Save Me…… from a society that continues to feed the rich at the expense of the rest of us

Did you know that there’s this amazing casino where people line up every day to put ridiculous bets on ridiculous odds. Sometimes these bets pay off. But more often than not they don’t and the losses just keep stacking up. But it’s the few times when they do pay off that give the players that special buzz. The buzz that keeps them coming back for more, betting more money and risking higher odds each time. And the great thing about it is that when they run out of money, they just go to the cashiers, tell them that if they don’t give them more money the casino will shut down and, lo and behold, they’re given it!

Wow! What a brilliant place!

Except that the players are actually the global investment banks, financial institutions and insurance companies, the cashiers who give them more money are the world governments and the money they give them belongs to you and me.

Isn’t Capitalism wonderful?

Now, I don’t profess to have a detailed academic understanding of global economics and politics. But I do know that capitalism is based on the private ownership of the means of production and thrives on an unregulated free market which dictates whether businesses succeed or fail. If you’re not competitive or efficient enough, you don’t produce the goods that the market wants or you don’t produce them cheaply enough, you fail. So be it. That’s the system. If you want to survive, you’ve got to be ruthless and be better than everyone else.

But that’s where I get confused. If the system dictates that only the fittest survive then why are many of these banks still around? Why did we have to bail them out in the 2008 global financial crisis, a crisis that they created? Surely we should have let them go bankrupt, just as Capitalism dictates. After all, that’s the altar at which they worship every day, when they switch on their computer screens and continue spending other people’s money.

But what’s the big deal, you might ask? It’s just money. There’s always more of it to go round. The consequences of the years of toxic trading by these big banks isn’t hurting anyone, is it?

Well, this week it emerged that the Spanish government plans to slash €30 billion from budgets in 2012, affecting severance pay for workers, unemployment benefits, wage packets, and long-standing union agreements that protect people’s working rights. Unemployment is at 23 per cent, more than double the European average, with more than five million people out of work and 50 per cent of young people without a job. House prices have dropped 10 per cent while mortgages have gone up and home repossessions have risen more than 30 percent. The Spanish economy is expected to shrink by 1.5 per cent in the next 12 months. Spain is not, of course, alone in Europe in its plight. And all of this stems from the 2008 global financial crisis.

Who caused it? The global banks, the US banking system and the bursting of the US housing bubble.

Who loses out? Well, for a start, the average working man and woman in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, the UK, the US…well, let’s be clear about this. Most average people in most countries in the world, actually.

But let’s take a minute to think about those institutions who put us there in the first place. If we’re struggling, they must be virtually at death’s door, having to work so hard to recover all those losses. Just think of all the sleepless nights they must be having. God, it must be terrible to be a banker right now.

Take those poor souls at insurance giant AIG, who took $170 billion in taxpayer bailouts in 2008. They were only able to divvy up between $218 million and $450 million in bonuses for themselves the year after. And that was based on losses of $61 billion for the year.

Then there’s the fragile little troopers at Lloyds Banking Group who got £40 billion in taxpayer bailouts but have only just managed to survive by chucking 30,000 people out of a job in the last three years. And you have to give a pat on the back to their former chief executive Eric Daniels who courageously declined his own personal bonus of £2.3 million in 2010. God knows how he managed to make ends meet on his measly £1 million salary.

Then there’s the brave bosses at Royal Bank of Scotland Group who got billions in bailouts, but could only afford to give 100 of their senior bank executives about £1 million each in bonuses in 2010. Former chief executive Fred Goodwin, who presided over the massive losses the bank suffered which prompted the bailout, had to walk away with earnings of just £20 million and a pathetic pension pot of £16 million. Three cheers for them all!

Then there’s the heroic bankers at Goldman Sachs, who also received billions of dollars in bailouts from the taxpayer. They were one of the institutions at the heart of the controversial Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) collapse which prompted much of the 2008 global collapse, and who this very week, were described by a resigning executive director of the firm in London as “morally bankrupt”. That baseless, insensitive and totally unjustified accusation will no doubt have hit company chief executive Lloyd Blankfein hard, especially as he only took home $7 million dollars in bonuses last year, a massive 44 per cent cut on the $12.6 million the board managed to scrape together for him the year before. I bet they even had to look down the back of the sofa just to get all that together for him, poor chap.

You see? Ain’t Capitalism wonderful? It’s survival of the fittest. It makes us all better, stronger, more efficient, more prosperous and happier. That’s if you’re a banker, of course, in which case we’ll give you more of the poor people’s money when you’ve pissed yours up the wall again.

