Latest news with #Socialists
Local Spain
4 days ago
- Business
- Local Spain
Inside Spain: Another bid to limit foreign buyers and house brands rule
If foreign property buyers from wealthy Western nations currently feel targeted by the Spanish government, it's not hard to understand why. In April, Pedro Sánchez's administration scrapped the golden visa residency scheme which gave non-EU nationals Spanish residency in return for buying property worth €500,000. Last week, the ruling Socialists officially lodged their proposal to charge a 100 percent tax on non-EU non-resident property buyers, effectively doubling the price they pay for homes in Spain. There have also been proposed foreign property ownership limitations put forward by authorities in the Canaries and the Balearics. And most radical of all was the suggestion submitted by Catalan separatist party ERC to require actual foreign residents to apply for a permit to buy a Spanish property if they haven't become permanent residents yet. In other words, if they haven't officially resided in Spain for five years. This proposal was rejected by Spain's Congressional Housing Committee in late April, but now ERC are trying to get such a law passed only in Catalonia. The idea is the same as that shelved a month ago - a regional authorisation system whereby foreigners planning to buy a home would first have to prove their eligibility by applying for a permit from the housing department of the region where the property is located, in this case Catalonia. The criteria for this would be first proving five years of continuous residence in the country, so it would exclude those with a temporary resident card from being able to buy a home. The initiative will be debated in the Catalan Parliament next week. 'You can't have a situation where a firm on the other side of the world buys real estate for speculation,' ERC MP Mar Besses said. ERC's Secretary General Elisenda Alamany has also defended the proposal by saying that 'we want people who buy to show their commitment to the city (Barcelona), as it's the way to guarantee our identity and communal lifestyle.' Both points made by members of ERC are certainly valid and understandable, but they seem to be more directed at investment companies as opposed to the temporary residents who they are looking to stop from buying homes. Can their residency in the northeastern region and desire to buy a home there be considered 'speculation'? Just as is happening with the crackdown on Airbnbs in Spain, the lines between huge businesses focused just on profits and people with one or two homes in Spain are becoming blurred. Protestors hold a banner reading 'The neighbourhood is not for sale' during a demonstration to demand better access to housing in Barcelona on November 23, 2024. (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP) In other matters, there was a time not long ago in Spain when buying Mercadona's Hacendado house brand was almost seen as defining one's class or socioeconomic status. The idea for many was that if these marca blanca (house brand) products are cheaper, they must be of a worse quality. It's a silly concept most of us are guilty of at some point, one which doesn't factor in the lower cost of distribution, packaging and marketing for supermarkets who produce their own products. Fortunately, through a combination of necessity and change of mentality, Spanish shoppers have gotten over their prejudices about house brands. Spaniards buy 20 percent more house brands now than they did in 2003, representing 44 percent of their grocery shopping, according to a study by Kantar for Spanish business daily Expansión. In some cases, the percentage is even higher: Lidl (82.1 percent), Mercadona (74.5 percent), Carrefour (40 percent), Día (57 percent). And according to their findings this shift isn't just about tightening one's belt because of the rising cost of living, although they admit that this has been the catalyst. Supermarkets in Spain have developed their own premium differentiation strategy - with different categories of house brands - which has broken the traditional monopoly of the big name brands. Now the marca blanca isn't 'the worst option' but the 'cheapest option', and this change of perception makes a difference. Unfortunately, the downside of improving house brand products - whether in reputation, appearance or actual quality - is that they've been getting more expensive. Then again, what hasn't?
