Lavengro in Spain

Slugs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails

Miss Whiplash in river car ordeal

Lindi St Clair, pictured in 1989, was a well-known figure in the 1980s

Former brothel keeper Lindi St Clair has been rescued after being trapped upside down in her car in a river for almost 24 hours. Ms St Clair, once known as Miss Whiplash, left the road near the village of Risbury in Herefordshire and went 15ft (4.5m) down an embankment … She once stood for Parliament campaigning for more liberal sex laws and later moved to Herefordshire where she is believed to have been running a duck farm.

In other words, she was trying to get her life together out of the public gaze. And she might well have managed to do so, except that she had a very nasty car accident and the BBC used that as a hook to blast her past life all over the Internet. Isn’t it about time the UK had a proper law on privacy?

Gmail

A fortnight ago I was having lunch with some friends and I mentioned that all my professional mail, incoming and outgoing, is copied, as a backup, to a Gmail account that I keep for that specific purpose and no other. As I said, ‘If Google’s mail servers go down, the world will have greater problems than the correspondence relating to my translation business.’

Perhaps I should have known better. I said that on Friday the thirteenth. Since then Gmail has been plagued by problems. For most of today I have been unable to access it.

Britain seen from abroad

I was brought up in a country that was an example to the world. I was told that my country was a model of democracy and decency, a country that opened its doors to refugees from dictatorships. It was a country that was, simply, better than others because it was the country that invented democracy, freedom and civilisation. Everything good was British and everything British was good. And there were British people trying and – sometimes – succeeding in bringing British values to those unfortunate peoples who had not as yet experienced them.

And then, outside the colonies, there were foreigners. The French were bad enough but they did have good food if you liked that sort of thing; the Italians were dreadful but they did have good statues and paintings, and they sang awfully well, you had to give it to them, fair’s fair; and the Spaniards were picturesque, with their bulls and their donkeys and their ridiculously pompous politicians, but they could never be really civilised.

Well, the biter has been bit. I live in Spain. I have said many times over the years that I feel freer here in my person, my actions and my expression than if I were in the UK – and that’s without mentioning the trains.

Today’s El País reports that the British government will not reveal the process by which the British state embarked on the invasion of Iraq. The minister responsible for vetoing disclosure of the decision is a self-confessed Stalinist, typical of the Labour Party, so there’s no hope of democracy from that quarter. It also lays into the UK in general:

The decision was no surprise because it is in line with the tradition of protecting the establishment that characterises British democracy, as has been seen repeatedly in recent years:

-Menezes. The CPS prevented criminal proceedings being brought against the police officers who wrongly killed the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in the London Underground. The judge prevented the jury from bringing in a guilty verdict.

-BAE Systems. Blair stopped an investigation into bribes paid to the Saudi royal family in arms contracts.

-Honours for sale. Against the judgement of Scotland Yard, the CPS did not prosecute close collaborators of Blair.

-Torture. London asked Washington to put pressure on British judges to prevent the publication of documents that could have proved that the accusations against Binyam Mohamed, a Guantánamo prisoner who was freed on Monday, were obtained under torture.

-Iraq. There has never been an independent investigation. All investigations have had limitations imposed by the Government*.

-Kelly. The Government was acquitted of sexing up a report on Iraq despite abundant evidence that it increased the pressure to exaggerate the danger that Saddam Hussein posed.

-The butler. The Queen stopped a trial against Diana’s butler, who was accused of stealing some of the Princess’s personal, belongings, because it could have damaged Prince Charles’s image.

*Not only has there been no proper official investigation, which is bad enough, but the Labour Party has never actually managed to find time at any of its congresses to discuss the British invasion of a sovereign country. That leaves me totally unsurprised.

British values

British nationalism wants to separate the country from the rest of the world by inventing ‘British values’.

Ms Blears told the BBC that the "overwhelming majority" of people in Britain shared the same values and there must be a "dividing line" between those embracing and rejecting British "core values".

There were clear boundaries about what was acceptable in British society, the communities secretary said.

