Lavengro in Spain

What is truth? Who cares?

Nobody expects the Grauniad to get things right of course; the paper even managed to spell its own name wrong once. But it is worth looking at today’s leader in which it takes it upon itself to tell the people of Europe what we are doing wrong.

… the rightwing German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been to the left of her British, French and Spanish colleagues by paying firms to keep their workers in jobs;

I can’t speak for Britain and France, but the new Spanish labour legislation deliberately follows the German model of providing top-up state benefit for people who are on short-time working. And while Christian Democrats are indeed on the right, they are not to be confused with British Tories – as the Tories themselves have recognised in their European Parliament affiliation.

For Spanish unions the issue is not that they produced a general strike (it was only the fifth in four decades) but that it came three months after a reform designed to lower the cost of firing workers.

In fact it’s the seventh general strike since 1978. The problem was not so much that firing workers was expensive; many employers chose a more expensive way than was strictly necessary (improcedente, unfair dismissal), paying standard compensation rather than risking unpredictable legal action and wrangling over breaking contracts. The problem was that much employment was on the basis of temporary contracts, providing precarious employment, precisely because of the risk involved in giving people indefinite contracts that could only be broken with very great difficulty. There were precarious temporary contracts and indefinite contracts and nothing between them. Just this morning I spoke to a young woman whose four-month contract with the Catalan government came to an end in August. The present law provides for 20 days’ redundancy pay for each year of employment and allows employers to lay off workers if the company is heading for financial difficulties. It is said that this latter provision is too generous for the employers. Its definition will inevitably be tested in the courts.

I have no idea how these provisions compare with other countries but unlike the Guardian I admit when I don’t know things. I don’t just make them up. It is also said that the reform will be a failure because it will not create employment. That may be so but the economics labour law in general is not a matter on which I have any great knowledge, and I prefer not to comment.

The new system was announced in a Royal Decree before the summer and passed into law a few weeks ago. The chances of the law being changed now are zero.

José Luis Zapatero is one of the last major social democrats standing in Europe and his labour minister praised the great sense of responsibility of the Spanish unions, but both are now on the other side.

Yes, one interesting photo published yesterday was of Zapatero supporting the strike in 2002. Since then he has become prime minister and has found that things look a bit different when you actually have the responsibility of keeping the ship afloat.

* * * * *

And now for something completely different. Today’s Guardian has a letter from a number of people supporting the boat that is breaking the blockade of Gaza. It ends with these words:

We believe that this boat … has been of immense symbolic significance in highlighting the blockade and reasserting the Jewish tradition of standing up for the victims of injustice.

But how does the Guardian manage to headline this letter? Like this:

Reasserting the Jewish tradition of defending injustice

Some people might suspect a not-so-Freudian slip on the part of a sub-editor.

How on earth did I let myself in for this disaster?

But which of them is thinking it more strongly?

Places to avoid

Number two in an occasional series of bars I have not been into. This is in Elche, southern Spain.

Dubious Science

In his Guardian Bad Science column today Ben Goldacre climbs aboard the bandwagon of hysterical anti-Papism that is rolling around Britain in anticipation of the Pope’s state visit.

Before I go any further, I will quote the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS:

Conclusive evidence from extensive research shows that correct use of condoms every time one has sex significantly reduces the risk of HIV transmission.

Let there be no doubt. Condoms prevent AIDS and the bishops who say that the virus can get through the holes in the latex don’t know what they are talking about. But there are some awkward facts that get in the way of the theory that the Catholic Church’s teaching on condoms is responsible for the scale of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. The following reports are from the same UN web site. Follow the links to read the full report on each region. There are also separate country reports

Sub-Saharan Africa

In 2008, an estimated 1.9 million people living in sub-Saharan Africa became newly infected with HIV, bringing the total number of people living with HIV to 22.4 million. While the rate of new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa has slowly declined—with the number of new infections in 2008 approximately 25% lower than at the epidemic’s peak in the region in 1995—the number of people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa slightly increased in 2008, in part due to increased longevity stemming from improved access to HIV treatment. Adult (15–49) HIV prevalence declined from 5.8% in 2001 to 5.2% in 2008. In 2008, an estimated 1.4 million AIDS-related deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. This number represents an 18% decline in annual HIV-related mortality in the region since 2004.

Latin America

In 2008, an estimated 170 000 new HIV infections occurred in the region, bringing the number of people living with HIV to an estimated 2 million.

The Catholic Church has a presence in Africa, but the scale of that presence, and the effectiveness of its teaching there, are far less than is the case in Latin America. Nevertheless, I have never seen any British anti-Papist attempt to reconcile these figures. Why should it be that the scale of HIV infection in Africa is more than ten times higher than in Latin America? How can this disparity be attributed to the influence of the Catholic Church? Moreover, I have been told (though I have no data) that the rate of HIV infection in Africa is roughly the same in areas under Anglican influence as in Catholic areas.

Until I see an argued response to this point, I will assume that this great concern for Catholic teaching responds more to British religious preoccupations and prejudice than to reality. There is, after all, no reason to suppose that the UN is part of a worldwide Catholic conspiracy, yet I find no mention of the Catholic Church’s attitude there.

Finally, to avoid any confusion, I repeat:

Conclusive evidence from extensive research shows that correct use of condoms every time one has sex significantly reduces the risk of HIV transmission.

Notes

The UN specifically mentions some countries in the above regional reports as having serious HIV/AIDS problems. The proportions of Roman Catholics in the populations of those countries are as follows:

Swaziland – 25%

Côte d’Ivoire – 17%

Lesotho – 45%

Peru – 89%

Links to Wikipedia.

And because what I tell you three times is true:

Conclusive evidence from extensive research shows that correct use of condoms every time one has sex significantly reduces the risk of HIV transmission.