I've Been Driving In My Car

I was driving along the Carretera Artà through Puerto Alcúdia yesterday. As I do most days. Unlike the summer when there is much traffic and tourists wandering all over the road, it is quite a pleasant drive in winter. I don't mind speed restrictions. They let you drive with less stress. The restriction along the carretera is 50. It is probably unnecessary during winter; in summer it is essential. But yesterday, enjoying the quietness of the road, I was sticking to the limit, just about. Not everyone was. There was someone wanting to go a good deal faster. The car behind came right up my rear and then overtook. There is meant to be no overtaking along this road and because of the regular crossing islands it is a hazardous manoeuvre. So what, you may be thinking. Happens all the time. Well, sometimes. Much as I panned the layout of the road when it was re-done, it has at least cut speed and more reckless driving. Praise where it is due. The point about yesterday, though, was not the car behind but the one behind it - the Guardia. They would have been aware of his speed, of his overtaking and of the fact that he had been tailgating. Exceeding the speed limit is one thing that can get you points on your licence, tailgating is another. But nothing. Happens all the time.

I have, on numerous occasions, witnessed cars overtaking a Guardia vehicle and sometimes it has been a Trafico vehicle; Trafico that polices the main roads and motorways. They have overtaken at speeds clearly in excess of the limit. Nothing. Happens all the time.

Someone who was new to the island told me, with some astonishment, of having been in a bar in Can Picafort where two members of the Guardia, having had a couple of beers, then got into their Trafico vehicle.

These anecdotes are all symptomatic of what can often be a laissez-faire attitude to driving misdemeanours and also of setting the wrong example. Those cops having their beers. They may not have been over the drink limit, but if you are going to have a couple of drinks and then get in your car, what message does it send out?

Mallorca has a shocking record of road accidents, but my impression is that things have got a lot better. There was once a time when you went out on the road fearful of being involved in an accident, because any journey would seem to involve passing one that had happened, was in the process of happening or about to happen. Not now. It does seem to have improved. But it could be better still. And a touch more intervention when there is an obvious infraction occurring under the noses of the police might help to make it so.

And moving along the carretera, into Playa de Muro, there is a fair amount of work being done to the road. Not before time. They have laid new tarmac on those parts of the road which had basically fallen to pieces. It's something. They should re-lay the whole thing, as was done on the stretch between the Albufera reception and Can Picafort. They are also in the process of constructing pedestrian crossing-points and small roundabouts to replace the currently non-functioning system of the traffic lights at which drivers are supposed to turn right in order to turn left. Most do, but many do not, and that many do not because they don't see the sign or understand how they are meant to proceed. So the roundabouts should be a blessing. I say should be, but, as we all know here, roundabout etiquette is something that doesn't seem to be taught at driving school, and if it is it gets immediately forgotten.

If you go further along the carretera, as far as the roundabout coming into Can Picafort, you can head off towards Muro town. To your right is the Son Bosc finca, about which so much has been said in respect of the projected golf course. Its realisation edges ever closer. One of the environmental objections was the existence of a species of orchid to be found on the finca. The Balearic Government's environment department has pronounced. An area of some 6,000 square metres will remain protected in order to safeguard the orchid. This will mean that the hole, which would have swallowed up the orchid, will have to re-sited. Not a problem it would seem, as the whole project covers an area of 540,000 square meters. This intervention by the government does, however, means that the project cannot actually get under way. It has to be re-submitted in order to take account of the required change. So, on and on we go to the day when finally the diggers will move in, which they probably will, despite so many voices opposing it and also questioning its necessity. I guess I'll keep saying it. Forget the golf. Stick up a theme park or an all-year tourist development. Anyone for a Nadal centre?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Fontella Bass, not Aretha Franklin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXSocE_M1G4). Today's title - "it's not quite a Jaguar".

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Rescue Me

Look over the hill, boys, it's the cavalry. Just in time. Just in time to save the winter and its benighted tourism. The cavalry's coming from the east - Poles, Hungarians, Czechs. Praise be for the collapse of the eastern bloc.

If only. Not that there isn't to be an eastern invasion. Just that it is one by pensioners being brought to the Balearics under the subsidised scheme for social tourism. 48,000 are expected during the low season. Well, it's something I suppose, and with unemployment likely to nudge over the psychological barrier of 80,000 and even as high as 100,000 by the new year, anything will do. However, though a few hotels may benefit, that will be about your lot. The eastern European oldsters are not likely to be packing the bars, restaurants and shops of the Mallorcan resorts. And let's just put this in context shall we. If one takes the annual tourism to be in the region of 12 million, this slow-moving cavalry charge amounts to 0.4 per cent.

Still, there are always those other fringe sources of tourism, like the golf. Always the golf. Except it isn't always the golf. The development in Campos having been deposited into a bunker, now we have Binissalem refusing to allow another one to tee-off. It was almost certainly unwarranted - the course, that is - but the town hall's refusal to support its construction just emphasises the stasis of new tourism developments and also the golfing gulf between what the town halls are prepared to allow and what the tourism authorities see (wrongly in most instances) as the great future for Mallorca's tourism and, in particular, its out-of-season tourism. Shame really. They could have built a gentle pitch and putt for the pensioners.

And sport of another sort is also under a cloud. We're back with Real Mallorca. While there would appear to be a German who might be mad enough to want to take over a club that is falling rapidly and may well drop out of La Liga the way the team is going, there is no firm bid. Nor is there one from Freddy Shepherd. Whoever takes the club over, if anyone, can probably get it for a song. Why Davidson ever proposed the 38 million, God alone knows. If money cannot be found by March, the club is likely to be unable to pay its employees. It already owes significant amounts to contractors. The reality for Real is that it might just cease to be. And there is no real sign of the cavalry or of a rescue.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bon Jovi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2vDn6Ph1YA). Today's title - who did this? Careful, it's not who you might think.

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Keep The Faith

BEING SPANISH - PART SIX (RESTAURANTS)

The impetus for this "being Spanish" series was mainly comments about Alcúdia's Mile, i.e. it doesn't look "that Spanish". No, it doesn't. Or it does, if you accept that being Spanish is an adaptation, a cultural inversion for the mass tourist who needs a spatial reassurance of a conformity that could be described as "being tourist". Take a wander along The Mile in Puerto Alcúdia and contemplate its restaurants. Where do you find "being Spanish"? No, I'm struggling, too. The occasional name, Olas for instance, but otherwise it is anytown, anytouristtown Spain; Spanish by location, but a Mediterranean-lite of grill, entertainment and pizza with a splash of the Orient. At the top of The Mile, there is S'Amfora, where there is the temptation of tapas, and a restaurant with a not undeserved reputation. Close by The Mile is La Traviata with its bullfighting paraphernalia. Here are semblances, but these aside, what is it that defines the restaurant as being Spanish?

Take, as ever, our hypothetical holidaymaker anticipating a fortnight of some ill-defined Spanish experience. What does he think a Spanish restaurant might be? He suffers from a lack of experience in his homeland. Where there is familiarity of French, Italian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, is there the same appreciation of Spanish? Not really. But even if there were, a certain look would be difficult to conjure up. Indian and Chinese restaurants may follow generally similar patterns - many of them as wallpaper - but their European counterparts do not. What, after all, is a French restaurant supposed to look like or be like? Some might expect it to have strings of onions hanging from the walls, waiters in berets, an accordion player getting pissed on Pernod, and bottles of Listerine to combat the garlic-induced halitosis, but it would be an idiotic stereotyping.

If there is a preconceived notion at all of the Spanish restaurant, then it is likely to be one formed out of what might be dubbed the country-cottaging of imagery. In this respect, the Brit falls back on his own cultural symbol and reconstructs it for a different environment. Accordingly, the Spanish restaurant becomes stone-walled and flower-terraced. It is the transportation of quaint and of ruralism, and in some respects it is correct, as physically there are such restaurants, although not along The Mile. To what extent they can then "be Spanish", however, is a factor of personality and of keeping faith with a tradition not only in terms of cuisine but also style. Restaurants may be run by Spaniards, but that doesn't mean to say that they are Spanish.

Yet one asks, well what is this style? At an extreme, it might be typified by slovenly service and a salacious waiter who wants to roger your 18-year-old daughter. Some might say that this is "being Spanish". But this would be to succumb to a sort of Queen Motherly xenophobia. However, that borrowing of one's own culture is not inappropriate. For rural in Britain, think rustic here. It's the same word in Catalan, albeit with an accent on the "u". Rustic, rústic. It is redolent of a by-gone era and of an artisanship that seems at odds with the chicness that informs much contemporary restaurant design, wherever it may be. In the same way that a proliferation, surprising perhaps to a British visitor, of dry-stone walls cuts across the local landscape, so ruralism is symbolic of a certain Spanishness of restaurant. There is something of a link perhaps to the country pub, albeit that ceilings tend to be much higher. If the Spanish bar is a thing of mundaneness and atmospheric coldness, the restaurant is not. It is the pub alternative if you like - one of cosiness, of beams, of stone, of wood, of artefact and adornment, and often of low and discreet lighting.

