austere things that have nothing to do with debt

One of things that European governments are in the process of doing is presenting austerity packages as being an objective necessity in the current climate. We must cut, they say, as the national debt problem has got out of control. Even if you buy this, and many people,don't. It's interesting that only a certain range of policies has been deemed viable by European governments. The most obvious of these being "cuts". Sneaking in, barely noticed has been a rise in VAT.

Now, if you weren't aware, VAT rises are a bad thing for the poor and most vulnerable. At the flip of a switch they raise the price of everything they need to buy. Poor families spend a much higher proportion of their income in VAT rises than they do on other types of tax. It's a "regressive tax" in that makes no attempt to ensure that the wealthiest contribute more of their income than the poor do.

Notice at the same time that governments around the world have ruled out putting up taxation on income or profits. But the VAT rise indicates that they do want to raise more money through taxes. So why choose one over the other? Particularly in the teeth of cuts in public services that disproportionately affect low-income families who are more likely to be service users. Rather rubbing salt in the wounds, isn't it? Raising the prices of everything they buy, whilst simultaneously reducing their access to resources.

Is there any economic benefit to a VAT rise as opposed to raising income or corporation tax? VAT raises prices, depresses spending/demand and could be argued to be detrimental to economic growth. Income tax on the other hand places the burden on people who ordinarily spend a smaller proportion of their money on goods and services, in effect putting money back into the economy that might otherwise be left in savings accounts. A corporation tax might have a slight negative effect on foreign investment (but wouldn't if it were co-ordinated continent wide by international lending institutions), but would in any case be taking money of corporations that aren't currently investing it anyway (as growth figures show they're hoarding it).

So, why a VAT rise? Well today's news from the OECD might give us a hint. Returning to their favourite theme, "let's bully weak Eurozone countries into doing what we say", they combine a stern warning to Spain about their deficit with a statement from Moody's rating agency saying they might downgrade Spain's banks' debt ratings. Do as we say or the bear (the small banks like Caja Madrid in Spain's banking system: see pic) gets it. Let's have a little look at what they've already done:

The moves include plans to sell off a 30 percent stake in the government-owned national lottery, the partial privatization of airports, cutbacks to a key jobless benefit, tax cuts for small businesses and an increase in the tobacco tax.

So privatisation, benefit cutbacks, tax cuts (!) for businesses, indirect taxes. What do they want now?

The government says that next month it will approve a highly contested plan to raise the retirement age gradually from 65 to 67, part of a drive to shore up public finances.

But the OECD said in a report that Spain should consider raising the retirement age even further by indexing the age to life expectancy increases.

The government is considering extending the period of a person's working life used to calculate retirement pensions — it is now the last 15 years. The OECD says people's entire working life should be used in the calculation, a move that would reduce the average monthly pension.

A rise in the retirement age and a decrease in payouts might help Spain's financial situation in the longer term, but it's not going to do much to sort out the immediate debt problems.

Measures passed in recent months make it easier and cheaper for companies to lay off workers, doing away with a system that provided some of the most generous severance payments in Europe.

The Paris-based OECD said that if these do not manage to boost hiring, the government should consider broader measures to make the labor market more flexible.

The idea that making it easier to fire people will increase levels of employment is a novel one. This despite the fact that there are already various methods to hire people on a temporary, precarious basis, if business were in fact looking to take on staff. The likelihood is that cheap firing, will in fact, lead to the more obvious rise in unemployment, when companies use it to, err, fire people cheaply.

Finally this:

The OECD said that if Spain's deficit-reduction measures fail to meet targets the government should consider raising VAT taxes on some goods and services.

If "stimulating the labour market" and cutting public services doesn't work, the next step is raising VAT on the shrinking amount of consumption.

So the collective voice of the rich, capitalist nations essentially has one piece of advice: do what right wing neoliberal ideologues argue for even when there isn't an economic crisis, conveniently using the debt as leverage.

