In my driving career of 45 years, I've only ever had one parking fine. This total was doubled yesterday when some officious bastard gave me a ticket for parking in front of my daughter's flat. The notes say that, if I don't pay the fine within 28 days, the amount doubles from 35 to 70 quid, that they'll then pursue me through the courts and eventually unleash the bailiffs on me. I wish them luck. Surely even the dimmest traffic warden is able to note a Spanish number plate and realise that they don't know where I live. And never will. But, anyway, I've now taken the car off the road and parked it in front of the electricity sub-station at the end of Hannah's garden. I'm sure this isn't permitted either but they don't send people around to check. Plus there's no sign saying it's verboten.

Talking of stupid bastards . . . The Sun newspaper - one of Murdoch's - greeted the appointment of Roy Hodgson as England's new manager, with a page of puerile idiocy around his slight inability to say the letter R properly. The fact that, despite this, he speaks four foreign languages clearly meant nothing to the cretins who write this sort of stuff so as to feed the prejudices of other cretins. And to encourage the mocking of kids by their school 'friends'. Sometimes I wish I ran a vigilante group charged with administering orchidectomies to whomsoever we wished. As an acceptable alternative to eugenics.

Back home in Spain, a new report says property values have fallen by 41% since the peak in 2008. Of course, the government's number is much lower than this, at only 20%. I really don't know why the government bothers producing this sort of statistic since no one believes them. It keeps a few people in work, I guess. Anyway, the authors of the report say that 2011 was worse than 2010. Which is not good. They also say there's a land-bank sufficient for another 4 million homes. These, of course, won't be needed for many years. Who owns all this (useless) land? Well, my guess is the banks, either directly or indirectly.

Some good news from Spain? El Confidencial Digital tells us that bullfights will return to Cataluña in 2013, just a year after they were made illegal there. The Madrid Government is to declare the Fiesta Nacional a "cultural heritage" and this will make bullfights legal throughout Spain. This comes after a petition was submitted to Parliament by a group of bullfighters, as a prelude to a debate there and vote on the subject later this year.

Finally, for those who haven't seen it, here's something I prepared earlier. On driving in Spain.