Friday thoughts.

Weather report: a bright and sunny start here in Vigo today. Other parts of Spain have had floods in recent days, I understand, so we seem to be getting off lightly. By late afternoon at least one temperature gauge outside a chemist’s shop was showing 27 degrees. It was in full sunshine but even so it seemed a little excessive to me.

Tomorrow we head a little further south to Figueira da Foz in Portugal. Last year at this time we arrived there to find them suffering from the after-effects of Storm Who-Knows-What-Name, with trees blown through windows on the sea front and millions of Euros of damage all over the town. The year before we had had to buy sun hats and suncream. So goodness only knows what awaits us this year. From reports of a cold front crossing the Iberian Peninsula, however, I think we might not need our sunhats! But you never know!

The other day I went on a bit about how dark it will be when we change the clocks at the weekend. As has happened before, I was sending the time in the wrong direction. It will in fact be lighter in the morning and darker in the late afternoon.

In the baker’s shop cum cafe this morning I half saw a news report about the moving of Franco’s remains. Members of his family were saying that the decision was “electoralizada”, which presumably means “taken for vote-catching purposes”. Maybe so. But not all of those giving fascist salutes were of the older generation. Not the very young either, but young enough for me to wonder about their reasons for feeling that way.

I read somewhere yesterday that Jean-Claude Juncker has accused Boris Johnson of spreading lies during the Brexit campaign. Speaking on Thursday evening the European Commission president said he “should have intervened” in the campaign to point out “bulls***” and falsehoods spread by “Boris Johnson and others”. “They were saying things, some of them – lying. Telling the people things which have nothing to do with our day by day reality,” he told an audience at a think tank in Brussels.

It’s coming to something when foreign politicians start to say in public that ours have lied!! I doubt that it makes for good relations!

It is, however, perhaps rather a pity that he did not intervene at the time. It’s a bit late pointing it all out after the event. Maybe he too thought, as so many of us did, that the result of the referendum would be a vote to stay. Would his intervention have made any difference? Or would it just have reinforced some people’s views about an interfering Europe?

All water under the bridge now.

Just as I am growing more and more concerned about the acceptance of violence as a normal thing in our society, I come across a survey from Cardiff University that tells us that a majority of voters in England, Wales and Scotland believe that violence against MPs is a “price worth paying” in order to get their way on Brexit. And this is not just frustrated leave voters either. Of those who took part in the survey 71% of leave voters in England, 60% in Scotland and 70% in Wales agreed that violence towards MPs was “a price worth paying” for Brexit to be delivered. Remain voters - 58% in England, 53% in Scotland and 56% in Wales - felt the same if it meant we could stay in the EU. So remainers are only marginally less violent than leavers.

I am somewhat gobsmacked!

I would be interested to see if there is any difference in opinion between different age groups.