I am glad to report that I have recently discovered a couple of English-language blogs about Catalan/Spanish politics:
Catalonia Direct
Catalonia Info
and an updated entry from George@BCN. Keep it up, superb writing.
These new additions to the English language Catosphere, each with its own perspective, will serve to counter the pseudo-historic revisionism, the pack of lies and bullshit, and the Catalanophobe resentment of Spanish nationalism (past and present) apologist Kalebeul.
Update 19/02/2010:
I have added a few blogs to my blogroll and to the list of blogs I follow. Great stuff out there but there are some people that could do a bit better....
I am trying to access WikiLeaks but it is not working. Anyone out there is able to connect to http://wikileaks.org or http://www.wikileaks.org Yesterday, The Guardian had an editorial in praise of it…. could this be the death-knell for Wikileaks?
If I do a PING, it comes up with this result:
Update: 1900h: well, I don't know what happen but Wikileaks.org was down for about 2-4 hours between 2-5pm at least. It is now up and running. I am going to check up if I have any neighbours, currently or in the immediate future, in the BNP.
Well, the campaign to stop shaking hands with the less-than-honourable members has not made the impact I was hoping for… never mind.
I honestly think it would be a historical event if it were to catch on and spread all over the UK ahead of the European election on 20 June.
Any way, if you have a blog and want to spread the word, perhaps it is not too late.
http://trenator.blogspot.com/2009/05/dont-shake-hands-campaign.html
I have posted in The Independent, The Guardian, even it that Guido Fawkes blog (apologies Tom & Graeme, I thought this could get traction that way...) and other blogs but nothing is happening.
Sometimes I cannot help thinking that the BBC’s reputation for objectivity, neutrality and high journalistic standards is more a myth than reality. Particularly when it comes to criticism of the Scottish Labour party. In Spain everyone if full of how great the BBC is and how it should be a model for all public broadcasters. I used to agree. Now, after living in the UK for over 10 years, I am not sure. Myth, perception and reality intermingle.
Yesterday, I posted the below text in the Blether with Brian blog.
To my amazement, it has been removed as it apparently breaks the house rules on defamation.
Can anyone let me know what is in this post that is defamatory?
I have posted it again with a toned-down version, let’s see if it makes the cut…
========================
Brian,
The Speaker of the House is not a mere class rep.
The Speaker is supposed to lead.
If the less-than-honourable members have been up to no good, it is the Speaker’s job to tick them off.
Michael Martin was an awful speaker: inarticulate, mumbling, discourteous and with a tendency to gag people down. Nothing to do with class or background or accent: all to do with competence.
Michael Martin committed far too many errors to deserve any sympathy:
1) He was the main force behind the push for exemption from the FoI Act. He wanted the expenses system to be kept secret and wasted thousands of our tax money on legal fees.
2) When it was clear that this was going to come out, instead of saying sorry, instead of showing contrition or remorse, he calls in the Police to investigate the leak.
3) When a couple of backbenchers raise the issue, he shuts them down in the most childish and discourteous manner. (Hoey)
4) When another backbencher raises the issue of the no-confidence motion, again the mumbles, fumbles and shows why he should have never been the Speaker in the first place.
All this after having had a number of years to do something about this mess.
So, you understand that most of us have no sympathy for the shop steward that became one of them. Good riddance.
======================
Since the extent of the expenses scandal became clear, I have been flabbergasted at the dishonesty and the lack of morality of the vast majority of MPs.
Today, I propose that the public takes a stance.
I know I am a total nobody in the blogosphere but I think this is worth trying. If you can spread the message, perhaps it will catch on and set a global trend. With the European Elections campaign in June fast approaching, the least-than-honourable Members will be out and about campaigning to get our vote. Before we give them our vote, we should give them a piece of our mind.
What I am suggesting is that elected politicians are given the cold shoulder by the voting public.
I advocate that we should not shake hands with them, let alone let them kiss our babies for that arranged photo-opportunity.
Before we do such a thing, we are entitled to ask:
“Do you have a clear conscience with regards to your expenses claim?”
“Have you claimed for any personal items such as furniture, luxury
carpets, garden maintenance, pool cleaning, TVs, pet food, etc?”
“How many times have you flipped your home since becoming an MP?”
“How much have you claimed under the expense system?”