And it is in the keeping of a tradition and of personality that one finds a different type of reassurance, one of that tradition not having been betrayed by a newer generation. There are several examples, but one such is La Parra in Puerto Pollensa where the barrels of a bodega collide with something of the pub, a grandfather clock for example. Height and stone work are perhaps no more clearly expressed than in Eu Centro in the town of Pollensa. Beam, stone, wood and barrel can be made to transform the unlovely, as was the case with Sa Taverneta des Moll in Puerto Alcúdia when the insipid interior of the one-time bar was ripped out. The floral or garden terrace can be experienced in restaurants which can occasionally truly aspire to the overworked hype of "romantic" - L'Aup on the turning to Cala San Vicente or the elaborate, lush and aptly named Jardín in Puerto Alcúdia.

For all that these restaurants may be said to typify a being Spanish, there is still the question of context. Only L'Aup in its rural setting and Eu Centro overlooked by the church in Pollensa might be said to benefit from a contextual position that makes unquestionable that Spanishness. Jardín, for example, seems like a mistake: in staggering distance of The Mile and next to a "snack grill" that was once Molly Ryans Irish bar. Some struggle alongside the anytouristtownisation of the resorts. Brutalisation-by-Dakota, for instance, has brought a hard-nosed but home-grown internationalism to Puerto Pollensa but is perhaps also an unsentimental realisation that, though the tourist hankers after a seemingly hard-to-define restaurant being Spanish, he is also at ease with a culinary, design and thematic imperialism.

* Please do feel free to send me - to the email address below - any of your suggestions as to restaurants that you feel are particularly "Spanish".


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - John Waite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUz9ZfegpIE). Today's title - American mega group.

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And There's A Message That I'm Sending Out

There are changes to the structure of the consortium for tourism promotion in Muro. Big deal, you might think, and you would not be wrong. It may be an old adage of business management that structure leads to strategy, but however Muro wishes to integrate different interests, the key issue is what it all leads to - if anything. At times, one fancies they devote energy to the politicking of structure and insufficient to the purpose of that structure.

I wrote about Muro's promotion back in June (8 June: The Point!). It isn't necessary to go over that ground again, except to say that the impetus for that piece was that there was to be a "marketing makeover", whatever that was meant to be. I am yet to be made aware of any.

The main interest groups in Muro are the town hall and the hotel association for Playa de Muro. But the town hall is a thing of faction. Elements within it are on the side of the hotels in respect of the protracted debate regarding the Son Bosc golf course; others are not. It isn't mutual hostility, but nor is it full harmony. Whether in accord or not, there is a bigger issue, and that has to do with how well the town (and others in Mallorca) can promote itself.

There may be a temptation to think that the holidaymaker is indifferent to exact locations; that he opts for Mallorca and that the resort itself is relatively inconsequential. In some cases this may well be true, but one only has to take a trawl through some holiday websites to appreciate that there is a battle going on between certain resorts and a tourist wish-list that needs satisfying by different destinations and indeed hotels. The resorts are their own niches. Once upon a time, Mallorca could have been characterised as some amorphous mass for the mass and massively uninformed tourist, but not now. Before the internet, the towns, the resorts had little opportunity to send out their own unique messages. They were swallowed up in catch-all adverts for the island, and still are when it comes to television and much print advertising. This style of generic advertising can still work well, or at least appear to do so if the appearance of the actual advert is anything to go by. There is one for Andalusia on the mainland. It is visually striking and supported by a dramatic, flamenco-cool, Café del Mar-ish musical and vocal treatment. But it is still a form of first-base attention and interest grabber. The holidaymaker's next act is not now to head off to the nearest travel agent but to go and surf the internet and identify where precisely he might wish to live the holiday dream of that initial advert.

The towns have their own sites. I referred to these on 29 November. The tourist versions are of questionable value, and yet effort and money is devoted to their promotion. In Pollensa, you will see pollensa.com; in Alcúdia, one of the boats that hacks along the bay has an enormous alcudiamallorca.com name emblazoned on the side; in Playa de Muro, taxis have playademuro.net. Of the three, only Alcúdia's is of any real use. All three are essentially vehicles for selling hotel accommodation, and in the case of Playa de Muro, the site is that of the hotel association. It contains little of value. Indeed its tourism perspective is questionable. Take its blurb about Playa de Muro for instance. It is written for a conference audience and not for the tourist. It boasts 14 hotels with "excellent conference and meeting rooms". If these were so important, why are none of them open in winter? Are there no conferences in winter? One also gets a hint as to what may be a purpose of that golf course, i.e. one to support this largely invisible conference business. The website says that "we are planning" a golf course. Who is the "we" in this instance? It can't be the town hall as it is not a town hall site. They may well believe that they are planning one, but there are those at the town hall as well as GOB, the environmental pressure group, and various pieces of legal interpretation who say otherwise.

Much as the internet has become the first portal of call for the holidaymaker, so it should also be for any town hall with a decent promotional message. But the town halls fail to get any such message across. It falls to the commercial websites to do their job for them. Maybe I should apply for a grant. What the town halls seem to be either unaware of, incapable of or unwilling to engage in is any form of interactivity. Those holidaymakers who go and surf the internet. What is one of the more important things they are looking for? Opinion, recommendations, personal experiences. There may be a potential tyranny of prejudice, subjectivity and misinformation through these, but their influence cannot be overlooked. It is just this sort of service that the commercial sites can offer, and the town halls do not or cannot.

For all that there may be a change in structure, Muro will probably allow the hotels to continue being the standard-bearer for promotion via the internet and providing little in the way of meaningful information. Meanwhile, the town of Muro itself is completely overlooked. It may suffer by comparison of genuine interest with Alcúdia or Pollensa, but that's no reason for it to be ignored. There will doubtless continue to be the odd brochure available at the tourist office, yet there is no satellite office in the remote Alcúdia Pins area for such diffusion. The hotel association will doubtless continue to produce its own neat brochures, but these are after-the-event. More and more, it is promotion before-the-event of the holiday that is demanded, and that means the internet.

Promotion is all well and good, but anyone who knows his marketing will tell you that it is but one aspect of marketing. A concentration on this one aspect blinds the decision-maker, the consortium, whatever to the wider picture, and that is the whole marketing mix of the resort. Alcúdia and Pollensa can do this, or could do, as both have resorts (and old towns) with identifiable characters. Muro and Playa de Muro do not. Promotion fine, but attention has to be paid to the product of Playa de Muro, to its lack of focus and to its indistinctiveness, as is exemplified by the fact that it is so often seen as being part of Alcúdia. One thing the consortium could do immediately is to instruct those websites and tour operators which state that certain hotels are in Alcúdia, when they are not, to get that information right. It would be a start.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Rolling Stones (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2fhus_rolling-stones-wild-horses-live-aco_music). Today's title - a line from a single by an English artist who was big in the USA; the song was a number one there.

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Wild Horses

Twelve high-ranking officials and two civil servants from eleven municipalities across Mallorca are implicated in a scandal related to false documentation centred on land in Ses Salines. It is a bizarre case involving a horse-riding club, and the officials include four mayors, five former mayors, one former mayoress and two other representatives, one of whom is still in position. All the officials come from one party - the Partido Popular (PP). They are all due to take their places in the dock today as the "caso caballistas (case of the horsemen)" is heard. Neither Alcúdia nor Pollensa has anyone implicated, you'll doubtless be pleased to learn, but Sa Pobla and Santa Margalida do.

What on earth is going on? The mayor of Llucmajor is facing a three-year stretch for another scandal, the Andratx case has claimed not only the former mayor but other officials, and at the regional government level there is the "money-in-the garden" case, to name but one. The last Balearic administration (PP) is one that seems to have been ripe with less-than-fully-legit procedures.

The hope is that the succession of scandals will finally bring to a head and to an end the corruption that appears to bedevil or to have bedevilled local Mallorca politics. One expresses the hope, but then one receives a knowing look. Scratch the surface, and the fear is that it is all around.

Why is that some mayors, and it does seem to be mainly mayors, appear to be incapable of acting with propriety? Are they out of control? I am greatly in favour of local mayors and local democracy, but when all trust in such a system evaporates in a collusion of false documents or some fraud, what is the point of it? It is not just that trust is destroyed, it sends out a rotten message, and believe me there are any number here who will willingly receive that message and enact it accordingly.

One can search for different reasons. Perhaps it's to do with competence, or the lack thereof, or with weak personalities, or with nepotism and the influence of "networks" and families. Maybe it's all these things. What qualifications do many of these mayors bring to their position? Is there any such thing as a fit-and-proper test? And where are the checks and balances? The town halls could do with a dose of external audit or of some monitoring body comprising people from outside the municipality. Except that would succeed only in slowing up decision-making and adding to bureaucracy and costs. But maybe something like this is necessary in order to create confidence in a system that at times is open to ridicule. Perhaps some areas of town hall responsibility also need attention. Anything to do with land, and so often these cases are to do with land, should be hived off and placed with an independent island commission. The particular sadness of this current scandal, however, is that it was island-wide; it was not a case of one rotten borough, and the common link is that of a political party.

While the history of the Civil War is always told as a narrative of the clash between left and right and of Republican and Nationalist, it should not be overlooked that one of Franco's key aims was the destruction of what he saw as an unworkable party system. There were plenty, once democracy and the monarchy were restored, who argued that Spain could never operate a democratic system. I daresay such voices still exist. But they were and are wrong. Nationally, the democracy has matured, but it is at local level that it remains in an infancy of pettiness and occasional petty or grander theft that seems to refuse to want to grow up. One hopes that all the rottenness has been rooted out. Otherwise those old voices are likely to become louder.


