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Stephen Covey has a phrase in his book that keeps springing to mind when I think of what Zapatero is trying to do with the Spanish economy: “you can’t talk your way out of a problem you’ve behaved your way into.”

Whilst reading about the terrible human drama which is unfolding for 33 Chilean miners, their families, loved ones and the nation of Chile the other day, Frankl’s book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ came to mind.

If you’ve been watching the news over the last few weeks and seen how the flooding in Pakistan is going from bad to worse, on both a human and a political level, check out the “Responding to Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes” study.

Which asset class should you invest in? Which asset class are you good at investing in?Which asset class do you enjoy investing in? The two questions are not, of course the same. You can be good at something and not enjoy it and enjoy something but not be good at it.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on my business plan for Spanglish Lex over the summer and have been going through Jim Collins’s ‘Beyond Entrepreneurship’ again. Spanish politicians should read this book. If they’re a bit busy with everything that’s going on, they should just read chapter two.

Welcome to the third podcast interview with Edward Hugh about the Spanish economy. Edward is an independent economist based in Barcelona. He is also a prolific blogger and is frequently quoted in the English-speaking financial press as a reliable source on what’s going on in Spain as the recession continues to unfold.

If you’ve taught a language, or learnt a language, for any length of time, you will have come across innumerable methods which claim to be the most effective at teaching a student a new language. In all my travels, language learning and language teaching experience, I’ve never been convinced by any one method completely.

I can’t quite remember why now but on Sunday I ended up reading about some historically very important translators. Who would you consider to be the most important translators in history?

The Economist’s excellent new language blog wonders how language affects thought, or vice versa: “IF YOU speak two or more languages fluently, you may be familiar with the feeling that you act differently in them. I tend to be more excitable in Spanish and ruder in Hebrew, for instance, than I am in English.”

Well, July has arrived and yesterday I was doing my quarterly tax returns on the last day (again! Must talk to my inner sergeant-major about that) and revising my invoices, noticing the new 18% VAT rate in Spain. Will it really make a difference to consumers, business people or the government’s tax revenues?