Typically getting into a state of high excitement when any British sportsperson comes near Mallorca, the press and now also the British Government have latched onto Tom Daley's presence on the island to promote an anti-balcony diving campaign. Cue photo of Tom and the lovely Paul Abrey today. I have previously written about balcony-diving under a heading "Blame Tom Daley"; just wait for the dives to increase as Tom takes his dives during the Olympics.
See more: Ultima Hora
Showing posts with label Balcony diving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Balcony diving. Show all posts
Friday, June 15, 2012
Monday, March 05, 2012
Balcony Diving: Blame Tom Daley
I'm taking bets. When will this year's first balcony dive be registered? And if you fancy an accumulator, when will this year's first balcony-dive death occur? There's no point in running a book on whether there will be a balcony dive or whether there will be a balcony-dive-related fatality, as the odds are odds-on.
If you need help, 8 April was the date of last year's first registered balcony fall. But doubts were cast as to whether it qualified as a dive, as it was probably an accident, while no pool - usually an important factor in the balcony dive (indeed, it is essential) - was involved. Nevertheless, this incident in Alcúdia got the balcony-diving pre-season underway and promised a good year, which it proved to be. The first official dive with consequences, i.e. either injuries or worse, was on 24 April. So, let's see if this can be beaten this year, shall we, and see which resort can claim the first. It was Palmanova last year.
The publicity afforded to balcony diving has been a valiant attempt to make Mallorca the undisputed world leader for the sport. But unfortunately, Mallorca has some serious competition. Australia for example. It has even had something of a celebrity dive, if the world of BMX riding can be said to produce celebrities. Champion rider Dane Searls went headlong into concrete last November (without the aid of his helmet it would appear). Great Dane is sadly no more.
The Balearic Government, presumably aware that Mallorca can't really compete with a place the size of Australia, is instead meant to be considering measures to stop balcony diving. It may well, therefore, be looking with interest at a local law to be introduced in Lloret de Mar. This resort, lauded as being the most drunken in Spain, is seeking to shed a balcony-diving reputation by fining hotels.
This is rather harsh. Is it really a hotel's fault if someone decides to clamber onto a balcony railing and aim for the pool? Short of totally enclosing a balcony or making railings so high and running barbed wire along them, there isn't a great deal that hotels can actually do to prevent a determined diver.
Fines are used to try and deter the practice elsewhere. In Florida, it isn't the hotel that gets the ticket but the diver him or herself. Might there be similar fines imposed in Mallorca? Well, there could be, but the chance of them being paid is another matter. The Lloret hotels could be in for as much 1500 euros per dive. Me laddo on tour tends not to stretch to such a budget.
If a fine were not paid, or even instead of a fine, what about banging up a diving miscreant? Possibly, but the last thing the local authorities need is a whole bunch of diving tourists clogging up cells when they've got better things to do with the space, such as filling them with looky-looky men or ladies of the night. Moreover, in the absence of a new law, what offence would have been committed?
Other ways of tackling the diving phenomenon might include kicking the offender out of the hotel, always assuming he or she is in a fit state to leave it and not either in a body bag or in ICU in Son Espases, adding to the cost of a local health service with so little money that motorists will soon find themselves having to pay a tax to help fund it.
Another might be to blacklist the offender, so if he tries coming back to Mallorca, he would be turned away at passport control. This would still require an offence having been committed though. There is no actual law to stop someone diving from a balcony.
A problem is that, even if the law is used, it wouldn't necessarily prevent diving. In Lloret, unless there is an accident or a death, how would police get to know? The hotel isn't going to tell them, unless they plan on handing over 1500 euros while making the statement. Will there be a diving dobbing-in hotline for other guests to use to contact the police? One positive for any police investigation is that dives tend to be on film. And on YouTube. Evidence isn't that difficult to find.
The regional government will be hoping that incidents don't become, as spokesperson Rafael Bosch remarked last August, more "unfortunate". But there is one added factor this year. Tom Daley. Does he realise how much damage he's potentially causing by popularising diving? God forbid he does well at the Olympics, because this August will indeed be more "unfortunate".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
If you need help, 8 April was the date of last year's first registered balcony fall. But doubts were cast as to whether it qualified as a dive, as it was probably an accident, while no pool - usually an important factor in the balcony dive (indeed, it is essential) - was involved. Nevertheless, this incident in Alcúdia got the balcony-diving pre-season underway and promised a good year, which it proved to be. The first official dive with consequences, i.e. either injuries or worse, was on 24 April. So, let's see if this can be beaten this year, shall we, and see which resort can claim the first. It was Palmanova last year.