Over the last year or so, there is one man that has become a source of pain for some in the financial services sector. Some journalists don’t like him either. It is Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor. [blog]
His idiosyncratic style and general slow delivery (plus mumbling and fumbling and humming) irritates many. Others are irritated by his “attacks” on the financial services sector and the markets. The right-wing blogosphere attack him for being a "leftie" and the mouthpiece of the Labour government. Or so they claim. Stockbrokers and investment managers despise him because he “brings the market down”. I thought the markets were "efficient"?
The FT journos call him Pestowire, or Peston RNS, a reference to the Regulatory News Service used for the public dissemination of financial markets announcements.
It is difficult to convey to anyone living outside the UK how pervasive Mr Peston’s presence in the BBC has become. Since his reports on the debacle of Northern Rock, and the collapse of the banking system and consequent recession, his presence is the main feature of the 6pm and 10pm news bulletins every single day. I remember one day he even broadcast from the garden in his house.
Recently, he has published a short essay with the title “The New Capitalism”. [PDF]
They are summarised in these two videos. [link]
Personally, I don’t have any issues with his reporting. And when someone’s argument is over style, or personality, you know that people are on a loser. So I haven’t got much sympathy for those who blame Peston for anything. The world, or the stock markets, would not be any different, had Robert Peston not reported on the stories we all know about now. Shooting the messenger is not the answer to this problem, and it shows how inward-looking and shamelessly self-preserving the financial services sector (I refuse to use the word ‘industry’) has become: denial has become the modus operandi in the face of an unpleasant reality.
I do have a bit of an issue with this essay though. Not much with the content than with it having the logo of the BBC as an endorsement. So is this the BBC’s vision of capitalism post-credit crunch or Peston’s? It may be trivial and I might be over-analysing, but the presentation of this essay is not clear, and as a license fee payer I object the way in which has been delivered.
I have no issue with Peston’s book “Who rules Britain”. It may read more like a series of articles and it lacks a cohesive argument, a central thesis that it is presented to the reader. But overall, it provides a few examples of how the City and big businesses work, and how tax avoidance, sorry tax efficiency, has been encouraged by the Labour government.
But reading his essay on the new capitalism taking shape, I could not help but wondering about some of the statements and claims made:
“Arguably the global economic crisis will turn out to be more significant for usWell, I disagree completely. The collapse of communism left millions of people in the world, including Europe, ideologically orphan. Suddenly, there was no alternative to capitalism in its various forms. Communism, the egalitarian, collectivist alternative had failed. We went from two competing systems to one. Now we are going from an imperfect system to another one.
and other developed economies than the collapse of communism.”
“To put it in crude terms, for much of the past decade, millions of Chinese
slaved away on near subsistence wages and still managed to save, both as a
nation (China swanks £1,400bn in foreign exchange reserves) and as individuals.
And to a large extent they were working to improve our living standards, because
they made more and more of the stuff we wanted at cheaper and cheaper prices.”
During the last few weeks, I also thought about writing a series of articles about the (financial) mess we are in, and how banks and financial markets participants are irrational, irresponsible and self-serving institutions that need to be closely monitored and regulated by competent agencies, independent of governmental interference.
(Trust me, I work in the industry and I don’t take any pleasure in writing this).
But then I read a few articles and I thought there was no point in writing about something when more qualified and intelligent people have explained the issues much better than I could ever hope to do:
(By the way, I don’t mean the latest Pestowire, more on that one another day…)
In reverse chronological order:
Nouriel Roubini: on what’s coming: Bloomberg video (let’s not ignore the Bloomberg journalist quest for a “number”… and how even a man of the intelligence of Roubini falls for it like a schoolboy), and FT article. And another essay published earlier in the year.
John Kay: Or how governments “passive” ownership of banks is just storing trouble. [Link]
A conversation between Martin Wolf and John Kay on the regulation of global finance.
But most of all, I do miss the regular macro analysis of Stephen Roach at Morgan Stanley GEF.
He may have been early in his calls (tech boom, asset bubbles, current account deficit, subprime), but he was right: macro imbalances sooner or later give way to correction and because of leverage and behavioural issues, corrections in our time are more violent and unsettling than in the past.
The problem is that when your firm earns revenue by trading volatility and hyping up the market, it is very difficult to keep writing about things as you see them. What I mean is that it is an impossible situation when you have the chief economist writing articles explaining we are getting into a big mess, and your sales desks churning structured products like there is no tomorrow.
