I've Got My Orange Crush

The local clementines are a real treat. They are also inexpensive. You can get a good bag full for a euro. What can be doubly nice about them is that they come with a bit of greenery still attached. There are probably those who complain that this adds to the weight and therefore the price, but it is a very small matter when compared with the sheer aesthetic of a green leaf or two atop the small orange as it nestles in the fruit bowl.

Because they are sweet, cheap and plentiful, they are also very popular - as you might imagine. But the clementine's popularity has a downside. And that is that the skin often does not find its way to the rubbish bins. There is an, how can one put it, indifference towards litter among some of the locals and, though fruit skin will eventually degrade - unlike empty beer and water bottles - it takes some time. Evidence of the popularity of the winter clementine is the fact that on many a street corner and indeed along a street are scattered piles of peels. They are as common as the shattered glass that is the remnant of a car having shunted into the back of another.

It does, though, take some mindlessness to walk along a street, peel a clementine and just discard the skin on the pavement. There again, we are in the same sort of territory, I guess, as the reluctance to scoop up dog turds which of course will also degrade, after a while. But because nature eventually takes its course is really no excuse. In fact, it is no excuse at all; it is just mindlessness or bloody-mindedness.


I had vowed to try and steer away from the economic bad news stories. I am still trying my best to ignore them and hope they will just go away, but I would be neglecting my duty - such as it is - not to mention the thoroughly dire economic indicators that are knocking around Spain just at present. A fall of a tad over 15% in industrial output in one month is going some, even for a country lurching into recession, which Spain is. The largest decline has been in durables - output of tumble dryers and the like have tumbled some 24%. Despite those white goods I mentioned being shifted around yesterday at the Alcúdia recycling dump, there don't appear to be too many actually taking their place in households. On top of this, unemployment is at a twelve-year high. The good news, if one call it such, is that the European Central Bank may cut interest rates further, which might just have the effect of weakening the euro against the pound; the trend is already in that direction.

Much as though the experience of Spain is being repeated elsewhere in "Euroland", Spain does have its own peculiarities which make recession potentially deeper. These are the housing market, the astonishing amount of debt that exists in that market and the sheer lack of movement in it at present as well as the general lack of competitiveness of the economy as a whole.

There was some optimism being expressed in "The Bulletin" at the weekend that Mallorca might be able to stave off some the worst of the recession. It has been suggested before that the island's economy may not slip into recession even if the rest of Spain does. It will be tourism that sees to that. However, one feels that some of the evidence being cited of Mallorca's comparative buoyancy is probably rather delusory. One aspect is that there is apparently an increase in the number of Brits moving over here. Well yes, and maybe they're all coming in hope of finding work or business that doesn't exist. Another is that there are hints that the tourism season will turn out to be better than might have been anticipated. Again well yes, but might the numbers be heading to increased numbers of all-inclusives? That may make the economic figures read well but the wider economy will not benefit. In this context, Les emailed me to say that there appears to be a broadening of the AI offer around The Mile in Alcúdia. As I said the other day, one can understand it, but it really helps no-one except perhaps some hoteliers who might be panicking into offering AI at a time of economic difficulty.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "I Ran", A Flock Of Seagulls (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUjIA3Rt7gk). Today's title - an earlier thing from one of the biggest of all time.

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