The Cádiz Carnival in One Tweet

Y por suerte no son los únicos pic.twitter.com/aaqDQqSbPK

— Siempre Atento🔻 (@SiempreAtento2) February 15, 2020

Fake Photography as Food for Thought

Alison Jackson's photography explores the cult of celebrity and how it's created through imagery and the media. An award-winning artist from the UK, Jackson's work has garnered both praise and condemnation. Many people are now taking notice, including President Donald Trump.

Beatles videos + lyrics

Beatlestube.net is a site that tries to organize all The Beatles videos that you can find on the web. There are plenty of Beatles music footage on Youtube™ and Google Video™, but it's difficult to have them in a logical sequence. Beatlestube.net will help you to do that.

If you are looking for all The Beatles videos from an album here is the albums page. Plus you have all the lyrics near the clips and you can post a comment for each video.

You can find also some good concert clips, and these movies: A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine and Let It Be...

Enjoy it!

Lyrics Training / Inglés cantado

Lyrics Training is an easy and fun method to learn and improve your foreign languages skills, like English, through listening to the music and typing the lyrics of famous songs, with the help of subtitles in six languages, classified in three levels.

Brexit: Bad Advice from the People

By IAN McEWAN

There is no turning back. The stubborn negotiation to say enough about Theresa May, and after Boris Johnson for a brief period, has achieved the most masochistic and meaningless ambition ever dreamed of in the history of the islands. The rest of the world, with the exception of Presidents Putin and Trump, attended the process in amazement and dismay. In December, a majority voted in favor of the parties which called for a second referendum, but these unfortunately could not make common cause. Now we have to pick up the tents, maybe to the sound of church bells, and hope that the 15 years of difficult road we are going to take will bring us back to something similar to what we had, with our multiple trade and security treaties, health and scientific cooperation, in addition to thousands of other useful agreements.The only sure thing is that we will be asking ourselves questions for a long time. Let’s put aside for a moment the lies of the campaign in favor of leaving the EU, its suspicious funding, the Russian intervention or the ineffective Election Commission and let’s think of magic dust. How is it that a question of constitutional, economic and cultural consequences of such magnitude was settled with a simple majority and not with a super majority? A parliamentary document (Briefing 07212) from the time of the Referendum Law of 2015, indicated the reason: the referendum had to be purely consultative. The consultation was to "allow the electorate to express an opinion". How has "consultative" been transformed into "binding"? Thanks to the blinding dust that the populist hands threw into our right and left eyes.

We have endured the crippling bond between the government and the opposition. Corbyn held the door to Europe open for Johnson to cross. In this case, if one went far enough to the left, one ended up meeting the right which came from the other side and threw himself into its arms.

What have we learned in our blindness? That those who did not prosper in the old state of affairs had no compelling reason to vote for their maintenance; that our prolongation of parliamentary chaos was the result of an error in approach when formulating a yes or no question for which there were dozens of answers; that the long-standing ecology of the European Union has deeply influenced the landscape flora of our country and that the uprooting of these plants will be brutal; than what used to be called hard Brexit became soft; compared to the threat of non-agreement which still persists today; that any form of exit, according to the calculations of the government itself, will cause the economy to contract; that we are good in the multiple and bitter division: young against old, cities against countryside, university graduates against those who give up; Scotland and Northern Ireland against England and Wales; that any past, present or future international trade agreement limits our sovereignty, as is the case with the Paris Agreements that we sign or with NATO membership, and that, therefore, "regain control" has been the most promising and empty cynical of this deplorable period.