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Britain is sleepwalking into total state control of our daily lives
Thank God we won the Cold War. For a while there, it was touch and go, the future of the world on a knife-edge. On one side, we had a system permeated top to bottom by an official state ideology. Employment and freedom was made contingent on adherence, an extensive network of censors and informers was established to maintain the illusion that dissenters were a minority, harsh punishments were meted out to political prisoners, and the state took control of vast swathes of the economy. On the other, the promise of freedom: freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and association, freedom to do as you would with your private property. It was, as I said, close. But in the end, despite Thatcher's brief, doomed fightback, the Socialists won. It's a tongue-in-cheek reading of British history, but it doesn't take a great deal of exaggeration to see how it could be true. As AJP Taylor once wrote, 'until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state beyond the post office and the policeman'. That is emphatically not the case today. Having won the wars, the advocates of freedom comprehensively lost the peace. They lost to such a degree that those of us born and raised afterwards find it hard to comprehend the scale of the change. It's easiest to start with the size of the state. To be sure, socialism in Britain has receded from its high point. The nationalisation of coal, iron, steel, electricity, gas, roads, aviation, telecommunications, and railways has been mostly undone, although steel and rail are on the way back in. But by comparison to our pre-war starting point, we live in a nearly unrecognisable country. In 1913, taxes and spending took up around 8 per cent of GDP. Today, they account for 35 per cent and 45 per cent respectively. To put it another way, almost half of all economic activity in Britain involves funds allocated at the behest of the government, and over half of British adults rely on the state for major parts of their income. And if anything, this understates the degree of government control. Outcomes which are nominally left to the market are rigged by a state which sees prices as less as a way for markets to clear, and more as a tool for social engineering. Universities charge tuition fees capped by the state to students funded by the state, with the looming threat of lost university status if they veer from approved principles. Energy prices are capped, and in crisis subsidised. Mandates are put in place for the installation of heat pumps and sale of zero-emission vehicles as a share of business. Wherever you look, there is meddling. The judiciary has revived the labour theory of value, awarding tens of millions of pounds in equal pay claims to shop workers who explicitly acknowledge they would never have taken warehouse jobs unless they paid far more than retail. The benefits system has recast the old mantra as 'from each according to their pre-tax labour income, to each according to their needs-based assessment'. The support of the proletariat is purchased, the middle classes are punished. And the Government appears to view its primary task to be finding caches of private wealth or institutions that have slipped state control – private schools, pensions, and the like – and reeling them in. We are so used to state control of our lives that we act as if it is simply a fact of life that we require permission to build on land that we own. But prior to 1947, there was no such requirement. It was taken as granted that having purchased land for a family home, no-one would interfere with your effort to build one. The Town and Country Planning Act put paid to that, handing councils the power to veto any and all construction. Combined with the surge in interest in state provision of housing – social housing went from 1 per cent of the country's stock in 1911 to 16 per cent today – and the result was to strip away our freedom to live where we would, as we would, and replace it with the utopian dreams of central planners. Sometimes these extended to direct sabotage: when Birmingham was among the most prosperous regions in Britain, with services businesses growing faster than anywhere else in the country, London-based planners, having already obstructed the construction of factories, declared its growth to be 'threatening'. The result was a ban on office development, and the crippling of its economy. Those parts which are under state control haven't fared much better. The charitable hospitals and friendly societies that existed prior to the NHS were swept aside in a project that explicitly aimed to replace this 'medley of public and voluntary institutions' with rational, 'planned' healthcare. The results have been catastrophic. We have created one of the largest employers on earth, with some of the longest waiting lists and worst health outcomes in the developed world. Between private and public provision, we spend almost 2 per cent more of our national income on healthcare than our Australian cousins in exchange for massively higher avoidable mortality. This should be a national disgrace. Yet despite the dismal experiences and the constant drip of scandals, it remains popular. The idea of healthcare provided outside the state is simply alien to a people taught that their system is the envy of the world. When Boris Yeltsin visited the United States, it was a trip to a supermarket that convinced him of the futility of the Soviet model. Regrettably, Britain's indoctrination has been far more effective, resembling at times a last-ditch counterinsurgency campaign conducted against our own people. The education system, under the thumb from preschool to grad school, has long abandoned efforts to instill national pride in favour of preaching about the benefits of diversity and nebulous British values that amount to upholding the state. Over 10,000 people a year are arrested for communications offences. Whenever attempts to impose multiculturalism on Britain hit a snag in the form of the latest terrorist outrage, the institutions of the state and its allies sing from a single sheet. The result has been a curious demoralisation. Asked to list the key features of British patriotism in 1914, our representative Englishman might have listed the Empire, the monarchy, the Church of England, the Royal Navy. Ask today, and you'll get something about fairness, diversity, the BBC and the NHS. This is, of course, all in jest. Britain is not a socialist country. And thank God for that, Comrade. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