Very few people know if he was pushed or if he jumped but having Stephen Roach in China as Chairman is like having Messi playing in the reserves for FC Barcelona. I always thought that his realist bear commentary irritated his bosses and colleagues as much as his skilful if somewhat verbose writings.
The real tragedy of banking and financial markets is how talented, educated people with intellectual curiosity have been replaced with money chasing mathematicians, PhDs in astrophysics and the like whose world vision is narrower than a snake’s arsehole.
Do you want to find out how we got into this mess? Then read a few articles by Mr Roach back in the day.
Policy errors – How politicians are no help, May 2007. Shortly after this article, he was dispatched to Asia. Whether you are in an autocratic regime, in a communist dictatorship or in a free market two-party democracy, it is not wise to wind up politicians and embarrass your bosses.
Asset bubbles must burst – January 2007. For some reason, I cannot find this one in the GEF site with the original date of early January. I wonder why some articles are removed and others remain…
Original Sin – April 2005
The Asset Economy – all time favourite, sadly removed from the Morgan Stanley GEF website, June 2004. When I read this article for the first time, I finally got it.
This article by Roach (The Asset Economy) is the one that explains the origin of this crisis. Politicians and their central bankers saw fit to support asset prices as a means to increase disposable income. One asset bubble led to another until there are hardly any assets left to bubble up.
Now it’s payback time.
First, a Happy New Year to all readers.
I have to apologise because I have not been posting much recently. In fact, I have been rather busy the last few months. My parents came over for Hogmanay, and today my gorgeous girlfriend and I put down a reserve payment towards the purchase of our new home.
Over the last few weeks I have not posted much, but I have discovered a handful of blogs in English about Catalan/Spanish politics.
http://soscatalonia.blogspot.com/ - does not post very regularly but it explains the issues clearly and in a combative language.
http://independentcatalonia.blogspot.com/ - an excellent list of reasons why Catalonia will be better off as an independent state rather than being part of Spain.
http://georgebcn.blogspot.com/ - a new blogger, George blogs from Barcelona in English and also in Catalan.
http://aclearcutcase.blogspot.com/ - also a new blogger, Josep has many other blogs in Catalan, available from his profile page.
http://waytoownstate.blogspot.com/ - also a new blogger in English, Xavier Mir has been an active participant in the Catalan blogosphere (Catosphere) for many years.
Then, we have Ian Llorens’ revamped blog: http://catalonianpolitician.blogspot.com/ -probably the best blog in English about Catalonia.
We still have the reliable The Badrash, Although Tom probably is very much on my left, metaphorically speaking, I do enjoy his posts and lateral thinking.
Mathew Tree is another Englishman who has made Catalonia his home. He even publishes books in Catalan.
Finally, Ramon Tremosa is a Professor of Economics at the Universitat de Barcelona. He has some publications in English in his personal page. I very much like his paper on the fiscal deficit in Catalonia and how it affects growth and economic development.
All in all, everyone of the above blogs helps to internationalise the issue of Catalan independence and explain why remaining part of Spain will result in economic, cultural and political decline for Catalonia.
There are many voices in Catalonia, native and adopted Catalans, who are determined not to be silenced by the rhetoric of the Spanish State. Against those failed expats who have not adapted to Catalonia, refusing to accept Catalan culture and language as a mainstream component of life in Catalonia, and adopting the language of anti-Catalan Spanish Nationalists, people like Tom, George or Matthew provide us with positive examples of integration.
If I have missed any other blogs, please let me know and I will add them to the post.
For those who borrow from Libertad Digital: enjoy the list above!
Sadly, Ian has decided to discontinue his excellent blog. It is a pity for there are not many people with the ability to put a point of view across in such a concise and smart manner. I am often slightly jealous of Ian’s posts, thinking to myself: “I wish I had written that”.
Whatever the reasons, best of luck Ian.
Then, I notice that another top blogger, Curious Hamster, seems to have stopped posting too, but with no previous warning. It is slightly concerning. Not sure whether it is a voluntary or involuntary hiatus. Another loss for the blogosphere, for Curious Hamster’s blog was a pleasure to read. He always provided a different viewpoint and his posts contained informative links to check his quotes and references.
It is a pity that people with so much to say, and who talk so much sense, are so scarce.
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