Well you can fool most of the people some of the time. The local paper waxed lyrical about a promotion between the national tourist organisation, Turespana and a marina association called AEEN and that it will be promoting sailing. Well sorry folks but AEEN is a pissy little organisation of 16 small marinas around Spain. The local ones being in Mahon, Ciutadella and Fornels; not exactly the hubs of serious yachting in the Balearics. Apparently this new initiative is to spend 22,000 Euros on improving the three Balearic venues. Hellooo! Far more than that amount is being spent on various things by boats on quay 7 in the Club de Mar in a week! When will these people get the big picture?
In the present world of political correctness I´m very surprised that the "Soller battle" was re-enacted again this year to celebrate Capitan Angelats kicking Muslim ass when he defeated the Moors led by Ulutx Alar on the 11 de Mayo de 1561. It´s not such a pretty picture as they stage mock lynchings of the captured rag-heads. I hope Osama doesn´t catch it on CNN or Al Jazira or we´re in big trouble!
Following on from previous comments regarding a certain Palma marina here´s quite an interesting comment from a service company when we were discussing where to moor in Palma; "Port de Mallorca is terrible to get in now and we try to avoid it as much as possible". So again, I remind skippers and owners in this marina, not to expect supply and service companies falling over themselves to come to your yacht!
Well, how´s the superyacht business you might ask?
Recently a crew training company released this statement: There are currently 14 miles of new yachts (both power and sail) under construction in 25 different countries, and there is a worldwide shortage of crew. This year, 2005, there are a remarkable 3,000 positions available.
This may not please everyone. A Spanish designer has come up with what could be the perfect solution for women who end up doing all the household chores. It is a washing machine called "Your Turn", which will not let the same person use it twice in a row. It uses fingerprint recognition technology to ensure the job of loading is not dumped on just one individual. Inventor Pep Torres was asked by a Spanish white goods manufacturer to come up with an innovative Father´s Day gift. "I thought it would be good to finish with macho man from the ice age who doesn´t do anything around the house except drink beers," said Sr Torres, a native of Barcelona. "Spain is changing a lot, and I wanted to come up with an invention to enable men to do more around the home."
This true story I bring to you, gentle reader, under the title "Home sweet Gnome". When Jean Collop of Wadebridge, Cornwall, England, heard a prowler outside her home late at night, she went to confront him herself. "I politely told him not to move," she said, and "grabbed the first thing that came to hand" to defend herself. Which was? "One of my garden gnomes." The man apparently didn´t hold still: she "hurled" the gnome "and hit him," she said, then retreated inside. There she grabbed another weapon -- a rolling pin -- which she preferred since she "didn´t want to break another gnome."
If you want to live a more stress free life and enjoy living to a ripe old age, you’d be better off locating to Portugal, Spain, Italy or Greece, a European Union funded survey has discovered. While older people in North Europe are healthier and wealthier than their southern European counterparts, they still die younger, according to the survey. This is just one of the findings to emerge from the ‘Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe’ (SHARE) project. The survey gathered data on the quality of life of around 22,000 EU citizens aged 50 and over in 12 countries, from Scandinavia to central and southern Europe- Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Denmark and Sweden. I
personally don´t think you need to go to all that expense of such a large survey. Get down to a local bar; the TV´s on; the radio is on; the slot machines are noisy; the coffee machine is grinding; the conversations are so loud you can´t think; a passing moped drowns everything out; the smoky atmosphere can be cut with a knife; the floor is full of cigarette buts, nut shells, paper and other detritus; the plumbing and electrics would be condemned in Northern European countries, as would the kitchen and the tapas lying on the bar.
Stressed? It is extremely simple. These are people so completely oblivious to their surroundings and other people and what might kill you that they simply don´t give a shit....until they die! Who´s right, I ask?
Our frog and horse eating, Gallic cousins, it seems, have every right to feel paranoid. In a recent survey conducted by the French themselves these are the comments from their neighbours. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as "chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless". However, the French may be more shocked by the views of other nations. For the Germans, the French are "pretentious, offhand and frivolous". The Dutch describe them as "agitated, talkative and shallow." The Spanish see them as "cold, distant, vain and impolite" and the Portuguese as "preaching". In Italy they come across as "snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed" and the Greeks find them "not very with it, egocentric bons vivants". Interestingly, the Swedes consider them "disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty". So therefore the old adage that, “France is wonderful, it´s just the French who are the problem”, is shared across Europe.