In August last year, there was understandable shock and anger at widespread rioting, looting and arson in some English cities. Everything from widescreen TVs to bottles of vodka and sofa cushions were looted from shops and businesses up and down the country in what some people claimed was a twisted response to the dire economic cuts forced on the public as a direct consequence of the 2008 global financial crisis.

But the irony is that the average person in the street has themselves been the victim of looting, arson, mugging and assault for years. The only difference is that the perpetrators have been wearing tailored suits, gold cufflinks, and have been driving million pound sports cars.

When the average man in the street goes to work on the factory assembly line, he produces a car or a computer or a TV for example. A product which is of use in society. When the doctor or the nurse goes to work at the hospital, they often care for the needy and vulnerable in society. When the policeman goes to work, he protects public property and safety. When the banker goes to work, he produces nothing except more money for himself.

The British philosopher and historian Bertrand Russell said: “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim. The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.”

Karl Marx said: “The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.”

He also said: “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”

Oh my god! Two quotes from Marx. That means I must be a Communist! No, I’m not. But I do believe unrestrained and unregulated Capitalism has failed us.

There will come a point where this abuse of power will not be allowed to continue. Society will not tolerate it. We’ve already seen the stirrings of rebellion in the Occupy movements around the globe. I hope it is simply a precursor of things to come. In fact, I am sure it is. The top one per cent of society might have more money and power than the rest of us put together. But then we outnumber them by a long shot. We have numbers, force, anger and justice at our disposal.

I believe it is time to redress the balance. I believe it is time we took our money back. And I personally don’t think any method of repossession, within reason, should be ruled out.

Save Me…… from the armour-plated warriors that love the sun and a good fight

It seems finally that the cold, winter weather is behind us as the temperatures begin to creep up each day. Thank God we no longer need the three blankets and 200 tog duvet on the bed any more.

But just as the door of wintery chills and chattering teeth closes, another door to a more deadly, scary, fear-filled world opens wide.

It is a world where the hours of darkness bring with them a tense nervousness, an anxiety that tightens across the chest, a fear that grips the very core of my being.

For I know that an army will soon be descending upon our tiny flat. They will have the ability to plague, torture and terrify us.  They love the hot weather (and we don’t have spring here, we just go straight from winter to summer) and they particularly love visiting in the dead of night. Just when your defences are at their lowest.

They will strike without warning . Every night you go the bed and close your eyes, you know that they may be close by, waiting to pounce. Once they’re in, they are virtually indestructible.

Ok, maybe I’m over-egging the pudding a bit.

But I’ll be honest with you. They scare the shit out of me. I’m talking, of course, of the six-legged freak that is the cockroach. The little fella that looks like a brown beetle and which can run faster than Usain Bolt with his trousers on fire.

They are not that common in the UK, especially in houses and flats. But here in Spain, when the summer comes, they invade faster than Nazi storm troopers blitzkreiging the Eastern Front. It’s something that as a Brit that I’ve just had to get used to since moving here.

They hide in the plumbing and come up the pipes at night. It’s quite common, particularly in older flats and houses, to find them having a party in your bath tub when you get up in the morning.

They are bomb-proof. They have body armour which can withstand a nuclear explosion. After the blast wave has disintegrated everything in its path, you can imagine them picking themselves up, dusting themselves down and saying “Well, that was a bit of a loud bang wasn’t it chaps? Gave me a bit of a fright, don’t you know!” (I also imagine them saying it in an upper-class English accent. I don’t know why, it just sounds like the type of accent they’d use. I’m strange like that).

Now, you think I’m blowing this out of all proportion don’t you? Well, let me recount a true story that happened to me and then you’ll understand. It was a titanic battle I had with one of them. And no matter what I threw at it, it kept coming back for more.

 Picture the scene. It was about two-and-a-half years ago. I was living in another flat at the time. It was dark outside, it was late evening, it was warm. The curtain was gently fluttering in the faint breeze of the open terrace window. The passing sound of a police siren came and went, a dove appeared momentarily on the wall and then was gone. A tramp huddled in a dark corner, swigging from a brown paper bag as a flash of lightning arched across the desolate, star-filled sky and a distant boom of thunder could be heard.

Hang on a minute. Where was I? Oh yes.  I was sitting watching TV. I forget the programme. As I sipped nonchalantly on a cold beer, I glanced down to see a cockroach scuttle across the floor about four feet in front of me. For a second, I could have sworn he flipped me the finger.

But instantaneously, like a coiled spring or a startled cat or a bloke who hates cockroaches because they give him the willies, I sprang into action, poised with the beer in one hand and a chocolate biscuit in the other, ready to strike.

