I’M NOT FAT I’M ANCRAM

The election season is about to descend upon us – this time it’s a European affair for the parliament. The polls take place between June 4 and 7 (European unity? The nations can’t agree over what day to vote).

Gibraltar it appears is to be visited by two big names from the Conservative Party. Michael Ancram will meet the Chief Minister and the Governor and then hold a reception at the Garrison Library on April 22. At some unspecified date William Hague will descend on the Rock.

The Gibraltar Chronicle describes Michael Ancram as a “heavyweight”. That he may be but I don’t think a person’s size should be brought in to the equation - indeed I was for many a year happily low-chested. “Big hitter” or “big beast” are the phrases we now use for those who play a major role in the British political parties.

Oddly the Tories only have a role to play in the politics of Gibraltar at the European elections. Whilst there is a Liberal party aligned internationally to the British Liberals, and the GSLP has socialist roots, there are no Rock Tories except every four year.

Gibraltar rather bizarrely votes in the South West England Constituency so whilst the Rock’s GSLP and Liberal supporters have allies in Labour and the Lib-Dems, there is no natural Tory constituency. So Ancram and Hague will have their work cut out sifting the Tories from the other chaff.

Of course the chance to vote Tory will be timely for Gibraltarians. Ancram and Hague, with the former leader playing a more major role, could within a year be members of the British Government.

In theory a Conservative Administration is more likely to defend Gibraltar’s interests more strongly – but Llanitos haven’t forgotten that it was Margaret Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe who in 1984 saddled them with the Brussels Process that opened up the current route for Spanish ambitions over sovereignty. Gibraltarians have long memories and it will be hard work getting a Tory vote from this rocky place.

THE RIGHT TO DEMONSTRATE, THE RIGHT TO RIOT

I have been looking on with an increasing sense of unease at the aftermath of the demonstrations surrounding the G-20 summit in London.

I have a very simple philosophy.

I believe that in a democracy we all have the right to demonstrate, to march, to protest, to make our views known.

I also believe that such demonstrations, whilst they may be policed, should enjoy the protection of the police who should ensure our freedom of speech.

I do not however believe that in a democracy we have the right to riot, smash the windows of offices, shops or banks or attack those who are sent to maintain law and order.

Sadly and tragically at such events as the G-20 the determination to demonstrate and the thirst to riot become intertwined.

Society must not ban demonstrations for fear of rioting but equally it would be disastrous to allow rioting as being a legitimate form of protest.

A policeman’s (or policewoman’s) lot was never a happy one. They have a duty to protect us and property from rioters – but they also have a duty to protect our right to demonstrate. It is a delicate dividing line.

Whether the police officers highlighted were guilty of aggression or merely doing their job – I have no idea as I simply do not know all the facts. If they are deemed to have a criminal case to answer - then let them be charged, face justice and if found guilty duly punished.

However it is not the police in Britain who pose the threat to democracy – but those who riot behind the shield of democracy. It is they who threaten to steal my right to peaceful protest and it is the rule of law that is my protection.

CAN RAJOY WIN AN ELECTION?

Mariano Rajoy, also known as Pappa Smurf to my readers, has not had a happy time since he succeeded José María Aznar as leader of the Partido Popular.

He seemed assured of victory in the 2004 General Election until the Madrid bombings intervened and his party’s handling of the aftermath saw the PP ejected from power. Since then he has again been defeated at the 2008 General Election by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s PSOE. To say his leadership has been under pressure amidst party scandals and other problems is to put it mildly.

Up till now, despite the economic crisis, the ruling socialist party has stayed ahead in the national opinion polls. However there is a glimmer of hope for Rajoy. An important shift in public support may be underway if the soundings for the European Parliament elections in June hold true.

According to polls published on Sunday in the Spanish national newspapers the Partido Popular has edged to a 4.5 point lead over PSOE in the June Euro elections.

