Earlier this evening I posted about a lovely holiday we had a couple of years ago in Spain; we were with good friends, we had good weather  we ate well, drank well, had a brilliant time. Everywhere looked smart and clean, everyone seemed happy and doing well… but that was several years ago.

I was listening to The World Tonight, just after ten o’clock this evening and there was a report tonight from Spain which is suffering from the most awful financial crisis. There were people being interviewed who had entered a lottery to get a job… cleaning the streets. One man was interviewed who had been an electrician before he lost his job; how did he feel when he got the job picking up litter in the streets… ‘like a man’ he answered.

Every week I teach English voluntarily to adults who come from abroad, we have Bangladeshi women whose husbands have restaurants, Chinese people who also work in the restaurant trade, a lot of…