The cockroach ignored me and kept going. It was only when I chucked a book at him that he started to notice. Then I grabbed my broom – which was handily in reaching distance - and whacked it down on him. I must have got him with the brushes only and not the wooden bit, because he scuttled in a different direction, but with more haste this time. I hit him again, twice. But he still kept going. By this time I’d got him cornered and was convinced I must have at least given him a headache. But he shot under the fridge so I jammed the end of the broom handle underneath it, thrusting it back and forwards trying to flush him out. As I did, I grabbed a glass bowl from the sink. Sure enough, he came scuttling out again and rushed back across the floor. But I was ready for him and slammed the bowl down over him, trapping him.

For a minute or two, we both sat there glaring at each other breathing heavily, wondering what to do. He was under the bowl so he wasn’t going anywhere. But then, what was I going to do next? Leave him there to starve to death?

Then I had a shot of inspiration and ran to the bathroom, returning fully armed with my spray-on underarm deodorant. That would do for him, surely. I’d accidentally blasted myself in the face with it the day before when I didn’t realise the nozzle was pointing the wrong way, and I got a mouthful that nearly made me vomit. If it could do that to a fully grown man, just think what it would do to a little cockroach.

So, as quick as a flash, I lifted the bowl and blasted him full force with the spray. Lynx Dark Temptation death! The burst knocked him backwards to the other side of the upturned bowl. But rather than flip over on his back and wave his legs in the air, he just appeared to get annoyed. So I slammed the bowl down again.

 Now I had an angry cockroach who smelled nice as well. I lifted the bowl and blasted him again, but he was too quick for me and he escaped back under the fridge.

For the next 40 minutes I was chasing him round the living room, into dark corners, under the sofa, back under the fridge, jamming that broom handle in and out trying to catch him. But eventually there was no sign of him and it only made me more edgy. Where was the little bastard? After that, I didn’t see or hear anything more of him that night, and eventually, exhausted from the battle, I reluctantly went to bed, but was careful to shut my bedroom door.

After a restless night of tossing and turning, I awoke the next morning. To my horror, just inside the bedroom door was the cockroach. But this time, he was on his back, lifeless, legs in the air. It seemed that the combined and sustained force of a book, a broom and half a canister of Lynx Dark Temptation body spray had finally done him in. But despite my elation, I admit I had a sneaking admiration for the little bugger who had clearly been determined to crawl all the way from the fridge in the kitchen to my room in a bid for a final showdown. I acknowledged a worthy adversary as I flushed him down the toilet.

So there you have it. They don’t go down without a real fight. And I hate them for it.

There is one defence you can employ to stop them getting in, in the first place. It can be quite simple. Just keep the bath plug in all the time. That, or let my wife deal with it. She has no fear of them whatsoever and has smashed many a cockroach into pieces by battering them with the underside of her slipper. She’s so effective that I wouldn’t be surprised if the cockroaches have a picture of her up in their HQ warning others not to mess with her.

But then, she’s Spanish. She’s used to them. I’m not.

Save Me…… from a pair of dodgy knees and a body that may not do what its told anymore

I used to go walking in the countryside a lot with friends when I lived in the UK. We would go everywhere from hills and mountains to moors and dales. And we would often camp out too.

Many times have I woken up to the early morning light coming through the tent as I’ve laid there in my sleeping bag. Many times have I made a cup of tea on a small stove fuelled by methylated spirits  while sitting half in and half out of the tent. And many times have I trudged across freezing fields in the middle of the night, in boots with untied laces flailing around, to visit the chemical toilet in the corner of the campsite, when all I’ve really wanted to do was to stay in my warm sleeping bag and wait until morning. But sometimes you’ve just got to go, even if it is three o’clock in the morning, there’s frost on the tent flaps and your torch doesn’t work very well.

There are some things you should never be without when you go walking. Good boots for one. A good map. And plasters. You’re almost always going to need plasters.

Now I still like to do walking here in Spain. But things are different now. We need more than just plasters.

As I mentioned back in January, we’ve set ourselves the fairly tough challenge of walking between 100 and 200km of the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain in August. It’ll take a week and a bit to complete.

Preparation is the key. But so is weight! Walking with as little as possible in your rucksack is vital. This means swapping a sleeping bag for a duvet cover. Yes, that’s right. A duvet cover. Infinitely lighter and perfectly good for the hot days we’ll almost certainly encounter, even though northern Spain is quite a bit cooler than the south. Clothes are another key area to cut back on. Three t-shirts, three pairs of socks and three pairs of underwear. That’s all. All you’ve got to do with give them a wash during the trip else they probably won’t even let you into Santiago because of the stink. Spray-on deodorant is also vital. It’s amazing what smells a good one can cover! And let’s be honest, despite the showers, the washed underwear and the clean teeth, you’re still going to pong at least a bit when you’re walking more than 20km day after day in hot weather.

