Stop Evictions!

What follows is a brief summary of the presentation on House Eviction your classmate Mohamed gave in class the other day. He wrote up the following text for you guys. So just read on to find out more about his work.

On Monday December 15th, known as the Black Monday, the LEHMAN BROTHERS collapsed, then the banks stopped lending, and the credit dried up, which caused a big impact to the rest of the world's economy.

In Spain, according to many analysts and other observers, the main cause had to do with Jose Maria Aznar's land act of 1998, which freed up the land market, leading to a housing bubble, which grew very quickly, due to an easy access to credit and low interest rates. Spain had built in one year more houses than France, Germany and Italy all together. According to the Association of Registrars, 90% of the population became mortgage holders in 2006.

More than 400,000 families have been evicted from their houses since Spain's Property Market crashed in 2008, under the unfair mortgage law of 1861, reformed only in few cases as 1946 and 2012.

In 2012 the number of evictions broke record and reached 517 evictions a day in Spain. That means an average of 21 per hour, or an eviction executed in Spain every 3 minutes. As a consequence of this, more than 119 suicide cases are directly linked to these evictions.

The Platform of Mortgage Victims have been fighting against the evictions, demanding urgent reforms through a Popular Legislative Initiative which collected 1.402.854 signatures. On February 12th 2013, this was knocked down by the Popular Party.

THe PIL /ILP contains three measures as the minimum rules to put an end to this eviction hell.

1- STOP EVICTIONS.

2- HAND OVER YOUR HOUSE KEYS TO THE BANK AS REPAYMENT IN FULL WITH RETROACTIVE CHARACTER . 

3- A PUBLIC PLAN FOR A SOCIAL HOUSING.

SO, It's clear, IT'S NOT A CRISIS IT'S A SCAM.

Also, check out the video "Spain Evictions and Homeless Crisis", by PressTV Global News. There you can see your classmate from minute 17.32 through 20.18. Thanks a lot for your work, Mohamed!!

Colorful Emotions: Born to be Blue

Emotions in English are strongly related to colors: green with envy, red with rage, white with anger, red or pink with embarrassment, blue with cold, rosy or peachy to indicate good fortune or optimism, yellow-belly which means coward in American English... And this post's protagonist: the Blues.

To have the blues, or to feel blue, means to be in a state of depression or melancholy. Also, Blues music has at its heart this idea of melancholy mixed with anger against slavery and humiliation, as it is associated with the blue color of the indigo plant, grown in many southern US slave plantations.

I'd like to present here one of my favorite jazzmen, Chet baker, who really had the blues deeply entrenched in his singing: The song that I post for you today is called Born to be Blue. Check out the lyrics below before or after you listen to it, to discover how he plays around with the colors that surround us in nature, and complete the missing words please!

Enjoy the jazz and happy (and not blue at all) new year!

Born to be Blue: Words and Glossary

The Argument Clinic, by the genious Monty Python

As I promised, here you have the sketch by the Monty Pythons we saw in class a few weeks ago: The Argument Clinic. This is but a taste of the fabulous, marvellous, and unique humor displayed by this British surreal comedy group, whose comedy sketches were first aired in the BBC in 1969. The group's influence on comedy has been compared to the Beatles' influence on music, and, personally, I couldn't agree more.
 Please, don't miss the argument versus contradiction discussion!! 

By the way, don't you think this type of argument clinic may be an awesome way to avoid split-ups and fall-aparts with family, friends and workmates in these stressful times? We should all get a voucher for this clinic for Christmas!

Here follows the script of the sketch:

 The Argument Clinic Script

More on Stereotypes

This idea that men's and women's minds work differently when it comes to dealing with our daily life has been a cliché all along our lives, hasn't it? Women's supposed ability for multitasking, for instance, is allegedly absent in men's list of skills... But how true is that? This post is especially dedicated to your fellow student Amador, who really seemed to be enjoying the debate. Subtitles are in Spanish this time, but it's just the exception!

A Tale of Two Brains

What Kind of Healthcare do We Want?

Yesterday, after her presentation in class, Rocio asked the whole group the following question: What kind of healthcare do we want? Indeed, her talk prompted many of us to speak about such an important matter as our health, and our healthcare system. We all agreed that it is indeed everybody's concern.

Here follows the documentary directed by film-maker Michael Moore about the Healthcare System in the US back in 2007: Sicko. I recommend you watch it, and see if you detect any similarities to current reality in Spain. It''s two-hour long, I mind you, but is probably worth the while.

Sicko by Michael Moore. Part 1

Sicko by Michael Moore. Part 2

Dumb Ways to Die

Now that we have finished talking about the different means of transport to get around the city, compared public transport to private vehicles, and reflected on our safety while traveling, I'd like to share the following video with you. 

It belongs to a public service announcement campaign by Metro Trains in Melbourne,Victoria, Australia, to promote rail safety. As the advertising agency claimed, this campaign was aimed at engaging an audience that really doesn't want to hear any kind of safety message. According to Metro Trains, the campaign contributed to a more than 30% reduction in near-miss accidents during last year.

Besides the announcement, pay attention to the lyrics: it has nice vocabulary about things we do in our daily life, even the silly ones! Enjoy!