Police Pederast
(DI) One boy in blue was caught red-handed with over 60 thousand pornographic images, which this Seville policeman had downloaded from the Internet. To his utter disgrace, many of them involved not only were very young minors but also babies. The Supreme Court gave the copper 30 months in jail (rather light, if you ask me) and rejected his appeal, which was based on his supposedly not knowing what he was downloading. The presiding judge sniffily commented, “a policeman’s profession demands a certain cultural level.” Jaysus!
Negative Equity
(DI) Negative equity, which is a fancy term for your mortgage costing more than your house is worth, is hell for the homeowner. Owning a house is meant to be an investment, not a loss, but according to Standard and Poor’s (major financial overseers who analyse and rate international economic conditions), 8% of Spanish homeowners now find themselves in this awful situation.
S & P predicts this number will rise to 20% if housing prices dip to 30% less than what they were in 2007, a trend which is quite possible considering the continuing economic malaise Spain is experiencing. Mortgage defaults, as a result, are on the rise too. The curious thing is that owners who bought their homes in the past two years are more likely to default than those who bought homes earlier, say, in 2003. However you look at it, owning a home in Spain is, for the time being, a risky investment.
GPS Directs Man To Death
(DI) Thanks to modern technology, a 37-year-old Senegalese man in the province of Badajoz has drowned after his car’s GPS erroneously indicated directions which lead the man to drive straight into a reservoir.
A companion he was travelling with, also Senegalese, managed to escape the car and survive. The GPS showed an old road which the men took, but the GPS failed to inform them of its ending in the reservoir, and as they were driving at night they couldn’t see the danger that they were fast approaching, hence the tragedy.
Cuban Dissidents
(DI) If you hadn’t heard, Cuba’s President, Raul Castro (yes, Fidel’s little bro), has been little by little easing up on the tiny country’s hard-line conditions; and one result of this has been the exiling of Cuban dissidents from the island, which is much better than rotting in jail for your political convictions, as so many have done.
Spain, always trying to improve relations with Latin America, along with the Vatican, played a major role in the 36 prisoners’ release who, with many family members, came to live in Spain. But now some 21 of them desire to re-locate to the US. Reasons include family members living there and wanting to be near their homeland when liberty returns to the island.
Antonio Diaz remarked that he “felt at home in Spain, and the living conditions have been excellent,” sentiments echoed by most of the others (see next story). But getting into the US is never an easy thing, which is why the US State Department is analysing each petitioner’s request one by one.
Cuban Exiles Deceived?
(DI) Eleven newly arrived Cuban exiles in Spain have complained that the government has not honoured its obligations, saying legal aid and economic benefits have not been forthcoming as proffered. Denouncing in particular the now-ex Minister of External Affairs, Moratinos, the exiles’ spokesman, Julio Gálvez, explained how “two minutes before we got on the plane in Cuba, we were forced to sign some documents with basically no time to read them.” He called Moratinos a traitor and accused him of not respecting the previous agreements they had come to.
His list of complaints includes unsanitary conditions where they are housed in the Madrid community, as well as being lied to about where they were going to live. Gálvez went on to urge the European Union to not waver in its common attitude towards the Castro regime.
The Spanish government is considering a modification of the existing status quo, which would ease up on the current strict stance. Gálvez, who is in complete disagreement, said the EU must not falter until democracy and human rights are restored in Cuba. Perhaps Gálvez has a forebearer who fought in the Bay of Pigs?
Political Hit-and-Run
(DI) An Asturiano PP councilman has resigned after being arrested for fleeing the scene of an accident in which the car he was driving ran over a young cyclist from Ávila, killing him. Now get this: the councilman, Victoriano Vidal Cordera, was responsible for Education, Culture, and the Environment.
If this is the way he treats accidents (one assumes it was), then how must he deal with these other issues that affect us all? And in the car were two other occupants, one of whom was arrested for covering up the incident, and the last chap is also a councilman. Maybe not all politicians are scum, but some of them arguably are!
Fines & Quotas
(DI) The Guardia Civil Union has complained that the Ministry of the Interior is forcing them to increase the number of denunicias and fines, so as to measure the effectiveness of the Guardia and even to base their salaries on these actions. In other words, more fines means more money for the agents, AKA, a quota system. The Union called this a ‘Machiavellian system.’
In its press statement, the Union mentioned its on-going undeclared strike of Bolis Caidos (fallen pens), in which the Guardia are fighting for better pay as, compared to Local and National Police, they do rather poorly; and they claim that the Ministry is trying to enforce a point system on the Guardia itself. The last time I talked with a Guardia agent, I mentioned this to him and he was surprised I knew about it and, while searching the car for my heroin stash, explained at length how badly they were being treated.