We were surprised. A few years ago, we were asked to list the country's problems - the gap between the rich and the poor, the overwhelming national health system, the north-south imbalance, crime, terrorism, austerity or the housing crisis, among others - the majority would not have thought of including our membership of the European Union. How happy we were in 2012, with the feeling of satisfaction that followed the success of our Olympic Games. So we didn't think about Brussels. What set us in motion was what Guy Verhofstadt called a "cat fight" in the Tory party. These cats have been fighting for decades. When they dragged us on and pushed us to take sides, we suffered from a collective nervous breakdown. Then enough people wanted the anxiety to go away and wanted "to get Brexit done." Repeated ad nauseam by the Prime Minister, it seemed almost rude to wonder why.

At the very beginning of the referendum campaign, we learned that “at the gates” referred exclusively to emigration, but also that it was the decision of the United Kingdom, and not of the European Union, to authorize the unlimited emigration of persons from countries applying for EU membership before the expiration of seven years of legal residence; that it is the United Kingdom which has chosen to allow emigrants from the European Union to stay in the country for more than six months without work; that the UK has successfully defended EU enlargement to the east, and that it is our country, not the Union, which admits that emigration from third countries continues (and why not?) while that from the EU decreases. We also learned that it was the United Kingdom, and not the European Union, which had decided to replace our patriotic blue passport by a garnet one. Although, when I look at them, my old passports seem almost black to me.

History has committed many injustices with the British state, but very few come from the European Union. Brussels did not insist that we neglect the post-industrial cities of the central and northern regions of England. Nor did he ask us to let wages stagnate, to allow billionaire donations to go to the CEOs of bankrupt companies, or to put shareholder value to social good, to sink our health care system, our social assistance and our Sure Start Family Assistance Program, we will close 600 police stations and allow the breakdown of public education centers.

The task of the Brexit campaign was to convince the electorate otherwise. In the referendum, it obtained a success of 37%, enough to change our collective destiny at least for a generation; to lead a sufficient number of people to believe that the source of all their grievances is a hostile external element is the oldest trick in the populist's manual. Like Trotsky for Stalin, the United States for the mullahs of Iran and Gülen for Erdogan, it's now Brussels' turn.

Hedge fund owners, plutocrats who donate to the cause, Eton elders and newspaper owners present themselves as enemies of the elite. No more magic powders. To say that the problem in Northern Ireland has been resolved is a dangerous hoax. We have seen the shame of the reasoned argument fall. The Brexit impulse contained important elements of the blood and earth ideology with touches of imperial nostalgia. These frightening desires went beyond mere facts.

We adopt a slang: "article 50", "frictionless trade", "just in time", "safeguard". How much we liked to use this slang. We have learned to respect an "invisible border". Before it all started, only a few knew the difference between the customs union and the single market. After three years, little has changed. A survey carried out last year found that many Britons thought that "falling asleep" was the same thing as being on duty. I wish.

Brexit leaders and the Leader of the Opposition have always lacked the time to start the two-year article-50 clock. They were afraid that those who had voted for the exit would change their minds; that among voters who did not go to the polls last time, supporters of the permanence doubled those for the exit, and that young voters who joined the census were overwhelmingly in favor of the European Union. The generals of brexiters they rightly feared a second referendum.

At a minimum, we can all agree that we will be a little poorer. As one of my school teachers said, if it’s really worth doing something, it’s worth it even if it’s done wrong. Theresa May never dared to say that with Brexit we would be better. She did not even tell us if she would vote for the exit in a second referendum. We must recognize her honesty. On the contrary, Boris Johnson, during his presentation to Parliament of his vision of the post-Brexit panorama, promised to close the wealth and opportunity gap between the north and the south of the United Kingdom, and to make the country the nerve center of the most advanced battery technology. He forgot to mention that the European Union had not intervened against the realization of any of these projects.

The redefinition of our new trade relations with the European Union will be a concern that will last for several years. As for the position of the United States, take a good tour of the Midwest of the country and spend a month crossing a desert of monocultures without seeing a wild flower. To compete with this, our agriculture should be ready to receive an injection of hormones. Our farmers should get rid of unproductive hedges, trees that separate fields and three-meter limits, all those parts now pieces of a museum. In its trade talks with the European Union, the United States has not considered tightening its regulations on animal husbandry, food production and environmental protection, although this would have given them access to 500 million consumers. The great American agrarian industry will not change its attitude for a country of only 65 million inhabitants. If we want a deal, we will have to lower the bar.