Most of these measures have very little to do with paying down debt, beyond the vague economic theory of their advocates. They are very much ideological decisions. If they were simply concerned with debt, why would they touch on things like pension reform, labour market reform and specific types of taxes? Surely ideologically neutral economic advice wouldn't distinguish between the way taxes are raised or the type of services that are cut?

The kind of pressure being put on Spain isn't actually directly related to their debt They could with equal validity decide that the best way to reduce the public deficit was levy new taxes, cut spending on the military, pull out of Afghanistan and end corporate subsidies. It's related to various problems the international financial community have with their labour market and welfare state. They are concerned with the usual neoliberal hobby horses: less rights, less public services, privatisation, less pay for more work for workers and less taxes for business. "Austere" things that have nothing to do with debt.

The crisis of neoliberalism is turning into a massive example of shock therapy for an entire continent, the dismantling of the welfare state on the pretext of resolving a debt problem caused by neoliberal policies.

Five word meme

So, a meme. You give people five words that remind you of them and you write a short piece talking about what the words mean to you. Jim Jay gave me these; Spain, Liberty, Teaching, trade unions and protest.

So, in exactly that order, I'll start with Spain. It's strange, when I was a bit younger I was always convinced that I was going to live abroad when I was older. There was a mixture of what was probably a bit of small-town snobbery mixed in with the feeling that the world was just too big to remain in your corner forever. The snobbery is interesting I think; back in the day that escaping the provincial upbringing narrative probably takes you to a big city and eventually to London, but modern communities are so fluid that moving to another part of the country isn't nearly exotic enough.

Despite that feeling, by the time I'd left university I'd left the country a grand total of four times : a family holiday to a French farmhouse that was on the verge of collapse, another to a Portuguese island full of pensioners, one trip to Italy to watch Internazionale v Ipswich Town and finally a short stay with a friend in Vienna.

I think there are three kinds of ex-pats, the first are the classic retirement villa on the Costa del Sol types (there are now so many of these that the DWP has a branch in Spain now, in addition to some towns having British mayors), who are unapologetically there for the weather and to enjoy life and couldn't give a shit about the local culture, people or language. These people have the most fun, worry the least and only have one complaint, the inconvenience of Spain having a native population. They don't worry if walking around in flip-flops in March makes them look like a tourist or about turning pink on the beach. The second are 'authenticos', who want to imagine they are the only foreigner in the entire fucking country who is actually making an effort, that they blend in so perfectly with their understanding of everything that they basically are Spanish. They're unbearably condescending to everyone else they come across and give advice like "try not to go on about differences between the UK and Spain, no-one cares man!" Finally there are all the people in the middle who make a bit of a effort but ultimately acknowledge that they're still foreign, have their own habits and pecadillos and are basically here to enjoy themselves and learn something. The difficulty is that although you'd like to be in the last group, the only way to achieve that is by feeling both the insecurity of the second group and the blunt pink-faced patriotism of the first group.

...

Imagine you were explaining the word democracy to an alien. First give him the standard definition: government of the people, for the people and by the people. Then invite him to examine and comment upon capitalist democracy, even at its best. I think the conversation would go like this...

- Democracy does not exist here

How do you mean, our leaders are chosen in free and fair elections?

- To whom do you refer?

Politicians and governments of course.

- But how are they your leaders?

They control the government.

- And what does the government control?

Everything; foreign policy, education, taxation; everything!

- But do they control what is made, how it is made and how it is distributed and to whom?

Well, no.

- And who does?

The people that own the capitalist companies.

- And they decide who does what, when they do it and what they receive for doing it?

Yes.

- And how are they chosen?

They aren't. They own the things they control.

- How?

They bought it.

- From who?

From the people who owned it before them.

- And how they get it?

The same way.

- And who owned it first?

No-one.

- Oh.

Liberty is meaningless in a society in which one part of society compels the majority to work in order to enrich that minority, in which that part of society holds permanent monopoly of the planet's resources and uses that to give orders to us all.

...