I’ll be honest with you, I’m not nearly as fit as I used to be. So while walking 100 to 200km in a week might have been plain sailing for me 20 years ago, it isn’t quite as easy now.

For a start, I’m carrying a few extra pounds. I admit it. I’m cuddly. Secondly, my joints creak a bit more than they used to, especially the dodgy right ankle I’ve had since injuring it playing rugby more than 20 years ago. The older I get the more creaky it gets.  The knees too tend to get a bit stiff nowadays. Everything else seems to be in reasonable working order however, at least for the time being.

But to get back to my original point, what’s also different though is the things we need. While the plasters still come in handy, there’s another thing I’ve found absolutely indispensible. Vaseline! Before and after a long walk, it is amazing how useful it is for those hard-to-reach places that chafe and rub and get red and sore. I’m sure you can work out where I mean.

It came in very handy last weekend, for example.

We had planned, last Saturday, to walk about 15km on a route out of Seville along the river to a small town called La Algaba. Walking with friends, the idea was that we’d get there and then get a bus back. But as it turned out, we got a bit carried away and when we got there we thought we might as well walk all the way back too. So we did.

A walk that was estimated to take between four and five hours ended up talking nearly nine hours and instead of 15km we clocked up 28km.

Boy, did the Vaseline come in handy after that! And so did the cold compresses for the tendons on the backs on my knees that were strung tighter than piano wire.

But, despite the discomfort – which thankfully only lasted about 24 hours after the end of our marathon day – we were really pleased with ourselves.

You see, fearing that 20km a day for five days in a row might be the undoing of us in August, we had planned to slowly build up the distances we were doing in preparation. We figured 15km was a good objective this time, after we did a 10km gorge walk a few weeks back.

So to end up doing 28km, and walk away with little more than sore knees, chafed nether regions and aching feet, is in many ways a mental barrier that has been well and truly crushed.

Last time, our destination was in a loop around the outside of Seville, so that the unplanned walk back from La Algaba only turned out to be about 12km.

Next weekend, we’ve got a 22km walk lined up. But the destination will not be in a loop this time. It’s actually 22km north of Seville, so walking back will mean doing double that.

And despite the joy of knocking up 28km in one day – an achievement which I would have been able to do easily 20 years ago and which our friends, a decade or more younger than us, did with considerable more ease – I’m not sure I’m ready to do 44km in one day just yet. The mind is willing, but the body – and especially the knees - may decide to down tools and go on strike if I push them too hard.

Who knows though? There’s nothing like a dose of confidence, a surge of adrenalin and a pot of Vaseline to give you the drive to do almost anything, even if your body's not up to it! At this rate, come August, we’ll be doing all 800km of the Camino in one week instead.

Or maybe I’m still on a high from the achievements of last Saturday.

Save Me…… from the bleedin’ obvious

The Oscars are upon us once again this Sunday with no less than ten films up for Best Picture this time round and with a total of 24 awards for all manner of acting, design, directing, script writing, editing and for the bloke who made the best costumes.

In fact, if there were an Oscar for best self-congratulatory back-slapping then the Oscars itself would win it every year.

Among those in the running for the awards this time are The Descendants featuring George Clooney, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy starring Gary Oldman, The Help with Jessica Chastain, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close with Tom Hanks, silent movie The Artist, Terence Mallick’s The Tree of Life featuring Brad Pitt and Midnight in Paris directed by Woody Allen.

Even If you’re only remotely interested in cinema you’ll probably have heard of at least a few of these films if nowhere else but on the TV news, in the newspapers or on the internet. You might have even seen a few of them!

But if you’re Spanish, right at this moment you may well be scratching your head at a few of those names. And here’s why.

It’s not surprising, I guess, that when some English-language films come to Spain, their names are changed so that, I assume, they might be more appealing to Spanish audiences. Some film names may be expressions in English that simply don’t translate with any sense into Spanish. Some may be word-play or idioms that again don’t cross the linguistic barrier intact. Fair enough, you might think.

But here’s my problem. It is my humble opinion that a disproportionate number of the new names given to these films lack any sort of imagination and are often laughably literal.

Let’s take some of the films up for Best Picture this Sunday. The Artist and The Descendants both cross over unscathed. But Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – the film version of the TV series of the John Le Carre novel about attempts to uncover a mole deep within the British Secret Service – becomes...yes, you guessed it, The Mole.  Where’s the mystery or intrigue in that? At least the original name – derived from the names given to the suspects by the spy master - creates some illusion of conspiracy and suspicion. To borrow the slogan from a well-known DIY company, the Spanish name “does what it says on the tin” and nothing else.

