TILTING AT WINDMILLS: A CORRUPT NEW YEAR

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

A CORRUPT NEW YEAR

As we look back on 2008 and towards 2009 one fact is clear –corruption is alive and well and living amongst us.

You might argue that the world economic crisis is what occupies peoples’ minds at this time. True it is. However it was born of corruption in the financial sector in the USA from selling dodgy mortgages to the multi million dollar Ponzi scam of Bernard Madoff. It was then seen to spread around the world of greedy bankers and financiers aided and abetted by their political friends. Banks were hurriedly bailed out not so that they could help mortgage owners or embattled small companies but so that their bonuses, golden handshakes and company jets would stay airborne.

In Spain corruption is the sad norm. Voto en Blanco has touched on the tendency to corruption in the current PSOE administration looking back to the years of Aznar and González. It observes:

“Aznar pudo haber demostrado con su mandato que su partido era mejor y distinto que el corrupto PSOE de Felipe González, al que sustituyó en el gobierno en 1996, pero hizo justamente lo contrario, demostrando que ambos partidos eran similares, obsesionados con el poder, inclinados hacia la corrupción, incapaces de regenerar la democracia degradada, ambos interviniendo la Justicia, coartando la libertad de los diputados, partidarios de las listas cerradas, mintiendo desde el poder e incumpliendo las promesas electorales.”

This corruption in Spanish life has affected expats living in this country. However far more have lost their homes, life savings and future hopes at the hands of criminal financial advisors and investment companies who are British and prey on the weak and gullible amongst their own community.

There is no reason to believe that 2009 will be any different. The omens are not good.

A happy New Year!

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TILTING AT WINDMILLS

Sancho Panza is much less learned but a good deal saner than his master.

"At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that are on that plain.

"Fortune," said Don Quixote to his squire, as soon as he had seen them, "is arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those you see there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. "What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here and betake yourself to prayer, while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."”