UK growth revised downwards. Spanish stocks fall. Oil & gold at record lows.

And there are more floods in Britain.

That’s what I get for reading the news every morning. Oh, and a British muslim family was not allowed to board an aeroplane to the US for reasons unknown. There were however two less depressing bits of news. Greece has approved gay unions (193 in favor versus 56 against) despite the Orthodox church’s angry opposition. Keep in mind Greece is still a country where cremation is illegal because the church opposes it. Yes, I said illegal.

The other interesting thing is Spanish Hacienda (AEAT-the tax man) has finally published a list of five thousand people and companies who owe taxes of over a million euros each. Some of them are hugely successful and wealthy.

I really don’t get how it’s possible because in Spain the government can just go into your bank account and take money. In 2012 I logged into our bank account one morning and was shocked that €15,750 had disappeared because the government decided we owed them that in extra taxes. It turned out our accountant had made a mistake, but so had the tax authorities. In reality we owed them €3250, but they held onto the whole amount during the entire process which took a year to resolve. It seems they reserve those practices for going after regular people, because the list includes footballers, racing-car drivers and even judges who owe massive amounts of money and obviously haven’t had their accounts debited.