You might think I’m being a little harsh here. So then, Exhibit B your honour. Recent Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill, about a man who dreads the annual Thanksgiving visit of his twin sister Jill, has been renamed Jack and His Twin in Spanish. So what’s that about then? Well, it’s about a bloke and his twin. Oh, right, ok. 

And I’ve got plenty more where that came from. Take Keanu Reeves’ 1991 gung-ho surfing action cop thriller Point Break. A point break is a surfing term which refers to the point where a wave hits rocks or a raised shelf which juts out of the water. You could argue, with at least some semblance of seriousness, that it is an ideal metaphor for the way that Reeves’ character juts his sizeable FBI cop frame into the “wave” created by the surfing dudes / bank robbers. You see the cunning way they link the subject of the film to the title?

Bollocks to that, think the Spanish film re-namers. In Spanish its name is They Call Him Bodhi. I imagine the conversation between the film execs who came up with that went something like this. 

They’re sitting in an office looking at the script and one says to the other “So, what ‘s it about then?” “Well, it’s about a punk cop who learns to surf in order to catch some bank robbers who spend their time surfing,” says the other. “Who’s in it?” says the first one. “Keanu Reeves is the cop and his character’s called Johnny Utah. Oh, and Patrick Swayze’s in it too,” says the other. “What’s his character called?” says the first one. The other pauses for a second, looking down the cast list on his script. “Er, ah yes, here it is. They call him Bodhi” he says triumphantly. “Bingo!” says the first one.

Need more examples? Let me wheel out Exhibits C, D, E etc. etc. etc. Gene Hackman’s 1972 thriller The French Connection about a maverick cop’s attempts to smash a drug smuggling operation between France and the US is thrillingly, if not slightly obviously, renamed in Spain Against the Drugs Empire.

1999’s The Insider, a thriller which tells the true story of a tobacco industry whistle blower who suffers threats, stalking, million dollar lawsuits and a wrecked marriage in a bid to tell the truth, becomes the massively understated The Dilemma in Spanish. The title gives the impression he’s sitting on the couch scratching his head trying to work out what to order on the Chinese takeaway menu.

Then there’s 1979’s edge-of-your-seat horror flick Alien, which tells the story of how a creepy acid-for-blood alien creatures wipes out a crew of seven people on a mining ship in deep space.  In Spain it becomes Alien: The Eighth Passenger, just in case you forgot how many people were on board. Imagine a conversation between friends deciding what to see at the cinema on a Saturday night. “Hey, there’s a great movie about an alien space monster that attacks the crew of a space ship. Do you wanna go and see it?” “How many people are in the crew?” “Er, seven I think, because the Alien is the eighth one apparently.” “Nah, it sounds rubbish. Now, if there had been ten people on board that would have been a thriller!”

Kevin Costner’s 1997 post-apocalyptic futuristic thriller The Postman about a nomadic survivor who delivers letters among isolated and scared communities, encouraging them to stand against a tyrannical warlord, becomes Messenger of the Future (It’s about a bloke in the future who delivers messages, obviously).

Others include Ben Affleck’s terrorist-steals-nuclear-bomb thriller The Sum of All Fears which becomes Nuclear Panic; 2005’s Brokeback Mountain which becomes In Forbidden Land; 2004 remake The Manchurian Candidate which becomes Messenger of Fear (are you seeing a pattern here?); 2010’s Inception which bizarrely becomes Origin (origin of what?); 1994’s prison drama The Shawshank Redemption which becomes Life Imprisonment (Where is he? In prison. How long for? Life) and 2000’s Robert De Niro comedy Meet The Parents which becomes Her Parents, while its sequel Meet The Fockers becomes His Parents and its sequel Little Fockers which becomes Now They’re the Parents. It’s about parents, just in case that’s not clear.

And I haven’t even got on to the subject of how 99 per cent of all films are dubbed into Spanish when they are shown in cinemas here. There are millions of people in Spain who have never even heard the real voices of Tom Cruise, Sean Connery, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep and others. But that’s for another time.

If I’m to be completely objective, it’s only fair to sign off with an example of how it can sometimes work the other way too.  And for this, I only need one exhibit in evidence; Samuel L Jackson’s 2006 action thriller Snakes on a Plane. I'll leave you to guess what that's about.

Save Me…… from nostalgic trips to the bank

I remember the 1970s with a special fondness, partly because I was born at the very start of them.

Putting aside the familial earthquakes that ultimately shaped my childhood and adulthood and presented me with a big bill for years of personal counseling, the 1970s were a decade of simplicity, long summers, flares and our family’s wooden-framed Rediffusion TV.