Forget your engines, navigational aids and toys on board the most important piece of equipment on board is the heads system. For all you yachties that appreciate this it may be some consolation that it happens to others but, in a big way, and I mean a big way! Disgruntled passengers arrived back from an aborted cruise last month after a voyage billed as an Iberian Odyssey from Southampton turned into a "nightmare" of blocked lavatories. The Thomson Celebration, 21 years old but on its maiden voyage under the holiday company´s ownership, developed a plumbing problem three days into the two-week trip but continued with engineers working to fix it. After six days, 250 of the 700 lavatories were still not working. With passengers complaining about an appaling smell, Thomson Cruises was forced to cancel the voyage. As they say, "shit happens"!
Nanny Britain update: Children have been banned from collecting chickens´ eggs at the National Trust´s showpiece farm because it is now deemed by health and safety advisers as too hazardous.The feeding of grass pellets to goats has also been outlawed at the farm at Wimpole Hall, the trust´s largest property in Cambridgeshire, amid fears that young visitors will pick up diseases and germs.
And what else is happening back in blighty? Interesting figures have emerged from a poll of 18,000 consumers for loyalty card company Nectar. Half the women in Britain would rather have a free voucher to go shopping at their favourite store than have sex. But while many males would say this confirms what they already suspected, it is revealed that one-third of men would give up sex for a free set of power tools or tickets to a football match.
I opened the Daily Bull**** on the 17th May last and read, "..representatives of eleven Consulates in Palma had met the president of the Tourist Board and complained about: lack of safety in the streets, high prices, poor service..". But, this was from their archives from the same date in 1980. One thing you cannot level at the local tourist trade- inconsistency!
Oh-oh, Hun alert! Get your towels out there right now! The president of the Krautentravelenazzociation has just announced that they are expecting the same number (3.5 million) of hairy Aryan bodies here this summer that polluted the Playa de Palma in 1999!
As many of you well-informed readers will know the Catalans think themselves as apart from the rest of Spain. They are now even trying to form a separate state in cyberspace! The Catalan government has asked the national government for permission to register the .ct internet domain suffix for the region, which would identify it as a separate nation on the internet.
Here´s a quickie: a man goes to the doctor complaining that he has problems hearing things properly "what are the symptoms" the doctor asks "a yellow faced cartoon family but I don’t see how that helps".
You may remember some years ago that the crew training company, IYT came and went from Palma leaving a nasty smell. It appears that they are still up to no good in Ft Lauderdale. Under international agreements, says the MCA, only Maritime Administrations can issue certificates of competency under the STCW Convention (Standards of Training Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers as amended). According to Tony Drury of the MCA’s Seafarers Standards Branch, “Only an administration such as the MCA or an equivalent state authority can issue a STCW certificate of competence or endorsement.” In this respect the IYT’s statement concerning its “STCW compliant IYT Yachtmaster Ocean Certificate of Competence” is misleading. The IYT’s claim, which appeared in the May issue of Dockwalk magazine, that “it is the only company in the world that issues STCW compliant commercial Yachtmaster certificates” is false.
Your impression that it´s getting more expensive in Mallorca is not unfounded. The results, just released as the "Consumer Price Index" has shown that a basket of groceries has increased by 2.9% over the last 12 months. Such is the price of living on fantasy island!
I´m not one to loll around on a beach but this news story caught my eye. Some EU states are side-stepping their obligations to keep problem beaches clean, by deleting beaches from official lists so they no longer have to meet with cleanliness regulations. And guess what- Spain’s deletions since 1996 has now reached 40% of the total! Lies, damned lies and statistics.
Well, Palma cabbies have finally admitted it; they don´t know where the **** they are! The Palma radio-taxi association have recently announced the introduction of GPS units in the first 200 of their members´ cabs!
Until next month,
Bates