Teaching is something for which I have found I have a mixed bag of talents. I have no natural affinity for inspiring children, but manage to make lessons entertaining enough to hold the attention of adults. It has also revealed to me that any job, no matter what interest it may have at first, will eventually get old if you have to do it five days a week, 12 months a year. I remember when I'd just started, I was in a Summer School, and there was another teacher, "Good Tom" (to be contrasted with "bad Tom", the Director of Studies, so-called by the students, not the other staff). Kids of all ages loved him, he fit strangely with adults, though most of us warmed to him in the end. I envied his natural rapport with younger people, the instinctive relationship he had with them. Some of us (both me and "bad Tom") are stiff, cold and humourless, unremittingly adult and unable to ever feel that bond.

...

I've been in trade unions of various sorts for a while now, but I'm currently a lapsed member of the anarchist CNT. I lasted about a year there, before being finally put off by the cliquey feeling the place gave off (even if the majority of people I met were friendly enough). TEFL-teaching is not a friendly business for building workplace organisations, what with high turnover and as many levels of management as any government department. The thought that I'd ever manage to get enough unity to practise the CNT ideal model of trade unionism (decide everything is big worker assemblies) was enough to make me decide that taking ideological decisions on was what "bureaucratic" and what "revolutionary" was actually a bit of hinderence to doing what needed to be done - using workers' organisations to actually make yourself and the people around you better off and more confident. So I left and I'm putting my name forward for elected workers' rep (for another union, the CGT). If for me liberty means more than letting one class of society own everything, then fighting for that does mean us taking decisions together, democratically. But we don't need a schematic for how to do it, let's see what works.

...

I've never been a big protester, I've been to lots over the years, but I can never muster the requisite enthusiasm. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a crazy extremist revolutionary type, but if I'm going to strut around waving my red flag I want something tangible to come out of it. Call me a boring bastard, but I want a protest strategy to have some kind of potential victory written into the plan. Take boycotting coca-cola for instance. Now, Coca-cola are arseholes, complicit in all sorts of horrible shit. But I don't think not buying coke on principle is a political response to that. It's a way of making yourself feel better without changing anything. Coke know they aren't going to win back yogurt-weaving hippies with their Palestine-solidarity Mecca Cola and all the rest. They aren't interested in appeasing them, and to be honest people aren't interested in being appeased. Neither I nor anyone else is going to be convinced that coke are nice people, regardless of what they do. So they've no motivation to change. Now. Pick an issue. A winnable issue, call a boycott with a plausible end (say de-segregation of buses) at which point the participants will resume consumption of said product. That's a protest, that's a direct struggle with your opponent to change something. Then I'm a boycotter, then I'm a protester. I don't think anyone should get into this for the badge-wearing opportunities, let alone for the glamour. Because unless you're Swampie, it sure as fuck ain't very exciting.

coming home

I´ve six weeks back in England coming, so I thought I´d make a list of things I´ll be glad to see again ...

roast beef and yorkshire pudding, stuffing, gravy, bicycles, pints, ale, bitter, custard, takeaway curry, fish and chips, being offered tea all the time, places that are green and not pale brown, primark, asda, people speaking proper english, Ipswich Town, cricket, the hot dog stand in the town square in Ipswich, The Duke of Marlborough pub, amazon.co.uk, SIM only mobile phone contracts, banks with no standing charges, (mostly) toll-free roads, two-storey houses, more than three flavours of crisps, pies, apple crumble, people arriving on time, food from parts of the world other than the one I´m in, people who are disparaging and cynical about their country, people whiter than I am, being able to walk at a normal pace without obstruction ...