It was a time when you had to use a phone box if you wanted to make a call while you were out. It was a time when it didn’t take long to decide what to watch on TV because there were only three channels. It was a time when, if you wanted to change the channel, you actually had to get up from your chair and walk over to the TV and do it because there were no remote controls. It was a time when I got 10p a week pocket money and would spend it on ha,penny chews and packs of stickers for my World Cup ’78 sticker album (I kept getting loads of “Dino Zoff”s – google him – and I could never swap them with my mates because they all got him too).

It was a time when banks closed early and there were hardly any cash machines and those that did exist were slow. It was a time when banks did everything on paper - in triplicate – and it took days for your salary to arrive in your account. It was a time when, if you presented a foreign cheque at the counter, the member of staff would look at you in a funny way and say “We don’t do Mickey Mouse money here Sir.” It was a time when, if you wanted to change your account details or order a new card, you had to go to your own branch to do it.

Ah, the 1970s. It’s lucky I feel nostalgic for them, because I can time warp back to them any time I feel like it right now in 2012, by just calling into pretty much any Spanish High Street bank.

While British banks have moved forward with the times, Spanish banks seem to be very much stuck in a rut. A flared-trousered, three-TV-channeled, World-Cup-78-sticker-albumed rut.

Now, of course, Spanish readers will be looking at this and wondering what the hell I’m going on about. Spanish banks are fine, you say. Well, that’s because you don’t know any different. But try visiting a British bank and you’ll probably faint at the sheer weight of technology and lack of paper that greets you when you step through their doors. And you’ll also probably be amazed to know that you can draw your money out of pretty much any cash machine from any bank and NOT be charged for it.

Yes, it’s true. And what’s more, I’m prepared to go on the record now about Spanish banks and I don’t care if my bank here in Spain blackballs me for what I’m about to say.

Spanish banks are crap. They are backward, sluggish, inefficient, technology-starved and so irritating that you want to pick up a chair and throw it at someone – which is probably why they’re screwed down in every branch you go into.

I have the misfortune to be with Banesto. But, let’s not be unfair here. All Spanish banks are the same, useless behemoths.

You may think I’m just ranting, so let me put some meat on the bones of my rantathon.

There’s a lot of paper in Spanish banks. A lot. Even though they have computers, they still do everything with paper. And then they copy it on to three other bits of paper, just in case the first bit of paper goes missing. Everywhere you look in a Spanish bank, there are piles of paper. You want to know where the Amazon rain forest has gone? It’s in Spain. In the banks.

They charge you for having an account, they charge you for giving you a debit card, they charge you for arranging to pay your rent out of your account every month, they charge you for having your salary paid into your account. Then they charge you for paying utility bills out of your account. Then they charge you for the statements they produce that tell you what you’ve just been charged for doing all that other stuff. They also charge you if you draw money out at a cash machine from another bank. And I’m not talking piddling amounts either. I’m talking about five Euros a pop for most things.

I fairly regularly transfer money from my Spanish bank account to my British bank account – but I can’t set up a monthly payment, oh no. I have to do it manually every month, even though I do the same bloody thing every month. And then, when I do, a new member of staff turns up who doesn’t know how to do it and ends up spending 30 minutes staring at the computer screen and ringing loads of numbers trying to find somebody who knows what to do, while also tutting and telling me at the same time that I’m holding up other customers and can’t I come back another time when they’re not there and another member of staff can spend another 30 minutes doing the same bloody thing.

Things that take a matter of minutes in a British bank take ten times longer in a Spanish bank. Even getting your salary. In the UK, the transfer from your employer’s bank to your bank is instantaneous. In Spain, it takes a couple of days to appear. I guess that’s because the bank’s carrier pigeons can only carry so much in one go.

Look, don’t get me wrong. British banks are far from perfect. And they’ve also had a load of taxpayers’ money to bail them out, yet still find the cash to pay out big, fat bonuses to big, fat bankers. (Note to big, fat bankers - come the revolution, you’re probably quite high up the average taxpayers’ “To Do” list, if you know what I mean).

But, really, come on Spanish banks. While there were many things in the 1970s that I loved, going on a nostalgia trip every time I walk through your bloody doors is not something I want to keep doing. Get a computer that works faster, buy a longer cable, install broadband, stop using so much paper. Do something, for God’s sake.

Everybody else is waiting for you to catch up.   