In  civilised parts of the world the idea is to bring people together by seeking common values.

Personnel

What does the word personnel mean?

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary it is:

people employed in an organization or engaged in an organized undertaking.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is:

The body of persons engaged in any service or employment, esp. in a public institution, as an army, navy, hospital, etc.; the human as distinct from the matériel or material equipment (of an institution, undertaking, etc.).

And according to the BBC it is a member of the British military:

Four British personnel have died from injuries sustained in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.

Three soldiers from 1st Battalion The Rifles were struck by a blast in the Gereshk district of Helmand province and pronounced dead at the scene.

Is this a part of the militarisation of British society? You bet it is.

Waterstones

From the BBC:

A man sprayed a mixture of urine and faeces in two supermarkets, a pub and a bookshop in Gloucestershire, a jury at Bristol Crown Court has heard…

He then moved on to Waterstones bookstore in Cirencester where it is alleged he sprayed the substance from a spray container all over a toilet in the coffee shop. In total 706 books were contaminated.

How do Waterstones work these days?!?! Or, for that matter, how does the BBC?

This is England

A wall painting has appeared in London showing the face of a young woman with a completely bald head, a pound sign tattooed on her forehead with the blood-red words This is England, and vultures circling over the scene … It is an allegory of a country thirsty for blood, of a person who makes money out of her own death, and of media who act like vultures.

Walter Oppenheimer in today’s El País.

PS I have of course translated all this from Spanish. It occurs to me now that the original might be This England.

Comparative cultural customs

It is always interesting to compare social customs in different cultures. Barcelona is a very crowded city with a Mediterranean culture that allows for less interpersonal space than is found in the north of Europe. So, it often happens that people bump into each other, not only in the bus or metro but in the street. The typical cultural reaction on such occasions is for both parties to offer a slightly extended open palm to indicate distancing and peace, and to smile at the other person to indicate that no offence was intended.

I found myself in just a situation this evening. As I was walking down Via Laietana I passed a shop that I decided, at the last minute that I wanted to go into. I stopped suddenly, turned back a little and went into the doorway. As I did so, I felt a person brush past me. I prepared for the procedure I have described. But it turned out that the man who had passed me was not Spanish, or Mediterranean, or South American. He was very obviously from a barbarian northern tribe because what I saw when I looked at him was not a face with an apologetic smile but a snarl that shouted, ‘Gerrout my way you fucking shite.’ The conversation, if such it may be called, developed as follows:

‘Don’t you speak to me like that.’

‘I’ll speak to you any I want if you gerrin my fucking way.’

This reminds me of the occasion a a few years ago when I was on a pavement in Cambridge. I almost fell over a loose dog that had insinuated itself between my legs. Under my breath I muttered, ‘Bloody animal.’ Immediately I heard from behind me, ‘Oy! Don’t you swear at my dog.’

Ay, '¡los ingleses!

Brown on the Ripper

It is – well let us say that it is interesting to see that the British Prime Minister has time left over from saving the world to interest himself in matters that belong, one might imagine, in the realm of the Ministry of Justice (BBC):

Gordon Brown has said it is "very unlikely" Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe will be released from jail … "We're not aware of any tribunal being asked for or arranged in relation to this case. "Obviously the tribunal would consider these issues but in my view it is very unlikely that anything is going to happen that is different from the sentence that has been imposed upon him."  (my emphasis)

Brown actually has got round to having a view on the matter. He really must have been burning the midnight oil at Davos, where he was doing what he is paid to do. Which is not commenting on when prisoners might or might not be released.

But then as Chancellor in 2000 Gordon Brown took it on himself, and found the time in his busy schedule, to intervene fatuously in favour of a girl who was said, wrongly (see here), to have been unfairly refused a place at Oxford. It turned out that the girl’s headmistress was an acquaintance of his.

And, by the way, note the Royal we in the second sentence.

Europe comes to London

There’s fog building up in the Channel again, according to the BBC:

Priceless medieval jewellery from Europe on display in London