What would you like to see done ?
What would you ask you loacl politician ....
Dont forget we r a fourm here and do have a say
Jurdy

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(1) Address the 15M issues, negotiate and commit to them!!!

(2) Esperanza, why did you raise the metro fare for the rest of the Madrile?os, but discount the pilgrims, and kept it at this price afterwards whilst trying to cut salaries of teachers without knowing anything about their working hours??

(3) And as rules of democracy depicts, would be a good start to open up parliament sessions for the public (other than that 1 day a year public hearing day.. that?s just pointless). In Oz, we always have the odd granny, ex-MPs watching, so nothing escapes! This will probably help open up issues of corruption.

(4) Still don?t understand what this PP foreign MP thing is about… apparently they even opened a branch of PP in London to recruit young Spaniards living in London… *Play PP AstroBoy Music*

(5) PP and PSOE, are you now slaves to the Merkel administration?? As the Germans light heartedly made claims to several Spanish islands already.

That?s more or less it at this point. 😊

So much happening in this country, and I can?t even get started about the Gillard government…

What would I like to see done?

1) Streamline local government. What is the point of a local council which has too few inhabitants to be be able to provide services? I have seen councils here in Galicia with less than 3,000 inhabitants where the mayor is on 60,000? a year!!
2) Get a serious grip on the black market and corruption.
3) Modernisation and centralisation of services such as driving licenses, passports, social security. How much does it cost to reproduce these services in every large city in Spain? How much time is lost by workers in Spain queuing all morning to renew a driving license or pay a traffic fine?
4) Get rid of the Provincal layer of local government.
5) Reform electoral system as it’s manifestly opaque.
6) Review the constitution - what was relevent post Franco is not necesarily the most relevent in the 21st century.
7) Get all-party agreement on long term strategy for education.
8) Adopt a national housing planning policy & abolish the ‘off plan’ method of purchase which promotes speculation and unfinished projects.
9) Reduction in social security payments for small business startups.
10) Introduce regulatory bodies with teeth to control ‘essential’ service industries such as telecommunications, electricity, gas, water.
11) Prosecute football clubs who do not pay their taxes.
12) All-party investigation into employment, listening to all interested parties; unions, industry, social groups, church etc. I know it all came to nothing the last time, but they should try again.
13) Union reform - take away their direct funding from the State and make them more accountable to their electorate.

What would I say to my local politician?
I’d ask him who he was (or who they are) and what has he done to represent La Coru?a.

I’d want him to push for the my right to dual nationality the same as latin-americans (to give me the right to vote), which the current constitution provides for but is not adopted for EU citizens.

I’d want him to reform the voting laws in autonomous parliament elections - I want to vote there aswell.

I’d tell him to pull his finger out, stop bickering and pull Spain out of the mess it’s in.

There’s more but I’ve forgotten what the original question was.

Many of these are really good and I’d agree with them. I especially like Gretina’s point about making parliamentary sessions completely public and broadcasted. RB’s ideas about streamlining the smaller local council, centralizing federal services, national housing policy and union reform are all superb as well.

I’m really focused on the employment reform myself. I’d really like to see regulations softened on hiring and firing to kick start a jobs program. I’d probably want to see something about cleaning up the barren developments that are laying waste to vast tracks of land or remain enormous concrete eyesores as a bit of a make-work program.

Given that like the UK Spain is essentially a 2 party left or right of centre set up, it really doesn’t matter who wins… the end result will be just another case of Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.

Faced with the collapse of the banking system which ultimately led to the ‘Crisis’ the PSOE had to make some very hard choices and these choices will lead to this governments failure to win in November. Things would have been no different under Rajoy and the PP; the poorest sections of the community would have been hit perhaps a little harder in fact just as they have in the UK under the Cameron / Clegg administration. So far as personalities are concerned, Jose Blanco has to go… permanently. Zapatero hasn’t done too bad a job but its time to go… just a shame that Rubalcaba is next in line; you need to be physically fit to do the job and frankly I don’t think he is.. My own personal choice for leader would have been Carme Chacon, but perhaps sensibly she withdrew from the race.

As for the PP I wouldn’t buy a used car from any of them… all too smug and full of their own importance.