This will be worrying news for the socialist government in the week after Zapatero reshuffled his government. It also comes on the back of a 70 billion euro government stimulus package to keep the economy afloat. However unemployment in Spain has almost doubled from pre-crisis levels to 15.5 percent - the highest rate in the European Union. Yet despite all that Zapatero and PSOE have put in showings in the opinion polls that Gordon Brown and his Labour Party would smear for.

In all probability the Euro Elections will be the last chance for Rajoy to win and stay at the helm of the PP. If he wins, he will survive for now and be given a springboard for the 2012 General Election. But, given that his party now has a slender lead, he goes on to another defeat – what then?

MADOFF ON THE ROCKS

Gibraltar is receiving unwelcome publicity over the involvement of some of its banks in the Madoff Ponzi scheme. The spotlight has first fallen on the Banque Jacob Safra just at the time the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says Gibraltar has not complied with all its off-shore agreements.

First the trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s brokerage is seeking the return of $150 million that an offshore investor withdrew less than two months before the jailed swindler’s arrest, saying the money should be returned to other customers.

A lawsuit was filed last Thursday as trustee Irving Picard steps up his efforts to use bankruptcy law to try to “claw back” funds withdrawn by some Madoff clients. He has already appointed a Gibraltar law firm to act on his behalf.

In the lawsuit Picard argues that whilst Madoff was running his long-standing Ponzi scheme, some customers received fund distributions that were nothing more than fictitious profits. This money, says the trustee, should be returned to help reimburse Madoff’s many victims.

The complaint was filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan against Vizcaya Partners, described as an international business with main operations in the British Virgin Islands. It seeks the return of $150 million wired from the Madoff firm to a custodian for Vizcaya on about October 31, less than two months before Madoff’s arrest. The custodian, Banque Jacob Safra of Gibraltar, was also sued.

The lawsuit says Vizcaya, according to the Madoff firm’s records, opened an account with the company in December 2001. Since January 2002, Safra or its affiliates invested about $327 million with Madoff for Vizcaya's benefit, the lawsuit said.

Meanwhile in the official OECD list, Gibraltar is one of 30 tax havens, which are ‘jurisdictions that have committed to the internationally agreed tax standard, but have not yet substantially implemented it.’ Gibraltar committed in 2002 to implement the agreed tax standard. Up to now it only has one agreement, the recent one with the USA signed just before the G20 summit in London.

Now a cynic (so that rules me out) might say that as Barack Obama has tax havens firmly in his sights Gibraltar’s actions were a ploy to take the president’s eye off their target. What is a fact is that after seven years of doing nothing the Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, rushed to London to sign the accord amidst much fanfare – so draw your own conclusions.

In the Gibraltar section of the OECD list are locations such as Andorra, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Nauru, Panama, San Marino and the Turks and Caicos Islands, and others. Whilst the other British zones of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man plus the island of Malta have all been promoted above them in the OECD’s standing.

People on the Rock might question why the Gibraltar Government signed in 2002 an accord that it seemingly had little intention of implementing when it could have acted on it immediately and lead the pack of good guys in off-shore finance.

Furthermore the Gibraltar Government has argued that it is no longer a tax haven but the OECD says it is, and that organisation’s opinion that counts amongst world leaders when they view the off-shore banking scene.

BIZARRE DEATH IN THE TAJO GORGE

The official statement is hard to believe but the National Police in Ronda have arrested a 63-year-old woman and her 36-year-old son after his girlfriend fell to her death in Ronda’s Tajo gorge and they did nothing to help her.

The tragedy occurred in the middle of last October but now the police have charged the pair with not helping the woman or seeking help from the emergency services.

The woman fell to her death from the balcony of a property in which she had lived with her boyfriend for several months overlooking the Tajo gorge. According to her partner at around 2.30 in the morning they had a row and she disappeared from the apartment. He heard a bang from the balcony door and went out to find her bag, her shoes and mobile phone but no sign of her.

It is at this point that the story changes from a tragedy to the bizarre. The boyfriend immediately phoned his mother to tell her that he thought his girl friend had fallen in to the gorge. She told him to be calm, to go to bed and sleep. Both seem totally unconcerned about what had happened to the girlfriend. In the morning his mother arrived, cleaned his house, looked down from the windows over the Tajo and almost certainly saw the body of the girlfriend.

