Monthly Archives: June 2009

Dr. Coldlove, or: Why I learned to stop worrying and love the aircon

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This post is related to my last, partly because it deals with my unpopular suggestions for dealing with common problems and partly because it involves mosquitoes (‘the devil’s moths’ as I call them*).

Last night, with an indoors temperature of 30º and level of humidity that a fan would not shift, only direct, we elected to put the air conditioning on all night. It was a simple enough decision. Gemma turned to me and said “I think we should put the a…” but by then, I’d already closed all the windows and found the remote control for our air-con unit. We continued to watch Star Trek: First Contact with the pleasant, and pleasantly guilty, feeling of cool air caressing our youthful skins. (Well, Gemma has a youthful skin; despite being YEARS younger than her, mine has developed the reddish hue and blood-vesseled texture of a Plymouthian living in Spain**).

We slept right through the night with barely a stir, except for when it got too cold. One of the many advantages of sleeping with the air conditioning on is the fact that it’s cooler when you want to sleep. Another advantage is that while you have the windows closed, all but the most ingenious mosquitoes are barred from entry to your boudoir. A disadvantage is that any cigarette smoke from the sitting room that wasn’t expelled before the airlock was sealed becomes your ‘smoke buddy’ for the night (though this probably helps some people maintain a minimal nicotine blood level and for that reason it should probably be counted as another advantage). There are no other real disadvantages… unless everyone does the same. Because that would cause massive amounts of carbon to be released into the atmosphere, by way of electricity generation.

So I ask you, people of Barcelona, Toulouse, Marrakesh, Los Angeles, Singapore, Perth (Australia, obviously) and Mumbai: tonight, switch your air conditioning off. I won’t, because I need it. But if you took some time to think about the future of the planet, you would.

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* I refer to moths as ‘the devil’s butterflies’ and mosquitoes as ‘the devil’s moths’.

** I was born in Freedom Fields

*** Obviously the title could have been “Dr. Coldlove, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the aircon” but I decided against it

Updated: Reports of electoral fraud in Spain

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As mentioned in comments on my last post, there are reports today of numerous discrepancies in vote counting across Spain. Many of these incidents involve relatively small numbers of votes. But taken together, there are enough examples to plausibly suggest a widespread campaign against parties of the left, and those supporting independence for some of the ‘autonomous regions’ in Spain.

The story is being widely reported in the Catalan and Basque pro-independence media but has had few mentions in the mainstream Spanish press. The main party apparently affected by these discrepancies is Iniciativa Internacionalista (II-SP), which the Spanish government failed to have banned shortly before the elections. Zapatero’s government accused II-SP of being a front organisation for ETA but failed to present evidence supporting this claim to the courts. II-SP received a vote of support from Arnaldo Otegi, spokesman for the outlawed Basque party Batasuna days before the elections. PP leader, Mariano Rajoy named them “the ETA list”, while UPyD leader Rosa Díez declared that II-SP “is ETA”. Apparently taking the lead from the USA’s former right-wing government, neither party leader deigned to share their evidence with the voters they were appealing to.

The allegations fall into three groups: (a) the general feeling that the huge increase in blank and spoiled votes coincides a little too smoothly with II-SP and other parties faring more poorly than expected; (b) specific examples of localities reporting examples of discrepancies between town-hall and Spanish Ministry of Interior official figures; and (c) inexplicable displays of support for far-right parties in areas where they have never previously shown any support (normally at the expense of another party which did worse than expected).

It’s too late for me to scurry around collecting examples of the three groups now, but the comments pages of this Avui story list several (at least one of which, the Vilafranca del Penedès one, seems to have been ‘corrected’, though by which side, I can’t tell). Rab is sure that the way that these discrepancies affect specific parties suggests a fraud. I’ll wait and see what appears tomorrow before I make the same judgement.

UPDATE

OK this is getting silly.

María Teresa Fernández de la Vega (Spanish VP)’s constituency recorded no votes for the PSOE

Europe of the Peoples-Greens have denounced irregularities

II-SP officials removed from recounts

Numerous towns appear to have returned erroneous numbers, major Spanish press outlets stay silent

EU parliament election results in Catalonia

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For coverage of Spain as a whole, take a look at Graeme’s posts here and here.

The results in Catalonia were a mixture of ‘more of the same’ and a disappointingly low turn out. The PSOE-PSC won again, albeit with a share of the vote that dropped from 42% to 35%. CiU were next, their share increasing 5 points to 22%. In fact, CiU were the only major party to see their actual number of votes rise in a worryingly low turnout of 37%. The PP gained a 1 point increase in their share of the vote, while ERC came fourth with a small drop in their share.

Interestingly, there were 72,681 spoiled or blank votes, which taken together constitute the 6th biggest constituency in the election, after IU-ICV who got 6% of the total vote. I’m told by a friend that there were also 6 times as many of these spoiled or blank votes than there were in the last EU parliament election.

Among the newer parties running this year, Iniciativa Internacionalista gained more votes than Rosa Diez’s UPyD – but both failed to get 1% of the vote here. Veritas and Esquerra Anticapitalista received 0.36% and 0.26% respectively.

The older style fascist parties look to have made some gains but their numbers are still so low that it’s hard to be too worried. The Falange Española de las JONS nearly tripled their number of votes… to a total of 1,575. The Falange Auténtica and Democracia Nacional also increased their number of votes, but the total number of people voting for far-right parties in Catalonia (no, I’m not including the PP), remains very low.

Table of results:

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Full table available at El País.