THE CATALAN DICTIONARY
Now, remember what I was saying about that free dictionary, the one with the Sunday copy of "dBalears" (24 November: Cool For Cats). I admit I had forgotten all about it, but the publicity in "The Bulletin" had clearly done something of the trick. At the newsagents yesterday, who should I bump into but Jamie from Foxes, and he was in pursuit of extending his multi-linguistic capabilities by becoming the proud owner of the Catalan-English dictionary. You see, I'm not always right. Here was one Brit committed to availing himself of Grup Serra's generosity in seeking to be able to explain that the cat is indeed under the table - in Catalan. So, Jamie asks, where is it? The newspaper, that is. We look around. It is not on the normal racks. Eventually, we spy three copies to the side of the main counter. Three copies with three pocket dictionaries for what would be pretty damn small pockets. Too small, thinks I. I'll do with the one I've got. Jamie, however, is determined that his language education demands a copy of the paper and its wee gift. The only problem was ... he hadn't ordered it. Only three copies of the paper and they had been reserved. Where was it explained that you had to reserve your copy? I don't remember that. If there were only three, they are not exactly banging out copies of the dictionary or of the newspaper. In the highly unlikely event that anyone reading this wants a copy of the Catalan to German or to French dictionaries that are to appear on subsequent Sundays, might I suggest you head off to the newsagents sharpish and bang in your order. Meantime, if they ever repeat the exercise, might it just be possible to make it clear that you can't just turn up with your euro or two and walk away with the prized dictionary.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Four Tops (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StwKWpMI9R8). Today's title - one of the greatest of all time.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

I Can't Help Myself

I ought to start a campaign here against shoddy English. It is everywhere, and it is often inexcusable. Spanish restaurants should not find it difficult to get an English speaker to point out inaccuracies. The problem is that they find those who profess to speak English, including some English people, and they are none the wiser. The result of this can be the likes of the classic Restaurant Boy "flesh on the tenterhooks" that was to be found on its business cards, until I pointed out that it was garbage. There was never any excuse for Taylor Woodrow's "we build in Spain since 1958"; it's a British company for God's sake. They may have been building in Spain since the late '50s, but they still can't sell all their apartments in Puerto Pollensa.

It's not as though I am dogmatic. I can play fast and loose with the English language, and I do. It is one of the beauties of English that it is so amenable to flexible usage, to the making-up of words and to the abandonment - usually for emphasis - of those rules that were drummed into you at school. Never start a sentence with and or but; always have a subject, object and verb in a sentence. I've just broken that rule; there was no subject. I do not object to text style or to Americanisms. Language should be flexible, but not if it makes no sense, is wrongly spelt or is just plain wrong.

Maybe it's all the years of editorial. I can't help myself. There were two adverts for restaurants in "The Bulletin" yesterday. Both carried mistakes, one more blatant than the other. Try this out: "the excellent quality of one of Britain's foremost Indian restaurants is now open for lunch and dinner". What's wrong with this? How can "the quality" be open? The subject is "the quality". They mean the restaurant, but it's a nonsense. Then there is this: "fine wines to compliment each course". It's the wrong compliment; it should be the other one - complement. A minor slip or typo perhaps, but still a slip. Then there are estate agents. The Spanish frequently get this wrong and refer to "state agents". They are thinking that they have to drop the "e" as this is indicative of a Spanish spelling. In trying to get it right, they get it wrong. But even if the estate agency is British, there are the frequent howlers; well, they are howlers to me. "The property comprises of four bedrooms, etc..." It can consist of or it can comprise. It cannot comprise of. It's shoddy English to comprise of; it's also wrong. Then there is Spanglish or the inaccurate use of "false friends" that have crossed from Spanish into English. The clearest example of this is the use of "reform", as in the building/the restaurant/the bar needs some reforms. Look up the Spanish word "reforma" in a dictionary - in mine anyway - and it does indeed say "reform" but it also says "(ARQ) repair". The "ARQ" is short for "arquitectura". One can undertake repairs or renovations or perform a refurbishment, but not a reform; it is not how the word is used in English, but it is here - by the English. One can re-form with a hyphen, but even that isn't accurate. There should be some reforms to the way English is spoken.

English, unlike Spanish, German, French and other languages, tends to avoid a rigid approach. Much like there is no written constitution, there is no written set of rules in the sense of a body that arbitrates on linguistic matters. Yet there are of course rules - thousands of them. It is just that the English, the British, are often unaware of them. And this can largely be explained by schooling and by that tendency towards flexibility. A German, for instance, will insist on being taught rules for English grammar; he has his own grammar hammered into him at school. A Spaniard may not insist, but he will be fully aware of the existence of rules. During the summer, I used to meet up with a Mallorcan friend - Toni who runs Pippers restaurant in Puerto Alcúdia. As a favour, I was helping him out with his English. When I got to grammar, he understood well the rules and applications of tenses. Ask many English speakers, and they wouldn't have a clue.

In "Euro Weekly", the editorial manager has been doing regular items about language and language learning. She makes a good point this week when referring to the fact that Brits, when learning Spanish, run up against the grammar wall. It's not surprising. To teach a Brit Spanish, one probably has to first teach them about English grammar. Perhaps it all boils down to the fact that the English verb system, at its basic level, is so simple. "I write, you write, he writes, we write, you write, they write." "Yo escribo, tú escribes, él escribe, nosotros escribimos, vosotros escribís, ellos escriben." Conjugation is less obvious in English, and don't even let's mention the formal and informal "you's". Then there is the fact that we don't change our adjectives and that we don't have masculines and feminines (and neuters in some languages). At least in Spanish there is no declension of the article, as there is in German (and by article I mean "a", "the", and also "this" and "that").

Mind you, what can the poor old Brits do? As I write this on a Saturday afternoon, many will be glued to Sky. And the media are often at fault. They are at fault for admitting into their midsts those whose tenuous grasp of the English language should bar them from ever going near a broadcasting studio: the football pundit or football manager most obviously. I fancy it was Big Ron what did it, a man who didn't so much murder the language as put it up against a wall and fire a volley of bullets through its heart. And his crime was? To introduce the use of what might be termed the football present perfect. Listen to almost any pundit or manager now and, when reporting an incident, he will say: "the boy's gone down the wing (or worse, has come down the wing), he's crossed it, the goalie's come for it and the striker's put it in the back of the net". Unless this is a report on something that has just been shown, it is always wrong, and 99% of the time this is the case. (Depending on context, it should either be the past or present tense.) But because Big Ron, or whoever it was, did it, i.e. used the present perfect incorrectly, so others aped him, and they aped him because they thought it was correct. And they thought it was correct because they didn't know their language, and especially their grammar.

I come back to my old friend, the man in the bar (who does exist by the way). We were once having a conversation about language and language learning, and I cited the case of the use of the present perfect. He said it didn't matter. Why should people need to know what these tenses are called or what they do? And you know, he was probably right, because for the Brits they don't matter. Which is maybe why many struggle to understand Spanish. From shoddy English to shoddy Spanish.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Stereophonics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxE1vyxIoAc). Today's title - legendary act and legendary lead singer who died recently.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)


Index for November 2008

Alcúdia marina - 3 November 2008
All-inclusives - 16 November 2008
Architecture - 11 November 2008
Artà - 22 November 2008
Asociación de Britanicos Irlandeses Residentes Empresarios y Trabajadores en las Baleares - 1 November 2008
Balearic economy - 6 November 2008
Bars - 15 November 2008
BBC - 9 November 2008
Bees - 10 November 2008
Campos - 17 November 2008
Can Picafort - 6 November 2008, 18 November 2008
Car chase - 13 November 2008
Car sales - 5 November 2008
Catalan - 24 November 2008
Churches - 11 November 2008
Citizen participation - 19 November 2008, 20 November 2008
Coffee - 4 November 2008
Credit and interest - 26 November 2008
Crime - 3 November 2008
Dictionaries - 24 November 2008
Digital television - 20 November 2008
Ensaimada - 12 November 2008
Environment - 17 November 2008
Eurorregión Pirineos Mediterráneo - 16 November 2008
Expatriates - 10 November 2008
Fairs - 5 November 2008, 12 November 2008, 21 November 2008
Fiestas - 18 November 2008
Fira de Tardor 2008 - 21 November 2008
Football - 13 November 2008, 14 November 2008, 15 November 2008
Garry Bonsall - 19 November 2008
GOB - 17 November 2008, 29 November 2008
Golf - 17 November 2008
Gotmar Residents Association - 19 November 2008
Holiday bookings - 16 November 2008
Holiday lets - 9 November 2008
Hospital General de Muro - 12 November 2008
Hotels - 8 November 2008, 9 November 2008, 16 November 2008, 26 November 2008
Landscapes - 23 November 2008
Language - 24 November 2008, 30 November 2008
Nordic walking - 7 November 2008
Parking - 18 November 2008, 29 November 2008
Paul Davidson - 13 November 2008, 14 November 2008, 15 November 2008
Pedestrianisation - 1 November 2008, 19 November 2008, 22 November 2008, 25 November 2008
Planning permissions - 26 November 2008
Police - 3 November 2008
Political parties - 17 November 2008, 20 November 2008
Pollensa Fair 2008 - 5 November 2008
Power cut - 14 November 2008
Property market - 2 November 2008
Pumpkins - 12 November 2008
Rafael Nadal - 28 November 2008
Real Mallorca - 13 November 2008, 14 November 2008, 15 November 2008
Residents associations - 1 November 2008, 19 November 2008
Rubbish tax - 22 November 2008
Sa Pobla - 21 November 2008
Santa Margalida - 18 November 2008
Season 2009 - 27 November 2008
Spanishness - 6 November 2008, 8 November 2008, 11 November 2008, 15 November 2008, 23 November 2008
Storms - 4 November 2008, 7 November 2008
Street cleaning - 20 November 2008
Tea - 4 November 2008
Television - 3 November 2008, 20 November 2008
Tour operators - 16 November 2008
Tourism - 8 November 2008, 16 November 2008, 22 November 2008, 27 November 2008, 28 November 2008
Town halls - 18 November 2008, 19 November 2008, 25 November 2008
Train - 5 November 2008
Tram - 5 November 2008
Unemployment - 4 November 2008, 7 November 2008
Water supply - 21 November 2008
Websites - 29 November 2008
Weddings - 11 November 2008
Winter tourism - 1 November 2008

It Means Nothing

There have been a number of large figures knocking around these past few days; figures in numerical terms that is. For once, they are not related to the numbers of unemployed or the size of the town halls' debts. They are figures for internet usage - those for websites of the town halls and centrally.

