Editor's Blog May 22nd 2012
Rumours
Again I am amazed at the naivety of some of the people that write on the walls of Facebook political groups, the latest one being about the rumour of a Spanish fisherman blockade of the border this morning. Timings were given as 10:00hrs so we sent a team down there nice and early and as of 12:00hrs all seems quiet.
Rumours like this start as just whispers, which are fanned by the breath they are carried on which eventually hit a spark and catch fire. Like all fires, it requires three elements to keep burning, fuel, heat and oxygen.
Commenting, many people are on the verge of panic, others are saying well close the border and see if we care, we can manage on our own. But can we really? We rely heavily on the importation of food which most of it comes overland, we rely on our Internet which is funnelled from Madrid, we need to get rid of our rubbish which we do so in Spain (LOL).
These and a multitude of other services, like medical care, are necessities that we could live without but only temporarily. We also have hundreds if not thousands of Gibraltarians that live in Spain but work in Gibraltar, a closed border is not ideal, we have become dependant on our neighbour, as much as some Lineses have become on us.
Maintaining a hard line, like the one from Madrid, will cause us hardship in buckets. Border queues are not a thing that have developed overnight, they are a constant companion that get better or worse at the whim of politicians who orchestrate every single action.
This current climate may endure whether the Spanish fishermen get to fish in Gibraltar waters or not. And this is all down to the fact that the current Spanish Central Government is hell bent on pushing their sovereignty claim.
Its not about the Spanish fishermen, it never was, its about deflecting and turning the eyes of the Spanish population away from the very serious issues that are affecting our neighbours at this time.
There are Spaniards that will deny this and say that everything is hunky-dory, but when I went to throw out my rubbish this morning I saw a team of Spaniards, two males and a female, rooting around in the wheelie bins, if this is not the measure of a country in the doldrums then I don’t know what is.
Whatever the next few months will bring, it probably wont be good, but I will assure you of one thing it will be Jose Average who will suffer the most.
Ed.
