More Shouting from the Usual Suspects

Today it was the CNT (Confederación Nacional de Trabajo) who were shouting and demanding other people's money. Naturally enough, they have many members who are out of work and having a hard time, and many more worried about the future, but I wonder if they realize they are doing no more than releasing a bit of tension and annoying people.

They are not an important union; they were once important, during the war, but as a political movement, which is what it still is, in fact, insofar as it is anything at all. But it gets no publicity, it is ignored even by the government, and so cannot even pretend that they are doing it to draw attention to the crisis.

They were demanding the creation of jobs. This is not a bad idea, of course; when an increasing number of people are out of work, I think we can assume that even the idiot who thinks he is in charge here realizes that it is important to reduce that figure. He just doesn't know how to do it. The CNT probably imagine it can be done by raising taxes and having the government invent jobs for the unemployed. (It is fairly obvious that making it more difficult for the productive sectors to grow, in order to expand the non-productive is not the way to stimulate the economy, but some people cannot see beyond their noses). But they are not just ignorant far-lefters, they are supposed to be anarchists, which makes you wonder why they are so keen to see the government taking even more control of the economy.

As we passed, I speculated whether it was a condition of membership to have a silly moustache, no dress sense, and generally to look like a total prat, but Mrs Hickory suggested it was not the best moment to ask.

BTW, the said imbecile has just announced, unilaterally and without warning, that he is removing the Spanish troops from Kosovo. In fact, it looks as though it was his Defence Minister who made the decision without consulting him, and without informing the allies. Ally is a concept which this government does not understand, along with loyalty, freedom, education, economics and leadership. Zapatero is not a leader, any more than Brown is. They are both where they are by a combination of chance, favours owed, and fratricide among the better men. Neither is capable of captaining his house at cricket, let alone running a country. They are both of the type that begs to be allowed to keep the scorebook so they can pretend they are part of the team. They are both bumbling incompetents on the world stage, an embarrassment to their countries.