France 24
6 days ago
- Politics
- France 24
Portugal far-right party becomes second biggest in parliament
Chega, which means "Enough", and the left-wing Socialists had been level on 58 seats after the provisional results from the May 18 poll, but the far-right party won two of the previously unannounced four overseas constituencies, taking its tally to 60. The results make Chega the official opposition just six years after its creation. The centre-right Democratic Alliance claimed the other two overseas seats taking its total to 91, still far from the 116 seats needed to form a majority government. The Social Democratic Party of outgoing prime minister Luis Montenegro is the main part of the alliance. "It is a big victory," said Chega founder and leader Andre Ventura, claiming that it "marks a profound change in the Portuguese political system". The anti-immigration party had 50 seats in the last parliament. Montenegro is expected to try to form a minority government after the latest election and he has said he will not deal with Chega. But Ventura called on Montenegro to "break" with the Socialists. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was to hold new talks with the leaders of the three main parties on Thursday and could name a new prime minister during the day. "Portugal is moving in line with the European trend" for a "protest vote", said Paula Espirito Santo at Lisbon University's Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Portugal far-right party becomes second biggest in parliament
Portugal's far-right Chega party won second place in the country's snap elections last week, according to final results published on Wednesday. Chega, which means "Enough", and the left-wing Socialists had been level on 58 seats after the provisional results from the May 18 poll, but the far-right party won two of the previously unannounced four overseas constituencies, taking its tally to 60. The results make Chega the official opposition just six years after its creation. The centre-right Democratic Alliance claimed the other two overseas seats taking its total to 91, still far from the 116 seats needed to form a majority government. The Social Democratic Party of outgoing prime minister Luis Montenegro is the main part of the alliance. "It is a big victory," said Chega founder and leader Andre Ventura, claiming that it "marks a profound change in the Portuguese political system". The anti-immigration party had 50 seats in the last parliament. Montenegro is expected to try to form a minority government after the latest election and he has said he will not deal with Chega. But Ventura called on Montenegro to "break" with the Socialists. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was to hold new talks with the leaders of the three main parties on Thursday and could name a new prime minister during the day. "Portugal is moving in line with the European trend" for a "protest vote", said Paula Espirito Santo at Lisbon University's Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences. lf/mdm/giv/tw/aha
Associated Press
6 days ago
- Business
- Associated Press
Portugal's Chega party becomes the main opposition and joins Europe's far-right surge
LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Portugal's anti-immigration Chega party notched another political gain for Europe's far right on Wednesday after it was assigned the second-most seats in parliament — meaning it will become the head of the parliamentary opposition to the new government. That shatters the pattern of Portugal's center-right and center-left mainstream parties alternating between heading a government or leading the opposition. Chega's strides since the May 18 election coincide with gains elsewhere by far-right forces. In Europe, those include France's National Rally, the Brothers of Italy and Alternative for Germany, which are now in the political mainstream. Leading the opposition is quite the accomplishment for a once-fringe party that competed in its first election six years ago, when it won one seat. It has surged recently with its hardline stance against immigration and with the inability of traditional parties to form lasting governments. The May 18th election was Portugal's third in as many years. Chega, which means 'Enough,' secured 60 of the National Assembly's 230 seats after it picked up two more seats on Wednesday from the overseas voters of the European Union country of 10.6 million people. 'This is a profound change in the Portuguese political system,' Chega leader Andre Ventura told supporters after Chega bested the Socialists by two seats. The center-right Democratic Alliance, led by the Social Democratic Party, captured two more seats to take its tally to 88. Following the election, incoming Prime Minister Luis Montenegro was already looking at heading another minority government similar to the one that fell two months ago in a confidence vote after less than a year in power. But now Montenegro and other parties will face an emboldened far-right competitor that campaigned under the slogan 'Save Portugal' and describes itself as a nationalist party. ___ Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain.
