Jobs For The Boys

Apologies for lateness - internet woes!

According to the "Urban Dictionary", "bish bosh" means "an improper or unfinished piece of work due to laziness", while "bish bash bosh" describes "the efficiency of a process you have just explained" as in one, two, three steps, it's as simple as that, bish bash bosh.

I don't know, on the one hand, that laziness is a fair criticism, but there was some unfinished work at the Balearics education ministry. It does, on the other hand, appear to be a case of being as simple as that in securing another post in Balearics government circles for those who leave unfinished work behind. To what and to whom am I referring? What else and who else than "The Return Of The Mighty Bosch" (or maybe Boosh would make more sense).

Bish bash bosh, simple as that, Bosch is back. Job's a good 'un. Unlike the job that wasn't a good 'un at the education ministry and which resulted in the Mighty Bosch being given his P45 and replaced by someone likely to be more amenable to following the government's education language policy. The presidential ink barely dry on the dismissal notice and Rafael Bosch has found new gainful employment - this time at the newly-created ministry for the economy and competitiveness. He is to be an advisor on competitiveness. Good for him.

WARNING, WARNING, cliché coming up. Jobs in government are like the managerial merry-go-round in the Premier League (the merry-go-round being the cliché in case you aren't up to speed with footballspeak). Bosch is to the Balearics Government as Mark Hughes is to the Premiership. No use at QPR, for some inexplicable reason he gets the gig at Stoke City. All jobs for the boys or, in Hughes's case, having a persistent agent.

Rafael probably doesn't have an agent and he doesn't seem to need one. Just hangs around the corridors at the Consolat de Mar and waits for the first competitiveness-advisory task to be cobbled together into the form of a job description. And presumably, competitiveness in the Balearics isn't dependent upon a language policy. If it were, then there would surely have been no advisory role for Rafael. But then, is there not at least some element of language that plays a part in Balearics competitiveness? Is Castellano not a language that offers the potential for greater competitiveness? Hmm. Can the Catalanist Bosch (Catalanist according to the Círculo Balear's strongly anti-Catalanist Jorge Campos, that is) be trusted to pursue competitiveness with full Castellano vigour? I'm sure he can be.

Rafael having found a way of being able to continue to pay the mortgage, what of others who were recently shuffled out of the Bauzá cabinet? Will they also be returning? What role might there be for Josep Aguiló, who was ostensibly in charge of competitiveness before getting the heave-ho? Governmental advisor for paper clips and staples perhaps?

Perhaps Bosch might help the new boy at competitiveness, Joaquín García, make more of a fist of things than Aguiló did. For the ex-minister, competitiveness appeared to amount to little more than lowering wages but any failings he had in competitiveness terms weren't really his fault. He was also bean-counter-in-chief, and so looking after the centimos was his main priority. Bauzá was right to recognise that Aguiló's portfolio was too broad and so has created separate ministries - one for the economy and one for bean-counting - but the consequence of this is that the new bean-counter-in-chief, José Marí, is going to have the count the half a million euros more cost of the various new jobs for the boys, of which Bosch's is one.

And among these new jobs is provision for not one but two press officers for García (the other new and separate ministry is social services which have been spun out of the health portfolio). Two press officers? Why are two press officers needed? What does even one of them do? Is the Balearic Government so vast that it requires all these press people knocking around the place in the different ministries?

The opposition has, naturally enough, latched onto the fact that Bosch's appointment is representative of an increase and not a decrease in public spending on governmental posts. Austerity for some but not for others. Perceptions, perceptions, always perceptions. There may be sound reasons for these new appointments but there is an unmistakable feeling that these reasons may include jobs for the boys.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.