The publicity afforded to balcony diving has been a valiant attempt to make Mallorca the undisputed world leader for the sport. But unfortunately, Mallorca has some serious competition. Australia for example. It has even had something of a celebrity dive, if the world of BMX riding can be said to produce celebrities. Champion rider Dane Searls went headlong into concrete last November (without the aid of his helmet it would appear). Great Dane is sadly no more.
The Balearic Government, presumably aware that Mallorca can't really compete with a place the size of Australia, is instead meant to be considering measures to stop balcony diving. It may well, therefore, be looking with interest at a local law to be introduced in Lloret de Mar. This resort, lauded as being the most drunken in Spain, is seeking to shed a balcony-diving reputation by fining hotels.
This is rather harsh. Is it really a hotel's fault if someone decides to clamber onto a balcony railing and aim for the pool? Short of totally enclosing a balcony or making railings so high and running barbed wire along them, there isn't a great deal that hotels can actually do to prevent a determined diver.
Fines are used to try and deter the practice elsewhere. In Florida, it isn't the hotel that gets the ticket but the diver him or herself. Might there be similar fines imposed in Mallorca? Well, there could be, but the chance of them being paid is another matter. The Lloret hotels could be in for as much 1500 euros per dive. Me laddo on tour tends not to stretch to such a budget.
If a fine were not paid, or even instead of a fine, what about banging up a diving miscreant? Possibly, but the last thing the local authorities need is a whole bunch of diving tourists clogging up cells when they've got better things to do with the space, such as filling them with looky-looky men or ladies of the night. Moreover, in the absence of a new law, what offence would have been committed?
Other ways of tackling the diving phenomenon might include kicking the offender out of the hotel, always assuming he or she is in a fit state to leave it and not either in a body bag or in ICU in Son Espases, adding to the cost of a local health service with so little money that motorists will soon find themselves having to pay a tax to help fund it.
Another might be to blacklist the offender, so if he tries coming back to Mallorca, he would be turned away at passport control. This would still require an offence having been committed though. There is no actual law to stop someone diving from a balcony.
A problem is that, even if the law is used, it wouldn't necessarily prevent diving. In Lloret, unless there is an accident or a death, how would police get to know? The hotel isn't going to tell them, unless they plan on handing over 1500 euros while making the statement. Will there be a diving dobbing-in hotline for other guests to use to contact the police? One positive for any police investigation is that dives tend to be on film. And on YouTube. Evidence isn't that difficult to find.
The regional government will be hoping that incidents don't become, as spokesperson Rafael Bosch remarked last August, more "unfortunate". But there is one added factor this year. Tom Daley. Does he realise how much damage he's potentially causing by popularising diving? God forbid he does well at the Olympics, because this August will indeed be more "unfortunate".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
All Fall Down: Balcony diving again
On the "Ultima Hora" website some wag posted a comment under a news item. It read (and I'm translating here): "Balearic tourist promotion. Blue-flag beaches. UNESCO mountain heritage. University Hospital Son Espases (specialists in balconying)".
You can probably work out what the news item was about. The day after someone died falling out of a hotel in Ibiza, two more didn't quite bite the dust in terminal fashion: one in Cala Rajada, the other in Sa Coma. I might be inclined to make a not so funny gag about comas in Sa Coma, but I won't; in any event the one who made the descent suffered relatively minor injuries.
Balconying. Balcony diving. I've done the subject before, but it doesn't stop me doing it again. Another person commented under the news item that it was the "theme of the summer". Which may be true, but then it was last summer's theme too. And what a fine theme it is as well. If it weren't for the case that it can end in tragedy, as it did in Ibiza, then we could all have a jolly good laugh. Actually, we do have a laugh, because what else can you do when you learn of the lack of brain capacity of some visitors to Majorca and the Balearics and the potential for the brain to be permanently lacking as it spills out onto some poolside concrete.
Rather than repeat what has been said before, let's consider some of the thought processes and justifications that have been forthcoming from the incidents of what may be balcony diving or may be falls as a result of climbing from balcony to balcony.
Instead of just admitting that falls are because someone was mad enough to try and dive into a pool, what you get is some other reason. Not from the police, the paramedics or the hotels, but from the ones who have suffered injuries or from their friends.
One thing about balconies is that they have railings or some other elevated barrier. They are there for a good reason. To stop you falling off. I can think of only two really good excuses as to why anyone might find him or herself on such a barrier. One is that there is a fire. The other is that an axe murderer has broken into the room. Both might require that a certain risk is taken in effecting an escape. Otherwise there isn't a good excuse.
Nevertheless, you get excuses. The fall was the result of a slip. The hotel was negligent. Neither is satisfactory because they ignore the obvious and seek a justification or to apportion blame. I can give you an example of how this goes.
When one particular incident occurred, I posted something about it onto this blog. This attracted a great number of comments, one coming from someone claiming to be the person who had fallen (and it may well have been this person) and who refuted the idea that it had been a case of balcony diving. The best of all was someone who reckoned that the hotel should be sued.
