Tonight

Tonight in Glasgow:

Most appropriate, given the circumstances...

After all these years, still my favourite band ever and top guys they are too.

Happy Birthday Rab!

Links:

BBC

Wiki 

Official site



Update post-gig, 13/12/2010:


Sound quality perhaps not the best, but the Fannies played two Orange Juice covers at the end of the night, brilliant!

You know it is true

Source: http://xkcd.com/386/

Waverley Excursions

Ahh, what a fantastic day I had yesterday aboard the beautiful Waverley paddle steamer on the Ayrshire coast.

http://www.waverleyexcursions.co.uk/index.htm

Sailing from Ayr [wiki] to Ailsa Craig [wiki], stopping in Girvan [wiki] to pick up more folk.
Absolutely fantastic day out, the weather was great and the ship is a work of art. Check the pictures in the link above.

At Ayr harbour

Engine room                                                Helpful advice

Isle of Arran in the horizon

Heads of Ayr

This is not the Med. It is Scotland's west coast!

Kennedy Castle at Dunure

Crew member enjoying a well-deserved break

Culzean Castle

 Approaching Ailsa Craig after stopping at Girvan

Ailsa Craig

Ailsa Craig, west side (phone camera). The white dots are breeding gannets.

Three twats on jet-skis

All in all, a glorious day out and something I'd recommend to anyone.

If it is not your think, don't fear: there is a licensed pub on board. 

Blogus interruptus

Regular readers will have noticed that there has been an hiatus in this blog.

Sometimes life takes over in unexpected ways. Amongst other stuff, being without internet at home for 6 weeks has been quite traumatic. Let’s hope I never have to go through this again.

Much has been happening since my last entry.

-         a new UK coalition government

-         FC Barcelona has won the League title

-         AVUI has been bought by El Punt on the cheap with the support of PSOE-PSC with the aim of toning down its editorial policy and ultimately get rid of the title. Shame because AVUI and its Diàleg pages were an oasis of free-thinking and competing viewpoints, from PP and Ciudadanos to ERC and Reagrupament. 

-    I visited by family and friends in Catalonia and enjoyed a visit to the city of Zaragoza.

-         The Labour Party is Glasgow has found itself mired in corruption allegations and scandals. To call this lot the Labour mafia as I and many other people do is really an understatement.

-         The Spanish Constitutional Court has issued a ruling against the new Catalan Estatut (devolution framework) that was approved by the Spanish Parliament, the Catalan Parliament and the people of Catalonia in a referendum. This ruling destroys the consensus of 1979 and attacks the most fundamental tenets of social cohesion in Catalonia.

-         The Spanish PM has said that the process of devolution (“desarrollo autonómico”) for Catalonia has been closed.

-         Spain is going to play in the FIFA World Cup final for the first time ever. My 20/1 bet placed a few weeks ago now looks extremely good value.

-         A few so-called “neutral” bloggers have come out of the closet with regards to the whole Spain vs Catalonia debate.

Normal services will resume soon. I am trying to recover usernames, passwords, etc, and get my thoughts together on a few issues.

Happy New Year 2009!

Well, Rab has been rather busy: changing jobs during the most severe financial crisis since 1929, moving home again, DIY, decorations, planning applications and Freedom of Information requests with the useless fuckers in the most incompetent local authority in Scotland, etc, etc, etc.

But Rab is back and from now on I will keep the blog up to date more regularly.

Another borrowed article: anti-Catalan prejudice

It is pandemonium in Can Trenator.

Buying a new house, putting the flat out in the rental market, getting engaged, birth of gorgeous wee niece, getting married, honeymoon, changing jobs, shoddy service from building companies, etc, etc.

Oh, and the financial crisis.

Normal services will resume soon. In the meantime, I borrow the text from a lecture from Mathew Tree on anti-Catalan prejudice.

PDF

Rab is back

Well, Rab is back.

I have been out of blog-service due to a variety of reasons: long hours at work, not least because of the ongoing credit crunch, buying a new house, trying to rent out my old flat, and last, but not least, getting engaged to my gorgeous girlfriend. This last event involved a couple of trips to Dublin to buy The Ring, and London for D-Day.

Piece of advice: if you are going to travel a long distance to buy an engagement ring, it is advisable to check in advance that the place is not going to be closed due to a local bank holiday.

