Are they all working to make me miserable?

The trick of being a Briton living in Spain is not to despair when looking at the political news in either country. 
     Despair is a perfectly reasonable response to the savage self-mutilation of the Conservative party, lashing out at itself at the expense of the country that it is supposed to be governing.  While, in Spain, the inability of so-called left wing political parties to form a new government to try and stop the haemorrhaging of any residual respect for a totally corrupt old political class is hardly an inspiring sight. 
     In neither country has a majority of the population voted for the rubbish that is parading itself as a government, but the oppositions in both countries have also shown themselves to be woefully inept at combining to change a disgraceful situation.

I read, with increasing horror, the way that the Conservatives in Britain are destroying the National Health Service.  Their high handed and duplicitous approach to an institution that they did all in their power to strangle at birth when it was founded, is depressing but entirely expected given their past history. 

Education, under Ms Morgan (or should I say Gideon, because he is the one who seems to be announcing educational policy nowadays) is headed towards disaster, with teachers becoming more and more disillusioned with the profession.

The support for Brexit speaks for itself, especially the collection of freaks on the Conservative side that speak out for it.  The referendum exists solely to keep Cameron in a job, as it was his panicked response to the rise of Ukip and has absolutely nothing to do with democracy or morality or belief, simply to do with political survival.  However, even Cameron’s selfishness pales into insignificance when compared with the incandescent self-absorption of The Boris, our own unconvincing and vapid British take on The Donald.  And these, and even lower life forms, pretend to govern us!  God help!

Which He certainly hasn’t done when it comes to Spain.  
The failure of the political elite (I use the phrase very, very loosely) to form a government is, in my view, a disaster.  I fear that Spain is, at the moment, an inherently conservative country and, in spite of the fact that PP (the Conservative party) has been shown to be systemically corrupt and little less than an elected kelptocracy, making themselves rich at the public expense, at least a third of the voting population will put their cross next to a party that will continue to rip them off.

The vulgarity of the criminality of PP is too extensive to document in a single blog, but simply Google ‘PP corruption' And see what you come up with!  And no one resigns, in spite of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing.  The system in this country has been set up, or has developed to the extent that justice is not a concept that has anything like the respect that it deserves.

There are whole swathes of society in this country that are ‘above’ the law or have a privileged position.  Judges are political appointments and they display astonishing partiality.  Political parties have far too much power and, bear in mind there is no transparency law in Spain!

We are to have a new election and the polls tell us that the basic situation is not going to change with the parties getting much the same proportion of the vote with PP increasing (sic!) its share, C’s increasing its, PSOE and Podemos dropping support.  That is difficult to understand and is totally depressing.

In my view, anyone who votes for PP, knowing the range and extent of corruption that is a key element in their existence, is doing a grave disservice to Spain. 

Anyone who votes for C’s is taking style for substance and ignoring the fact that the only real guiding principle of the party is the acquisition of power, especially by the photogenic leader.

Anyone who votes for PSOE is wilfully ignoring the fact that the failure of a government of change to keep Rajoy (aka Bromo) out should be squarely placed at its door.  Ideally, the leader of PSOE should resign for his total political ineptitude, but I recognize that it is impossible at this stage in an election.

So, for me, Podemos and the parties of the real left are the only real alternative for the country; and it looks as though the country is not going to agree with me and they will vote for the tired, corrupt and inept.

I confidently expect that the elections will, eventually, give this country another right wing government and that will be the result which will galvanize the independence movements in The Basque Country and Catalonia and lead eventually to the break up of Spain.

It is therefore with something like relief that I turn to my OU studies, the editing of an anthology of our poetry group, and the writing of the content of my next book of poems.  Never let it be said that the arts could not soften the horror of political life!

And the sun is shining!