(rosbif y pudding de yorkshire, pan relleno con salvia y cebolla, salsa de carne, bicicletas, pintas, cerveza inglesa/amarga, salsa inglesa, curry para llevar, pescado a la romana y patatas fritas, que ofrecen tazas de té a menudo, lugares que son verdes no marrón claro, primark, asda, gente que habla inglés de verdad, Ipswich Town, cricket, el puesto de perritos calientes en la plaza mayor de Ipswich, el Pub Duque de Marlborough, amazon.co.uk, los contratos de moviles, bancos sin cobras, autopistas sin cobras, casas (no pisos), mas que 3 sabores de patatas fritas, pasteles de carne, crumble de manzana, gente que llega en punto, comida de las partes del mundo que son acá, gente que denigra a su país, gente mas blanco que yo, andar a una velocidad normal sin obstrucción)

things I will miss ... tortilla, nightlife starting at 12am, eating breakfast at 7am after a night out, people being interested in where I come from, regular diversions which involve following people you´ve just met to wherever they happen to be going, learning a new way of expressing myself every day, free food with every beer, botellón/street-drinking, people selling you beers on the street, pretending to run away from the police when they pretend to chase you (see botellón), watching street-sellers doing the same with sheet + strings devices, taking three hours to eat out with friends, spanglish (talking and hearing), sitting in Templo de debod as the sun goes down, being called a guiri, calimuxo, drinking al fresco, boquerones, ham, a mix drink meaning about 100ml of booze, wine costing about a quarter what it does in england, feeling like I should join every overheard conversation in English and patatas bravas...

(tortilla española, comenzar la noche a las 12, desayunar despues, que a la gente le interesa de donde soy, seguir gente que ha acabado de conocer a cualquier sitio que esten yendo, comida gratis con cada caña, botellón!, gente vende cerveza en la calle, fingir huir la poli mientras fingen a perseguirnos (ve botellón), ver callejeros hacen lo mismo con sus productos en sabanas, el spanglish (hablar y oír), sentar en templo de debod durante la puesta de sol, ser llamado un guiri, calimuxo, beber en terrazas, boquerones, jamón!, que una cubata significa 100ml de alcohol, vino barato, sentir como se debe entrar cualquiera conversación en Ingles, patatas bravas y tardar tres horas para cenar con amigos ...).

el orgullo viene antes de la caída

I wonder if there´s an equivalent in Spanish for the expression "pride comes before a fall"?

I mean forget that most of the world regards the Confederations Cup as a bit a friendly knock-about and most of the teams qualify by the default of being the least shite of truly woeful confederations.

The Spanish media bollock on about "The Red Legend" like La Selección hadn´t been utter dross for decades prior to winning the European Championships. Most of them were already talking about "the final with Brazil" and they´re pretty much certain they´ll walk the world cup. Well, back to Earth with a bump after losing to a side that only sneaked out of their group because Egypt imploded. Should do them good mind, they could do with reminding that no European side has ever won a world cup outside of their home continent...

Europeos al español

If it weren´t for the major parties habits of flyposting every available surface, and hanging flags from every tree, then you might struggle to work out that there was an election in two days time. In all my travels around the city I´ve managed to see a grand total of two stalls (one PSOE, one PP) and a van from one of the random "EUROPE´s fantastic, they give us loads of money" parties.

You can´t escape the idea that aside from the Europhile cranks, no-one really gives a shit round here. And if no-one cares here, where the EU is largely credited for making Spain a developed country after years of Franco, then no-one is really going to care anywhere.

As for the results, it´ll be as you were as the PSOE and PP both hold onto their votes, the former because Rajoy is one of the most unpopular opposition leaders in Europe and the PSOE is actually trying to help people through the crisis (being on balance, the most left-wing government in any major Western European country), the latter because Zapatero is, despite all that, a pretty uninspiring human being.

The Izquierda Unida will once again tread water, managing not to deteriorate as badly as their Eurocommie cousins over the water in Italy. Which, with the exception of Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste seems to happening all over Europe. The reality is, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the UK, the Spanish left is taking no more advantage of the crisis than they are.

