23rd April 2012

Having just returned home from ten weeks in Spain I have to admit that I am shocked by prices.

Everything from Rioja to Rolls is more expensive.

Italy was more expensive than here so coming home was a return to common sense, but when we could enjoy a two and a half hour Menu del Dia, three courses, bread, olives and wine for six Euros in Spain, well, we put weight on!

It seemed rude not to!

Meanwhile the Euro Zone crisis rolls on.

The Dutch Government has resigned. Mr Sarkozy is in trouble. Angela Merkel is not looking forward to doing business with the new French President and Spain is forecast to be the next Greece.

I felt this on Saturday listening to the Man U - Everton game on the car radio as I drove back from Bradford.

Every step forward that United took, after they levelled the score just before half time, every goal was immediately followed by an equaliser.

4-4 the final score. Attrition by goal inflation!

Doubtless the blue side of Manchester was delighted, suddenly the Premiership Title, which had been disappearing over the horizon as Manchester United began to practise their own goal inflation, began to come back into focus as the goal difference was dramatically reduced along with the points tally.

The same is true in other economies. Take Oranges as an example.

Today I bought four Spanish oranges, they were reduced to Two Pounds, fifty pence an orange.

In Spain I could buy a large sack by the roadside, thirty or forty oranges, for Three Euros.

Of course, despite Global warming, we still don't grow oranges in Cumbria, but then in Spain whilst they grow them, they don't always pick them because there is no value in the crop and the picking costs more than the oranges are worth, so often they are left to rot on the trees or, as we routinely observed, allowed to fall to the ground or in one hacienda we passed regularly, onto the road where they were juiced by the passing traffic.

Despite not having much of a facility with language I like the idea of being European of travelling to different countries, enjoying the food, the weather, the scenery and the culture, I like the idea so much that I really want Barcelona to beat Chelsea, for no other reason than I enjoyed watching Barcelona play and on one occasion was allowed to watch a United match on a small screen in an Irish Bar in Barcelona whilst Barcelona played on the big screen and, when United scored, the crowd in the bar cheered encouragingly, whilst urging their team on to victory.

As the con-dem government veers from one crisis to another, none of which are dealt with satisfactory, the tectonic plates of the global economy are shifting, Europe is struggling to steer a course through its current crises and Asia continues to establish itself as the manufacturing and economic centre of the world.

Times are, as a troubadour once observed, changing but tragically no one appears to notice.

The con-dem government appears to have no plan, no strategy and no real sense of direction.

Meanwhile the crises, pasties, pensions and the price of oranges continues to challenges everyone except the bankers.

My particular bete noir is inflation. As I have observed before it is an iniquitous tax on the poor.

The pension increase was in fact not an increase it was simply a redressing of the inflation balance which had reduced the value of the pension by five per cent.

To add a sense of practical and fairly simple fact to the mix, the granny tax scandal is not reducing the elderly persons tax rate. As my tax statement nopted the old age pension itself is taxed, but the DWP do not reclaim the tax, so it is taken off the tax free allowance and repossessed, robbed, and pilfered from the occupational pension which was paid for out of taxed income.

Meanwhile the fortunes of some in government and their pensions were protected by being invested in tax havens.

The public demand to know the truth ............