The emails produced by Cervera were dated almost a week before the president of Caja Navarra went to the police over the alleged blackmail attempt. Here is a rare full version of Dead Or Alive on South Of Watford Gender Benders episode. Two people from Cadiz working in the middle of the English countryside. This is not to say that Spain hasn't touched bottom on job destruction, just that reaching that point still leaves it far away from anything resembling sustained job creation. Inspired by such an impeccably democratic example, Mariano Rajoy has announced that he intends to change electoral law for the municipal elections so that the party which receives the most votes gets to govern regardless of whether they have an absolute majority or not. Email This BlogThis! Showing all 1 items Jump to: Release Dates (1) Also Known As (AKA) (0) Release Dates UK 1984: Also Known As (AKA) It looks like we don't have any AKAs for this title yet. Also, many of those who are leaving are not so young. Industries that made things. Although they talk of a minimum threshold necessary for a party to claim control of a city without winning the election, we will have to wait and see what the PP tries to get away with. The accusation has enthusiastic support. Many of them are going for the foreseeable future. We don't yet know how a government which previously claimed it would use no public money to bail out the banks is going to manage the turnaround, Friday is the bad news day. However, that is not the case with the shit I'm going to describe now. What would they know? The news yesterday that Bankia is going to be bailed out by the Spanish government has put the stability of the Spanish banking system back at the centre of the country's ongoing crisis. This is not, it needs to be pointed out, the same as a majority of the votes cast. 81. Plenty of material there, but this time I've decided to leave all the ridiculous stuff from right wing sources in Madrid to one side. If you disagree try to make a list of them without thinking too hard and see what number you get to. This is what he had to say: A very strange thing happened last week in Spain. So a train driver pointing out that he has hit 200km with a train like this isn't boasting about doing something that he shouldn't do. Tuesday, March 06, 2012. Still very much the personal project of Rosa Diez, the party machine reacts badly to dissent and those who favour a fusion or agreement with Ciudadanos are subjected to insults by the loyalists. It's a failure, an abject failure if you analyse the data. Perhaps the party which has taken the biggest hit from Podemos has been Izquierda Unida, who found themselves pushed behind the new party in several regions. After a build up that had almost everyone expecting a major shift towards pro-independence sentiment, a closer examination of the results reveals a small reverse in nationalist support. Even their own economists don't believe the propaganda when it comes down to it. Just 25 miles north of Watford City, nestled on the south shore of Lake Sakakawea, lies Tobacco Gardens Resort & Marina. Date: 25 May 2020 Author: South of Watford 0 Comments. It's that. Now I've travelled many times on Alvia trains like that involved in the accident and similar ones running on high speed tracks built for the faster AVE, and they still go very fast - frequently at more than 200km per hour. Because it has become evident that he doesn't have an explanation to offer, merely a collection of recycled cliches. It's about public resources being used to prop up the private sector. You see, they had quite a lot in common. Here we go: It didn't work. Given the lack of interest from the big investors, Bankia mobilised its whole commercial network to sell shares to its own customers. In this situation it is Rato that has been left, perhaps to Rajoy's satisfaction, looking like a greedy banker. The PP, who vilified Rubalcaba as being the epitomy of evil, suddenly realised how much they will miss him as they become the only party of the '. The Palau case is not unique by any means, it's remarkably close to that pattern of corruption that is still emerging in Partido Popular ruled areas like the Balearics, Valencia and Madrid. Both of the regions voting today belong to that select group of comunidades autonomas in Spain (along with Cataluña and Andalucia) that set their own electoral timetable instead of having a common voting day. Pensioners weren't expected to live out their last years on the poverty line, a health service that kept people healthy without corporate sponsorship! Watford is 15 miles north-west of London. Bankia is still stuffed full of PP appointees and the solution adopted to allow them to continue in their comfortable positions is unlikely to be favourable to public finances. There isn't that much remaining of the 'Esquerra' part in ERC but they also have to keep an eye out for emerging rivals, look at the rise of the CUP in yesterday's election. I don't share the argument for Catalan independence, although I understand and respect the case for it when it is reasonably argued. As does pretending that the rest of Spain lives a leisurely life of ease and comfort at Catalan expense. The problem comes when the spinners try to attribute this success either to austerity or to the accompanying 'reforms'. As seen from the north. Feel free to put the other side or conflicting opinions in the comments, for a day or two we can still pretend we live in a free society. Iniciativa per Catalunya, which would expect to pick up votes on the left from disillusionment with the PSC, have gained three seats which isn't bad but it doesn't suggest great things to come either. That could really provoke some democratic regeneration. In the Patagonian summer it does modestly well out of tourism, mainly from those who want to walk, as we did, the nearby Torres del Paine national park. It's that time again, the South of Watford winter break. 