The
good news on the Spanish economy is that, after 5 or 6 years, it's
finally moving in the right direction, albeit slowly. However, some
commentators - most? - feel that it'll take quite some time to
impact on the country's massive unemployment rate of 26%. As Edward
Hugh puts it:- Many of the old doubts about
the durability and sustainability of the Spanish expansion remain.
The labour market is still a huge problem, the housing market is
gridlocked, credit is scarce and expensive, and the population is
shrinking at nearly 1% a year as discouraged workers (both nationals
and former migrants) pack their bags and leave.
. . The big question still
remains: is this a balanced recovery, an export lead one, or simply a
government financed one?
All I can add is that several more shops closed in Pontevedra while I was in the UK. And this is a wealthy city.
All I can add is that several more shops closed in Pontevedra while I was in the UK. And this is a wealthy city.
One
bit of undoubtedly good news is the growth in the number of
tourists heading to Spain. These totalled 10m in the first quarter of
2014, well up on last year. Another bright spot has been the growth
in exports but this may have stalled now.
Spain
is different 5:
- Spain is not unique in giving certain officials immunity from legal suits. The difference lies in the numbers. Hundreds in Spain, one or two elsewhere.
- Likewise with pardons for those (eventually) convicted in Spain.
- Not just foreigners but many Spaniards think that Spanish teaching methods are stuck in a past of rote learning. If so, this may account for the poor performance of Spanish teenagers in problem-solving challenges. Certainly, Spain has a higher school dropout rate that other European countries, something which got even worse during the boom, when high-paying jobs were plentifully available on construction sites.
- The Spanish use capital letters for some words (e. g. History) where others don't and don't use them where other do (e. g. british). I'm compiling full list for publication.
- In Spain there are still ironmongers who will sell you a single screw and then wrap it for you. No so in the UK, or in many countries, I suspect.
The
house being built below mine continues to be in a state of stasis.
But the (otherwise idle) crane, has swung round 90 degrees. In the
wind.
Language
abuse: If you can think of nothing good to say about your
supermarket products, claim they're 'specially selected'. As in, "We
need to sell some sausages. So, we won't take those lamb chops; we'll
take these sausages."
Finally
. . . Not everyone will be interested in this but here's Simon Barnes
of The Times giving his view on the Moyes debacle at
Manchester United. As I said the other day, it must all come back to
Alex Ferguson. So I don't have any difficulty agreeing with Mr
Barnes:-
Don’t
blame David Moyes. It wasn’t his fault. He was just an innocent
bystander caught in the crossfire. It’s not his fault he isn’t
Sir Alex Ferguson — just as it was wasn’t Louis XV’s fault that
he wasn’t Louis XIV, or that it was John Major’s fault that he
wasn’t Margaret Thatcher. Moyes just had the misfortune to sound a
little bit like Ferguson.
Who
can we get to succeed me?” Ferguson wondered. “I know! Me!” He
chose Moyes because Moyes is a thoroughly good egg and has always had
the right sort of attitude to Ferguson. That is to say, deferential,
awed, one step away from forelock-tugging. Put that together with the
right sort of accent and what you’ve got is the footballing
equivalent of the old school tie.
Fergie
Lite. That’s what it amounts to. A talented, decent man without
Ferguson’s mania. An absolutely first-class type — but alas,
first class of the second class. It was, in short, a classic botched
succession: the old tyrant installing his favourite son, Manchester
United as a sort of footballing North Korea. And calamity always
follows.
It
happens throughout history; the passing of the autocrat is almost
invariably followed by chaos. It is the successor who cops the blame,
but the fault is always with the autocrat who came before. And you
can say what you like about Ferguson — praise him as generously and
rightly as my colleague Matthew Syed did in these pages a couple of
days back — but he was as much an autocrat as Louis XIV.
Le
club c’est moi. “When I want your opinion I’ll give it to you,”
Tommy Docherty used to tell the chairmen of the football clubs he
managed, or so he claimed. Ferguson put that principle into practice.
He created an absolutist state in which anyone who showed any
independence of spirit was sent into exile, regardless of value: Ruud
van Nistelrooy, David Beckham, Paul Ince, Roy Keane, Jaap Stam, and
on and on.