Though the IU´s high tide was a good deal higher than any UK equivalent (for a variety of reasons, both historical and relating to the two countries electoral systems), the proof of the pudding in the Left-wing alternative pudding is in how its fortunes are changing in the face of the recession. Now, I´ve never said that it logically follows that economic depression equals a swing to the left. In fact often recessions produce a sort of stoic fatalism that makes people wait it out until the next upswing. If the consequences are global enough, local polite elites can avoid blame for them, even, as is the case in Spain, the effects are stronger locally than the global average.

More than that, if the recession really exposes the instability of global capitalism, and reveals how little it serves the general population, you should still expect a better hearing for those with an alternative. But not any old alternative. Preaching old-style social democracy seems to be no more convincing in bad times than it is in good ones. Neither do these parties seem to be able to articulate a fundamentally different vision of the future that appeals to anything more than the usual groups.

For years I´ve wondered whether I would join a functioning left party in the UK, if one existed. Well, the answer in practice seems to be no. The thought of desperately flyering for the bright mixed-economy nationalizations of the future makes me feel a bit queasy...

The unwritten laws of Spain

Spain, being the epicentre of malfunctioning rules, inefficient bureaucracy and generally a culture of disinterested chaos, survives mostly through instituting rules and customs that are essentially unwritten but must be followed at all times. To truly fit in here you must follow the etiquette. Some important things to remember are as follows:

Firstly, during the Winter months, it´s required that you comment on how cold it is constantly. At a minimum this should be done every time you enter or leave a building. On entering the building you must point out how cold it was outside. As you remove your multiple garments - scarves, hats, coats, more coats, jumpers etc - simply make a shuddering gesture, look your companions over, then remark ´ay, que frio, eh?´ This is for the benefit of the people around you. When exiting a building and going out into the cold, you repeat the same routine, only this time you say it to yourself, rather than your companions. Failure to do this will result in the catastrophic effect that no-one know that it is cold, or be informed that the weather is, in fact, appropriate to the season.

Secondly, if you are old and Spanish, especially if you´re are old, Spanish and walk incredibly slowly, more slowly than any human being really should be able to without the universe collapsing in on itself, you MUST walk in the middle of narrow pavements. As you wobble gently from side to side (your bottom half for some reason is considerably wider than you top), you cannot allow other, more rapid, pedestrians, to pass you. You are in fact part of a complex training programme demonstrating the Spanish way of life to interloping foreigners. Without your assistance they will never learn the correct way of walking on Spanish streets (the gentle amble which results in everyone being late for everything) and will forever be laughed at as the sad, inept foreigners that they are. Now, the selfish pensioner, unmoved by these arguements, might ask why they should be expected to shuffle so wearily around the city in this manner, selflessly enlightening the unitiated outsider. But by way of recompense they receive a reward whereby every Sunday young Spanish people are obliged by law to take an old person for a walk. Preferably this should be a relative of some kind, a grandparent if you´re of that age or a parent if you´re a bit older. If not, you should find an unattached one and adopt them. They´ve earned this reward for years of patient wobbling.

Finally, you should look out for "la broma burocracia", a practice that to the outsider might seem infuriating, but should be borne with a phlegmatic shrug, simply being the way things are done. The system works like this: you will be set a reasonable deadline by which to register someone or something (everything must be registered with 15 different agencies, in different parts of the city, none of whom share any information), after dwelling for the regular quantity of time on it, you will decide to make an appointment at whichever of the three million governments departments is in charge of it. This appointment will inevitably be after the deadline. You will have no choice by to take it. Some months later the department that set the deadline (as opposed to the one that fulfils it) will mention that non-compliance with their instructions will incur a hefty fine. When you (not unreasonably) point out that it is their own system that lacks the capacity to carry out their mandates, they will shrug their shoulders and fine you anyway. Then, when you actually go for the appointment, you will discover that didn´t really need one anyway (you just needed a place in the short line) and as the final insult, will be told that you´ve actually already done whatever you needed to do and they could have just sent you the correct piece of paper in the first place.

But like I said, don´t get wound up. It´s just how this place works.