Index for May 2013

Aina Cifre: Pollensa painter - 25 May 2013
Alchemy - 18 May 2013
Balearic Government cabinet re-shuffle and new jobs - 3 May 2013, 31 May 2013
Blue flags - 24 May 2013
Catalan and Mallorquín - 21 May 2013
Chemists and tourists - 23 May 2013
Diplocat and Catalonian independence - 1 May 2013
ESRA flower show - 17 May 2013
Gibraltar and UEFA - 26 May 2013
Ironman in Alcúdia: inconveniences - 12 May 2013
King's royal yacht - 19 May 2013
Low-cost tourism - 4 May 2013
Magalluf troubles - 7 May 2013
Majorca Daily Bulletin: MBE award dinner - 11 May 2013
Manacor-Artà train - 6 May 2013
Naturism in Mallorca - 5 May 2013
President Bauzá's secretary - 20 May 2013
Protests over beach matters - 27 May 2013
Puerto Alcúdia beach path asphalt - 8 May 2013
Religious studies and education reform - 30 May 2013
Roads: unused and unfinished - 16 May 2013
Rumours and hotels - 28 May 2013
Salvador Dalí - 10 May 2013
Seasonality and winter tourism - 13 May 2013
Senegalese man dies of TB - 14 May 2013, 29 May 2013
Tax and mistrust - 22 May 2013
Tenancy act revision and holiday lets - 9 May 2013, 15 May 2013
Tourism promotion and Balearics' island councils - 2 May 2013

Round And Round In Circles: Catalan arguments

When a member of a government senses that his time is about up, he might well be inclined to engage in a spot of political sabotage. He might want to take the ship down for all to be lost at sea, including the captain on the bridge. Is this what he has in mind? Has the increasingly anonymous Bosch become venomous Bosch?

Rafael of that name is being lined up for a shuffle. His is the only significant name that attaches itself to one of the Bauzá cabinet chairs that is to be played musically. When all else fails, and all else has more or less failed, a shuffling of the pack, a game of musical chairs, a sideways move or a demotion can be spun as the failing leader being dynamic. Taking action. Bosch, he who has been unable to see the eponymous wood of his name from the trees, is to be the fallguy. Probably.

Alas, poor Bosch, we knew him. We knew him from the start. I never know which way round they go but he was the nice one out of Mutt and Jeff. The unpleasant one was any of the others. This was why he was given the task of being the Balearic Government's spokesperson. Nice Mr. B. The trouble for Mr. B, and this was because we knew him, or we suspected we did, was that he might not have been totally on-message. If only in private.

The shuffle hasn't been announced but the bets are all but off. Someone else will take over at education and try and make sense of the wood of the government's language policy when it is obscured by so many trees that bend in the wind of all the wind-baggery of Mallorca's language politics, a wind-baggery that has become an invitation to a private party that no one else shows any great interest in wanting to gatecrash. The left moan about an undermining of Catalan and want to crash right through the government's language politics, but the Partido Popular and fellow travellers on the right, aka the Círculo Balear, further aka Jorge Campos, engage in their own exclusive arguments about what is Catalan and what isn't. Which is why the increasingly anonymous Bosch looks as though he might have gone venomous.

We knew him, Bosch that is, because we suspected he wasn't fully on board the good ship Bauzá when it came to the politics of language. And now, even if he weren't being prepared to walk the plank and dive into the waters near Cabrera, stripped of the prospect of champagne and lobster as when he resurfaced from an alleged underwater educational video shoot paid for with public money, the akas of the fellow-travelling right are calling for his dismissal. Campos has called Bosch a "Catalanist", which is pretty dirty talk among those on the Mallorcan right. Campos should beware. He knows all about denuncias for using insults. Enough of them have been hurled at him, to which he has responded by running off and dobbing on the insulters to Mr. Plod.

Bosch has gone Catalanist and has gravely undermined Bauzá's authority, says Campos. Really? How can authority be gravely undermined when it already has been? Whatever. Bosch has said that the Balearic language doesn't exist. And this, in the fields of Campos land, makes Bosch a Catalanist. Oh, you venomous Bosch, you know that the president is a man for the Balearic language. Or languages. Those that come from Catalan. And that he is no man for Catalan. And if you didn't know, well Campos is always there to remind you and so now also is the president of the Partido Popular in Mallorca (who isn't the same as the president of the government), Jeroni Salom. He has said that the Catalan of the Balearics will be protected. And it will be done so in some school textbooks. Otherwise, in fifty years time (he doesn't explain why fifty years), no one will remember to use "nin" in Mallorca or "batle" or "arena". If he says so. I didn't think "arena" was a specifically Balearic word, but then what do I know?

