Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, March 02, 2017

Pontevedra Pensées: 2.3.17

I mentioned inefficient librarians the other day. These folk are, of course, civil servants. Or funcionarios. This class of job is often said to be the Holy Grail of Spanish youth. Maybe it's true. For, when the Madrid municipality recently advertised 400 jobs, they got 38,000 applicants. Here in Galicia, there's some sort of tussle going on over whether there'll be the annual civil service exams (las oposiciones) this year. Needless to say, aspirants with money invest a lot in preparing for these and can't expected to be happy when told that there won't be any this year. So no comfortable new jobs either. Need I add that the examination system in not known to be hermetically fraud-free. It helps if you're plugged in (enchufado), regardless of how much tutoring you have or haven't paid for.

I wrote recently of attempts to get Franco's corpse removed from the Basilica he erected for himself in the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid. For reasons which you might be better able to understand than me, Spain's Supreme court has rejected this petition. Perhaps under the next left-wing government.

This week's click-efficient list from The Local is Ten Amazing Modern Archtitectural Wonders in Spain. Get wondering.

One awful side-effect of Trump's rise to political power is that we've been acquainted with just how stupid many (North) Americans are. Especially, of course, those Evangelists so easily duped by their millionaire TV pastors. I heard yesterday, for example, that almost 50% of Americans think it's wiser to stock up on food than to have a pension plan. As for the countless said pastors, how about this set of claims from one of them: There’s a desire on the part of some, and I think it’s satanic, to destroy America. America is the great hope of the world. If America goes down, the lamp of freedom goes out. There’s no other champion of freedom anywhere in the world and we would be engulfed in chaos. We were heading that way. Obama was bringing it on. Another four or eight years of Obama-style government and we would have been consumed with a socialist mentality and the freedom that we’ve enjoyed would be blotted out. So God gave us a reprieve.

Just to cheer you up, here's five signs of why we're headed towards a major war. Perhaps those Americans eschewing a pension and stocking up for difficult times have got it right after all.

Did you know that in 1986 the Scilly Islands and the Netherlands signed a treaty ending a state of war that had existed between them for 335 years? Unbeknown to anyone in the Dutch government until they got a letter from someone on the islands. More on this here.

Finally . . . For lovers of border collies, here's an amusing video.

And another cartoon. Probably only funny to Brits:-

"Is that all you get for a quid - 'You've eaten a lot of chips'?"



No comments: