Michael Lewis and his Liar’s poker is more familiar, but I wonder whether it wasn’t St Philip Neri who invented the big swinging dick. This from my day-by-day compilation of Barcelona history, where in 1561 we also find the Fathers of Mercy being banned from wearing hats:

En el exceso de sus arrebatos amorosos, veíase obligado a exclamar: «Basta, Señor, basta, que no lo puedo sufrir.» Y su cuerpo temblaba agitado por la vehemencia del amor divino. Desde entonces su corazón empezó a palpitar de una manera tan violenta, que levantaba su túnica y hacía oscilar los objetos que se hallaban junto a él.

Like blues singers, the saint could tell sinners by the way they smelt, but alas seems to failed to profit from this useful gift.

Amando de Miguel says the government shouldn’t subsidise new cars made by foreign companies, and car-factory-free La Rioja agrees, although they perhaps wouldn’t turn down more wine subsidies. Madrid and Cataloonia predictably have their own schemes, no central government initiative being too humble for a retaliatory regional branding exercise from the marketing bureaucrats. No one here or elsewhere in Europe seems to know or care how this fits in the need to restructure the car industry, or for that matter with the government’s sustainable energy/economy PR assault. But it’s a safe bet that Andalusia will lead the way by both implementing the scheme wholeheartedly and achieving zero growth over the next 20 years.

Apparently there are elections next week. Carlos López says we should vote to stop the latest ETA strawmen, UPyD says we should vote for people not peoples, and most of us will probably vote for someone mad because, as Ignacio Escolar implies, our rulers don’t really care what we want anyway.

Will Zaplana get to share a cell with Camps? Will anyone be able to afford to find out? More crucially, will Man U dump on Barça?

Tags: Amando de Miguel, cars, Catalonia, corruption, ecologists, elections, Europe, European elections, Felipe Neri, Francesc Camps, La Rioja, Madrid, PP, PSOE, recession, UPyD, Zaplana
Categories: Les bourgeois

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