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@BrianMcCarthy's 'I'm starting with perhaps the most middle-class song of my lifetime. I've never been to a dinner party in my life but for a decade this was the soundtrack to the ones I managed to avoid.'
Associations! It's very unfortunate that a piece of music can be weighed down by associations. In my case that Buena Vista Social Club album doesn't really have any of those associations as at the time I was in with the Latin/Salsa tribes of London (and also not invited to any dinner parties).
Anyone noticed that there is very little on this thread that's from Spain itself rather than Latin America? It seems Spain has not produced anything very memorable for some reason.
There is an interesting passage about laziness in Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008) by Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang. Chang says:
"Countries are poor not because their people are lazy, their people are 'lazy' because they are poor."
"After her tour of Asia in 1911-1912, Beatrice Webb, the famous leader of British Fabian socialism, described the Japanese as having 'objectionable notions of leisure and a quite intolerable personal independence'. She said that, in Japan, 'there is evidently no desire to teach people to think'. She was even more scathing about my ancestors. She described the Koreans as '12 millions of dirty, degraded, sullen, lazy and religionless savages who slouch about in dirty white garments of the most inept kind and who live in filthy mudhuts'. No wonder she thought that 'if anyone can raise the Koreans out of their present state of barbarism I think the Japanese will', despite her rather low opinion of the Japanese. This was not just a western prejudice against eastern peoples. The British used to say similar things about the Germans. Before their economic take-off in the mid-19th century, the Germans were typically described by the British as 'a dull and heavy people'. 'Indolence' was a word that was frequently associated with the Germanic nature. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, wrote in exasperation after a particularly frustrating altercation with her German coach-driver: 'the Germans never hurry'.
In other words, culture changes with economic development. That is why the Japanese and the German cultures of today are so different from those of their ancestors. Culture is the result, as well as the cause, of economic development. It would be far more accurate to say that countries become 'hardworking' and 'disciplined' (and acquire other 'good' cultural traits) because of economic development, rather than the other way around.
Indeed, Japanese workers used to be a pretty militant bunch until fairly recently. Between 1955 and 1964, Japan lost more days per worker in strikes than Britain or France, countries which were not exactly famous for co-operative industrial relations at the time. Co-operation and loyalty came about only because Japanese workers were given institutions such as lifetime employment and company welfare schemes. Ideological campaigns (and government bashing of militant communist trade unions) did play a role, but they would not have been enough on their own."
Just seen the highlights replayed at half-time and neither the penalty nor the sending off looks that clear-cut (maybe things will be clearer when there are better highlights available).
It's possible the oppo player ran across Colback. Whatever happened it wasn't one of those crazy lunges from Colback.
Furlong didn't seem to have raised his arm that high.
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