Lavengro in Spain

Gibraltar, by Jingo

It has been my experience over the years, in  real life as well as online, that the mere mention of the word Gibraltar is enough to turn otherwise intelligent, rational, sane and thoughtful Brits into gibbering, jingoistic flag-waggers as if by magic.

There is a lot about Gibraltar that is simply not reported in the UK since the base emotion of patriotism is strong enough to overcome, or perhaps inhibit, any proper analysis of the situation. If I were to suggest for example that Spain has several legitimate grounds for concern over the Gibraltar government's policy on bunkering, would your average British patriot:

a) Agree

b) Disagree

c) Not have a clue what I was talking about.

Comments are closed. I’ve been through it all before, several times.

The foreigners are doomed!

	They’re all doomed! DOOMED!

The Independent’s relentlessly Eurosceptic economics correspondent Hamish McRae foresees, in the best Scottish tradition, gloom and doom for southern (i.e. Catholic) Europe. He worries about the million or so people that the UK ‘has living’ in Spain, as if all of us were not workers and permanent residents but expatriate retirees, are just here for the cheap fags and booze and willing to return if things get tough. And he reassures us that ‘we’, by which he apparently means the British state, are preparing to help those million people if the foreigners screw up completely and Spanish cash machines run out of money. Such is the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy that this panic will be monged and wildly overvalued by the City of London and disaster in the Mediterranean will be provoked – deliberately or not according to your point of view.

He also says:

If you were abroad over Easter and noticed the exchange rate, you may have been surprised to see that sterling is not as weak as it has been of late. The pound yesterday was at its highest since mid-February 2011. The rise has been particularly against the euro…

It is (deliberately?) unclear what he means by ‘of late’. If he means the last three months he is demonstrably wrong. The sterling/euro exchange rate for the last 12 months has been this:

In early July last year sterling reached a low point of €1.1136 and the other day it reached a high of €1.2060, which is lower than the high point of €1.2079 reached in early January.

At that lowest rate last July, a cup of coffee or a beer that costs 2 euros would have changed from £1.80 to £1.66, a 15-euro lunch would cost £13.47 instead of £12.48 and a dinner for 50 euros would be £44.90 against £41.46. That, remember, is taking the lowest dip on the 1-year graph and its second-highest point, and is using the interbank rate. By the time banks have had their share the effect on the total budget of a weekend away is hardly severe. Certainly my British friends who were here last weekend didn’t mention any particular problem.

Eurodoom – or perhaps not

While British Eurosceptics are quick to write off the euro as being doomed, those who care to look will see a curious thing. Despite the current crisis the euro has held its own with sterling for the last three years, This graph from Oanda.com shows how there was a great devaluation of sterling in 2008 but since then there has been no real overall change in the exchange rate. Obviously the markets do not see the state of the euro in such dire terms as the British media do. Or perhaps sterling is just as doomed as the euro.

Met chief resigns

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson has resigned. I said as soon as he was appointed that he was heading for trouble.

He says, ‘my integrity is completely intact.’ Indeed, he is a proud man.

Pulling up the ladder

This letter appears in today’s Observer (my emphasis):

… A necessary condition for getting the chronically unemployed off benefits is a rise in the minimum wage. Simply curtail immigration and the market will up unskilled pay rates. Nothing less than the unthinkable, namely a UK opt out from the EU accord on the free movement of people, will do.

No outsider is going to worry about the social costs of our growing underclass or feel any sense of obligation to do something about it. This is our problem and it can only be resolved by ourselves. It follows that our citizens have priority over would-be immigrants. Home solidarity trumps both international solidarity and unbridled capitalism.

Yugo Kovach, Winterborne Houghton, Dorset

Now it may be the case that the Kovaches have been settled in Dorset since the days of Alfred the Great, or at the very least that one Guy de Kovach was a trusted lieutenant of William the Conqueror. But on the other hand, that may not be the case.

The crisis – as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. The greedy banks, aided and abetted  by their malevolent friends in the rating agencies, cause untold misery and mayhem in the world’s financial and economic system.
2. The democratic governments of the affected countries are left picking up the pieces. They have an idea. Maybe the banks could play a part in clearing up …
3. The greedy banks, aided and abetted  by their malevolent friends in the rating agencies, kick the democratic governments in the balls and scream, ‘Don’t even think of it or I’ll rip them off with my bare hands, make mincemeat of them, and force them down your throat for tomorrow’s breakfast.’