To take the town halls first. The other day, the "Diario" ran an article in which it explained that Alcúdia's site was the most popular on the island (I presume Palma is excluded from these). It has registered an annual number of just shy of 275,000 "entradas". I'm afraid at this point I get confused. What do they mean by an "entrada"? (From what I know, an "entrada", in computing terms, refers only to what I'm doing at the moment - making an entry.) Almost certainly it does not mean "hits", so probably page views. Assuming it is, it's not such a bad number; not brilliant, but not bad. Alcúdia tops the list with Manacor not far behind but Sa Pobla a fairly distant third, and Pollensa back in ninth spot. The article doesn't give a number for Pollensa, but Sa Pobla is some 110,000 behind Alcúdia and is six places above Pollensa.

Quite why Alcúdia should head this list and why Pollensa should lag behind, I am at a loss to explain. It's not as if the towns' populations are that markedly different, and if one takes population into account, then Manacor should come ahead of Alcúdia. Nor is there any clue in these websites being international. Alcúdia's site is in Catalan by default. There is a Castilian link, but it only gives menu items and not text. Pollensa's does not have a Castilian link, though both - eventually - get to their "sister" websites in different languages for tourists (in Pollensa's case, a complete waste of cyberspace). No, can't explain this.

But as in Spanish, so in English, there is the issue of terminology. Maybe someone can enlighten me more as to the application of "entrada", but whatever is used, there is so much confusion when it comes to terms and to statistics. And that brings me to ...

The figures for the town halls pale into cyberspace insignificance against those for the Balearic Government's tourism website - illesbalears.es. According to "The Bulletin", it received - get this - 85,168, 261 enquiries during the first nine months of this year. 85 million? What on earth does that mean? In fact, what are "enquiries"? If it is an accurately-reported figure, it is colossal, but as ever with these statistics it is not what it seems. Hits, and I have to assume that this is what enquiries means, are about the most useless statistic that can be dragged out for website traffic. Though useless, the number does give an indication. The site is obviously popular, and is evidence of how important the internet is, especially for the holidaymaker, though in the case of this site the overwhelming majority of visitors are Spanish - and you can see this for yourselves on Alexa.


GOBBY AGAIN
I thought our friends GOB, the environmental pressure group, had been keeping a low profile in matters Puerto Pollensa. Unusually for them, they seemed to have had little or nothing to say about the pedestrianisation. Maybe because there are enough voices doing it for them, or maybe they're in favour of it and know they'll be on a loser as they'd be placed in the mayoral circle of waggons and find themselves being similarly surrounded. And it would never do to act as the posse for the mayor and the Pollensa administration when there are other enviro controversies with which they can shoot arrows at him. Big-time controversies. Ho-hum. Like the parking area next to La Gola. Does anyone really give a damn, other than GOB? "Unsuitable", they say about the parking, without of course offering any solutions as to where there might be some alternative. I'm afraid I lose my patience with GOB who do, sometimes, make some valuable interventions, such as when they have, in the past, criticised the management of Albufera. It's enough to make you want to drain La Gola and pave it over, just to get up GOB's noses, which are of course immediately above their gobs.

Anyway, there was political support for GOB from the United Left and the Mallorcan socialists at the town hall, but their opposition to the parking was not sufficient to prevent support for it to proceed. Mayor Cerdà, rightly pointing to the need for parking in the area of La Gola, reckons that the "general" plan for the town keeps in mind the other need - that of "natural space" - which GOB claims would be eliminated were the parking area to be constructed. Some might say - what general plan?


A LITTLE BRITAIN CHRISTMAS
No, not that Little Britain, this Little Britain. Our own. Steve and Urbano. And as they're such nice chaps, on the WHAT'S ON BLOG (http://wotzupnorth.blogspot.com) are the Little Britain Christmas specials. The goose may be getting fat, but work your way through that list and it won't be the only one. Chops are being licked even as one reads it.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Adam Adamant. Today's title - Welsh band; not the Manics, the other ones.

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The Face

The Balearic Government appears to have buried the hatchet with Rafael Nadal. To recap. Funding for a tennis centre in Nadal's home town of Manacor was withdrawn by the current administration. It had been promised by the previous incumbents. Nadal took his racket home, and said that he would not participate in publicity. They seem to have kissed and made up. And so they should. If there is one person, one person above all, who should be the image of the islands and of tourism, it is Nadal. Not only is he known globally, he is also actually Mallorcan, which is more than can be said for previous "faces", some of whom, such as Paco de Lucia, were heralded with much fanfare and then disappeared as quickly as you could pluck a guitar string. The international totty that has been hauled out onto the marketing catwalk - Kournikova, Schiffer - may have had reasonable levels of recognition, but they, like Paco, were not from Mallorca. Nadal as the face is a no-brainer.

But now the government and IBATUR, the government's tourism promotional wing, seem to have netted the Manacor muscle, what are they going to do with him? One fears it will be little more than the "hi, I'm Rafa, fly me" nonsense. For all of Nadal's fame and appeal, the value of his celebrity alone is not enough to guarantee that it will be turned into a pot of tourism gold. It would be a massively missed opportunity if his name was not exploited in the best sense of that word.

Celebrity promotions can fail for various reasons, such as a lack of believability or a failure to connect with the chosen audience. Nadal, as celebrity and as a brand, ticks all the boxes, one would think. Marketers refer to "attributes", both of brands and of products. What are Nadal's attributes? Mallorcan, world renown, great sportsman, youthful, good-looking (some might say). One might argue that his relative youth might alienate an older audience, but he has the advantage of also being perceived as "a nice boy", certainly when compared to the moroseness of a Murray. Nice boys are winners with older markets. For a market nearer his own age, females have the hots for him and males can aspire to his body and talent (and may also, in some instances, lust after him). I'm not sure as to Nadal's international appeal to children, but the small boy next door may be indicative. When he's belting a tennis ball against the wall, he has his own running commentary in which "Nadal" features prominently. Nadal has pretty well all age groups covered. To not make good use of him would be a sin.

Nadal has recognition. He is in the same class as a Beckham in this respect. But for all that he is recognised, for all that he seems perfect as the wearer of the Mallorcan and Balearics promotional sandwich-board, look again at those attributes and now compare them to Mallorca as a product. A striking difference, in tourism terms, lies with the sport angle. For all that there has been the attempt to market Mallorca for its niche golf and cycling, the Mallorca product does not shout out sport. It is here that the Nadal brand and the Mallorca product diverge, and it is here that potentially the greatest opportunity exists as well as the potential for the greatest missed opportunity.

I go back to that piece about the golf development in Campos. Golf and more golf. The thinking is too narrow, too confined to a well-trodden fairway. I have a suggestion. Complexes, inspired by the Nadal name, of tennis courts and many other sports and activities, applicable for different age groups. Complexes that are integrated, with their own accommodation, entertainment and bars and restaurants, or are close to existing facilities. Complexes that are all-weather or have the possibility to be so - covered courts, enclosed pools, etc. The Nadal-isation of Mallorca. All-year centres. Three or four Nadal centres for all-year tourism around the island. The name alone would be enough to grab the tour operators' interest.

To make most of the Nadal brand, the product has to support it, the Mallorca product that is. I very much doubt that it will. Rather than hitting a winner, the tourist authorities, government and town halls will serve up another double fault. Even were they minded to contemplate such centres, it would take that long to ever get agreement, let alone get around to constructing them, that Nadal would have long retired and would have been superseded as the face by a string of bimbos or ageing musicians. What a shame and what a waste.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Corrs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzx7omiAmJQ). Today's title - different sort of question. "The Face" was the enemy of which '60s television character who himself lent his name to a punk/new wave act.

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Give Me A Reason

A thought-provoking moment from the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" yesterday. Well, it provoked my thoughts; I can't speak about others. On the tourism front, a professor in Barcelona is saying that, while the top and bottom ends of the market should be fine next season, the middle market is more likely to shrink. He explains this by comparing tourism with the situation in the car sector where mid-range car sales have fallen but the top end is still growing.