Save Me…… from angry claims of non-existent French conspiracies

For the second time in a matter of months it seems my blogs have magical predictive powers. Last week I wrote about the pointlessness of local rivalry in sport, and in particular football. Then, this week, as if by magic, the papers and the TV news here have been filled with reports of what appears to be an increasingly bitter sporting rivalry between Spain and France.

From talking with local people here in Seville, apparently it’s the fault of France that Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador, three-time winner of the Tour de France, got a two year ban for doping offences this week.

And as if to make matters worse, the Spanish government yesterday threatened to sue French TV station Canal Plus over a satirical sketch show that suggested more Spanish athletes and sports stars had ties with doping.

Contador got banned for having a tiny amount of banned substance Clenbuterol in his wee. From the cursory research I’ve done into it, the ban was imposed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), based in Switzerland. The case was brought by the World Anti-Doping Agency, also based in Switzerland and the International Cycling Union, also based in Switzerland. The three-man panel at the CAS which ruled on it was made up of a German, an Israeli and someone from Switzerland.

Now, maybe I’m missing something here. But I didn’t see the word “French” or “France” anywhere in that last paragraph.

So having found this out yesterday – because I don’t have anything better to do with my miserable life – I decided the right thing to do would be to go and stand on top of Seville’s tallest building with a loud hailer and tell the locals that in fact they’d got it all wrong and the French were actually innocent in all of this and deserved an apology.

But then France’s Canal Plus satirical news show called Les Guignols (The Puppets) – sort of a French version of 1980s British satirical news show Spitting Image – then went and broadcast three sketches poking fun at the situation; the latest sketch featured Spanish athletes including Rafael Nadal and Spanish football captain Iker Casillas signing a petition in support of Contador. But using needles instead of pens.

Oh ha ha. Very funny. Cheers France. Just when I was about to back you up.

Now Spanish people are fuming, the government has blown a gasket, and it’s a dangerous place to be round here if you’ve got even a vaguely Gallic accent or admit to liking Camembert cheese.

I’ve spoken to a few people here to try and work out what’s got them all mad about the French, aside from the stupid TV sketch show. And the message I tend to get back is that apparently the French are jealous of Spain’s sporting achievements and that there’s some sort of conspiracy going on to discredit the Spanish so that France can once again regain international sporting glory.

Well, ok, Spain does have the best football team in the world at the moment, granted. And their basketball team isn’t bad. But they don’t have the best tennis player or Formula 1 driver or golfer or rugby team or swimmers or snooker players or gymnasts or boxers or skiers or cricketers or table tennis players or ice hockey players or darts stars. The list of what they’re rubbish at is frankly endless.

So that got me thinking. Is this sporting pride all a bit misplaced? Is the Spanish perception of a French conspiracy a little far-fetched?

“Rafael Nadal’s the best tennis player of all time,” said a Spanish friend to me this week. So I googled “Who’s the best tennis player of all time?” and I found a website that said it was, in fact, Jimmy Connors (who’s American by the way, but you probably knew that already). Nadal didn’t even make it into the top ten. He popped up at number 24!

Another said “It’s all political. We’re the best in the world when it comes to sport and the French hate us for it.” So then I typed “Who is the best country in the world at sport?” into Google. The answer I got was “Australia”. And by a long shot as well, apparently, especially when you take into account sporting prowess per head of population.

Another said to me: “Well, the French control everything when it comes to sport, especially cycling.” So I typed in “World sporting federations based in France.” And I got nothing. But what I did find out was that the International Olympic Committee and FIFA are both based in Switzerland.

Can you see a pattern emerging here?

Look, I’m the first to admit that my research isn’t exactly scientific. But, while I may be going out on a limb here, I’m willing to bet that the real conspiracy is being masterminded by the Swiss and is designed to make everyone blame France for everything.

A classic case in point is Toblerone, a chocolate bar that you can’t actually eat without making your mouth bleed. Many people believe that the triangular shape of the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps gave Swiss inventor Theodor Tobler the inspiration for the shape of his creation. But what few people know is that the shape actually originates from a pyramid the dancers at the Folie Bergeres in Paris created as the finale for a show that Theodor saw.

So you see, every time you get a sore mouth from eating a Toblerone, it’s the bloody French who get the blame again. If I was French I’d have written an angry letter to the Swiss by now, telling them to back off.

Anyway, after all this googling, I was getting quite carried away so I finally typed in “What is Spain good at?”

Organ transplants, olives and the Women’s Roller Hockey World Cup apparently. They’ve won four times since 1992, which is nice for them. France haven’t ever won it apparently.

Save Me…… from pointless rivalries that test the boundaries of common sense

The dictionary definition of the word rivalry is “the state or condition of competition or antagonism. An angry or violent struggle, conflict or contention, especially of a bitter kind.”