Along the gutter and down the drain

Seldom has the expression Good riddance to bad rubbish been more literally true than with the closure of the News of the World. It is too much to say that that newspaper itself was responsible for me leaving the country, but when I decided at the age of 25 that my destined career was to be an EFL teacher outside the UK (and there was no shortage of jobs for such people in the country), the smug superiority in morals (private and public) and the holier-than-thou prurience (private and public) that prevailed in the UK were most definitely things that I was extremely glad to get away from. And though it was 1978 when I finally left to live abroad permanently, the same applied in the pre-Murdoch days in which I grew up. This is about the Profumo scandal (1963).

04 Editor Of Sunday News

 

‘Media give false impression of demo’ – Independent

In its leader about the demonstration in London the Independent says (my emphasis):

Pictures of injured police and masked youths smashing windows and cash-points … could not but taint the day of protest as a whole. It is no wonder that trade-union leaders moved quickly yesterday to insist that the actions of a few hundred people should not be allowed to detract from the main message of the official protest. But this is, to an extent, what happened; the force of the pictures made that inevitable.

That may very well be true but it leaves a big question mark hanging in the air: Where did such forceful pictures come from and how did people come to see them? The answer of course is that they were published in the media. So the Independent is clearly admitting that people inevitably have an inaccurate, distorted impression of what happened on Saturday because they believed what they saw in the media. These pictures for example are from the Independent itself:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is really saddening, but not at all surprising, is that the Independent seems utterly unaware of the irony of what it is saying.

Merseyliar

On Sunday we travelled by train from Blundellsands & Crosby on the Merseyrail Northern Line to Wrexham. This meant changing at Liverpool Central to the Merseyrail Wirral line, and then changing at Bidston to the main line to Wrexham. There was a bus replacement service from Bootle Oriel Road to Liverpool.

The bus got to the centre of the city but went a rather odd way for Central Station. It stopped on Lime St outside St George’s Hall. As I had a big suitcase I waited for the other passengers to get off. I realised that everyone was getting off. I spoke to the driver.

‘Is this Central Station?’

‘Yes,’ he lied.

‘It looks more like St George’s Hall to me.’

‘It’s the best we can do. We can’t get any closer,’ he lied further.

Of course I knew perfectly well that we were not at Central Station and so did the driver. (In fact we were a good five minutes’ walk away at the best of times and maybe a quarter of an hour for us with a big suitcase apiece.) My question was intended to ask whether this was what was regarded as the Central Station stop in terms of a bus replacement service, which has to visit every stop on the route, including the last one, though as I had seen all the other passengers get off I guessed that this was the terminus for the bus and there was a certain element of sarcasm in my question. The driver chose to answer my metaquestion (Is this what is regarded as the Central Station stop in terms of a bus replacement service?), which told me what I wanted to know, but he should not have done so. I had a suitcase and I was asking for Central Station. Had I been a stranger to Liverpool wanting to leave the city (and Merseyrail connects with the main line at Chester as well as at Bidston) I might well have assumed from his answer that the large station on the other side of the road was the one I was seeking. But that is Lime Street station.

Then there is his second answer. As we walked from where the bus had stopped to Central, we passed along Elliot St, next to Canning Place. There we saw a parade of three bus stops, obviously closer to Central Station than St George’s Hall is. But that was not all. The street on which Central station stands (it is an underground station with a small entrance) has no bus stops but does have traffic running in both directions; I can’t see why a bus couldn’t have stopped there. But even so, opposite the station entrance is a piece cut out of the pavement, maybe 10 or 15 metres long, marked as a loading bay for the nearby shops. This was not used on a Sunday afternoon, so there is no reason at all why it should not be used as the stopping place for a bus service to Central Station.

Merseyrail – more than just a journey

I phone Merseyrail:

"When does your last train leave Liverpool for Chester tonight?"
"Our system closes down at 20.00."
"But when does your last train leave Liverpool?"
"Because of adverse weather conditions we're running a half-hour service across the network."
Are you saying that your last train to Chester leaves Liverpool Central at 20.00?"
"I'm saying that because of the cold weather you shouldn't leave it any later than that. I'm just giving you sensible advice."
"I don't want sensible advice. I want accurate information. When does your last train leave Liverpool Central for Chester?"
"20.41."
"That's after 20.00. So can I leave Liverpool at that time to get to Chester?"
"We're running a half-hourly service till 20.00. I can't forecast the future."
"Forecasting the future is what railway timetables are all about."
"I apologise for trying to help."

I ended the call at that point.