Do people deliberately fall from balconies as a way of trying to extract compensation? It would be an extreme way to do so, but you can bet your life that compensation and ambulance-chasing legal firms are likely to loom into the equation.
The Ibizan hoteliers' president has been at pains to point out that the railing at the hotel in Ibiza is of a height that conforms with requirements and that everything possible has been done to prevent the sort of incident which occurred there. But why should he have to make this confirmation? Well, why do you think?
Hotels in Majorca and the Balearics fall foul of compensation claims all the time, and many are spurious. I mentioned all this in an article back in February ("Trying It On", 22 February). And the poor hotel is normally left with no alternative but to cough up for cases that are brought not in Spain but in the UK or elsewhere. With balcony diving, well, you would deny you'd done this if there was some possibility of getting compensation; not even ambulance-chasers could surely get it to stick if it was admitted, though you wouldn't put it past them trying. And crazy it would be if the hotel were held liable because someone had been crazy enough to take a dive.
There is such a thing as assuming responsibility, but the notion has become obsolete thanks to the rush to compensatory litigation and to assigning blame when blame resides elsewhere - splattered over a hotel terrace.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
You can probably work out what the news item was about. The day after someone died falling out of a hotel in Ibiza, two more didn't quite bite the dust in terminal fashion: one in Cala Rajada, the other in Sa Coma. I might be inclined to make a not so funny gag about comas in Sa Coma, but I won't; in any event the one who made the descent suffered relatively minor injuries.
Balconying. Balcony diving. I've done the subject before, but it doesn't stop me doing it again. Another person commented under the news item that it was the "theme of the summer". Which may be true, but then it was last summer's theme too. And what a fine theme it is as well. If it weren't for the case that it can end in tragedy, as it did in Ibiza, then we could all have a jolly good laugh. Actually, we do have a laugh, because what else can you do when you learn of the lack of brain capacity of some visitors to Majorca and the Balearics and the potential for the brain to be permanently lacking as it spills out onto some poolside concrete.
Rather than repeat what has been said before, let's consider some of the thought processes and justifications that have been forthcoming from the incidents of what may be balcony diving or may be falls as a result of climbing from balcony to balcony.
Instead of just admitting that falls are because someone was mad enough to try and dive into a pool, what you get is some other reason. Not from the police, the paramedics or the hotels, but from the ones who have suffered injuries or from their friends.
One thing about balconies is that they have railings or some other elevated barrier. They are there for a good reason. To stop you falling off. I can think of only two really good excuses as to why anyone might find him or herself on such a barrier. One is that there is a fire. The other is that an axe murderer has broken into the room. Both might require that a certain risk is taken in effecting an escape. Otherwise there isn't a good excuse.
Nevertheless, you get excuses. The fall was the result of a slip. The hotel was negligent. Neither is satisfactory because they ignore the obvious and seek a justification or to apportion blame. I can give you an example of how this goes.
When one particular incident occurred, I posted something about it onto this blog. This attracted a great number of comments, one coming from someone claiming to be the person who had fallen (and it may well have been this person) and who refuted the idea that it had been a case of balcony diving. The best of all was someone who reckoned that the hotel should be sued.
Do people deliberately fall from balconies as a way of trying to extract compensation? It would be an extreme way to do so, but you can bet your life that compensation and ambulance-chasing legal firms are likely to loom into the equation.
The Ibizan hoteliers' president has been at pains to point out that the railing at the hotel in Ibiza is of a height that conforms with requirements and that everything possible has been done to prevent the sort of incident which occurred there. But why should he have to make this confirmation? Well, why do you think?
Hotels in Majorca and the Balearics fall foul of compensation claims all the time, and many are spurious. I mentioned all this in an article back in February ("Trying It On", 22 February). And the poor hotel is normally left with no alternative but to cough up for cases that are brought not in Spain but in the UK or elsewhere. With balcony diving, well, you would deny you'd done this if there was some possibility of getting compensation; not even ambulance-chasers could surely get it to stick if it was admitted, though you wouldn't put it past them trying. And crazy it would be if the hotel were held liable because someone had been crazy enough to take a dive.
There is such a thing as assuming responsibility, but the notion has become obsolete thanks to the rush to compensatory litigation and to assigning blame when blame resides elsewhere - splattered over a hotel terrace.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, May 23, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Another British holidaymaker falls from a balcony
A nineteen-year-old British youth, named as Jacqos (which may well be the wrong name) Evans, was rushed to Son Espases hospital in Palma, having fallen this morning from a balcony on the seventh floor of the Torrenova Playa hotel in Magalluf. His injuries are not said to be as serious they might have been, given the height that he fell from.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Taking A Dive: The balcony boys
"Authorities warn over hotel jump craze." "Hoteliers demand action over 'jump' craze." "Man hurt in balcony fall." "Medical staff slam 'hotel jump craze'."