It's an interesting comparison, but I'm not entirely sure I agree. Intuitively, one would anticipate that anything other than the top end would decline next year, but there are plenty of messages floating around that suggest otherwise. Firstly, that bottom end. One has to be careful as to definition, but locally (in Alcúdia at any rate) it seemed that this year it was the very economic market, typified by the exclusive all-inclusives, that was taking a hit. I'm not sure that Bellevue, only a third or so of it all-inclusive, had a particularly brilliant season either. Yet some other hotels in the same area that were offering half board or self-catering were doing fine thanks very much. Ok, that this was this year, but there is a general feeling that, despite the economic problems, people will still fork out for their annual holiday. The car analogy may not be that appropriate, as the purchase of a new car is something that can be deferred. So, you might say, could a holiday, but there is perhaps less rationality when it comes to buying holidays or not.

There was, though, the evidence in August of hotels that were making special offers; hotels like Molins in Cala San Vicente or the Daina in Puerto Pollensa. I guess you would define these hotels as catering for the middle market, but again one has to be careful with one's classifications. Alcúdia, it might be said, has a strong lower middle-market presence than does Puerto Pollensa, but that lower middle-market is not the budget end, which the professor is saying is one that is likely to grow. From what I understand, bookings within this market for 2009 are pretty good. Right down at the budget end of the market, let's be blunt, the contribution to the wider economy is relatively small, especially if much of this market heads to an all-inclusive. The crucial factor for next year, especially where the British market is concerned, could well be the state of the pound, and the exchange rate against the euro could yet get worse. If the Brit holidaymaker does decide to go ahead with his fortnight in Mallorca and Euroland, there must be some concern as to spend, more so than has been the case over the past two to three years.

One hears calls for bars and restaurants to take account of the exchange rate and to price accordingly. It's all well and good, but why should they? Indeed, how can they? Owners may be well aware of the sinking pound, but they are also aware of their own costs. It would surprise me if one were to find significant price hikes next season, but it would surprise me even more if there were to be reductions. This said, if the Brit holidaymaker has yet to decide on his destination for next year, that exchange rate could yet become the loser in the penalty shoot-out between Mallorca and the likes of Turkey or Croatia.

There is now also the issue of VAT. The two and a half per cent reduction may be designed to stimulate consumer spending, but will it make much of a difference to the holiday decision-making purchase? On a two thousand pound holiday, the element for VAT means that, net, the holiday actually costs a bit over 1700 pounds. With a reduction, the final cost would now make the holiday some 40-odd quid cheaper. An incentive? It would be questionable even if it were true. The VAT calculation is far more complicated than I have just outlined, owing to factors such as the tour operators margin scheme (and don't ask me to try and explain that). If there is any reduction it will not even be in this range, and chances are that it wouldn't be passed on anyway. Forget it.

Nope, the real issue - that shoot-out decider - is the pound in your pocket, or rather the pound in your pocket when it is removed and then presented in exchange for a euro. The problem is that you might get just a euro, or even less. That would be worrying; if it went below one euro that could be the point at which the holidaymaker crosses the psychological barrier, and crosses off Mallorca from his list of destinations. But there again, rational though that might be to do so, who said that the holiday decision was solely a reasoned one; the holidaymaker needs to be given little reason to have that holiday and in Mallorca, despite the state of the pound. The middle market may not grow next year, but it may also not fall. Or am I being irrational in believing so.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Kaiser Chiefs, "Ruby" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMDcOViViNY). Today's title - oh, no apologies, it is Andrea after all. So therefore ...

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Due To Lack Of Interest

The Balearic Government is to pick up the tab for interest on lines of credit available for the modernisation of hotels. If evidence were needed as to the interdependence of the tourism and construction sectors, here it is. One hope is that hotels, which may have decided to stall refurbishments and modernisations because of the economic situation and also the potential unavailability of finance, will now change their minds, thus giving a boost to local construction companies. In winter, you can usually see a fair amount of renovation; it does seem to be less evident this winter. Whether the hotels will opt to avail themselves of these friendly terms is another matter - they would still have to fund the loans - but this initiative is not a bad one as it combines a short-term need to try and kickstart the ailing construction sector and a longer-term desire to upgrade hotel stock in general. At the recent World Travel Market, the government's boss, Francesc Antich, and the tourism minister, Miquel Nadal, referred to improvements in quality, and they met recently with the heads of the leading hotel groups to discuss just this very matter. However, one of the problems that emerged from that meeting was that of red-tape. Antich said that he will seek to reduce it, but at least one of the hotel bosses was unconvinced that he will be able to impress upon the town halls the need for them to be less bureaucratic.

If the hotels now wanted to effect modernisation plans, they would have to go through the planning-procedure hoops. Not only can this be time-consuming, it can also be costly. I don't know if the owners deliberately went ahead without obtaining the appropriate local licences, but you may recall that the Sunwing Resort in Puerto Alcúdia copped a threequarters of a million euro fine for renovation work undertaken at the Nuevas Palmeras hotel last winter. Perhaps they calculated that it was worth taking a fine and just getting on with things. Though some hotel groups should be very close to the corridors of planning admin in the local authorities, as some are based in the towns where many of their hotels are located, there is still the need for licences. Major works should of course have permission, and one of the problems with Sunwing was the disruption to neighbours, but the insistence of licences for pretty much every damn thing is a nonsense. I understand that one even needs a licence to paint the inside of one's house. Crazy, and no-one bothers because it's unenforceable. I was told the other day about illegal fincas built without permission. The fine for doing so is lower than the costs involved with gaining all the permissions, so they just go ahead and build them.

Meanwhile, and coming back to hotels, I am wondering whatever happened to all the fuss about developments having been built where they shouldn't have been, i.e. within the area from the coastline that has been deemed inviolable, or should have been, on environmental grounds. There was much publicity given to this, and I brought up it up here on the blog, but now it's all gone quiet. There was a suggestion that it was all a political posture on behalf of the PSOE prior to the national elections. And maybe it was. Or maybe it has been realised that enforcing expensive changes in the current economic climate is too politically risky. Or maybe environmental correctness is a product of economically benign times only. Or maybe they've lost interest while, at the same time, losing interest charges.



QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Lulu. The 1967 reference was to "To Sir, With Love", the title was "Independence" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubtCMya7NaQ). Today - a line from a monster song by a Leeds group. Girl's name.

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I Want My Independence

One thing you can say about the whole Puerto Pollensa pedestrianisation fandango is that at least it is giving people an interest during the otherwise quiet months of the off-season. Maybe there should be an annual controversy to keep everyone occupied once the clocks go back.

Anyway, Garry Bonsall tells me that there is a proposal for one lane of the road to be closed, a compromise of sorts. Maybe this would work, maybe not. It seems to me you either have pedestrianisation or you don't, with restricted access for deliveries as a sop to businesses that might be affected if you do indeed have it. Different forms of arrangement, though sought by the mayor, are attempts at post-hoc rationalisation of the questionably rational, in that the key question is why the pedestrianisation was ever conceived in the first place. As mentioned the other day, you have to go back to the summer of love - 1967 - for the answer, as it was then that the original plan was established, together with that for the new road.

Mayor Cerdà, it would appear, is only following orders. Perhaps someone should point out to him that the Generalisimo has long been begging at St. Peter's Gate. It's not as though all bets were off after 1975, the new road being one of them. One can justify that on the basis that there was a degree of foresight in appreciating the sort of traffic levels that Puerto Pollensa would come to expect. But because a plan was created 41 years ago doesn't mean that it has to be executed. I am wondering whether that law of historic memory, the one designed to rid Spain of symbols of the Franco era, could also be applied to traffic projects drawn up during that time, though I suppose you would have to unbuild the new road if it were.

It is a nonsense to argue that a scheme dreamt up in the sixties automatically has to be applied. Back then, the Spanish Government could have done pretty much as it pleased with scant or little regard for whatever anyone thought. Just nail the decree to the forehead of a convenient passing peasant, and then bring in the bulldozers. Times change, most obviously in respect of the volume of the public voice, which takes us back to that European law on consultation. Projects can no longer be foisted onto a local community without attention being paid to its views, but the mayor failed to consult widely from the very outset. Even if it were not his duty to have done so - though developments suggest it was - there was a moral case for it. Rather than adopt a seemingly dogmatic stance, one formed with the support of a plan from El Caudillo's time, he should have thrown it open as a full debate, not just about the pedestrianisation but about a scheme for the town as a whole. The closure of the frontline road is a piecemeal solution to a much wider problem - that of the infrastructure and quality of life of all of Puerto Pollensa. But he didn't, and now he's copping the flak.

Garry also tells me that there is an idea doing the rounds for a vice-mayor for the port. This shouldn't be necessary. A mayor should be for the whole town or not at all, and heaven alone knows what conflict this might give rise to, especially if they were from different political parties. But it is a measure of the apparent impotence of officials responsible for the port and of dissatisfaction with the administration that this is being advanced. For God's sake, this is a town that cannot muster 20,000 inhabitants. How much officialdom does one need? Yet there exists within this proposal the evidence of tensions and resentment between the port and the "pueblo". Pollensa is not the only town to suffer from this. Consider the four municipalities that comprise the tourism zone of the north - Pollensa, Alcúdia, Muro and Santa Margalida - and in only one case, that of Alcúdia, might it be said that the resort and the old town enjoy a degree of harmony. It is no coincidence that there is little or no physical separation between Alcúdia and Puerto Alcúdia. In the other three cases, there is not just the distance of kilometres, there is a distance also in administrative and psychological terms. In Santa Margalida such is the level of dysfunctionality that the opposition on the town hall is holding separate public meetings after the ruling group switched them from the evening to the morning when of course fewer people can attend. Much of the antagonism there stems from differences of opinion regarding projects as they affect Can Picafort. It's almost as though there has been a UDI. Perhaps that is what is needed for all the resorts, as the main beef with all of them and with the businesses in them, is that it is they, the resorts, which generate the revenues for the towns. This is no more so the case than in Muro and Santa Margalida where the "pueblos" have little or no tourism.

