Childbirth in Spain: The financial crisis, unemployment or job insecurity, low wages and difficulties in getting mortgages without a huge deposit have all meant that in the last 10 years or so, the average age of a first-time mother in Spain has risen sharply. First-time mums in Spain are now among the oldest in Europe. Back in 2004, the average woman had her first child at 31, but now, more than half are aged at least 35, and 20% are over 40.
Banking in Spain: I managed to get my tax declaration off via the internet before I left home for this week's camino. Though there was a last minute glitch when my bank account number was rejected. I recalled that my bank had recently sent me advice that the new IBAN number they's sent me a week or two ago previously had been incorrect. So I tried the corrected one and still got no joy. Nor with the one they said was incorrect. I called one of the lovely young ladies who deal with me and she said that the second one they'd sent me was also wrong and then gave me the right one. Hardly inspires confidence in the bank, does it? So, I won't name it. But it begins with P.
Banking in Spain: I managed to get my tax declaration off via the internet before I left home for this week's camino. Though there was a last minute glitch when my bank account number was rejected. I recalled that my bank had recently sent me advice that the new IBAN number they's sent me a week or two ago previously had been incorrect. So I tried the corrected one and still got no joy. Nor with the one they said was incorrect. I called one of the lovely young ladies who deal with me and she said that the second one they'd sent me was also wrong and then gave me the right one. Hardly inspires confidence in the bank, does it? So, I won't name it. But it begins with P.
An Honest Beggar: As I was walking home at 11pm on Sunday evening - yes, an early night - a voice close behind me asked for 4 euros 'for drugs'. I was then overtaken by a young man who stressed this would be a 'life-saver' for him. I declined and he proceeded on his way to the gypsy settlement in my barrio, doubtless already in funds. I noted he was well-dressed and healthy looking and wondered how he'd be in a few years' time. If our regular druggies are anything to go by, it'll be thin of body and gaunt of face.
The Camino Inglés: As usual, this got off on the wrong foot yesterday when I missed my exit at the north of Santiago - not for the first time - and found myself stuck on the AP9 towards La Coruña and Ferrol. From the previous time, I knew there was an exit 15-20km further on so decided to relax. Until I found said exit closed, for no apparent reason. Perhaps just to annoy me. A second exit proved elusive and so I drove all the way to our meeting point in Pontedeume. To where I'll have to return for my car on Saturday, from Santiago. Things can only get better. Meanwhile, here's a foto taken last night in a church in Pontedeume. Political correctness is yet to arrive here, as the Moors whom St James the Moor-Slayer is attending to are clearly visible. In the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela they're hidden by tall irises. So as not to hurt the sensibilities of the thousands of Muslim visitors, would you believe.
Finally . . . with apologies . . . The Brexit again: Reader Tom
took me to task yesterday for getting things arse about tit and for
relegating financial aspects. I responded that there were bigger
issues and he asked what these might be. Well, here's some, in 2 guises:-
We’re choosing
between freedom and serfdom: Melanie phillips, 'The Times'
Brexit may cost us in
the short term but I’d rather be poor than give up our right to
govern ourselve
In the 1975 referendum
the former prime minister Edward Heath, who had taken Britain into
the European Economic Community (the EU’s precursor) two years
previously, claimed membership would have no effect on British
sovereignty. The EEC was purely an economic arrangement, he insisted,
and we couldn’t prosper outside it.
I thought these claims
ranged from deeply misleading to outright lies. It was the first time
I was old enough to vote and I ticked the box to leave. I was
dismayed that the British people voted to maintain the
anti-democratic status quo.
Now we have reached
that point of decision once again. The EU has metastasised into a
full-blown superstate project. In the intervening years, the damage
it has done to core British industries such as fishing, its crippling
effect on Britain’s economic bedrock of small businesses and its
increasing subjugation of domestic to European law have steadily
ratcheted up public fury.
In addition, the EU’s
founding principle of the free movement of people makes it impossible
for Britain to control its immigration levels. To take the biscuit,
anyone voicing such concerns has been damned as a Little Englander
xenophobic racist troglodyte imbecile. The many millions who have
thus had these anxieties dismissed and traduced by the entire
political class are now spitting tacks over the threats, scares and
sheer contempt for ordinary people issuing from Remain.
There are nevertheless
many who, bombarded by claim and counter-claim, remain deeply
uncertain how to vote. Not surprising: this is a most complex issue
with profound and valid points on both sides.
Some of Remain’s
arguments cannot be dismissed. It is right to warn that Brexit would
cause turbulence and difficulties. Financial markets hate uncertainty
and the pound would almost certainly fall. The legal complexities of
disentangling the UK from all its European agreements would be
formidable. We don’t know what kind of trade deals the UK would
secure, or with whom. This turbulence, however, will in due course
ease. In the longer term I believe it cannot possibly be in the UK’s
financial interests, despite being outside the euro, to be tied into
the EU’s sclerotic and failing protectionist economic system
predicated on stamping out competitiveness among member states.
In any event, the issue
for me that trumps all the rest is the ability to govern ourselves. I
don’t believe for a moment that the UK, the world’s fifth-largest
economy, will fail to prosper outside the EU. In the last analysis,
however, I’d rather be poor and free than rich and enslaved.
