Ashes to ashes

Nature has a way of taking care of itself. The Eyjafjallajokull (go ahead, you pronounce it!) volcano in Iceland  has apparently entered a calmer stage, whereby more lava and less ash (picture above) is spewing forth. Nevertheless, chaos is still spewing from just about everywhere with any connection to Europe. Anywhere in the world, that is. An entry on Wikipedia, that not entirely reliable encyclopedia, explains what exactly the ash is and does.
As far as I'm concerned, I've seen enough about it for over a week. Now I wake up in the morning with gratitude: I wasn't going anywhere, I'm not anywhere else, I'm at home unstranded. That the world's air transport system, especially the European, came to a standstill at the hands of Mother Nature just goes to show that we humans are as powerless over her as we have ever been. Not unlike a power cut, when we realize how much we depend on it but only notice when it isn't instantly available.

I have every sympathy for people stranded hither and yon, particularly those with small children and no credit on their credit card. But little sympathy for football hooligans trying to hooliganize matches abroad - whichever abroad it may be. Little sympathy, too, for business travellers who must, must, must get to a meeting somewhere else - if they stayed home and videoconferenced instead, our air might be a lot cleaner. And I have no sympathy at all with Brussels fonctionaires trying to get to Luxembourg (go by car, it's close) or Strasbourg or any other place they are intent on bureaucratizing - if they stayed put, life would be a lot simpler.Least of all have I any sympathy for those who pay exorbitant amounts of money for 'private transport'. The news showed someone who paid €1200 to a driver to take them from Paris to Vigo in Northern Spain. With that kind of money, they could have stayed in great comfort for a couple more days in that beautiful city - and enjoy it, as opposed to 'seeing' it.

There have also been cases of true solidarity. One of them had a young couple with small children (two and four) being offered a flight on a private jet to get them back to Amsterdam from the Canaries, where they had been on holiday over Easter, for which they had saved up for three years. Dad had been unemployed for over a year and Mom earned €450 a month cleaning offices part time. The kind millionaire also paid for a car trip from Valencia on and up.

The Dunkirk spirit rose out of the ashes, too, when someone tried to get across the Channel in a rubber raft or three - well, not exactly a raft, more of a Zodiac, I believe. The spirit was dashed by the French authorities, who didn't think this was a good idea. But the spirit will not be put down quite so easily what with the Royal Navy coming to the rescue (should get Brown a couple of votes...).

To get to the point (at last): the Chaos Theory was proven thanks to that unpronounceable volcano. Or, as the Honorary Spanish Consul in Reykjavik put it in an interview, "We were blamed for a lot of the recession. Now this!" I think she meant Iceland, which turns out to be a lot more than a frozen food outlet. 

(C) Alexander Bewick 2010

Spain is under attack

Spain, or rather it's government, is under attack from inside and out. With the EU rotational six-month presidency only six weeks in Spanish hands, Prime Minister (or President of the Government if you prefer) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's popularity sinks below that of Opposition Leader Mariano Rajoy for the first time since the former's reelection two years ago. His party, PSOE, is down in the popularity charts, too; the PP (Partido Popular) leads by over 6 points in the 'if the elections were held today' polls. This in the country's highly politically-polarized media, where statistics tend to reflect the views of the Pied Piper who pays the bills.

In a more personal poll, my e-mails, usually plagued with nonsense messages, are now showing increasingly anti-government stuff sent by well-meaning friends and (virtual) acquaintances of all political shades. (Please stop it!)

Back to Europe. Zapatero may have begun his downward climb -I won't call it a spiral yet- at Davos, the recent annual informal business-political-economic-etc. summit held in Swtzerland. He stood out as the only head of government present who had no English. As I said, not a good start for the President of a European Union where the lingua franca is English among the 27 countries, and more languages, that make it up.

Recent upheaval about the financial situation of Greece, has brought about a non-Spanish media frenzy that proposes a domino effect: if Greece falls into (officially admitted) bankruptcy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland will be next. And bang goes the Euro.

In the meantime, Zapatero's Number Two, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, who stands in for her Europe-gallavanting boss more often than not, appears ever more haggard trying to persuade the inquisitive press that everything will be alright, not unlike a distracted mother kissing a grazed knee that will later be discovered to need painful surgery.

Today's Economist publishes an article by Charlemagne entitled: 'Old Spanish practices - Spain now leads the European Union, but not by example' (illustrated by Peter Schrank above) that includes the sentence, "Editorials across the EU have mocked the idea of Mr Zapatero advising Europe on economic recovery." And my good friend Sancho came up with 'Is Zapatero un cateto?' just the other day. Judge for yourself, but let's not forget that there at least two sides to every story.

(c) Alexander Bewick 2010

I came across a past copy of the Daily Express, not a paper I read often even online. Above the main headline you will see: “EXCLUSIVE: Secret squad preparing us to join euro.” I know what the political inclination of the Express is, so its alarmist tone doesn’t surprise me in the least. On Page 2 is a long article headlined, “X43m is spent on unit plotting to join euro.” (The X should be a pound sign but I haven’t got one readily available on my keyboard. Sorry.) There is even a box for a poll that asks, “Is joining the euro a disaster for Britain?” and phone numbers marked Yes or No – costing at least 25p (or €0.31) per call. The article is full of words and phrases like 'secretive', 'lavished on the project,' 'will fuel fears', 'propaganda', and so on. Subsequent articles and comments in that paper are much the same (see one here: “Spectre of rule by Europe, etc.”), and that isn’t the only such rag perpetrating the myth.

As anyone living in Spain on a fixed income in pounds will tell you, the exchange rate right now is crap and although I might not be an economist, I can predict that things are unlikely to get any better. Indeed, I figure we’re headed for a 1 to 1 exchange rate and an opportunity for Britain to at last join the euro zone. (Alarums from Express readers.)

What’s wrong with that? As almost any related Express article will tell you, rule by Brussels is anathema. Yet the UK is ruled by the EU already – or why are there constant complaints about it? A favourable exchange rate would surely mean that more British goods would be sold around the world, specially in Europe. And millions of travellers to the continent, that far off place just across the Channel, wouldn’t have to deal with the ‘complicated’ business of changing currencies everywhere. And let’s not even mention pensions for expat residents this side of the water, many of whom can no longer afford to live here in the style to which they’d become accustomed and most certainly couldn’t afford to live the same way in the UK either.

The first glass of wine I ever had in Spain a million years ago cost 2 pesetas (or €0.01) and it came with a tapa of delicious olives. My first wage packet in London, about a year before I took wine and tapas in Spain, was not quite X20 (or about €25 at today’s exchange rate) and wine in the pubs around Fleet Street where I worked was prohibitive, Rioja even more so and the cheap Cyprus variety undrinkable. Things have changed, of course, but in Spain we work in order to live, while in Britain it appears they live in order to work – if they’re not scamming the overloaded benefit system, that is. Not even Brussels can change those attitudes.

(c) Alexander Bewick 2008