Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Kamikazes; EU benefit; Poland?; The RT kettle; & A conundrum.

ZAMIKAZE DRIVERS: These are folk who drive the wrong way down autopistas. Spain seems to have a lot of them. Galicia even more so. One can only guess at the reasons. Since most of them are geriatric, possibly a loss of some marbles. And the fact they've never had to take a driving test.
    
AN EU PLUS: Never let be said I don't write anything positive about the EU. Or at least report it. For here's a laudatory comment from Timothy Garton Ash: "For all its faults, the EU is the world’s most effective exercise in political socialisation. Through those endless meetings, where the new ministers spend more time with their fellow EU ministers than they do with their own families, they discover that the way you advance your national interests in 21st-century Europe is through negotiation and compromise". So there.

POLAND?: In the same article, TGA describes the outgoing Polish government thus: "Orbanisation means that this dominant party abuses that power to undermine the foundations of liberal constitutional democracy. . . For example, it creates an over-mighty executive, co-opts business interests, misuses security services and erodes the independence of courts, the central bank and the media, thus ensuring that the next election is not really free and fair." I'm put in mind of another right-wing administration facing elections . On the tip of my tongue . . .

RUSSIA TODAY: From the people who gave you the green men in the Ukraine . . . "American words about its actions in Syria don't match the facts on the ground".

FINALLY . . . A CONUNDRUM: Can a plant be alive and dead at the same time? I ask this because the bougainvillea I've trained up the back of my house is both shedding old leaves and sprouting new leaves and flowers. To some extent this happens every winter but never to this extent. Down to our Indian Summer?

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