The prevalent impulse
to “keep hold of nurse for fear of finding worse” shows the
extent to which the UK has become an infantilised dependency culture.
A dismaying number now believe Britain is too weak to go it alone in
the world.
Without independent
self-government, however, there can be no democracy. We will
increasingly become, as the EU intends, a regional province of a
chimerical empire that has no cultural coherence or legitimacy but
represents merely the desire to control all under its bureaucratic
thumb.
The absence of
self-government has already had a corrosive effect on parliament,
where MPs have lost power and authority due to the steady
encroachment of EU laws and regulations.
This political decline
has been deepened by the belief that nations are intrinsically
threatening because they are governed by self-interest. The only
legitimate institutions are transnational and thus supposedly
committed to peace, love and the brotherhood of man.
Such EU
faux-universalism has helped undermine the building blocks of our
society by promoting the notion that all cultures have identical
value, self-designated victim groups must be indulged in their
illiberal demands and that war is worse than enslavement.
This presents acute
dangers for Britain’s defences. It’s not just the implications of
uncontrolled migration. Nor that, as Field Marshal Lord Guthrie and
other top brass have warned, the proposed EU army would undercut
Nato, the real bastion of Europe’s security.
It’s also that people
will only fight to defend their own nation, with which they
patriotically identify on account of its history, culture and
institutions. No one would willingly fight and die for Brussels.
With so many in Europe
similarly enraged by political powerlessness, Brexit might have a
domino effect and cause the EU to break up altogether. Remainers say
this would risk a return to war between nations and the possible
resurgence of fascism.
It’s true that the
European project’s foundational aim was to contain German
militarism. Times, though, have changed and Germany is now a
democracy. Moreover, the EU is itself fuelling the rise of
neo-fascist parties capitalising on the way it rides roughshod over
national interests.
If European free
societies are to defend themselves against their enemies, whether
from the Islamic world, Russia or the Far East, this will only be
done by sovereign nations fighting for their own future in alliance
with other such nations.
Britain’s historic
record of inventing and defending liberty and democracy, not to
mention the strength of its economy, mean that this week’s vote
gives it the chance not only to become again a democratic nation but
to put itself at the head of the defence of Europe. Freedom or
serfdom? That’s the choice on Thursday that faces us all.
Thursday should be a
vote of confidence in Britain - to take back democratic control of
our country. Dominic Raab, 'The Daily Telegraph'.
A vote to Leave is a
vote of confidence for Britain
The referendum is a chance to vote for ambition and hope. Britain faces
challenges and opportunities ahead, in or out of the European Union.
But, we can only reach our full potential, if we take back democratic
control over the direction and destiny of our country.
There are risks on
either side. But, the risks of remaining in the EU are greater –
including double-digit Eurozone unemployment, dangerous levels of
Italian debt which beckon the next financial crisis, and a broken EU
immigration system. We’d be better placed to weather these looming
storms from outside the EU.
But the choice on
Thursday should not be between alternative strategies of damage
limitation. We’re better than that. It should be a vote on how
Britain can go from strength to strength. Voting to leave is the
right thing for jobs and innovation. Our small businesses – which
create 85 per cent of new jobs – would be free from
straitjacket red-tape that deters hiring. And tech start-ups would be
released from suffocating regulation, such as the newly agreed EU
Data Protection Regulation, which the government estimates will
clobber the UK economy for £360 million each year.
Of course, we’ll
continue trading with the EU. Only a suicidal German Chancellor or
French President would go into their 2017 elections promising to put
thousands of German car workers and French farmers out of jobs, by
hiking tariffs with Britain.
But UK exports to
the EU have fallen since 2011 – not creating any new jobs.
Meanwhile, UK exports to the rest of the world are rising fast.
Far from needing to
cling onto the EU for dear life, a sober long-term assessment
suggests our horizons must gradually expand away from the shrinking
continental market, to take in the growing opportunities of the
future – from Latin America to Asia.
That’s impossible if
we stay in the EU, because we can’t negotiate free trade deals in
our own right, and Britain is held back by the protectionism and
special interests of an EU of 28.
On immigration, the
principled choice is to end the discrimination in Britain’s
approach to EU compared to non-EU migrants. That’s how to take full
advantage of the brightest global talent – with an Australian-style
points based system – while managing the costs that open-door
immigration puts on wages, housing and the NHS.
If this is such a bad
idea, why aren’t the Remain camp arguing to apply EU free movement
rules to immigration from the rest of the world too?
Above all, I want us to
be masters of our own destiny. With around 60 per cent of UK laws
made in or derived from Brussels, we’ve reached a tipping-point,
where that’s no longer possible.
When was the last time
you got to vote out, or hold to account, the 27 heads of government
in the European Council, the 27 EU Commissioners, or the 90 per cent
of Members of the European Parliament, who aren’t appointed by or
elected in the UK, but now write a majority of our laws?
So, this Thursday is a
chance to vote for an innovative, global Britain, cooperating and
trading with all – but democratically accountable to you.
At heart, it’s also a
choice between optimism and pessimism. The Remain camp have spent
four months telling us Britain won’t amount to much, standing on
our own two feet.
The Leave campaign is
the side with the ambition for Britain, and the belief in the British
people. This Thursday is a vote of confidence – in Britain,
and in you.
Dominic Raab is MP for
Esher & Walton, and a Justice Minister
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