Ivory towerism, maybe that's it. And a touch of snobbery as well. The ancient towns, the ancient pueblos look down on the coarse commercialism of their resorts and, while grateful to extract every last tax, treat them as second-class. Vice-mayors? Maybe there should be separate mayors and separate budgets.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Squeeze (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pehHNJWKf3g). Today's title - in 1967 she was offering her love and appeared in the film with the same title, and she was back in the '90s with this cracking song.

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Cool For Cats

The newspaper "dBalears" is to give away a dictionary with its edition this coming Sunday. It will be a pocket Catalan-English dictionary. Useful, you might think, and you would probably be right. Though announced in the paper's English-speaking sister organ, "Majorca Daily Bulletin", I wonder how many of the Bulletin's readership will next week be strolling to the local tabacos and adding "dBalears" to their shop for "The News of the World" and a packet of 20. I wonder how many of its readership even know of the existence of "dBalears", let alone have ever looked at a copy. Of course, only a few might have - it's in Catalan. There again, how many might have ever bought a copy of the Spanish paper from the same publishing group - "Ultima Hora"?

I already have a Catalan-English dictionary. It is the Oxford version. It proudly says on its cover - "nova edició", "per a estudiants d'anglès". I am reassured that I have the new edition, the only problem is I am not a student of English. I suspect the freebie with the newspaper will take a similar angle. Though it has its English-to-Catalan half of the book, my dictionary comes at the subject from the Catalan direction. Accordingly, in, for example, the section on prepositions, the exercise gives "the cat is under the table" (in English) with an appropriate cartoon. Not much use to those of us who need to regularly express this in Catalan. (Oh, and if you're wondering - "el gat és sota la taula" - at least that's how I'd say it.)

However, I am probably quibbling, this is, after all, a dictionary primarily aimed at Catalan speakers learning English who will undoubtedly need to know that, when "amb una familia anglesa" (with an English family), "sorry, I don't like mushrooms" is a common, everyday expression. My dictionary also seems to be more aimed at a youthful Catalan speaker. In the bit for "amb els amics anglesos" (with English friends, and note that they are English as opposed to British), there are words like "wicked". No room for "mingin', innit", but the dictionary doesn't quite convey the sort of generational context of such words. So, the next time those of you back in the UK, sorry England, are meeting with an ancient Catalan, do not be surprised if your mushrooms are in fact wicked or that your new best friend knows of a "really hip bar" which, because he's from Spain, will turn out to be the scruffiest pub in the neighbourhood.

In the spirit of "yoof" Catalan to English, the dictionary could make more of one of its "falsos amics", or false friends to give it the English term beloved of language teachers. One such is "llarg", which reads like it might be a character from a sort of Welsh Lord Of The Rings but is in fact the Catalan for long. It is of course close to the English "large". So the cool Catalan club-goer might believe that "to large it" is to long it, though this might be quite acceptable as I defy anyone to explain what "to large it" actually means.

But the main failings of my dictionary lie with the lack of the sort of everyday usage that would truly be useful to the Catalan, such as "I'd prefer to pay black" or "the indicator, what's that?". So I shall duly look to swell the coffers of Grup Serra next Sunday, and see if they have included such necessities. And perhaps some fellow Brits will do likewise, and having become the proud owners of their new dictionary, will use the newspaper for the cat to sit on (yes, that's sit on) under the table, or to wrap up the mushroom peelings. Wicked.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Jimmy Cliff (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkMzuXlKQv8). Today's title - no clues needed.

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Many Rivers To Cross?

BEING SPANISH - PART FIVE (LANDSCAPES)

As you fly into Mallorca and look down to the ground, what do you see? A regular flight path into Palma Airport takes you along the north coast, and you can see the blue of the Med, the white caps of waves and the twists of the length of beach that is that of Alcúdia Bay. The plane makes a right turn over Playa de Muro and tracks down the centre of the island and into Palma. You may just glimpse mountains and be aware of the windmills shortly before landing. Otherwise, a general view is one of brownness and yellowness, patches of green and of no great order. Welcome to Mallorca and welcome to its topography.

If you were a first-time visitor to the island, what might you expect in terms of landscape? Indeed, might you expect anything? But we're back in "being Spanish" territory, and coming from a green and pleasant land, the tourist is unlikely to expect the same aerial perspective of hedged fields, woodlands and the alterations through colour of crop rotation of coming into, say, Gatwick. He probably expects a deal of barrenness; it would accord with sun and more sun. And for the most part, that is what he gets, or at least it is also a fertile barrenness of the clay colours of potato and vegetable market gardening. If England is overwhelmingly green, then Mallorca is overwhelmingly a study through a variety of ochres.

Ask a tourist what, having landed, he might anticipate as some sort of emblematic statement of the local landscape, and he may well choose the palm tree, the arboreal go-to of the picture postcard, fronds artistically intruding as a foreground in a top corner of the frame with the shimmering azure of sky and sea and a whiteness of sand filling its background. And of course he will find the palm tree in abundance. Spanish, he will think. Which is true, but unfortunately isn't. Palms are neither natives of Mallorca nor of Spain, with one exception, the palmito. The anticipation of an exotica of sub-tropical arboriculture is misguided. The discovery is one of apparent northern European migration, for it is the pine tree that lords itself over the tree kingdom of Mallorca. If this is a disappointment, there is a consolation in the fact of the pine species - the aleppo. But even this is not unique to Spain or Mallorca; it is the Mediterranean wing of the pine party.

Travelling from Palma to the north of the island, the initial sense is of normalcy, granted by motorway, the blue and white of road signs, the familiarity of make of car and the reassurance of a McDonald's arch. But the name Al Campo smacks of a different commercial landscape, and then to the left one begins to become aware of a chain of mountains and a perhaps unexpected natural landscape. Mention Spain, mention Mallorca, and the novice holidaymaker would be unlikely to conjure up an image of a mountain range; mountains, hills don't belong in the same set of picture postcards alongside that of the blissful beach idyll. Yet arrive in Pollensa or Alcúdia, and it is mountains that enclose you. Some are startling, most dramatically the Puig María that appears as an isolated aberration of monstrousness looming over the old town of Pollensa, or the grey peaks above Puerto Pollensa which lend the resort a chill of mystery. But how might these qualify as "Spanish"?

As you move around the area, to Alcúdia, to Pollensa, to Manresa or to Cala San Vicente, there is one word that starts to form - rugged. This is not a word from the being Spanish lexicon, or at least many would presume it not to be. Being Spanish, in landscape terms, is meant to be vibrant and exotic; it is a type of anthropomorphism for the natural world, the imagined transposition of the flame colours of the flamenco dance onto the land itself. But here is rugged. It is scrub, dust, scraps of forest, hill and artisan, the latter most evident in demarcation by dry-stone walls both in towns and in the country. It is semi-moor or Peak District. How can this be Spanish?

Yet there are of course colours that comfort you. On that same journey from Palma at different times of the year are the oleander that adorn the central reservation or the blossoms of almond trees. And then there are the bougainvillaeas of streets and gardens and the omnipresence of the orange tree. None of them uniquely Spanish, but they conform to the perception of vista by vibrancy, to a four-colour separation of the mind's eye rather than the black-and-white print of hill and wasteland.

But there is one thing you might have expected to see. It's something lurking from the days of knowing smatterings of Spanish by Western. Wrong country admittedly, but still Spanish. Rio Grande. River. Take off from Palma and look once again at the island below. What you will not see are rivers. For in the limestone and porous fabric of the island, most of the water goes underground. It's not a comment on being Spanish, but it is on being Mallorcan - island with no rivers.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Beth Orton "Someone's Daughter" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIoC_Ya6WRo). Today's title - there was no question mark; it was covered by UB40 but who was it originally?

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I Keep Quiet About It

Get on the main coast road from Puerto Alcúdia, and where does it take you? The clue lies in the name of the road - Carretera Artà. The road runs parallel to the coast line, to the side of the bay of Alcúdia. It takes you into Playa de Muro, Can Picafort and then out into largely forest-bound territory to the coast side as you pass by Son Serra until you end up in Artà. Or maybe you don't end up. Instead, you carry on to Cala Ratjada or down the east coast to the likes of Cala Millor. That the road bears the name of Artà should suggest some importance, a major centre perhaps, but for most it is just a town on the way to somewhere else.

But before you get lost in Artà, struggling to locate the sign for Cala Ratjada, which is conveniently partially hidden and a surprise when you do see it, you might have noticed that large church, the one that rises from and dominates the landscape to your left. You might have thought, well, that looks interesting, but then you would still have kept going.

And that's the problem. People just keep going. Artà. It sounds like it's arterial, and its eponymous main road from Alcúdia pumps you through its centre and out the other end. No-one really goes to Artà, despite its prominence on road signs and the naming of the main coast road in the north. There again, why would you? What does Artà have by way of attraction? It barely registers on the tourist map or in tourist brochures.