Anyway, we and the cats are settled in our new home, we have decorated the spare rooms, painted the decking in the garden, the garden fence and gate, plant the grass, cut the grass, clean, etc.

Too much happening not to write about it. I am going to post a few short articles about the fallacies and myths surrounding the debate of Spanish/Catalan politics.

The more the merrier

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!

Time is a scarce resource

Regular readers will have noticed that I have been not very active of late. There are a variety of reasons:

+ Work: the credit liquidity squeeze and the return of volatility have resulted in longer hours at work.
+ Studies: the MBA thesis on credit default swaps is also taking longer that expected. Final deadline (I have already had a couple of extensions…) is 7 December 2007, so not a lot of time left.
+ Commuting: normally I drive from the outskirts of Glasgow to Edinburgh. This month, however I am trying to commute by train. Next year, if/when I have more time, I will write about public transport provision in the UK.
+ Too much to write about: frankly, there is too much happening. I feel overwhelmed with developments in Scottish/British politics and Catalan/Spanish politics. Where should I start. Thus, I feel easier to reply to other people’s blogs, even if they are slightly bonkers. Hello John and Trevor.

If all that was not enough, to be brutally honest, the few spare hours I have I’d rather spend them with my gorgeous, lovely, pretty and extremely patient girlfriend.

It has been a few interesting weeks. I have been accused of being both “obviously right-wing” and a “far-leftist” by Iberian Notes because of this post. Iberian Notes is a blog by a north American expat living in Barcelona which regurgitates the same bile and hatred towards Catalonia and its sense of nationhood and cultural, social and political identity as the most vicious and aggressive Spanish nationalist portals like Libertad Digital. Well it seems the guy used to work for them so no surprises there.

What I did not expect when I set up this blog (in September 2003 no less) is that I would be quoted out of context by El País newspaper:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cataluna/Independentismo/elpepuespcat/20071107elpcat_15/Tes (Spanish)

The post the article is referring is this one: It’s time. I notice the journalist cites the comment left by Ox, but not my reply with web links, or Ox’s lack of counter-reply. I will dedicate another post to this article next week.

In any case, for the benefit of Mr Delclós and Ox, I did not equate political independence to a complete assurance of improving life expectancy; rather, the crux of the post, for anyone that wants to read it properly, is that +50 years of Labour rule in Glasgow has failed to address this and many other social issues, that a change in policy is required and that only the SNP can provide the cathartic change Scotland so much needs.

Can anyone argue back that keeping Labour in power will resolve the many social issues we face in the west of Scotland when they have proved to be incapable of doing so in +50 years?

Warning: the CFA exams can lower your self-esteem

After all the effort, after all the hours (about 150), after all the sacrifices, I got the CFA results today: fail.

Q#	Topic	Max Pts	<=50%	51%-70%	>70%
-	Alternative Assets	12	-	-	*
-	Derivatives	12	-	*	-
-	Economics	24	-	-	*
-	Equity Analysis	24	-	-	*
-	Ethical & Professional Stnds.	36	-	-	*
-	Financial Statement Analysis	68	*	-	-
-	Fixed Income Analysis	24	-	*	-
-	General Portfolio Management	12	-	*	-
-	Quantitative Analysis	28	-	-	*

Pass rate was 39%. It was a close call but a fail nevertheless.
I am drained and exhausted.

Advice: if you ever consider taking the CFA Level 1 exam, make sure you put in the recommended number of hours (250 hours) and don't do what I did: 150 hours.

Never give all the Heart

Never give all the Heart
W.B. Yeats
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.

O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

------
PS: Apologies to regular readers but I have been far to busy lately and right now I could not care less about politics.

too busy studying!

Right ladies and gentlemen.
I have not forgotten about the blog, it is just that I am studying like crazy for the CFA exam.
Much, much more difficult that I initially thought; I have taken this week off work to study. This week I have been at the library from 9am until 8.30pm. Exam is on December 2nd so normal services will resume after that weekend.

PS1: Montilla, an immigrant born in Andalusia, has today been invested President of Catalonia. Will Spain ever have a Catalan primer minister again? Even just a candidate?
PS2: And now that the anti-Catalan Ciudadanos speak Spanish in the Catalan Parliament, could the Spanish parlament stop the prohibition of addressing the chamber in any language other than Spanish? What language is being discriminated by the law?

Arrrgh, can't wait to get this bloody exam off the way!