Dawn

Dawn

Friday, August 21, 2015

Spain's RC church; Corruption; Gib again; Drugs; Insults; Car scratching; New beggar?; & Interesting facts.

Two of Spain's bishops have declared the Pope's Cultural Adviser a heretic. If you know anything of the (unreformed) Catholic Church in Spain, you won't be at all surprised by this.

Corruption in Spain: Here's an El Mundo article (in Spanish) for those who don't yet know just how pervasive this is in this (otherwise) wonderful country. It's about alleged corruption in the body (el CNMV) which monitors the stock exchange. This once again raises the age-old question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who guards the guards?

Have there been any articles on Gibraltar in the UK press recently? I ask this because El País yesterday had a front-page item on the place, ostensibly on the current use of tunnels below The Rock. The sub-text was that this is where they protect the data of those who use this disgraceful 'fiscal paradise', which would be cleaned up(!) if Spain ran it. Roll on the general elections, after which this nonsense will surely stop.

Yet another drug bust in Galicia. Nay, in nearby Vigo. Of a Pontevedra family of well-known local narcotraficos. Two yachts were intercepted before they could offload in one of our numerous coves and huge quantities of cocaine were taken into police storage. From where, of course, some of the stuff has been known to get go astray.

Reading about the gross insults being exchanged between members of the British Labour party around the election of their next (semi)-leader, I noted that 'Tory scum' is still a favourite of the far left. I say 'still' as it was more than 20 years ago that I had to run the gauntlet of members of the Socialist Workers' Party (Trotskyists?) who were insulting and spitting at invitees to a dinner with the Minister of Health. If it hadn't been for a corridor for us created by the police and crowd barriers, I suspect we'd have been torn to pieces. A nice way to create a better world.

Is there a car in my street which doesn't have all 4 corners scratched? No, there isn't. One of them even has yellow paint marks on each corner, testifying to a wall of that colour. And a lousy driver, I guess. This is all very annoying when your car is new, especially when the scratches are caused not by you but by people scraping you as they leave a parking space. But you get used to it. And then you start to sympathise with the inconsiderate bastards who leave their cars a metre in front of and behind other cars. Almost.

I thought I saw a new type of beggar in Tiffintown yesterday, to add to our varied ranks of these - A smartly (if sexily) dressed young blonde woman, with a bag on each arm, moving from table to table. But not mine, as it happened. So, I asked the couple next to me what she was asking for. It turned out she was hawking bracelets of some sort. Probably Rumanian then.

Finally . . . Learnt from a podcast this morning:-
  • Cats are lactose intolerant.
  • A gene from algae is transplanted to the retina of the blind to restore their sight.
  • The animal eyes which are best for a full transplant to humans are those of the . . . . shark.

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