HUNDREDS HURT IN CATALONIA POLL CLASHES
MORE than 460 people have been injured in Catalonia in clashes with Spanish police trying to prevent a referendum on independence from taking place in the northeastern region, Barcelona’s mayor Ada Colau said.
Ms Colau said yesterday, as mayor of the city, she demands “an immediate end to police charges against the defenceless population”.
Police baton-charged and fired rubber bullets to disperse crowds in Barcelona and other towns and cities.
Videos have showed them beating people repeatedly as they try to confiscate ballots and ballot boxes.
In addition to the protesters and voters injured, Spain’s Interior Ministry said 11 police officers have been injured fulfilling judicial orders to prevent the referendum on independence.
Earlier Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull blamed the violence directly on Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy and interior minister Juan Ignacio Zoido.
He said actions by Spanish National Police and Civil Guard forces on Sunday were politically motivated and showed “a clear motivation to harm citizens”.
Catalan international affairs director Raul Romeva said regional authorities would appeal to European bodies over Mr Rajoy’s government’s alleged violations of human rights.
The officers fired rubber bullets while trying to clear protesters who were trying to prevent National Police cars from leaving after police confiscated ballot boxes from the voting centre.
Several people were injured during the scuffles outside Barcelona’s Rius i Taule school, where some voters had cast ballots before police arrived.
Catalan officials said 38 people were treated for mostly minor injuries.
Manuel Condeminas, a 48-yearold IT manager who tried to block police from driving away with the ballot boxes, said agents had kicked them before using their batons and firing the projectiles.
Elsewhere, Civil Guard officers, wearing helmets and carrying shields, used a hammer to break the glass of the front door and a lock cutter to break into the Sant Julia de Ramis sports centre near the city of Girona.
At least one woman was injured outside the building and wheeled away on a stretcher by paramedics.
Clashes broke out less than an hour after polls opened, and not long before Catalonia regional president Carles Puigdemont was expected to turn up to vote at the sports centre.
Polling station workers inside the building reacted peacefully and broke out into songs and chants challenging the officers’ presence.
Mr Puigdemont was forced to vote in Cornella de Terri, near Girona.
The Spanish government and its security forces are trying to prevent voting in the independence referendum, which is backed by Catalan regional authorities. Spanish officials had said force would not be used, but that voting would not be allowed.
Brexit prevarication and plays for power
BREXIT negotiations are now resembling Neville Chamberlain’s perambulations between the UK and Germany which resulted in the devastating events of 1939-45.
The longer this prevarication continues the worse, from our perspective, will be the result.
The scrambling of regional council leaders Carwyn Jones and Nicola Sturgeon to mount the world stage is not only embarrassing but counterproductive.
In Carwyn’s case, denying the reality of the Welsh vote casts a very bloodshot eye on his idea of democracy. Dennis Jones Newbridge
Lineker and Balding are not saving lives
I AGREE totally with correspondent Roger Kendall’s opinions on BBC salaries.
Baroness Karen Brady is losing sleep because Clare Balding’s salary does not match Gary Lineker’s.
Neither are worth the respective salaries they are paid from taxpayers’ hard-earned money.
The BBC could, perhaps, put on more programmes of quality if salaries were more realistic. And l would have respect for the baroness if she stepped out of her ivory tower and stated, not that Clare Balding is shockingly underpaid, but that our nurses, paramedics, firefighters and police are shockingly underpaid.
After all, if Lineker and Balding did not turn up for work, no one suffers. If our under-valued emergency services failed to turn up for work it could cost lives. J Price Coleford, Gloucestershire
Saddened to read of Addison’s death
AS one of the ten in 100,000 people in this country who has Addison’s Disease, I was saddened to read ‘Chances ‘missed’ to save boy,12, from undiagnosed disease death’ (Western Mail, September 29).
I was very lucky, in as much as when I collapsed on the last day of a holiday in Kefalonia in 2012, my wife somehow managed to get us aboard the plane home.
A couple of days later I found myself in Llandough Hospital, where I was to spend three weeks, and where, with some wonderful care and treatment, I was diagnosed with the disease, also known as Hyperadrenalism.
Sadly, in Ryan Morse’s case he wasn’t so lucky as “the opportunity to administer him life-saving treatment was missed.’’
