Cataluña, with its great port of Barcelona as the hub, has always been a region (or community) known for diligence, hard work, initiative and brains. It used to form part of the Kingdom of Aragon, and was once a Roman colony; invaded by the Visigoths in the 5th century, it became independent under the Condes de Barcelona from around 874 a.d. Marriage alliances typical of the epoch united Cataluña to Aragon in 1137, and to Castilla in 1479. (more…)
The Great Magistrate Pascual Sala, president of a politically correct invention called The Constitutional Court, recently found national reaction to his tribunal’s latest comedy ‘frightening’. It gave him ‘goosepimples’, he said. He was referring to a narrowly voted decision (6 to 5) to permit ETA’s political coalition BILDU to stand as candidates in the municipal elections. The Supreme Court had already made a contrary decision two weeks before. Most of us had assumed that a supreme court means just that, a court standing supreme among the Spanish judiciary. But it does not. Spain is different. In Spain the government allows another court, invented to pontificate on constitutional matters, to over-turn the Supreme Court’s sentence. No wonder most Spaniards went all doolali and voted for the GPLLDP (Gay Poodle Lovers’ Liberal Democratic Party) on Sunday 22 May. (more…)
Strauss-Khan stressed / thetimes.co.uk
News from New York suggests that the former Director of the IMF may not have tried to rape a hotel employee. It adds that M. Strauss-Khan may have fallen victim to a hoax orchestrated in France, to prevent the ex-Director from standing in next year’s French presidential elections. This is not precisely a surprise. (more…)
Next year the general election in Spain will choose which of the two major political parties will struggle on for another four years; the economy in ruins, the unemployment figures spiralling upwards, confidence in local and national politicians reaching its lowest level since the death of Franco. In fact one could assume that the Spanish people had more confidence in politicians during Franco’s ‘government’ than now, for the simple reason that with Franco you knew exactly where you stood. It was a given that you were not permitted to talk about politics, and anyway could not gather together in a crowd to do so with breaking the law; choices were few or non-existent. This perhaps explains why so many Spaniards, especially in more rural districts, sang rather a lot as they went about their labours. (more…)
Good manners are the means by which we become and remain civilized in a far from civilized world. Good manners have nothing to do with ‘class’ or ‘Society’ or what Miss Mitford agreed was ‘U’ or ‘Non-U’. Bad manners, on the other hand, are what make it so exasperating and difficult to get on with being civilized. I shall call these Good Manners and Bad Manners GM and BM, though these initials are unconnected with General Motors or British Medicine. (more…)
The swastike, a borrowed symbol / hindugodwallpaper.com
Believe it or not, the word comes from the Sanskrit svastika, and the nearest translation would be ‘conducive to well-being’. The swastika is an ancient emblem, taking the form of an even-length cross, with arms bent at right-angles, clockwise or indeed anti-clockwise. (more…)
Some ‘Black and Tans’ / puesoccurrences.wordpress.com
With the open admission that there has always been conflict between Ireland and England, probably since the Dark Ages, it was noted in the 1920s that ‘Irish Troubles’ were multiplying. The British government decided therefore to step up the Royal Irish Constabulary, a police force not known for gentleness in the first place. (more…)
The Duke hits Ninety
The Queen’s consort of six decades is 90. He has had what he calls ‘a good innings’. He is very popular with many in European countries, and the United States. He is also a bit of a favourite in Britain, with the exception of the stuffier classes, who still think of him as ‘an outsider’ and a ‘penniless adventurer’. This is especially true with the press, never forgiving when a very famous man is hard, unresponsive and enigmatic: “One gets a rather false image of me, from the press,” he once said in a rare interview, “I do not, for example, hate journalists, though I have hated some of the things they wrote.” An admiral once wrote of him, “Philip is always master of his own dryness.” A former First Lord of the Admiralty (Lewin) said that if Philip had not become what he became he was such a fine seaman that he would have been First Lord instead of him.
He is Philip Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and the Baron Greenwich (born 1921). (more…)
Since the ex-Head of the IMF has been disgraced for not keeping himself under control in a New York hotel suite, the question of who French socialists can promote as their candidate in next year’s Presidential elections remains moot. Someone has to stand up against Monsieur Sarkozy (as I suppose we must call him). I have an idea which I may submit to Paris in my perfectly fluent Norman French:
Since France got rid of Kings and replaced themn as Head of State with Presidents, life for five years if you get elected can only be described as Imperial. You live in one the greatest palaces to be found in the capital. There are fleets of black Peugeots and Citroens and Mercedes which rush you everywhere surrounded by Darth Vaders mounted on BMW bikes. No French king except perhaps Louis IV lived in such pomp as a modern French President. (more…)
In Spain the regional community, town hall and city mayoral elections were recently celebated right across the country. It would be true to say that the elections again prove that Spain must radically reform her regional electoral system, or fall into the dustbin of European history, for lack of attention to detail, if for nothing else.
In case you keep a watch on your local and national newspapers, but have failed to grasp the nub of what they have been saying since May 22, I shall try to sum up what happens in these Spanish regional elections, and how the constitutional laws regarding ‘Pacts’ affect them. (more…)