Does it hurt yet?

[Janet]

As part of the publication of the recently-announced austerity measures published in the BOE, unemployment benefit will be unavailable to those who have "sufficient means". The PM announced that unemployment benefit was going to be reduced after the first six months "to encourage the unemployed to look harder for work", but he didn't actually mention this, which has come as a complete surprise. Quite how "sufficient" is to be defined is unclear. JA

[Nova]

I wonder whether the French still have any guillotines left that they could lend or sell cheap to the Spanish.... 

[Janet]

 19 July did indeed turn out to be "a day of protests" throughout Spain, and the Canaries were no exception. Around 70,000 protesters from a range of sectors turned out through the islands to support the national protest called by the CCOO and UGT against the Government's austerity measures and cuts. In Tenerife alone some 30,000 protesters marched from Plaza Weyler to Plaza de la Candelaria in Santa Cruz, bringing the city to a standstill.

JA

[Janet]

I posted yesterday about the loss of the first free half hour's parking at our airports, and now there's more bad news for the island's motorists. As of midnight last night, petrol and diesel will go up  1.2 and 2 cents a litre respectively because of a Canarian Government decree, dormant since 1994, allowing each island to impose an insular surcharge on fuel. The money will go on Tenerife's roads, says the Cabildo. Whatever. Does it hurt yet? It's beginning to pinch, surely? JA

[Guanche]

I do think that some times this type of tax has a negative effect. People just stop using their cars as much. I know we have since the beginning of the year I would say we have cut our fuel bill by at least 60€ a month. Ok partly because they have opened a Mecodona in Guima, a 10 kilometre round trip instead of a 40 kilometre trip. And we go to the village for coffee more often instead of going to Santa Cruz a 60k round trip.

Things I have noticed though. The amount of tourist coach trips that come past our house has dramatically fallen this year. Ok I'm not watching the road all day but normally I notice them while in the garden and I haven't seen many. One of our neighbours runs a transport business. I think they have three large lorries. Two of them haven't mover for over two weeks. Lastly the amount of heavy transport on the motorway and going into the docks has, again dramatically fallen. This would be normal in the summer, but were into Oct now. We went to town on Monday about 10 am normally a busy time for the dock traffic. I only saw one container lorry turning in and non coming out.

[Janet]

Unemployment, evictions, social exclusion ... all are being blamed for an horrendous new effect of the crisis: families handing over their children into temporary care in order to avoid losing them altogether. The legal term is guarda , what we would call custody, where the child effectively becomes a ward of Court. Between 2009 and 2011, 237 children were placed in guarda, of whom 77 were handed over last year, 70 in 2010. Every attempt is made, it seems, for children to be placed in foster families or care homes near the parents, and of the 77 from 2011, 56 remained in the same municipality. Numbers are awaited with trepidation for 2012, but already the consejera de Cultura, Deportes, Políticas Sociales y Vivienda, Inés Rojas, has announced the start of a campaign to encourage people to put themselves forward as foster families. JA

[Nova]

So in the absence of a proper welfare system, it's the financially more secure who end up supporting other people's kids anyway!  I'd rather support them with monthly deductions from my salary while they stay at home with their parents than have them sharing my home with me!

Where will this end?  The situation already sounds too similar to when my great-grandmother had to hand four of her seven children over to an orphanage c.1900 because she couldn't afford to look after them.

[Guanche]

This is an apauling situation, truly apauling. In my wildest dreams I would never have dreamt about such a scheme.

[El Profesor]

This has long been a gripe of mine ..... after something I witnessed about 15 years ago.
The system here has been set up like this since long before this present crisis.

When a family is in grave difficulties, instead of helping them, a sort of bureaucratic machine kicks in and takes the children into care. This of course ends up costing society .... financially ..... many many times what it would have cost to provide a little food and clothing.
But that's just the financial cost, the social and psychological destruction sends ripples for generations.

This sort of thing becomes more common and more visible in a recession. A corrupt, inefficient and bureaucratic system that was rotten before the crisis. Care homes should be for orphans or children that are in danger.

[Janet]

Another suicide, this time a 62-year-old woman found in the street below her third floor apartment, where she was about to be evicted for unpaid rent. Link

I read yesterday a description of our present European economies as like war economies, worse than in any time since WWII. Well, how many victims will this war have?

How many have to die?