Salom has added that if these modalities of language on the island aren't protected, then the language will become that of Barcelona, and that is not the language of the Balearics. Well no, but, but ... . Question please, question please. Isn't the regional government wanting to try and stamp out the language of Barcelona anyway? Isn't this what the language politics have been about? Isn't this what the now anonymous Bosch was meant to have been overseeing. Ah yes, Bosch. Nope, I don't think he ever was on-message.

He hasn't become the venomous Bosch. He might have good cause to, if it looks as though he is being politically hung out to dry, but perhaps he just despairs of the circularity of the arguments over Catalan among Mallorca's Círculo right.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

In Too Deep?: The minister for diving

I feel sorry for Rafael Bosch. It can't be easy being named after a German electrical-goods manufacturer and so having an appellation which suggests that you should be organised, highly efficient and run on time. It becomes even less easy when you manage to make a Bosch botch of things.

Bosch is the Balearics education and culture minister. He also has the dubious honour of being the government's spokesperson, meaning that he is the government's patsy, its fall guy. Whenever he is wheeled out in front of the press, he is left exposed while Count Dracula, the president, lurks in his lair, licking the blood of his innocent colleague-victim and smirking at his misfortune and squirming embarrassment.

Bosch is the government's Explanationfinder-General, its justifier, its spinner. Nice Sr. Bosch, forever cast in the role of governmental moderate, the pleasant, acceptable face of Balearics capitalism and policy-making, thrown to the media wolves as Bauzá sinks his fangs into whatever cut he can make, as the vice-president and finance minister Aguiló emerges periodically from the darkness to issue further edicts of ever more outrageous tax-raising, and as the tourism minister Delgado scurries and scuttles between and in and out of skirting-boards, popping his head out now and then before disappearing for months on end.

The spokesperson duties have been coming thick and fast for Sr. Bosch, and in performing them it hasn't always been certain that he has been on-message. The government's withdrawal from the Ramon Llull Institute was apparently for financial reasons, or so Bauzá had implied. Bosch has said it was for political reasons, which is what everyone knew to be the case.

He finds himself in the midst of a Partido Popular media storm, new corruption allegations attaching themselves to the mayor of Inca, Rafael Torres, the speaker of the Balearic parliament, Pere Rotger, and the former and briefly secretary of the party, José María Rodríguez. This is scandal in the good, old-fashioned tradition of political scandal in the Balearics, but Bosch, normally used to commenting on news in that he tries and explains what on earth the government is up to, now finds that he is the news and in the midst of a media storm as great if not greater than that closing in on the PP because of the corruption accusations.

Bosch and the minister for the environment, Biel Company, have both been found to have been making summer visits to the island of Cabrera. In themselves, these visits are absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. However, both ministers are being accused of having made private trips using public funds. To make matters worse, there are suggestions of gorging on lobster and washing it down with Moët, all at the taxpayer's expense. Bosch has said that his trips were for educational purposes, and he has been seen diving in the waters around Cabrera apparently as part of putting together an educational video.

Unfortunately for Bosch, no one much is buying his explanation. There has never been, or so it would seem, any budget for the making of this video. Bosch has said that he has been looking for a sponsor, which is odd for an education minister who was meant to be undertaking a trip for educational purposes. And as the story unfolds and the clouds of the media storm darken, more is emerging, for example the fact that two public employees had to be paid for overtime while accompanying Bosch and Company. This - the overtime - is not in line with Bauzá austerity policy.

The president, not entirely out of the woods because of the supposed incompatibility of his business affairs, hasn't exactly been rushing to voice his support for Bosch, who is therefore increasingly being cast adrift. One could understand if Bosch, who has to defend government policies, might feel slightly let down. But the Bauzá presidency is of course all about clean politics, which is why there are corruption allegations surrounding individuals associated with the current administration.

