Pleasure Before Business!!
You can almost smell the sense of anticipation!
The big news in Spain this week was that a butcher in Pontevedra name Marcelino is winning a million and a half euro in the Primitiva lottery, thereby doubling the gross regional income of Galicia in one stroke. As you can see in the video I have linked to, all the Galicians are celebrating in their usual way by getting drunk and standing around in the streets doing nothing.
Marcelino is a 48-year-old butcher in the Pontevedra supermarket who use the same numbers every week for the lottery, because it is difficult for him to think of new ones all the time. As you can imagine, he lives at home still with his mother and his sister, but now that he has won all this money, he says, he is going to give up his job altogether in order to take care of the two most important loves of his life, namely, his two oxen (see above), which are name Lucero and Platero, and who he says are like sons to him, escept of course they are sons who he makes pull his plough and who shit in his fields.
As you can see also in the picture, Marcelino already has allowed his oxen to move into his unpretentious home. By the look on the faces of Lucero and Platero, you can tell that they are thinking, “Where is the bloody television?” Now that Marcelino has all that money, he will have to bring the electricity, the running water, the refridgeration, the Internet porn all into his home in order to keep his sons used to the lifestyle that they have not yet become accustomed to but which they will espect as the sons of a millionaire butcher. Is only a matter of time before they are speeding around in a flash Seat soft-top and starting fights in the most espensive night-clubs in Vigo, of which there are none.
Nobody is, I think, envying Marcelino or his oxen their win. In fact, is very nice that he is spending the money on someone other than himself and his family, sharing around the success like in that old proverb: a problem shared is a joy forever. However, there was also another winner of the Primitiva, a rich industrialist who own a factory in Portugal, and nobody is making any such fuss about him, even though there is no doubt that giving the lottery money to such a rich man is without doubt a much better waste of the public’s money. He will no doubt be using it to create jobs or to grease the oily palms of politicians in order to facilitate rezoning of land or overlooking of chemicals dumped into the local river, thereby contributing to the local economy, generating both employment and the need for investment in environmental projects, stimulating growth. However much the sentimental public likes stories such as Marcelino’s of a poor butcher winning more money than he know what to do with, is precisely because he does not know what to do with it that we should be making sure that lottery winners have more sense and know what to do with it. We should be ensuring that the lottery winners are all rich industrialists and land owners who will use the money wisely.
Of course, this will not happen while people have the vote. Is really quite immoral.