And
it worked. My God, it worked. The city state of Manchester seized
control of all England. There wasn’t a rival club who weren’t at
heart deferential to Ferguson, who weren’t at bottom a subject.
That carried on into his power over referees, his power over all
decision-makers in football. He compelled obedience.
His
record, at least in England, is staggering. It will be a long time
before another manager can match Ferguson’s collection of Premier
League titles. The Champions League record is the only thing that
lets him down in his search for total mastery; two is very good,
certainly, but doesn’t break the sound barrier into great.
Ferguson
achieved almost everything he and United could possibly have wished.
The only serious blemish is the succession, and the plain fact is
that the succession is a calamity. Moyes has gone, United have
announced that Ferguson will be closely involved in finding the next
manager: like a king appointing future kings from beyond the grave.
It’s a bizarre decision: Ferguson’s record of appointing managers
of United is not exactly 100 per cent. At least not in the right
direction.
But
hear a plain fact. The problem is not that it is difficult to find
the right man. It is that there is no right man. You simply can’t
follow a highly successful autocrat. I mean, whoever heard of Attila
the Second?
Here’s
one more man who would have failed as United’s new manager — Sir
Alex Ferguson. I don’t mean he would have failed in the Moyes
manner if he had stayed in charge. If he had done so, given the gift
of eternal life, United would be pretty much where they have always
been under his command. What I mean is that if a real Ferguson clone
could have been manufactured — rather than the faux clone Moyes —
he too would have failed this season.
That
is in the dynamics of a fully evolved autocracy — the autocrat
can’t be replaced. You can’t take the keystone out of an arch and
slip in a replacement, not even an identical replacement. That’s
because the whole damn thing has already collapsed. If power is
concentrated in a single individual, he becomes, quite literally,
irreplaceable. You can put someone in to do the same job but he won’t
get the same results. The thing is impossible.
Louis
XIV, it is generally agreed, did a jolly effective job of being king
of France. No one was ever in any doubt as to who was in charge
anyway: l’état c’est moi and all that. Ferguson was very much
his sort: call Fergie “le boss soleil”. But Louis XIV also
botched the succession: the next Louis was only 5 when he took over,
and when he reached majority he was generally recognised as a poor
show: lost wars, strife, faction and feud, all the stuff that led
eventually to the events of 1789. The Sun King’s legacy was,
ultimately, revolution.
Scan
the pages of history and the story is repeated again and again.
Georgy Malenkov was the David Moyes of the Soviet empire — he held
power for a full week after Stalin. They really knew how to go
through managers in those days.
Modern
democracies are supposed to prevent such messes. In a way, the whole
point of democracy is to make it possible for successions to take
place with minimal disruption to normal life. But Thatcher was as
near a thing to an autocrat as anyone could be in our political
system, and therefore it was inevitable that her succession was
botched.Her
suggestion that the solution to the problem was famously to “go on
and on”, which can more or less be regarded as her famous last
words. Ferguson adopted that solution himself, triumphantly
unretiring and going on and on as long and as successfully as any
mortal could. But there comes a time when even kings die, when even
great football managers must step back.And
then some kind of serious falling-off is inevitable. Of course, every
autocrat thinks he — or, rarely, she — will be the one exception.
Of course they do, they wouldn’t be autocrats if they didn’t
think they were exceptional even by the standards of their fellow
autocrats.
But
again and again they make a hash of it, not because of the
limitations of their successor, or even the limitations in
themselves, but because to an autocrat there can be no real
successor. Just the bloke who comes next.
You
can follow the autocrat with a good, understanding, listening
people-person and he will fail. You can follow the autocrat with
another autocrat and he will fail. You can follow an autocrat with
Mother Teresa or Attila the Hun, Stalin, Le Roi Soleil or Pope
Francis, and they will all fail.
Autocracy
is a marvellously effective system, wonderfully economical in its
decision-making, gloriously tidy in the way it works. And you can get
things done all right — you can certainly make the trains run on
time.
But
the one thing you can’t do is pass it on to the next leader. All
autocrats are by definition victims of their own success.
No comments:
Post a Comment