Lavengro in Spain

Guardianistas and the burka

From today’s Guardian letters:

There may just possibly be Hegelian arguments for total body coverage, but these have been trashed by mixing them liberally with the froth of modern mores.

(Note the mixed metaphor: mixing arguments liberally with froth turns them into trash.)

____________

Even women in high heels, whose minds have been numbed by the abstract freedoms of late capitalism are able to engage, eye to eye, expression to expression, with those they come into contact with.

I think I’ll send them to Pseuds’ Corner.

JACKO LIVES!!

Michael Jackson is NOT DEAD!!!!

Don’t believe what the so-called ‘media’ tell you it’s ALL LIES!!!!!!

I SAW HIM with my own eyes walking down the Rambla in Barcelona this afternoon!!!!!!!!

How terribly, terribly British!

BBC

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told the chairman of an independent inquiry into Iraq that he can decide to hold public sessions if he chooses.

How terribly British!

BBC (my emphasis):

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is giving details of an inquiry into the Iraq war in the House of Commons.

Opposition parties - and many Labour MPs - have been calling for one since shortly after the 2003 invasion.

The BBC understands the probe will be held in private and cover the period from July 2001 to July 2009.

The independent inquiry will begin work next month and take at least a year. Its aim will be to identify "lessons learned"' and not to "apportion blame".

Unpopular leader clings to power

A caring society

The Independent reports:

Patient dies after ambulance driver clocks off

Monday, 8 June 2009

An emergency patient died after an ambulance driver diverted to the depot instead of going to hospital — because he had over-run his shift.

The driver complained to a colleague that he was 15 minutes past the end of his duty and wanted to clock off. The News of the World reported that he got out of the ambulance without even telling his replacement there was a critically sick case being tended by another medic in the back.

The new driver headed to the hospital as quickly as he could — but the detour had added half a mile to the journey.

The patient, who had suffered a stroke, deteriorated during the drive and died of a suspected heart attack soon after arriving at A&E.

…

Where are the Tories?

There is a certain discrepancy between El País and the BBC about which party has won how many seats. EP has 265, 162, 80 for the EPP, Socialists and Liberals respectively, while the BBC has 264, 183, 84.What I am not sure about, however, is where the British Tories are counted. As they have not yet, I believe, actually made good their threat to leave the EPP, they are presumably counted in that group's total. As they have 25 seats, that would make a bit of a hole (nearly 10%) in the EPP’s size and would alter the balance of party strengths. The EPP would still be the biggest but would not be as dominant.

Before your very eyes

The amazing disappearing Labour Party.

Now you see it –

– and now you don’t.

Don’t believe what you read in the papers

It is wise not to take newspaper reports at face value, but if you’re a journalist yourself, believing what you read in your own paper is, I suppose, an occupational hazard. Peter Preston in the Guardian has fallen into that very trap.

On Friday 29 May Giles Tremlett wrote in the Guardian:

Conservatives woo far right ally in Spain

A Spanish political party previously aligned with some of the most extreme rightwing parties in Europe and backed by Blas Piñar, a leading apologist for former dictator Francisco Franco, has allied itself with the British Conservative party.

So, the Guardian’s intention is to link the Conservative Party with the far right. He goes on:

The party defines itself as conservative but, according to its website, backed the so-called Vienna Declaration that brought together extreme rightwing parties from across Europe in 2005. Its allies then were Austria's Freedom party, the French National Front of Jean Marie Le Pen, the Flemish party Vlaams Belang, Alessandra Mussolini's Azione Sociale and extreme rightists from Romania and Bulgaria. Though some of the parties are openly xenophobic or Nazi apologists, Alternativa Española says it is not racist.

All of this is perfectly true, as a look at the Alternativa Española (AES) web site shows, and it is probably what Peter Preston relied on when he wrote today about the British Conservatives sitting with ‘Spanish neo-Francoists’ in the new European Parliament. The problem is that is not going to happen. At last year’s Spanish general election AES managed a grand total, in all of Spain, of 7,078 votes (0.03%)! Their chances of being elected are, quite simply, zero. The Guardian’s original article failed to say this, and Preston, who claims a knowledge of Spanish affairs, didn’t think that the far right is next to non-existent in Spain.

Ironically, any Spanish sympathisers with Francoism are to be found in the conservative Partido Popular, which is a member of the EPP group – the group that the Tories are leaving!