Just read this on the Olive Press.  Arthur would get my vote, but not quite sure you can blame the Germans.



Arthur Webster 
July 19th, 2013 12:09 pm


The Spanish debt is the price we pay for an incompetent and German dominated government decision to ignore the theft and miss-management of clients’ money by the Banks combined with the insane decision that the clients who had been robbed should replace the money that had been stolen from them.
The Spanish debt is also a cost involved in such a small country having 17 (or is it 18?) presidents, 17 (or is it 18?) parliaments and 17 (or is it 18?) civil services. How does a country as small as Spain expect to recover the costs involved in such a mountenous bureaucracy? There are 17 layers of officials whose single purpose in life is to justify their own existence by being as obstructive as they can.
It is said that 85% of university students want to join the government or civil service. Let’s face it, there is plenty of room for jobsworth administrators to build their dangerous and intractable sections to absorb them.
How is it possible for a local president to earn more than the national president? How is it possible for 17 presidents to delay and/or modify any decrees or acts passed by the national government?
Why is it necessary for a small country like Spain to introduce its own common market? What degree of insanity and incompetence can possibly justify the huge swathes of paperwork that was necessary for a small business man to operate in different areas of Spain?
It is long past time that Spain became a unified whole and acted as such. How can anybody outside Spain possibly begin to understand that an agreement with the national government is not necessarily acceptable to the local governments?
How are tax payers supposed to continue financing so many layers of counter productive bureaucracy while trying to support the members of society who need their financial support?
The endemic corruption that seems to infest Spain at all levels (even my neighbours know who to bribe if they need something from the town hall) can’t be brought under control until government itself is centralised and audited.
While the government is sundered in the way it is, there is no national will for things to improve.
Local employers are happy sliding under the radar and paying for work on the black economy.
Taxation is one of the biggest disincentives to employers to increase their payrolls.
Many workers are so disillusioned that they will gladly join the slave markets and work with no contract for a bit of cash in hand.
The fiscal debt of Spain is an artificial creation and could be enormously reduced by centralising all government, massively reducing the civil service payrolls, treating the banks as the delinquent and greedy organisations that they are and making it possible for a business to comply with simpler employment regulations (where ever they are in Spain) and bring their payrolls under the tax and social security umbrellas.
Most of all, if the EU continues to militate against common sense solutions to Spanish problems, Spain must withdraw, regain her independence and climb out from under the beligerant dictatorship of Germany.

Endemic corruption
High cost of running a business
Outdated labour practices
Protectionism at most levels
Socialist governments buying votes with public jobs
Property market on it's knees and probably has further to fall
Black money

No worries

I love it here - they haven't found a way to tax the sunshine yet ....