They then went shopping and it was only afterwards that they called at the police station to report what had happened. The emergency services then raced to the scene and although they found the girl she had died around eight hours before help was summoned.

Now you or I might shake our heads in astonishment at this tale. But I will tell you for nothing that there isn’t a young Spanish wife or girlfriend with a partner who is a doted-on son who won’t nod their heads in sad understanding.

AON FOCAIL EILE

As my blog “Rape on a plate” proved so popular instead of a Hot Cross Bun or an Easter Egg I thought I’d bring you Aon Focail Eile.

When I ran a radio station on the Costa del Sol back in 1996 included on the programming was a weekly Irish music show. The owners of a San Pedro de Alcántara Irish restaurant contacted me one day so say I just had to hear a new CD they had – Aon Focail Eile.

The song was written by Ritchie Kavanagh but their version was by the Noel Furlong Family Group and both commanded the Irish music charts for weeks on end. Both myself and my presenter Tony Murphy played it so much we wore the CD out. We even had Noel Furlong on the show to discuss this wonderful play on words.

Now I’m told by Irish speakers that “Aon Focal Eile” literally means “one more word” or “another word”. However the song is about when Ritchie or Noel first went to school and as “focal” is pronounced “fuck-al” or basically “fuck-all” it was the nearest fun you could have to profaning whilst always falling back on the fact you were merely speaking Gaelic.

When I first worked in Dublin I was well used to “industrial language” but was quite shocked when the demurest of secretaries would “feck” this or that. Again she would have faked both shock and horror if for a moment I had suggested she were swearing insisting it was merely a common word in her native tongue.

Of course she was right and there was “focal” I could have done about it!

(To enjoy the delights of the Ritchie Kavanagh recording click on the video above).

RELIGIOUS, SPIRITUAL OR SUPERSTITIOUS?

Semana Santa, Holy Week, is now mid-way through its course in Spain and along with it the often highly emotional religious processions depicting events of that week in the Christian calendar.

Now when I grew up in the 1950s, as it happens as a Catholic child in a then basically Protestant country, I certainly viewed Spain as being one of the most religious European nations.

It was a time when Spain was in its second decade of Franco’s rule – a dictatorship that was firmly backed by the Catholic Church because it believed that his regime embodied and defended the one true religion and its one true church. There is much there for debate but that I’ll save for another day.

Today, in the post-Franco era, and especially under the socialist government, Spain has moved to being a very liberal rather than Catholic country. But what of the Spaniards themselves? What do they feel in their hearts or more specifically their souls?

It is an interesting question because on the streets of the cities, towns and villages we see acts of religious fervour that draw in all segments of society. Nor is it just Semana Santa. There is not a community in Spain that does not have its own specific version of the Virgin or a Saint to which it attaches strong devotion. When the statue is taken in procession those accompanying it represent far more than the church-going section of society.

Indeed when my mother came to visit I took her to a number of different churches for Sunday Mass and those attending made up only a very tiny percentage of the local population. Yet if it was Semana Santa or the honouring of the local religious patron or patroness the streets would have been packed with crowds.

On Sunday I attended one of the Palm Sunday processions in Ronda. The route was crowded and as there were many children involved there were grandparents, uncles and aunts, parents, brothers and sisters packing the route waving proudly to tiny Carlos and Josefa. However a young girl, and by young I mean in her late teens or early 20s, standing next to me made the sign of the cross very devoutly as the throne with the Virgin on passed by.

They say once a Catholic always a Catholic, and hence I always describe myself as a Catholic Agnostic. However the fact is that I no longer hold any loyalty or devotion to the Church of Rome but I would very much count myself as a spiritual person. Given that the Spain of today is a secular State, what beats in the Spanish heart and soul? Is it religion, a deeply held spiritualism or pure superstition coupled with perhaps tradition?

Discuss!