The times of damage and loss are coming. In a dangerous world beset by noisy "strong men", the European Union was our greatest hope for an open, tolerant, free and peaceful community of nations. The expansion of populism in Europe is already threatening these hopes. Our withdrawal will weaken resistance against the xenophobic tendency. The lesson of our country's last centuries of history is simple: the turbulence on the European continent will lead us to bloody conflicts. Nationalism is rarely a peace project. Neither does it care about the fight against climate change. It prefers to let the tropical forests and the Australian forests burn.

Take a road trip from Greece to Sweden and from Portugal to Hungary. Forget your passport. How rich, what exuberance there is in the gastronomy, customs, architecture and languages ​​of this group of civilizations, and how profoundly and proudly different each national state is from its neighbors. No sign of oppression from Brussels, nothing of the gray commercial monotony of the continental United States. Remember all you learned about the dilapidated and desperate state of Europe in 1945, then contemplate the tremendous economic, political and cultural achievements: peace, open borders, relative prosperity and promotion of individual rights, tolerance and freedom of expression. Until yesterday, it was the place where our older children, if they wanted to, would live and work.

All this is over, and for the moment the force is on the side of English nationalism. Its champion is the pro-Brexit cabinet of Boris Johnson, whose monument will forever remain a mocking smile perfected in the days of the former Soviet Union. I lie, you know, and I know you know, but I don't give a damn. Like when they said that "the five weeks of Parliament's suspension has nothing to do with Brexit". Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg were the masters of the mocking smile. The premature decision of the Supreme Court which held that the suspension was clearly illegal still stings. Recently, former Interior minister Michael Howard began to murmur against the judges. Expanding political control over an independent judiciary would be in keeping with the Johnson-Cummings project. Hungarian Viktor Orbán leads the way.

Supporters of the permanence have defended a nicer world, but we have always been the herbivores of the debate with our huge bonachonas and our ridiculed demonstrations. "A crowd full of hate," The Sun said; "An elite," The Daily Telegraph wrote. If 16 million is an elite, it’s to be welcomed that the UK is a model of meritocracy.

The truth is that we have been excluded. Thanks to the work and the grace of Corbyn and his mediocre lieutenants, we did not have an effective voice in Parliament. On her first day at the helm, Theresa May promised at the gates of Downing Street that she would rule for all British people. Instead, she threw half of the country to the dogs to appease the right wing of her party. Boris Johnson's rally was originally decided by a very small group of former voters, most of whom have said in polls that they would like Donald Trump to rule the United Kingdom and that they looked forward to hanging being restored. Similarly, Johnson reached the lowest level of populist vulgarity when he declared last June that the country would break away from the EU incubus. His dream has come true.

As for the extremes, we have never stabbed or killed a member of the Brexit Party in the street; we have rarely shown a propensity to send anonymous death and rape threats like the ones Gina Miller, Anna Soubry and many MPs have encountered on numerous occasions. However, anti-Semitic Labor Party emails were shameful, as was the crowd that besieged Rees Mogg's house and made fun of him. But supporters of the permanence do not shrewdly urge our compatriots to cause unrest in the event of a second referendum whose outcome would be unfavorable. About two-thirds of the voters did not vote in favor of the exit. The majority of businessmen, unions, farmers, scientists, finance and the arts were against the Brexit project, and three-quarters of MPs voted to remain. Ignoring the obvious public interest, however, our representatives crouched behind party cliques and "the people have spoken", that grim Soviet phrase, and his successor, "respect Brexit". It was the magic powders that clouded the mind, blinded reason and reduced the opportunities for our children. 
Copyright © Ian McEwan 2020