Things that people have been getting worked up about.

I have sometimes been told by friends in Spain that we don't have a problem with corruption in the UK. Maybe they don't count tax evasion, which just might be a kind of national sport on mediterranean countries. But David Cameron has been coming in for a whole lot of stick from revelations in the Panama papers. He doesn't seem to have dealt with it very well. 

Someone who appears to believe in total openness and revelation is the Archbishop of Canterbury, telling us all how he has just discovered that his father, the man he had always considered to be his father, was not his father after all. Exactly why we need to know this is something that escapes me entirely. But then, maybe he is wise to come out and tell the world before someone else makes a big story of it and starts to accuse him of trying to hide it. Unbelievable! 

Equally unbelievable, in my opinion anyway, are the people expressing their surprise that the Pope has not declared in favour of gay marriage and abortion. The man may be very liberal-minded in all sorts of ways but he is still the head of the Roman Catholic church! 

Plastic bags! Here's a link to an article about the plastic bag charge introduced sixth months ago in the UK. One thing that struck me in the article was the fact that people have been stealing supermarket trolleys. In Spain, where there is a supermarket between our block of flats and the twin block next door, I regularly see people walk out of the supermarket with their trolley full of stuff, push it through the doors into the blcok of flats and into the lift. Presumably they return the trolley after they have unloaded their shopping. I have not yet seen abandoned trolleys in the street outside and I can't imagine anyone hoarding them in their flat. 

And then are the plastic bags themselves, only one cent for a small one or two cents for a large one, which seems more acceptable that five pence somehow. Or you can buy a larger bag, a "bag for life" kind of bag rather than a small plastic one. They cost a bit more but they last longer. Here in the UK I have them from several supermarkets. At first it seemed odd to take a Tesco bag to Sainsbury's and vice versa but you soon get over it. In Spain they mark the bar code in the bag to show that you have paid for it. This may be more indicative of their mistrust of people going into supermarkets with their own bag. Who knows? 

You might slip all sorts of stuff into the bag instead of into the trolley. Many people leave their bags in the little storage lockers at the entrance and rush to get them while their purchases go through the till. Pull-along shopping trolleys are similarly tethered to special places at the entrance, as are wet umbrellas for that matter. And some places insist on your leaving purchases from other shops in those storage lockers. And stores like Mediamarkt encase your shopping bags from other stores in plastic. 

Are spaniards more prone to shop-lifting or are the British shopkeepers just more carefree about it all? Or is it just a national Spanish belief that corruption is rife everywhere?