Being purely selfish I would have to say that my vote would go to the person who would give the public utility suppliers the kick in the ass they so richly deserve.

Endesa for being so totally intransigent in their dealings with their customers, Water companies for failure to supply potable water ‘on tap’ to rural areas, Telefonica for their many and various failures to provide a good reliable communications system be it phone or adsl.

An even bigger kick in the ass to the water company in particular, in my area who, once again and without any prior warning turned off the mains water supply to our village community at 11 o’clock yesterday morning and still haven’t turned it back on again. This could well be a repeat of Christmas 2009, when they turned off the water at midday on Christmas Eve and it stayed off until December 28th. No forewarning, no apologies.

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foxbat - 13 September 2011 05:28 AM

An even bigger kick in the ass to the water company in particular, in my area who, once again and without any prior warning turned off the mains water supply to our village community at 11 o’clock yesterday morning and still haven’t turned it back on again. This could well be a repeat of Christmas 2009, when they turned off the water at midday on Christmas Eve and it stayed off until December 28th. No forewarning, no apologies.

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Brutal! What do you do with no water for showers and laundry?

So the PP want to create 3,5 million new jobs by creating 1 million new businesses. Does Spain really need 500,000 more bars and 500,000 more hairdressing salons? I see that the PP heirarchy have said this is an aspiration, not an electoral promise. I would imagine that Gonzalez-Pons will be gagged from now on.

Seriously though, regarding employment, it’s true that they need to be more flexible regarding contracts. There also needs to be greater control on the implementation of workers rights to go hand in hand with these changes. I’ll explain: my brother-in-law works in construction, the company he works for employs around 100 people in various capacities. Two years ago the owner had to make redundancies, and he said to his potential victims ” OK, I imagine that I’ll be looking for people to hire again in around 9 months, you can take redundancy with ciompensation as stipulated, but I will not hire you again when things improve, or you can forget about redundancy pay and be on the shortlist when things improve”. Many people forewent the redundancy pay in the hope of being re-employed, but two years on there are more lay-offs in the pipeline. This is on top of wages below convenio, hours in excess of the maximum, only having two weeks holiday per year and non payment of the Summer extra pay. The next government should, as a priority sort out employment law, get an agreement which favours the hiring of workers, albiet with less ‘rights’ but then these rights need to be enforced.

There are two points in the village where potable water is normally available 24/7. I say ‘normally available’ because obviously there are certain times of day when everyone needs water at the same time and this system struggles to keep up with the demand.

The normal supply to the taps or faucets in the houses is not potable; it’s ok for most daily domestic tasks, but not for drinking. When the water authority turn the this supply off, the two potable water points become the only alternative short of buying bottled water from the village shop.

Showers are impossible during these cut-off periods; a strip wash is the only alternative and this only after boiling up pans of water on the stove.
Not too bad during the winter months but during the Summer when daily temps can reach 40C its a bit of a problem. Laundry too is impossible except via hand-washing.

It’s not quite the Third World but I can see it from here…!

btw… its now 26hrs since they turned it off and its still off…

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This ‘job creation’ scheme already been tried here in Spain; thus we have half finished roads that go nowhere. Five years ago the Junta de Andalucia started building a bridge over the access road to our village as part of a scheme to remove heavy vehicles from the next town by building a bypass. Work stopped about two years ago… the bridge is incomplete, the road it was supposed to carry is in place but only as a road bed and this being rapidly overgrown as nature takes back that which was stolen. A total waste of money and labour… sure it kept some people employed for a while but…

Consider the brand new Airport at Cuidad Real… a 13000 foot single runway airport with all mod cons, a link with RENFE’s AVE system, road links with one of Spain’s main arterial routes. This is an airport that has everything… except aircraft and passengers! Air Berlin moved in shortly after it opened with many routes into Germany; then they pulled out because of no passenger demand. Ryanair opened a three times a week service to London; they too pulled out. Another total waste of money. As previously…sure it kept some people employed for a while but…

I really don’t know the way out of this situation; whatever is decided it will no doubt have been tried (and probably failed) previously elsewhere.

One thing is for certain sure… Rajoy and his cronies won’t make a jot of difference. Spain like the UK will just crumble under the weight of it debts.

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