Still
on the political theme . . . If you can read Spanish, this site is a
must. Started less that a year ago, it relentlessly exposes
corruption in all its guises and attacks the Spanish government on
the basis of (usually) established facts. The Spanish equivalent, as
someone has said, of the Guido Fawkes blog, it already boasts many
thousands of (equally disenchanted and angry) readers.
Someone
kindly gave me a pig's cured leg as an Xmas gift. (Is this any
different from a cured pig's leg?). In other words un
jamón.
I went yesterday to buy the special stand on which it's fixed,
allowing you to carve very thin slices from it. I didn't know what
this was called but it turned out to be una
jamonera. I'm
impressed by this era/ero
suffix
but, offhand, can only think of gasolinera
(petrol station); limonero
(lemon tree); cartero/a
(postman/woman).
For what they're worth, here are Wiki's offerings:-
-ero
Forms:-
1.
Occupations from nouns. Vaca. Cow Vaquero. Cowboy.
And, in the plural, Jeans.
2.
Places where a noun generally resides. Llave. Key. Llavero.
Key ring.
-era
1.
Indicates a place or object where something can be found, kept or
done. Guante and Guantera. Glove and Glove compartment.
Regar and Regadera. To water and Watering can
2.
Indicates a physical state or disability. Sordo and Sordera.
Deaf and deafness.
Borracho and Borrachera. Drunk and Drunkenness.
3.
Forms names of certain plants or trees from the name of their fruit.
Higo and Higuera.
Fig and Fig tree. Mora
and Morera. Blackberry
and Blackberry bush.
I
read yesterday that the Vatican had declined to give the UN figures
on priests accused of molesting children. But the BBC said this
morning it's now admitted there were 400 priests defrocked for this
in 2011 and 2012, double the previous 2 years. Astonishing. What
other organisation would survive this news? No wonder it felt it
needed a more appealing Pope, with touchy-feeliness that's confined
to star-struck adults.
Finally
. . . As I know from my experience with readers - well, one - there's
a mind-set in Europe which has it that what Brits think and do is a
function of their obsession with a lost empire. I'm on record as
saying this is fatuous nonsense, so I was delighted to read these
words from the Euro MP Daniel Hannan: "Britons
in Brussels are frequently told, typically with a little smirk, about
our national superiority complex. We are the way we are, we’re
informed, because we haven’t got over the loss of empire. The
reason we don’t appreciate the EU is not that we have
constitutional, economic or democratic objections, but that we are
peculiarly pleased with ourselves. It’s
one of the few national stereotypes allowed in today's Europe.
Indeed, it is trotted out so frequently and so breezily that many
Euro-politicians think it wholly uncontentious. The Euro-friendly
Janan Ganesh has deftly filleted what he calls 'the most popular myth
about the UK in foreign capitals: that it suffers from delusions of
grandeur'. As he put it in the FT
a while ago: The
caricature of neurotic Britons hankering after global clout, and
sometimes believing they still have it, is not just wrong. It is the
opposite of the truth. If anything, the UK suffers from delusions of
weakness. Its citizens habitually refer to their “small island”,
which, at least by population size, ranks in the top decile of
nations. You would not know from its parochial political culture that
the UK has nuclear weapons, a permanent place on the UN Security
Council, the ultimate global city as its capital and, according to an
annual survey by Monocle magazine, more “soft power” than any
other nation.
So
there!
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