I have just withdrawn 73K from my Santander UK account due to the contagion from the current Spanish banking crisis. Of course I know that Santander UK is a “British bank and depositors need have no worries whatsoever” but, call me awkward, I am not taking any chances. Santander decided to plaster its’ name over the British high street so hardly surprising then if jose publico ingles associates Santander Spain with Santander UK so any bad news in Spain will automatically contaminate the brand name here. Also I suspect there is more than a little antagonism towards a foreign bank which swallowed up our iconic brands Abbey National, Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley – and is top of the complaints league for customer service to boot. The satisfied Santander UK customer is – like the availability of their mortgages, dare I say – as rare as bird droppings in a cuckoo clock!

I agreed with the Reagan/Thatcher policy of standing up to the belligerence of the Communist bloc. But I also acknowledge that the moral integrity of the Greenham protesters did influence the attitude of wider society and thus influence the politicians. Scaling back on nuclear weapons happened just a little bit sooner than it might otherwise have done.

So Indignados everywhere are fulfilling a role. I am now seeing commentaries in mainstream media questioning whether the remedy for the present mess as propounded by the politicos and bean-counters – the return to ‘growth’ – can be right because, even f successful this time, it will only return us to a model that is fatally flawed, played out, obsolete.

Yes, it’s too bad because the M15 movement has some great ideas behind it. I wrote something on the movement in Barcelona, you can see it here:http://www.shareable.net/blog/occupy-barcelona

Greece is looking at national bankruptcy and default right now. As a consequence, banks everywhere will be forced to tighten their lending criteria and to generally adopt an even more cautious stance. This is bound to impact on the property market not only in Spain but also in the UK. Against this background it is difficult to see where the finance will come from to support those buyers who you say should be “negotiating hard” on their property purchase. After all, you do need money to support any such negotiating position and I have a suspicion that mortgages will be as rare as bird droppings in a cuckoo clock. And those who do manage to secure a mortgage could find it pretty expensive,