Maybe it's coincidental - what I was saying the other day about Campos and towns that have minimal or little by way of real tourism - but Artà is set to be on the receiving end of some seven million euros worth of spend, courtesy of the Spanish tourist promotion body Turespaña. You might ask why they are bothering. I might ask, as one who believes that Mallorca's tourism is wedded to the masses, why do they bother. But you and I would be wrong. Mallorca is full of curios, of old towns that seem barely worth the effort, and of small coastal enclaves that time - mass-tourism time that is - appears to have past by. Because that is the attraction of Artà and its coastal tourism that barely dares to speak its name.

Before you arrive at Artà, there is a road off that is not much more than a lane. It takes you to Colonia Sant Pere and Betlem. Don't expect either of them to be keeping you carousing until dawn. They are end-of-the-road, dead-end, nothing-much-happens Mallorca, peculiar small coastal settlements of no more than spectacular views across the bay and spectacular high rises of hills that dominate them. They are both a part of the coastal plain brooded over by the sudden elevations of the mountain range of Artà. And they want to spend seven million on these places? So they should. Or maybe they shouldn't, as it might disrupt the tranquility of those who have stumbled across Sant Pere and Betlem and would prefer to keep them secret. Or maybe they shouldn't announce the rich antiquity of this part of the island, evidenced by the prehistoric Ses Païsses just outside Artà.

Sometimes, maybe they should just spend the money on keeping places quiet.


A MAYOR UNDER SIEGE - THE STORY CONTINUES
Another week, another tough time for Pollensa's mayor. It's all a load of rubbish. And that is how the organisation for tourism businesses, Acotur, has portrayed the increases in rubbish collection and incineration charges. In some cases (as noted in "The Diario"), these are set to rise by some 300 per cent. These are, of course, tough times too for businesses, and such steep hikes in rubbish tax are the last things they need. Mayor Cerdà argues that the real cost of the tax has not been passed on over the past few years, which will come as small consolation to businesses hit by other rising charges in a downturn.

And pedestrianisation? The mayor has reiterated that he is willing to look at alternative plans for "mobility" in the port, and one such has emerged from a combination of Partido Popular and Unió Mallorquina (UM) members. This has arisen as a consequence of a meeting with the residents associations of both Gotmar and the port. The other day when I spoke to Garry Bonsall, he told me that he was due to be seeing members of the UM who had previously abstained on votes in respect of the pedestrianisation. It would seem that alternative ideas, such as limiting traffic access to, for example, the mornings, are now being tabled. It may also be the case that the road would be open in the off-season. Why shouldn't it be? At present there are enough drivers ignoring the "closure" as it is. What is revealing is that the mayor seems not only to be opposed by other political parties, he doesn't even have the wholehearted support of his own party. To top all this off, a letter from the port's residents association has now been made public. This was a letter sent to the administration in October that makes clear the number of complaints regarding the scheme and that contradicts the view of the town hall that there was not a "majority of unrest" among the port's residents.

If he hasn't already, I fancy that the mayor is due to get a fair amount of egg on his face.

(Since making this entry, I hear that the rubbish tax is to actually go down for tourist businesses. U-turn on rubbish, and now for the pedestrianisation ...)


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Graham Swift, "Waterland". Today's title - from a song by an English female singer who recorded an album with the title of a book by another contemporary British novelist, Ian McEwan.

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Potato Head

Remember Mr. Potato Head? I do. He's still with us, but now he comes with his own head. He became self-sufficient, courtesy of a prosthetic potato, putting an end to the weekly shop being deprived of a King Edward or two, as was once the case. One suspects, though, there is less pleasure to be had than when the eyes or glasses were pressed into a real spud and out squirted some juice. Mr. Potato Head was one of the great toys. Hours of endless amusement. How simple and how much fun.

This all goes by the way of an introduction to yet another of the island's fairs. From yesterday and running until next weeked, it is the Fira de Tardor in Sa Pobla (that's autumn fair for those of you not up to speed with the seasons in Catalan). And what better idea is there in a town known for its potatoes than to make the potato the theme of the fair. Yep, it's potato time in Sa Pobla, coming hard on the heels of the pumpkin revelries in neighbouring Muro. Another fair, another vegetable.

Sa Pobla also has a certain celebrity for toys. They're missing a trick with the autumn fair. Mr. Potato Head should be the mascot, at a stroke combining the Sa Pobla traditions of potato and toy - "Senyor Cap de Patata". But you know, I was writing this piece and thinking about a mascot and then went and actually looked at the events taking place at the fair, and there it was ... a mascot will be presented at the official opening. Could it be that Mr. Potato Head will indeed be in Sa Pobla? Given that they go in for those giants or big head masks at the fairs or fiestas, it would be about right.

Anyway, if you go along to the fair you won't be able to avoid sampling dishes made from potatoes, which kind of seems a bit, well, naff. It's not as though the potato is rarely to be found on one's plate in the normal course of nose-bagging events, but I guess they do rather more than just hand out dollops of mash or something. In fact I know what sort of thing they have on offer because there is a list of restaurants and their "specialities" for the duration of the fair. You can find it on the Sa Pobla town hall's website (in Catalan), if you can be bothered. A couple of them have "bacallà amb patata". Cod 'n' chips, but no mushy peas. Of course it could all be very much worse. Sa Pobla is also known for ... eels. I think I'll stick to the potatoes, if that's ok.

There is, incidentally, a much wider aspect to the potato theme. It may have escaped your attention but 2008 is the United Nations International Year of the Potato, and it is in recognition of this, in addition to the importance of the potato to the Sa Pobla economy, that the fair has adopted the potato.

For information on the Sa Pobla fair, see the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://wotzupnorth.blogspot.com.


If you've never experienced the delight of stepping under the shower only for the water to stop as you're in mid-hair wash, then you really should come and stay here for a while, because sooner or later there will be a cut to the water supply. It happens not infrequently; in Playa de Muro at any rate. Like yesterday.

On one occasion when the water went off, I called the company - FUSOSA. It was rather alarming as they were unaware of the cut. So I thought I would do the same yesterday, just in case. No, they were fully aware; it was a problem with the supply. Yes, I think we got that much. The point is that the water was off for getting on for four hours. As a result of last week's power cut - all seven hours of it - GESA-Endesa is to give discounts on all electricity bills by way of compensation. Now, I wonder if FUSOSA will be doing the same. I doubt it somewhat.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Billy Idol (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grBLbiyJTDk). Today's title - ok, literary quiz time for a change. "Potato head" was an insult directed at a character from one of the outstanding British novels of the last 30 years. It was set in the Fens, and eels (to give a further Sa Pobla link) featured. What was the novel and who was the author?

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Shock To The System

Man in bar time again. I ought to start a separate blog, call it something like Derek and Clive and make it a dialogue blog of the kind of views that "man in bar" comes out with. Derek and Clive might be quite apt, given the number of times the f-word tends to cross the lips of "man in bar". But anyway, I explain a bit about the piece from yesterday. Cue man in bar to dismiss the whole thing on the grounds that there is a "system" here (of politics) and that there is no point in wasting time and effort and giving yourself a heart attack over it all.

Ah yes, the "system". There is always a system. Wherever or whenever, there always is and always has been a system. Like that of Franco's time. It is said that a reason for the longevity of his "reign" was the sheer apathy of the people. It was the system, and that was it. Apathy and complacency. I can understand this double-header of inaction; it is usually accompanied by something else - comfortableness - and is expressed as couldn't care less. There is also just keeping your head down and getting on with your business despite the "system", and sod the lot of it.

You will never really capture people's interest in local affairs if they simply don't want their interest taste buds stimulated. But the pedestrianisation case in Puerto Pollensa is an example of how just one issue can make people take notice. Talk to anyone there, and you'll get an opinion. What is intriguing, at least I think so, is that, although the lack of consultation and therefore the imposition of the pedestrianisation was an example of how the "system" works, the system can be seen to be challenged and, moreover, challenged in quite a significant way. Partly this is because it is such a physically obvious change, but also because this is down to the publicity the case has generated, not just in the press but also through the likes of the Gotmar Residents Association. It is as though the cause has to be right for people to become engaged, and to that end, though I may have had the slight joke at their expense, the "alternative" United Left and Greens (EU/EV) in Puerto Pollensa have been and are tapping into an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and bringing this to the surface. The EU/EV, in the guise of Pepe Garcia, is firing at all targets. The pedestrianisation case is one with much popular interest. The latest is the problem of street cleaning and the fact that the contract for the company that is supposed to do this ran out back in March, yet it is still actually working (after a fashion) and receiving payment. Garcia has labelled the town hall administration "incompetent" for its management of something of such importance.

One thing that does raise people's hackles, and their interest, is the state of the streets and of course all the dog shit. And it's not just tourists. Publicising the fact that the contracted company has no contract as such could well make this another pedestrianisation story in Puerto Pollensa.

It's very easy for the man in the bar to ignore everything and put it all down to a system that cannot be brought to task, but there was one thing that Garry said about the impression he has of something stirring, and of people genuinely starting to take an interest in how the system works and how it can be made to work better. It may be wishful thinking on his behalf, but there again it may not. These are interesting times in Puerto Pollensa, so much so that even the man in the bar may get his head out of a copy of "The Sun" and take some notice.