My treatment now consists of taking steroids twice a day and having regular hospital check-ups. I firmly believe if my wife hadn’t managed to get me aboard that plane that evening I wouldn’t now be making return visits to Kefalonia, or, indeed, penning this letter. Brian Lee
Cardiff
Damning report on our prison population
AMID the confusing cacophony of never-ending news and opinion
concerning Brexit, you might have missed the publication of a damning report exposing the malignant rot of deeply embedded racist bigotry within Britain’s justice system.
An independent review ordered by David Cameron to examine the treatment and outcomes of black and minority ethnic people in the justice system, chaired by David Lammy MP, has unearthed an inequitable scandal of overrepresentation within the prison population of England and Wales.
The review noted that black and minority ethnic (BAME) men and women make up just 14% of the general population, and yet constitute one in four prisoners – a more disproportionate statistic than even the United States.
It also says BAME youth make up more than 40% of young people in custody.
Black boys are ten times more likely to be arrested for drug offences than white boys, even when prior character is taken into account; the total economic cost of overrepresentation in the justice system is estimated to exceed £309m per annum.
If our prison population represented the actual demography of England and Wales, it would translate into 9,000 fewer prisoners.
Mr Lammy’s recommendations include a “race-blind” approach to processing cases (albeit with scant substantive detail), reviewing gang-related prosecutions, a “rate-your-judge” system (again lacking explicit detail), sealing criminal records, “positive discrimination” in prison and judiciary recruitment.
None of these ideas would provide significant improvement to the current situation; the root cause of institutional racism is capitalist hegemony, the very same corrupt system which was bailed out by taxpayers and is now foisting the repellent swindle of austerity measures upon ordinary people to pay for the obscene excesses of super-rich bosses.
A united front of organised resistance will send these jackals a message that we won’t silently tolerate such obscene injustice any longer. Daniel Pitt Mountain Ash
Cruel life of working animals abroad
BRITAIN has long been regarded as a nation of animal lovers. Our pets are often seen as treasured family members, and many people go to great lengths – and costs – to ensure their companions lead a happy and healthy life. New research suggests that the average dog owner spends over £18,000 on their furry friend during its lifetime.
It’s wonderful that the welfare of most pets is well looked after in the UK. But, sadly, it’s a very different situation for many working animals in developing countries.
Worldwide, around 200 million working animals, such as horses, donkeys and camels, make it possible for impoverished families to earn a small income by transporting goods and people.
They play a vital role, but they often endure hard lives without access to the food, water, shelter and essential veterinary treatment they urgently need.
On World Animal Day (October 4), we’re highlighting the struggle they face on a daily basis and asking everyone to give them the recognition and support they so greatly deserve.
Please visit www.spana.org and help us to ensure that working animals overseas receive the same care and compassion as our own much-loved pets here in Britain.
Geoffrey Dennis Chief Executive, SPANA (the Society for the Protection of
Animals Abroad)
It’ll be good riddance to this corrupt EU
THE moaners just don’t stop moaning, they just don’t get it that the people in a referendum last year voted to leave a corrupt, undemocratic dictatorship.
Now they seem to point to the fact that the vote was by the narrowest of margins – 52% voted to leave, 48% voted to stay.
Now when I was in school, 52 was higher than 48 – but the moaners don’t seem to grasp that.
The moaners also state that the vote was only advisory. So had the moaners won would they still moan at that?
Haven’t these people seen how childish these corrupt politicians are acting towards the UK during negotiations? Are these the sort of idiots you want your Government to deal with?
A recent letter by a regular moaner to these pages stated that the EU had helped maintain peace in our time for the past 70 years. I think you will find that Nato has been responsible for that.
I certainly hope that the EU after the UK’s exit destroys itself. We have never voted to be part of this corrupt club, the people voted in the 1970s to be part of a Common Market, not a corrupt market run by corrupt politicians.
The comments coming from the likes of Tusk and Barnier seem to be throwing cold water over Theresa May’s recent speech, and certainly no such transition term should happen.
Article 50 gave us two years, and so two years it should be, but seeing how the EU is reacting at the moment the British Government should in no uncertain terms tell Barnier, Tusk and Merkel where they can stick their corrupt club.
We don’t need the EU, we have countries outside the EU waiting to sign trade agreements. I say ‘good riddance’ – the sooner the better. DJ Radford
Barry