Smoke On The Water, Fire In The Sky

The mayors' big away day. Look, I know it isn't that far - to Brussels, that is, when compared with, say, Australia - but who actually has coughed up for 40 mayors to turn up in the Belgian capital in order to harangue the European authorities into divvying up more dosh for the Balearics and into not stopping fire runs as part of a directive against pyrotechnics? If they have all paid out of their own pockets, then my apologies for the following, but I somewhat doubt it. How many mayors are needed to change a light bulb, or in this instance to change the level of funding? And to the mayors you can add various other politicians, businesspeople, artists, union representatives - 150 in all. One hundred and fifty! What on earth for? If you are going to argue a case for more funding, you should be a bit careful someone doesn't turn round and ask if some of the current funding is finding its way to pay for 150 people to come to Brussels for a couple of nights in a decent hotel plus flights and some nosebag. Furthermore, if a sizeable chunk of the Mallorcan and Balearic political population can piss off to Belgium on a midweek jolly, does this perhaps suggest that they don't really have enough to occupy them when back on the islands? I say to Brussels - keep your money and tell the mayors to get back and do a decent day's work.

Now, I don't know if one of the 40 was Pollensa's normally under-fire mayor, but had Joan Cerdà gone off for a day or two's respite from the normal attacks he is subjected to, one could have understood it. There is more trouble brewing, one suspects, in Puerto Pollensa. This time, it's the relocation of boat maintenance workshops, by which are meant - I think - the likes of Astilleros Cabanellas (there is in the report a reference also to Boquer, which seems a bit odd, given where it is, but there you go). There are, according to "The Bulletin", two options for siting the workshops, and I'm afraid I don't understand either of them; well, I don't understand the descriptions. One, it says, is a plot of land "on the left of the road running down to the wharf ... on the Gotmar country estate". The other is to the right of the new ring road, apparently. Anyone help here, because I've no idea. I know that not all work needs to be carried out in water, but I can't figure out whether these options are by the water or indeed where they are. But of course, the very mention of Gotmar will probably have the radicals of that part of Puerto Pollensa back on the trail of his mayorship. Things have gone rather quiet on that front. Too quiet, I'd say, if I were the mayor. Watch out! If he happens to be out of the country, it could be the moment for a coup d'état!


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Pet Shop Boys, "West End Girls" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAHfoIfo_7A). Today's title - how can you not know this?

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