23 likes. The amount needed to save Bankia seems to rise almost every day and the disastrous handling of the issue by the government came dangerously close to provoking a run on deposits in the bank. Rajoy had made a sort of implicit contract with pensioners, they would vote for him to protect their pensions whilst he made sure that future generations would never enjoy the same conditions. We've been told all along that the fundamental problem for Spain is that it has become uncompetitive, and the austerity programme has been a clumsy attempt to force through the internal devaluation (read reduced wages) that would restore the economic balance with its competitors. Some story, because Bankia is now a bank resulting from this fusion process and all that has been created is an even bigger and more expensive monster. Consulte la predicción de la AEMET para Madrid. Learn More . Everything works fine until it doesn't. You hope, but you can't be sure that's what will happen. It's now over 3 weeks since I last blogged on the subject, but the crisis over the bailout of Bankia rages on. Some polls have shown Mas getting the majority he wants and others have shown him falling short, there is no consistent picture. Set up camp, fish for your dinner (or stop in at the full-service restaurant or well-stocked convenience store), then navigate the waters of Lake Sakakawea in a kayak. That's the UK. I did toy with the idea of continuing wordless blogging and just post the results widget from El País. Now we must await further news from the judicial investigation. The situation is made even more ironic by the fact that the move against Rato was spurred by a critical report from the IMF, Rato having been director general of that body until he walked away from that job before the shit hit the fan. Running with the bulls isn't the most dangerous sport they play in Pamplona. Defying Mayan or any other prophets of doom I'm taking off this afternoon for Chile. The train driver is to blame for everything. What does seem evident is that there will be a significant collapse in support for the PSC, Catalan wing of the PSOE. It seems that this is far from being a unique case on Spain's high speed lines. So is this it, crunch day for Cataluña as it decides its future relationship with Spain? The pro-austerity party have got everything they asked for, although you sense it will never be quite enough. There are some absentees from the list of those accused of mismanaging the banking crisis, because those who control Spain's biggest banks have been instrumental in driving the disastrous strategy. This is not just about Podemos, new broader based civic platforms are quickly forming to present alternative candidacies in big cities like Barcelona, Sevilla and Madrid. The regional president of Galicia, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, who should be fully occupied with the consequences of dealing with those affected by the crash in his region instead decided to go for the idiotic ', So what do I mean when I write about deficient safety systems? hide. Be the first to share what you think! Then there is the (deliberate?) The general assumption this morning seems to be that CiU and ERC will unite in a grand coalition, as between them they command a majority in parliament. So the line where the accident occurred is no longer considered to be high speed since the accident, although it was presented as such and forms part of the planned AVE line connecting Madrid and Galicia. Your email address will not be published. Life, south of Watford, seen from the north. ), I won’t be relying on Air Madrid to get there and normal blogging resumes on Monday. It says an awful lot about the way this government operates that the announcement of how much public money Bankia needs was made by the newly appointed president of the bank, with a figure way above anything which had been suggested by government ministers. The details we have of the case so far just don't fit. Young Spaniards are not just going overseas now to get away from home for a year and pretend to learn a foreign language. On the export side it is of course completely true that Spain's exports have been the success story of the crisis, the only success story to be told apart from the ability of the financial sector to suck us dry. All the better for it to sink slowly, but relentlessly, down through the sticky London clay until it reaches a point where return becomes impossible. confusion over the way in which the bank will be rescued. He's facing charges of reckless manslaughter. Does anyone here have a copy of it? Gerry Marsden (1942-2021) Yerror-riyt, La. Check out a rad documentary, South of Watford, below about the positive punk movement (based on the NME article by Richard North), which features some killer old punk footage and performances, as well as interviews with Blood and Roses, Brigandage, Glen Matlock of Sex Pistols, Siouxsie Sioux and music journalist Jon Savage. If you think or hope otherwise then ask yourself about the attention paid to pensions. I laugh when I read articles in the press about the wide ranging reforms Spain is supposed to have undertaken, wondering about the use of the plural. How things have come full circle, this is effectively now how many European governments are working with the tiny detail that redistribution goes from the poorest sectors to the wealthy. Some recent national opinion polls show them with little more than 55% support combined, when in happier times for Spain it would have been more like 80%. Incidentally, if you think that the Spanish electoral system has been brutally unfair in past general elections, just wait and see what happens in the next election if the two major parties have a lower vote but are still clear of any rivals. It's bullshit. There's no money to pay for anything you see, unless you represent part of that elite. Showing posts with label Madrid. All terribly old-fashioned I know, but if I want to look for evidence of long term decline I don't need to go back into history to find it. Some disenchanted voters will vote for the smaller parties, but many may simply opt for abstention. best. Odd when you consider how long the PP affords protection to people who take money. Indeed Cervera - and you have to take this statement in the general context of the PP and how they behave - had something of a reputation for integrity and for campaigning for greater transparency in politics. Mas and his party, Convergència i Unió (CiU), have never been in favour of Catalan independence, and the language he has used in the campaign to refer to the national question has been deliberately ambiguous. The banks - in one year we have gone from ". No serious prediction can be found showing promising economic growth for Spain in the next decade. The PP does not panic