GOING DIGITAL
The UK is going digital and Mallorca is to do likewise. The analogue system for televisions is to be superseded by the new digital system from the start of 2010. Most of the island is already covered to enable this, but Alcúdia and Pollensa have been lagging behind. But a couple of days ago (as reported in "The Diario"), there was the activation of the signal from a receiver on top of the Puig de Sant Martí, the hill (some say mountain) at the back of Bellevue, which has made Alcúdia digital. By the end of the year, coverage across the island should have reached 98 per cent, and Pollensa is next in line to get its signal. I'm sure you'll all be happy to know this.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Barry Manilow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKPWzLgvgW4). Today's title - a later song from a one-time punk artist.

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One Voice

GARRY BONSALL - THE GOTMAR RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION

One thing you notice about Garry Bonsall is his hand gestures. The fingers of both hands held tight together demonstrate unity; the fists pressed together denote divisiveness. Strong, certain body language is the sign of clarity of expression and of thinking. It is also the manifestation of purposeful communication. And communication is one of Garry's "big things".

The founder and president of the Gotmar Residents Association is sitting on a sofa in his clinic in Puerto Alcúdia. We are meeting for the second time in two days, finding time in a hectic schedule of dentistry and dealing with politicians. Garry may not be a politician, but he is a political animal, and it might just be that he has set in motion a process that could have a profound impact on the island's politics.

We have to go back in time. It just depends how far. Let's keep to the relative here and now, shall we, and a meeting just a few years back with Tomeu Cifre, one-time mayor of Pollensa, and now an opposition member in the town hall. It was Cifre who suggested the idea of the association as a means of channelling complaints and enquiries through to the mayoral office from the dissatisfied residents of Gotmar. There had been an association, but it had become moribund. It was re-formed with Garry at its head, and it is perhaps ironic that a suggestion from a former mayor should have led to a pressure group that is now prepared to take legal action against another.

Then we go back further, back over thirty years, during which time the Gotmar urbanisation has suffered from apparent inattention to its street lighting, its drainage, its roads. It was this combination of neglect over the years that brought things to a head and to the muscular residents association that is now fighting for improvements with what is becoming an ever more powerful voice. From the relative inconsequentiality of poor local amenities, that voice is being heard not just by the Calvari steps in the "ayuntamiento" of Pollensa but also in the Mallorca Council and, quite possibly and eventually, in all the municipalities of the island.

There is a still further step back in time; to 1967 when the plan for what this year became the new road into Puerto Pollensa and the pedestrianisation of the front line of the port was first presented. 41 years later, following an edict from Franco's time, the mayor pressed ahead with a scheme for pedestrianisation that has been greeted with widespread opposition and which has become a "cause célèbre" in the town and a clarion call for the Gotmar association.

Pressure can work. The mayor has conceded that there should be an architect's plan for the rehabilitation of Gotmar. Protestations of there not being any money have been met with a challenge to the mayor that it is his - and the town hall's - obligation to meet standards of service in Gotmar. The message is finally being accepted. And then there is the pressure regarding the pedestrianisation, and the not insignificant matter of European law that the town hall is now being made aware of. For it is this law which establishes the obligation on behalf of local authorities to consult with their constituents in respect of matters affecting the local environment. It is the apparent contravention of this law that may yet see the mayor facing a legal challenge brought by the association. The mayor is hinting at considering alternative plans for "mobility" in the town and these may help him to back down with grace. Otherwise, the legal action is likely to go ahead.

The improvements to Gotmar and the pedestrianisation case are only the first chapters in the story, for it is the nature of the residents association, the involvement of the Mallorca Council and the spreading of the word about the potential power of associations across the island that form the next parts of the plot, some of it yet to be written.

We come back to communication. If Garry's beef with the mayor is a lack of communication, consultation and accountability, his association is not similarly bereft, and this is an association that can now boast over one thousand affiliates and that is multinational in its make-up. How do you get everyone working together? The fingers lock together. "Unity through diversity". It sounds like a soundbite, but it emphasises the lengths that he has gone to in order to establish a common purpose within the association. The fists are pressed together. There are other associations that don't have such a singularity or such a unity, and that of the Gotmar association has been achieved through coaching, another of Garry's "big things". It is rare to encounter here, at least it is for me, the sort of personal development techniques that would be commonplace in the UK. The coaching, by a professional, has been instrumental in facilitating not just only a unity but also good communication within a multinational group. An aim now is to create a similar unity across the various associations that exist in Pollensa to form a sort of über-association.

It is important to understand that this is not just a bunch of stroppy foreigners making waves, though there is a clear sense of political empowerment for a foreign voice that would be unlikely to be represented through the normal political process. It is not impossible for a foreigner to aspire to or to gain local office, but the language, especially the dominance of Catalan, makes this a tough call. The association sidesteps this by becoming a separate voice in the local political scene, but one that is cross-national and cross-cultural; it's that unity through diversity. One that was solely British or German, you fancy, would be a source of antagonism, one that would make the fists be pressed together.

The success of the Gotmar association and the realisation that a European law exists in respect of consultation have been the springboard for the widening of the Gotmar experience. Garry is now talking with the Mallorca Council about its officially adopting this law for citizen participation, and he envisages a situation whereby all the municipalities on the island have associations that can act to hold their local officials to greater account. It is a sort of grassroots democracy in action if you like, and it is one that has clearly unnerved Mayor Cerdà in Pollensa and may just also unsettle a few other mayors in Mallorca.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Consider Yourself" from "Oliver" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LzmdovYoAI). Today's title - large nose; from Garry, change one letter.

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We Don't Want To Have No Fuss

Our old friends, the United Left and Greens "alternative" (EU/EV) in Pollensa, have been kicking up more fuss. Hot on the heels of their failed motion to overturn the pedestrianisation scheme in Puerto Pollensa, they have now turned their attention to the parking area next to the sports centre. Nothing like a bit of constant agitation to keep the wind up the under-fire mayor.

The parking area, which came into being with an underwhelming fanfare of announcing also some trees and a little play zone for kiddies, is the tarmacked-over old bit of wasteland that used to be able to accommodate more than the numbers that the new area can. It's ok, at least so I thought. Yes, it could have done with there being more parking spaces - they could have left out the play zone for example - but it is better than scraping across dust and stones than once was the case. However, not everything is ok. Apparently when it rains, there is a problem, that of flooding, while, so say the agitators, there is a difficulty in respect of access to the parking, which is, I think, rather overstating the case. They go on to say that there is a danger for kids crossing the road to the sports centre, saying that there had been a plan for a bridge. Again, I think this is overplaying things. The road isn't particularly unsafe, and it has road calmers, so whether this bridge is really necessary is a moot point. The EU/EV imply that this all should be done rather than messing around with the pedestrianisation. Well, if there is an issue with flooding, that's one thing, but the objections they are putting up seem pretty thin. The mayor may deserve criticism for various things, but this all sounds like a vain attempt at picking up on any old thing for the sake of having a dig.


Pollensa town hall is not the only local authority in which there is opposition agitation. In Santa Margalida, there is a bit of storm about the cost of fiestas. Some of you may recall my raising this back on 17 August (Duck Soup), specifically in respect of the Santa Margalida jollies. I asked then what do the fiestas actually cost and queried whether the ever more extravagant fireworks displays could really be justified when other things in the municipality are being overlooked. Well, there is an answer to how much it all costs. This year the town hall spent 512,000 euros, most of it for the Can Picafort August fiesta and La Beata in Santa Margalida itself in September. Now, apparently, they want to add a further 300,000 for next year. On what exactly? Coincidentally, 300,000 is the difference between tenders for a rehabilitation scheme for Son Bauló. The ruling group (Partido Popular and its allies) has gone for the higher priced scheme; the combined opposition say a lower one, which they claim offers more improvements, should be adopted. The opposition says that "a government team in complete crisis" that wants to increase the amount spent on the fiestas "has clearly taken leave of its senses" (quotes in translation from a report in "The Diario"). If the opposition is to be taken at its word, for two aspects of the town hall's responsibilities 600 grands worth of public money more than some might deem necessary is due to be lifted from the municipal piggy-bank.

Now, though I query the spend, what I don't know is if there is a return, by which I mean do they undertake some form of cost-benefit analysis to ascertain whether revenues generated by local businesses come close to or exceed the amount spent? If it were clearly demonstrated that this was the case, then fine, I suppose. There again, I don't know how it could actually be proved. But the fiestas are important to the local businesses. A good example of this was the stink over food sampling at the small Playa de Muro fiesta this summer. The restaurant owners in the playa objected, especially as the restaurants providing the samples were from Muro town, and one was owned by the councillor responsible for fiestas. In Santa Margalida, there is presumably extra trade generated by La Beata; not by tourists, as not many tourists attend, but by people from across the island, given that this is one of the most traditional of the island's fiestas. In Can Picafort, however, it is more debatable. The tourists are already there, and one fancies they go along and have a look at the fireworks and the fire-run and then go back to their all-inclusives. Otherwise, does the Can Pic fiesta drag in a load of additional people from elsewhere on the island and in numbers that might justify the expenditure?

My guess is that they just come up with a figure, spend the money, and that's it. This being the case, one has to start to ask about priorities and precisely the role of local town halls and indeed the people who administer them. As someone instinctively drawn to local democracy and to the closeness of local people to their administrations, I am loathe to bring this into question, but increasingly I am beginning to have my doubts as to the structure of government here - the levels and indeed the sheer number of authorities. It is a theme for another day.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Huey Lewis and the News (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4fdkkBt8VE). Today's title - well, we will get fuss and we have got it, but where does this line famously come from? Musical.

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