A brief history of Spain in stickers (part 1: the right)

Politics geek that I am, whenever I see an interesting bit of graffiti or a sticker knocking about I take a quick snap with my camera phone, so's I can check it a bit later. Having a handful of these I thought I tell youse all a few brief things about the politics and history of Spain through this random collection of snippits.

First up, snapped on Calle de Goya, in the poshest part of the city, a poster for La Falange. It'd be surprising in most countries to see fascists concentrating their propaganda in the rich parts of town. Not, obviously, in Spain, where a lot of the older fortunes round that way were made off Franco's coat-tails. This lot, so I'm told are the 'official' Falange, the direct descendants of Franco's party of government. The picture, suitably enough for the area, is of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the party, executed by the Republican government in November 1936 (during the Civil War). On the very same road, still prominent (and shiny enough to be being maintained), a plaque adorns the front of a chapel anouncing that this fascist Germanophile was "fallecido por dios y espanya" (killed for God and Spain). This is apparently identical to the thousands that were placed on religious buildings across the country under the Generalisimo. In 1981, Madrid's main thoroughfare (Gran Via) had its original named restored, after 42 years as Avenida Jose Antonio.

The modern day Falange now exists as 3 small squabbling parties, arguing over a legacy. As in other countries, the obsessions of the modern far right have shifted from fear of Bolshevism and International Jewry toward more immediate concerns and La Falange participates on some basis in the broader two year old Frente Nacional, that peppers the same areas of Madrid with obscenely racist anti-immigration posters, such as the one illustrated here. The caption at the top reads 'deduce: who is last?' with an elderly Spanish man pushed to the back by various ethnic caricatures. Concluding with 'if you're Spanish, you (should) always (be) first'.

More weird and not so wonderful things than straight up, old-fashioned, Castilian fascism are to be found when venturing out of Madrid, and wandering round Seville, I found something probably unique in European politics: Carlism. Just when the rest of Europe was beginning to stop arguing about such trite nonsense as which particular line of their unelecting, sponging royalty got to be King, Spain was just getting started on a 19th Century full of revolutions and counter-revolutions aimed at founding Republics, or placing different royal lines on the throne. The hardiest challenger to the 'Alfonsine' line of the House of Bourbon, was Carlism. Carlos, the brother of King Ferdinand VII, was briefly heir to the throne, prior to Ferdinand's death, on grounds of being his closest male heir. He was then stripped of this right when it was decided, instead, that a woman would be able to accede to the throne. What he came to represent though, in a time where Spain veered between liberalism and absolute monarchy was the absolutist of the absolutist, the most interventionist notion of the Spanish throne. Now, you might wonder at this point why anyone gives a shit about this sort of thing in this day and age. After all, I saw this sticker on a electrical box in 2008 Seville. Besides which, the Spanish monarchy are absurdly popular, probably the best-loved royal house in the World.

It goes back I suppose to the great big ideological mess that is Spanish conservatism. Back in the '30s, the ostensibly fascist party in Spain (the aforementioned La Falange) were not that big a force. They did a good line is street fighting with anarchists and socialists, but the major force on the Right in pre-civil war politics was a formation called CEDA, an alliance of traditional conservative groups. It was this sector of society that backed the army in their coup d'etat and came to identify the conservative part of their identity with Franquismo and the crusade against godless Reds. So, even though Franco didn't recognise their monarch (and was fairly ambiguous about the role of the actual monarch), it came to pass that Carlism was the only ideology to really turn-out a mass social movement (Los Requetes) that voluntarily fought for Fascism, mostly landowning small/medium farmers from the Northern region of Navarra, who marched for "Dios, patria, rey" (god, country, king). These days the Comunion Tradicionalista Carlista (not to be confused with the Third Way branch of Carlism that supports national socialism and workers' self-management) pulls between 20-50,000 votes nationwide and spends its time promoting Catholic social doctrine, chiefly through intolerance of gays and abortion. They are currently the only political organisation to recognise Carlos Hugo de Borbon Parma as the rightful King of Spain (he's a university professor who lives in Brussels apparently).