It is to become law in Spain that men do as much housework as their wives. Well, it's not strictly speaking a law - more a change to the marriage contract to include a pledge to share cleaning burdens and such. It's coming in as a section of divorce reform, so that "he never did any washing up" will soon be fair grounds for parting, whereas before the idle spouse would have had to go to the Spanish equivalent of Brighton (Torremolinos?) with a hooker and a private dick. Nobody will actually be sent to prison for watching Biggos Brotheros when there were clearly chores to be done. But it "sends a message", said Margarita Uria, the parliamentarian who pushed for the clause.  I suggested much the same thing myself one time, when I was concocting the manifesto for a fourth political party, as part of a women's magazine jape - my plan was that tax would be paid in inverse proportion to the amount of housework a person did, so that a man doing an average amount (the figure at that time was 24 minutes a day, to a woman's two hours and a bit) would end up paying 75% tax, while his lady friend paid a quarter. The truly crafty thing about my plan was that it wasn't really about the sexes at all, it was ushering in socialism through the back door - because, working on the assumption that the best-paid member of a household is generally speaking the most slothful, all households would end up paying way over 50% in tax. Plus, the complex monitoring systems (nationwide CCTV, finger sensors to register contact with Vim etc) would put the structures in place for me to become a totalitarian dictator when I wanted to take things a few steps further. Nobody called me on this nefarious long game since it was, as I say, a jape; and I have to say that I'm surprised that any plan, anywhere in Europe, that resembled mine even a tiny bit ever got beyond the status of jape.  In Spain, the domestic burden on women appears very onerous - the average man spends 44 minutes a day on cleaning and 51 on childcare, while his wife spends nearly six hours on both. The figure is unenlightening, though, since it doesn't factor in how many women work full-time, so there must be spikes in the graph from women without jobs who do nearly everything about the house. I don't think anyone would seriously counter that it was misogynistic for the person who didn't have to go to work to do other stuff instead, even if that "other stuff" were the tedious business of cleaning. A lot of regular work is very tedious as well. My view is that in a household where two people work, the bulk of the cleaning is undertaken by the person with the highest standards. Technically speaking, it is unfair, since even a person with infinitesimally higher standards will end up doing the lion's share of the work. (You only need to think "I can no longer stand to look at that washing up" a minute before your spouse thinks it, and lo, you've done it.)  In peculiar relationships, couples vie to have the lowest standards and descend into unspeakable squalor. Otherwise, it might generally be women who do the cleaning, but as one of the third generation of fully employed females in my family, I can tell you that this is a cultural hangover, and will erode over time. Cleanliness isn't innate to the female psyche. I have a fragment of week-old Wotsit wedged in my keyboard, and that's why I rarely use the letter ... oh never mind. What's curious and telling, I think, is that such an issue has to be addressed at a constitutional level, rather than a domestic one. Women, in other words, ought to be able to fight this battle themselves. What's wrong with negotiation? Whatever happened to old-fashioned nagging and moaning?  There's actually not a bad parallel with our Asbo debate. Where once neighbours would negotiate between themselves and, in the case of a particularly noxious neighbour, gather to voice their discontent, they now call the police. The police have no legislation on which to act, so sooner or later, the legislation is supplied. But legislation is a blunt and insensitive tool, so before you know it, eccentric or unpopular citizens get an Asbo for getting undressed with the curtains open or gardening in their pants. Large, flabby concepts - sociability, consideration, cleanliness, fairness - are best addressed on a small scale. The law is only really good for the small, concrete things that can be measured in cash or stitches.  So Ms Uria is right. This Spanish business does send a message, but the message is: "We Spanish women are too clean, and we aren't good enough at moaning." I want to say that they should take a masterclass from the French, but I'm scared of sounding like a Tory ...