Cosas de España/Galiza

What you need to know about the new animal-friendly Law. I wonder when they’ll be given the vote. And if, meanwhile, one year-old galgos won’t now be hung from trees or thrown down wells.

Great places in the Basque Country – France and Spain. At least in Spain, they each have 2 names.

I wonder if this means the quality of sausages down South will now improve.

I thought this celebrated Spanish-sounding ballet dancer might be this celebrated Spanish ballet dancer. Turns out she isn’t. But it’s not her fault. 

The UK

Richard North today: It is very difficult to avoid the suspicion that the government response to Omicron is a massive over-reaction, the timing of which conveniently diverts attention from more pressing problems – especially with a media which is so easily distracted by the soap opera of the ongoing booster campaign . . .  When one sees the torrent of trivia that fills the pages of the British press, it is very easy to take the cynical view that readers are being fed a diet of garbage to keep them from addressing the more substantive issues. We need to be acutely conscious that the media narrative is precisely that, a narrative. What we are being told is rarely what we need to know.

Possibly thanks in large part to Covid, the UK property market is currently insane. My daughter and her husband put their house up for sale at a high price on Thursday, and – after 10 viewings on that day and Friday – got 3 offers at or above the asking price by Friday night.

BTW: UK estate agents(realtors), put a lot more effort into marketing properties and usually work off a fee of 1.5%, against 3-6% for their not-very-efficient opposite numbers in Spain.

The EU

Richard North again: The UK Government is now permitted to seize powers that would have been unthinkable even during a war. EU member states have gone much further. But, as the whole point of the EU was to install benign oligarchy in place of chaotic, potentially irresponsible democratic government, this should come as no real surprise.

The USA/Religious Nutters

Gun insanity has been taken to its logical extreme by an ‘evangelical Christian political activist’, David Barton: The Second Amendment gives all citizens the right to own whatever weapons the government has. Expanding on this theme he added: I don’t care if my neighbor has a nuclear bomb because he should have the same rights as the government. If you’ve been trained with responsibility and morality and the concept of when and where you use them, you don’t start anything. But, if somebody else [i. e. The government] starts it, you can take them on. 

I can think of at least one American who should be nuked by his ‘neighbor’.

The Way of the World 

A trigger warning has been issued to students at Aberdeen University re Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped viz. that the book contains depictions of kidnapping.

The latest iPhone 13 Pro Max, with one terabyte of storage, costs over £1,500. 

Finally  . . .

I get a lot of laughs from Roger Mellie’s Stupid Facebook Group (Viz): The finest collection of funny stuff on Facebook curated from the four corners of the internet and delivered directly to your eyes. Plus, you know, Viz stuff. But you might not have my taste.

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