Politics – again…
While Dani and his old dad watch WWE wrestling on TV some people in Spain may be talking politics. The reason? Because tomorrow (Sunday 10th November 2019) Spain goes to the polls to elect the next government. Well at least that is the theory. This is the third election in just over three years. The second this year. And there is no sign that it will all be resolved.
While the current (supposedly socialist) Prime Minister has the biggest number of seats he cannot form a government. After seven months! Yet last week he managed get the body of Franco exhumed from El Valle de los Caídos. Something many previous socialist governments had failed to do. (Read more on that here.) Not that there are more important issues in Spain right now eh?. Of course not! How could there be? Right?
Meanwhile. In the UK…
Then again, it is not much better in the UK. A month and 3 days from now the UK goes to the polls for the third time in four years. Fourth time if you include the EU referendum. In the UK it’s all been about “Brexit”. Or rather all about stopping or delaying Brexit.
Now there’s a good job. Member of Parliament. Get paid a reasonable wage. Probably in the top 0.5% of world-wide earners. Plus, a raft of expenses. And basically; do nothing.
In nearly three and a half years the UK parliament has done nothing apart from discuss/debate (more like argue about) Brexit. Doesn’t this just prove beyond any doubt that while Europe makes all the decisions our own lot do absolutely jack shit??! The same goes for Spain, as the very recent events show.
It begs the question: How many more elections will there be before Dani is old enough to vote?
And History?
As if all the political mess is not enough, what about this one? (We are heading into grumpy old dad territory here.)
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not exactly the “fall” but certainly the beginning of the end of the wall. I was there a few days later. I stepped through a hole someone had hammered out of the wall so I could have my photo taken. Only to be punched and shoved back through that hole by an angry east German guard.
There was an article celebrating the event in the easyjet magazine which I read yesterday on my flight. And it kind of pissed me off. I need to quote this word for word:
“The Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart as its east German builders officially called it, separated two very different ideologies, with the authoritarian communism of the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic (GDR) effectively using the Wall to block the influence of the more liberal, capitalist, US-controlled West Berlin.”
I feel I have to call out this shoddy piece of writing/journalism (or whatever it is). What are they teaching kids these days? The commies may have wanted you to think that they were trying to keep westerners out, but anyone old enough to know better, knows that the wall was built by the east German communists only to keep their own people in. Yet he never mentioned this. Here we have a modern day ‘writer’ trying to twist history. Trying to pretend that it was somehow both sides to blame. Was he taught that in school? If not then where does he get this false information?
Let’s look at that again; “…effectively using the Wall to block the influence of the more liberal, capitalist, US-controlled West Berlin.”
Where do these people get these ideas from? And more importantly why are they putting this shit out there to deliberately tell readers the wrong things. Why can’t these so-called writers tell it how it is? Or was in this case?
The writer’s name is Thomas Hobbs. Shame on him for not knowing (or at least telling) the real story here. I am sorry to tell you Mr. Hobbs, but you are wrong and should have used this opportunity to tell the real story of why that wall was built.
Anyway, Back to the Wrestling…
Meanwhile I just watched a wrestler win a fight by pinning his opponent down with a fork-lift truck. Work that one out!?
How I would love to see the politicians slugging it out in this way. We can all dream eh?