Here Come The Judge

So, the Spanish justice minister has resigned. The reason? He went on a hunting trip with a prominent judge or, more accurately, he was on the same trip; there is a difference. Sr. Bermejo, the minister, says that it was all a coincidence and that he "barely even greeted the judge", reports the BBC website of the trip. Justice minister, leading judge - would hardly know each other after all. Still, there is no reason to assume that they are best of mates, so could well have just been on nodding terms during this trip.

There is rather more background to this, of course. Judge Garzón, himself taken into hospital last week following an anxiety attack, is one of the country's top investigative judges; he it was who had ordered the exhuming of graves as part of a case to charge Franco and cronies with war crimes. That order was overturned, but he keeps coming into the public eye, as he did when he recently ordered the arrest of members of the opposition Partido Popular - the day before the hunting trip in fact. And it's this that has really stirred the pot. The PP leader Mariano Rajoy reckons that there's something a bit fishy about the whole thing. What is fishy is the fact that many of the current scandals nationally and in Mallorca stem from previous PP administrations. Sr. Rajoy has sought to draw a connection between the hunting trip and the investigation, which he says is for political reasons ahead of forthcoming regional elections. It may be unfortunate that they were both on the same trip, but I daresay that there are other occasions, other than those of formal governmental duty, when their paths might cross and would go unremarked on. Perhaps more important was the fact that the minister didn't have a licence to hunt. That he has chosen to resign might suggest that there is some honour among Spanish politicians, which is more than might be said for British ones, those close to the justice ministry, for example. She may be the minister for the other half of the old combined Home Office, but how Jacqui Smith cannot resign is beyond me. Anyway, that's another matter.

Still on matters political though, my thanks to Anne Marie for finding that the mayors' big away day to Brussels was hilarious and for asking whether there has not been a protest over the fact that so many mayors and other officials can all troop off to Belgium for something that should be the responsibility and duty of just one or two representatives. And the strange thing is that there hasn't been. Barely a murmur in fact. One wonders why the people of Mallorca and the Balearics are, as Anne Marie suggests, so "passive and disinterested".


Right, let me remind you that there is now this twitter malarkey on the blog. I am pretty sceptical about it I must say. I introduced it only because I was hearing that it was a sort of must-do thing. I really shouldn't succumb to this sort of pressure. Whether it serves any purpose where this blog is concerned I'm not really sure; whether it serves any purpose anywhere I'm not really sure. It seems like another way of passing on largely inconsequential bits of nothingness, such as one hears all the time when people are making calls on their mobiles. "I'm just gonna 'ave a dump now, babe, awright." "Yea, me too, babe." "Love yer, babe." That type of thing.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - here's a good version rather than the expressly religious ones: from his "Mack The Knife" phase, Bobby Darin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M58eoKaI2g0). Today's title - who was this and on which TV show did he appear?

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