Thieving Citizens Justify Fraud
(DI) The two most inevitable things in life, taxes and death, remain so, at least where, in the case of the former, public opinion is concerned. A recent survey revealed that a whopping 43 per cent of the general public justified tax evasion, calling it a normal practice.
No one likes paying taxes, and one would think that the crisis might have increased people’s unwillingness to come clean, but it seems that no, it’s just what people tend to always do.
The numbers curiously reveal that businessmen (50%) and professionals (48%) show the greatest tendency to rip off the system, as well as those between the ages of 40 to 54 (49%).
Those approaching senior citizen-hood seem less tolerant of the idea, with the over-65’s, at 31%, being more reluctant still (afraid of losing their pensions?). Most people, when asked about the usual tax-evader, pictured a businessman. Whatever the numbers, taxes continue to be a thorn in most people’s economic paws.
In the Court of the Mobile Phone
(DI) If you think your mobile phone bill is too high, how about receiving one for over 105 million euros? That’s what the Government pays annually for the 56 thousand phones currently in use by its exalted members.
Okay, you think, calls need to be made, and civil servants always need to be connected to the Internet, but upon assuming power in 2004, Zapatero’s minions only had just over 15,000 phones in use. This is an increase of 275 per cent, whereas our general public’s phone ownership only increased, in the same period, by 42%. The PP has asked Congress for a serious reduction in the number and the use of phones which, to my mind, is akin to telling politicians and civil servants to stop talking so much as their excessive hot air is threatening the environment as well as the country’s accounts.
Road Rage Turns Deadly
(DI) You might have thought they were filming a movie in Madrid but no, it was utterly real: a minor car accident, in which two cars scraped against each other (it was nothing, according to witnesses), provoked the 77-year-old driver of one to kill the 55-year-old lady driver of the other.
After the lady got out with her partner, they engaged in heated discussion with the soon-to-be murderer, who returned to his car to get his gun. His first shot hit the woman in the face. He then fired three shots at the woman’s husband who managed to escape uninjured. Not content, the gent took aim at a watching concierge who had yelled at him to stop firing; luckily, his aim was bad.
He finally returned to the seriously injured woman and fired point-blank into her chest, thus sealing her fate. Feeling his job was done, he drove off but was followed by another driver who contacted the police, who quickly swooped down on the deadly pensioner. So next time, think twice about giving some son-of-a-b**** the finger for cutting you off.
Panic Rooms & Pirates
(DI) Arrggh, matey, shiver me timbers. High sea piracy is still, in 2010, a serious problem, despite modern-day pirates having thrown away their peg-legs, eye patches, and set free the parrots.
In Spain’s case, the famous tuna trawler, La Alakrana, was boat-napped and it took ages to finally secure the release of the mainly Galician fishermen for whom the Government allegedly paid a large ransom (according to the EU, an illegal act).
But whether ransoms are being paid or not (the Government consistently denies this), piracy still costs the country a lot of money in lost goods, which has forced its hand into its pocket in order to beef up security at sea. Security teams (in many cases British mercenaries – Ed) now man many boats, and their serious weaponry has so been quite effective at repelling attacks seeing as, since November 2009, all attacks have been thwarted.
But the fishermen want more protection, which is why they proposed to Defence Minister ,Carme Chacón the idea of ‘panic rooms.’ These rooms would be shielded like an armoured car, supplied with the necessary in case of a long stay inside, and of course, would be able to communicate to the military who, presumably, would roar off towards them in case of attack.
While all this is very good for our fishermen, it seems to me we could save some money, time and effort and just allow the fishermen to fish off the military boats themselves. What Somali pirate in a small, cracked launch would dare to board a destroyer?
Frying-Pan Ferocity
(DI) “I didn’t hear a thing,” explained a neighbour of Zahra and Moustapha, while the latter, armed with a frying pan, was beating in the head of the former, his own sister. The 37-year-old Moroccan, in an attempt at an alibi, phoned police to tell them his sister, after not letting him in the flat, had left and that he’d seen a Gypsy shortly afterwards leaving the area which worried him (him and Sarkozy).
Police dropped by to investigate, discovered Zahra’s body in a pool of blood, and quickly deduced that Moustapha’s story was shaky at best. The condition of Zahra’s head lead to a search for the instrument of death and the frying pan was found in a nearby garden.