This is a government fast giving the impression of drowning. Bosch is one of the more likable figures in government, Company the most popular minister (according to a recent poll anyway). Yet here they are, embroiled in a ridiculous affair coming on top of the corruption allegations, the president's own embarrassment over his business affairs and the loss of two health ministers in under four months.

The resignation of both ministers has been called for in certain quarters. Either or both may yet decide to resign, even if the affair is relatively minor in the scale of things. Bosch may not be in so deep that he can't escape the consequences of his watery hole. Or maybe he is simply out of his depth. Sadly, he wouldn't be the only one.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Educating Rafa: Mallorca's schools

One of the names I'm afraid you're going to have to get used to over the next few years is that of Mr. Bosch, Rafael of this variety. As new education minister for the Balearics, can we expect Mr. Bosch to promote instruction in engineering? Will Mallorca's schools be subject to his use of power tools or will they be set to a gentle wash and softened by a fragrant conditioner?

Mallorca's state-run schools aren't very good. Or at least, what they produce underperforms in comparison to most of the rest of Spain and therefore most of Europe. In key competences, such as maths and comprehension, Mallorca and Balearic school children rank among the bottom four of Spain's regions. The standard of English is such that two-thirds of students at the Universitat de les Illes Balears admit to not understanding it, despite instruction at the university and years of teaching at school.

The education spokesperson at the CCOO union has a point when he suggests that, of the ministries in the new Bauzá administration, education should be given the greatest priority, above even that of tourism. Mallorca's future lies with well-educated and motivated raw material that can help to shift the economic emphasis away from a reliance on tourism and to change an attitude among young people that they can aspire to no more than being waiters and hanging out on the beach.

The union has expressed concern that the new administration might be targetting education for privatisation. It is probably a touch of scaremongering, but it is just one issue that confronts Rafael Bosch as he takes over the education ministry. The CCOO, and the other two unions representing teachers, have, however, given Bosch's appointment cautious approval. They describe him as "moderate and communicative".

And being perceived as moderate might well be a blessing, given that President Bauzá had suffered, some time before the elections, his now infamous, self-confessed "mental lapse" in respect of language, one that has, ever since, dominated discussion as to the PP's attitude to language and the party's potential for scrapping Catalan as a language of teaching. This will be an issue that will dog Bosch, though, for his part, he is saying that there needs to be greater effort in the teaching of language - three languages in fact: Spanish, English and Catalan. Hierologically, the hitherto anonymous Bosch does not appear to adhere to the notion of Castilian being the sacred language.

He recognises that the law as it stands allows parents freedom of choice between Spanish and Catalan as to the main language of teaching. For the most part, Mallorca's parents are happy enough for Catalan to prevail, while schools and pupils have expressed their preference for Catalan, and on occasions vociferously so.

The language question does threaten to overshadow all other matters in Bosch's ministerial in-tray, but it is way less important than the main one - that of improving standards and combatting what he has described as the "intolerable" situation regarding the high level of year repetition that pupils in Mallorca are obliged to undergo. To this end, Bosch is planning to create a "social pact" between the teaching profession, unions and others to develop a model of education in the islands. Which sounds all rather grand, though we will have to see what it actually means. More practically, he is hinting at adding an hour to the school day, which, pact or no pact, the unions might find a tad hard to swallow.

At the same time as Bosch has got his feet under the ministerial desk, the schools have broken up for the long summer break. It might seem that Bosch, if he believes that longer hours and more schooling are necessary, should perhaps shorten the holidays. The fact is, however, that adding hours isn't necessarily a solution and nor would be a shortening of the holidays. In Finland, for example, there is an eleven-week break, a lower annual number of school hours than Spain (quite appreciably so) and a way higher standard of achievement than anywhere in Spain.

Mr. Bosch is not only education minister. He also has responsibility for culture. And perhaps here lies a clue for him. Improving educational standards in Mallorca is less a matter of longer days and more one of changing cultural attitudes to education. The people he really needs to be educating are parents.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.