All That's Missing Is The Sea

If you can't actually get to Mallorca, then what's the next best thing? Flicking through the pages of a brochure or surfing websites and imagining you were there? Or how about going to a pretend Mallorcan cove in the middle of an English city? If you live in Birmingham you could have done just that. Monarch had created an artificial beach replete with sun umbrellas in Chamberlain Square in the city centre. Visitors, says "The Diario", could listen to music such as flamenco, and there is a supporting website - http://beach.monarch.co.uk.

Of course when the skies are grey and it's chucking it down, it does all rather lose its impact, but this is not such a bad idea - the fake cove that is. The Mallorcan tourist authorities put on a Mallorca show in Manchester some weeks ago. How effective that was in attracting business, we will probably never know, but it was a worthy attempt. The Birmingham beach is an example of businesses doing it for themselves. But don't get carried away with thinking that Monarch is only trying to drum up business for Mallorca - they're now doing something similar for Turkey.

And I would be deserting my duty if I did not of course discover something rather odd for you. It comes from that Monarch website. Go to the bit for Mallorca (Majorca) and you will find that is says, inter alia, that "one of the most famous beaches on the island is in Alcúdia (Playa de Palma)". Eh? Well, Monarch is only, through its tie-up with Cosmos and the Co-op, the third biggest tour operator in the UK. You don't expect them to get things right.


Pollensa - six hundred grand light
Further to the note on Pollensa town hall being in debt and seeking bank credit (18 July: Sick And Tired), the administration has, it would appear, been able to secure 400 grand, less than half the amount that it needs. Cue, as always, the usual suspects among the opposition to voice criticism. The head of the PP does "not wish to participate" in what he considers to be "a farce" (the seeking of this credit), given - as he claims - the town hall is sitting on 3 million's worth of short-term credit policies and unreceived taxes for "urbanistic" infractions. The Alternative argues that the town hall should be looking to cut costs, and in this he is almost certainly correct. We come back, for example, to the spend on the fiestas. It may not be a huge amount in the overall scheme of things, but what exactly is the justification for lavish publicity material for the likes of the music festival and Patrona? There are signs up all over the place for the festival. Why? The design and production costs for the Patrona brochure will not have come in cheap. The publicity should be about information, which indeed it is, but it is information that can be conveyed far more cheaply. The town hall runs two websites; it can use those more effectively for getting the information out. People can download and print off if they want. Then there are the fiestas themselves. The town hall was meant to be reducing its spend, but the programme for this year's Patrona suggests anything but. Is it really necessary to have three separate music events going off at the same time in three different squares of the town? What do they all cost? Apart from the artists, there is erection and dismantling of stages and equipment, cleaning-up, policing.

Town halls such as Pollensa are responsible for a number of public services, such as police. It's not as if they do not need sizeable budgets in order to meet these basic obligations, but one also has to wonder at the size of the administrations. Departments for this, departments for that. Jobs for the boys, you tend to think. In a town of under 20,000 people, it should be possible to efficiently run a town hall with far fewer heads than are employed. I have mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again. To the best of my knowledge there is not a public audit office that scrutinises town hall operations. There ought to be. Not only might this recommend savings, it might also be able to check for or indeed prevent any potential misappropriation - a problem in many town halls that has led to the numerous scandals, though not, I would hasten to add, Pollensa. The town halls operate as their own self-sufficient democracies, which is fine, but there needs to be a body to which they are accountable and not just the legal authorities and police when they unearth potential malpractice. If such an office does indeed exist, one might reasonably ask what on earth it does.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Heatwave", Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE2fnYpwrng. Today's title - had this before, but it's a great song even if it is complete froth.

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