Hmmm. Bitter, angry, violent, antagonistic. Yeah, that about sums up what I want to talk about this week.

Now, rivalry is a good thing in many cases. It fosters competition, improvement, drive, motivation and the desire for perfection in many things. Take sport for example. Barcelona and Real Madrid, Manchester United and Arsenal. What’s their rivalry based on? The fact that they are all at the top of their games and want to be the best.

But then there are the sporting rivalries based not on the drive for perfection, the desire to be better or the motivation to improve, but on the simple fact that the competition happens to live just down the road.

The simple fact – be it pointless, illogical, irrational, emotionally-twisted and moronic – but which drives the desire to see the other team get totally and utterly stuffed as much as possible, even if you’re not in the same league as them and the outcome doesn’t affect you in the slightest.

This is something that ‘s puzzled me for years, mostly because I have personal experience of it. But it’s come to a head quite neatly this last week because the teams I’m talking about have all faced off against each other in the last few days.

And the rivalries these particular teams foster – here in my current home in Seville and back in my old home of Croydon - encapsulate every bit of the twisted negativity that the dictionary offers up as definition.

In the case of Seville it’s the rivalry between Sevilla FC and Real Betis who both play in Spain’s premier division La Liga. In Croydon it’s the rivalry between Crystal Palace and Brighton, who both play in England’s second tier known as The Championship.

Like I said, my problem isn’t with rivalry per se, but with rivalry based purely on geography.

Ask any supporter of Sevilla FC (recently the more successful and generally more affluent team in the city) what they think of Real Betis (with a working class fan base and a poorer history, which has only recently seen an upturn with promotion back to the top division last season) and you will witness barely concealed rage and vitriol. It works the same way in the other direction too.

As for Crystal Palace and Brighton, well their rivalry is even more bonkers. They’re located a good 40 miles apart. But they still hate each others’ guts. Walk down the street in either town carrying the colours of the opposing team and you’re just asking to be punched in the gob.  

It’s not as if the teams have had much to be angry at each other for in recent times. Betis only got promoted back to the top division this season, so they haven’t even played Sevilla in three years.

The same is true of Crystal Palace and Brighton. Brighton got promoted to the same league as Palace this season, and before that the last time the two teams met was seven years ago!

I once asked a friend of mine, who was a Portsmouth FC fan, why he hated Southampton FC, 30 miles up the road, with the same vigour shared by Brighton, Palace, Betis and Sevilla. This was at a time when Southampton were two divisions below Portsmouth.

I was hoping he’d say something like: “Well, we are both on top of our games at the moment and we want to be the best, as it fosters a healthy drive towards perfection which is wonderful for the historic sport of football, my good man.” Or something like that.

He pondered for a moment, and then said “Well, it’s ‘cos they´re cunts aren´t they?”

Indeed. Now do you see my point?

I should add, at this juncture, for purposes of full disclosure, that I was born in Brighton, I grew up there and naturally enough I support the team. As far as Sevilla FC goes, I live about five minutes walk from their stadium and can hear the fans roar when a goal is scored on match nights, so naturally I keep an eye out for how they do as well.

Last week, when Sevilla played Betis at Betis’ stadium in the south of the city, the fun and games started in the morning even though the game didn’t kick off until the evening. As I walked past the stadium at about 10am, there were a couple of hundred fans chanting, singing and flag waving next to the – empty – team bus parked up outside. As I walked up the road, I saw another gang of supporters outside one of the big hotels doing the same thing. A few seconds later, the team bus drove past us and away up the road to turn around at the roundabout. The fans roared as it went past – still empty. Then they roared again, as it drove back and parked up to, I’m guessing, pick up the players holed up in the hotel.

It was still 10 hours before kick-off and the Betis stadium was about a 15 minute drive away. What were they going to do? Give the players a day-long tour of their own city on a bus?

Later in the afternoon, the fans were still outside the – wrong – stadium chanting, singing and flag waving. But by this time, their numbers had swelled. It’s never like this when they play other teams. Even Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Anyway, on Tuesday this week Brighton travelled to Palace for a night game and the usual crowd trouble flared up outside the stadium before and after the match.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that all this energy, anger, vitriol, venom and spite might produce some thrilling head-to-heads between these spitting, vicious rivals.

Well, the result of both games was a decidedly dull 1-1 draw. About as enthralling as a fart in a tornado.

So the conclusion that it’s all complete nonsense is surely obvious, is it not then?

Mind you, having said all that, I still think Crystal Palace are a bunch of wankers and I´m delighted when they lose, even when it has no connection to my team whatsoever. And no amount of logical argument, even by me to me, will ever convince me otherwise.