanos. Or “The Spaniards”. Will it prosper, despite debuting in the middle of a recession and being the nth such place to open in the last five years or so? Well, initially yes. Such is the pull of the new in fashion-conscious Pontevedra, it’ll probably rank as a must-visit for at least a year. Thereafter we’ll just have to wait and see.

Talking of town . . . Walking into it today, I saw a sign on a shoe shop window saying it was offering Pares Sueltos (or 'Loose Pairs') in its sale. What can this mean? You can buy, say, one size 3 and one size 5 of the same type of shoe? Or a size 3 of one type and another size 3 of a different type? Or perhaps they specialise in shoes for women of doubtful morals.

Walking out of town past the excellent library, I decided to pop in and use one of their computers to check for emails. At 2.30, the place was suddenly shaken by loud pop music, which I finally realised was a signal they wanted us out. Checking the timetable, I saw we were now on Summer Hours of 9.30 to 14.30, which compares with the rest of the year’s 9.00 to 21.00. Or a shift from an impressive twelve hours a day to just five. My friend Jon had told me only last night of a similar regime change in his gym. Astonishing as it may seem, I hadn’t realised until today that Summer Hours meant drastic reductions in services offered – allowing the staff to spend the afternoon on the beach – but had assumed it meant places both starting and finishing earlier for three months. I must get out more.

Finally . . . Prospect Magazine seems to have found a true genius in James Hawes. I recently posted his suggestion that folk of my generation should be compelled to do social work and now here he is again with a proposal for a new tax . . .

As the coalition struggles to span the abyss of governmental borrowing, I would like to propose a new tax to fulfil the long-established criteria of a just and desirable imposition on a particular item. Those criteria are: that the tax should not impinge on the ability of the most vulnerable to maintain health (ie, the item must be purely discretionary); that the item should be widely enough desired for the tax not to result in its disappearance; that the tax should be easy to collect and hard to evade; and that - as with 4×4 tankettes in the current vehicle-excise model - the restriction in the item’s ownership to the carelessly rich or the hopelessly enamoured should tend to the moral improvement of the nation.

On what, then, will our splendid new tax be raised? On an item lost in the dark ages and available only to the wealthiest until Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the father of French economic dirigisme, obtained the secret in the 17th century. On an item excoriated through the ages as the agent and evidence of vice (by everyone except Socrates, but look what happened to him).

Well? Surely the answer is clear. As our forefathers taxed private windows, so should we tax private mirrors. 

New mirrors will be assayed at the point of manufacture and acid-etched if for public use, with swingeing penalties for falsification. Since glass is both very heavy and tremendously fragile, smuggling will be hard to the point of uneconomic. Existing domestic mirrors will be self-assessed and liable for spot-checks through unannounced visits from customs and excise, with fixed penalties for evasion set (as with television licensing) at a deterrent rather than a proportionate level. A zero-rated category will include all mirrors up to 75 square cm. This will cover not only all health-and-safety equipment necessary to dental hygiene, rear-viewing, under-car bomb checking and so on, but also reasonable items such as make-up and shaving mirrors. 

The moral component here, I trust, is clear. There is a valid argument for the use of small mirrors enabling such swift and sociable checks on the state of hair and teeth as are conducive to general satisfaction - but who needs to see themselves full-face, never mind full-length? Above the exempted area, therefore, the tax will be not merely progressive but geometric. If the rating on a domestic mirror of 100 sq cm is M, the rating on a mirror of 200 sq cm will be 4M, and so on. Devotees of Lacanian psychology may ask what is to become of childhood development without the “mirror stage” - but this is a country we are running, not a second-rate English literature department, so we will privilege empirical benefit over half-baked Parisian theory.


Our tax cannot be accused of a class bias because it will light most heavily not on the richest, but on the vainest. Certainly vanity and gold have frequently been observed to cohabit, but the link is not philosophically ineluctable: one assumes that Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example, spends little time gazing at his own reflection. The Barclay brothers (if they are ever taxed anyway by anyone, anywhere) would doubtless happily abolish all preening within their bailiwick to minimise their liability. On the other hand, where inflated bank-balances and image obsession are found together, the bill will be enormous; and where the two are not only conjoined but inescapably linked (as with Posh/Pete/Paris and co), the public purse will be gratifyingly swelled.
The moral impact on society will be incalculable. Western man has become an auto-scopophilic monstrosity, fixated on that ultimate post-Protestant idol: the private mirrored self. No wonder we in our decadence bow down before mere successful mannequins. But stronger even than vanity is our ancient desire to evade taxation. Emancipated by enlightened government intervention (as we have been by Californian car-emission regulations) we will throw our mirrors into the nearest skips, rejoicing at our victory over the hated Inland Revenue. Men will once again shave like men, not groom like show-ponies. Women’s bathrooms will be places for speedy, honest faffing (face, armpits, fanny and feet) rather than secret theatres of obsessive makeover.


We will, like our ancestors, only ever catch sight of ourselves full-on in public places, where dwelling on personal appearance will invite suitable ridicule. We will define ourselves not via the mendacious surfaces of our private mirrors (which only ever show things the wrong way round), but through the multi-faceted reactions of our fellow human beings. Life will cease to be a salon where couture and wit are pre-polished before staged entrances, and become once more a living forum where unpredictable encounters decide our statuses. Meanwhile, the hopelessly vain will reside alone amid their endless looking-glasses. And be taxed through their noses for it.