in a very public way, but results which had the party not even reaching 30% of the vote in their strongholds of Madrid and Valencia have had a profound effect internally. Watford is 16 miles north-west of City of London. South of Watford is off to the beach this evening for a long weekend (I love being able to say that in December! We'll just slip a special provision into the budget to pay for that. no comments yet. Defying Mayan or any other prophets of doom I'm taking off this afternoon for Chile. Spain's government is being crushed by the weight of its own mediocrity and inability to respond to the situation. It's a South of Watford world exclusive. This time it's prestige with a small 'p', the AVE offers tremendous inauguration and boasting possibilities for Spanish politicians from all governments since the 1990's and has become an untouchable icon of Spanish progress. Copyright © 2020 CVLT Nation. The shock of the European elections was twofold, firstly because support for the two main parties combined fell just short of 50% of the vote, and secondly because of the surprise emergence of Podemos as a potential threat to that two party hegemony. Diez apparently believed she could eclipse the Catalan upstarts, but her right wing media allies seem to be in favour of the merger and have fanned the flames. That's an awful result, but I still believe it has as much to do with national issues as with local ones. It was not, they revived as a new ‘positive’ form. Always trying to go that extra mile to make sure our customers are happy and always on the look out for Tamla Motown/Soul records for our own collection too. The government is certainly pleased with this, it's one way of reducing the unemployment total short of a serious epidemic. Third Thursday (21) No More A Roving Third Thursday (20) Lighting the Darkness Third Thursday (19) Bliss was it… (take 4) Top 80 Tags. Some doubt has been cast, from those carping republicans, on his qualifications for the job - given that he appears to have reached the age of 46 without ever having had what could be described as a real job. The driver of the train had posted a photo on Facebook some time ago of the speed display on his train showing 200km per hour. Also, an agreement with Mas means they have to publicly line up behind setting the Mossos d'Esquadra and their rubber bullets onto anyone who doesn't like their health service being dismantled. Of course it's still not a year since he (allegedly) took office as it takes a month or so after the elections for a change of government to take effect in Spain. This is because it is a national vote and therefore doesn't suffer the sort of deformation present in general elections here, that which allows Rajoy to have an absolute majority in parliament with well under 50% of the vote. More than just being another episode in an ongoing financial crisis, the Bankia situation does show every indication of being a full blown scandal. Neither Galicia nor The Basque Country have made it through the full four year term, although the reasons for early elections are different. It was his economic model that failed and led the country into this crisis, the structure of the banks makes little difference to the outcome when the dependency of the whole sector has been on building ever greater numbers of houses year after year based on the assumption of endless credit. His wife Letizia can tell him about that, although her decision to abandon journalism for life as queen to be suggests she wasn't that keen on a career either. Last week it was a weekend in Innsbruck, the hotel receptionist who checked us in was Catalan. This is not just the attitude of the PP, the whole establishment of the transition years gets intensely nervous at anything that might upset the cozy cronyism they have nurtured carefully for so many years. We are treated to yet another early election called, as in the recent case of Galicia, for opportunistic reasons. It's Spain's huge loss, a well prepared generation taking their skills elsewhere. Show all posts. The armed forces presence in her funeral has of course been designed above all to pay homage to a military adventure only exceeded in its pointless absurdity by Aznar's dramatic capture of the goats grazing on Isla Perejil a few years back. Ah, but you don't understand how terrible things were before she came to power is the last resort of the Thatcherites. Not bad is it, 350-400000 jobs lost for each point of deficit reduction? The alternative is to either put a special AVE station well outside of Santiago city limits (Tarragona or Segovia style), to tunnel, or to bulldoze a significant part of the city to build a nice straight line for the fast train. El Mundo's document casts little new light on the case, but as a description of the scale of the corruption involved it's really quite useful. Not so lovely is the the way in which the rehabilitation of the historic building was used as the cover for a massive corruption scandal which goes to the heart of the Catalan political establishment. I admire the shallowness of this argument, people who write about economics as a profession but don't apparently understand that throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work depresses consumer demand and reduces imports. The 'mistake' was of course corrected, but I wonder how many other cases there were. If you look at the economic data and especially at the unemployment figures you would think such a conclusion is beyond doubt. As journalist Richard North stated in a February 1983 article in NME: So here it is: the new positive punk, with no empty promises of revolution, either in the rock n’ roll sense or the wider political sphere. The common denominator is a rejection of the old way of doing politics, and of those who administer the crisis in their own interests. Using the excuse of austerity, Cospedal has pushed through a law drastically reducing the number of members of the regional parliament. That is, if they're not too busy dealing with. There hasn't even been a single press conference yet by the heads of the public companies involved, infrastructure (ADIF) or operator (RENFE). You have this expensive and useless arms contract to pay for? But even so it's hard to think of a country that has obtained absolutely no long-term benefit at all from it. 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