Four successive days, four successive and similar headlines, even down to the number of "crazes". Crazy. These front-pagers all come from "The Bulletin". While media in the UK were apparently bad-mouthing Mallorca because of the "craze", the local hacks of the press were doing their best to make sure that no one failed to know about it, even to the extent of producing what was basically the same story and of headlining with nuts stuff like "medical staff slam". Well, they weren't about to approve of it. "Balearics big up balcony battiness." "We're all bonkers, say the batty balcony boys." The paper even managed to include a question about the balcony diving in an interview with the Spanish ambassador to the UK. What's it got to do with him? For the record, he puts it down to cheap booze. He might have added idiocy and stupidity.
The annual ritual of people falling out of hotels has been taken to a new level this year, thanks to the variant on audience-surfing or stage-diving. Rather than a sea of people in an audience, there is, hopefully, a small sea of a pool to break the dive. The trouble is when there isn't, and the medics and hotel staff have to scrape up the mess.
Of course, no one much would know about it were it not for You Tube and for the press taking a delight in the batty balcony boys. And it is a delight, because it's "news". While balcony diving has suddenly caught on this year, the balcony has long presented a huge temptation to the half-brained tourist, determined to lose the remaining half in a fall. Ever since hotels decided on having adjoining balconies, nutters have attempted to climb from one to the other. Some years ago, I was in a bank. A chap with plaster on a limb, who looked as though he should have been in the bank wearing a balaclava and holding a sawn-off shotgun, explained the circumstances surrounding the plaster. Just about. It was hard to decipher the mix of Mancunian and Martian that he was speaking. It was all a laugh, though. Five in the morning, crashing onto a balcony below. Hilarious.
Why is the press getting so sanctimonious about it all? If some tosser wants to play at being Tom Daley and makes a big thud rather than a bigger splash, then it's no great loss. Not very pleasant if you happen to be on a sun-lounger as some customer of Moron Holidays slams into the beer on your table, but at least it's something by which to remember the holiday.
The "authorities" are planning on a shock and awe campaign to highlight the dangers of balcony-ing. What a brilliant idea. Bring even more attention to it. Just as campaigns to persuade dypso-nympho teenagers in Zante to not take on industrial quantities of industrial alcohol fuelled the tendency, so we might expect ever more tanked-up Icaruses flying into the sun and pool, or concrete.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Four successive days, four successive and similar headlines, even down to the number of "crazes". Crazy. These front-pagers all come from "The Bulletin". While media in the UK were apparently bad-mouthing Mallorca because of the "craze", the local hacks of the press were doing their best to make sure that no one failed to know about it, even to the extent of producing what was basically the same story and of headlining with nuts stuff like "medical staff slam". Well, they weren't about to approve of it. "Balearics big up balcony battiness." "We're all bonkers, say the batty balcony boys." The paper even managed to include a question about the balcony diving in an interview with the Spanish ambassador to the UK. What's it got to do with him? For the record, he puts it down to cheap booze. He might have added idiocy and stupidity.
The annual ritual of people falling out of hotels has been taken to a new level this year, thanks to the variant on audience-surfing or stage-diving. Rather than a sea of people in an audience, there is, hopefully, a small sea of a pool to break the dive. The trouble is when there isn't, and the medics and hotel staff have to scrape up the mess.
Of course, no one much would know about it were it not for You Tube and for the press taking a delight in the batty balcony boys. And it is a delight, because it's "news". While balcony diving has suddenly caught on this year, the balcony has long presented a huge temptation to the half-brained tourist, determined to lose the remaining half in a fall. Ever since hotels decided on having adjoining balconies, nutters have attempted to climb from one to the other. Some years ago, I was in a bank. A chap with plaster on a limb, who looked as though he should have been in the bank wearing a balaclava and holding a sawn-off shotgun, explained the circumstances surrounding the plaster. Just about. It was hard to decipher the mix of Mancunian and Martian that he was speaking. It was all a laugh, though. Five in the morning, crashing onto a balcony below. Hilarious.
Why is the press getting so sanctimonious about it all? If some tosser wants to play at being Tom Daley and makes a big thud rather than a bigger splash, then it's no great loss. Not very pleasant if you happen to be on a sun-lounger as some customer of Moron Holidays slams into the beer on your table, but at least it's something by which to remember the holiday.
The "authorities" are planning on a shock and awe campaign to highlight the dangers of balcony-ing. What a brilliant idea. Bring even more attention to it. Just as campaigns to persuade dypso-nympho teenagers in Zante to not take on industrial quantities of industrial alcohol fuelled the tendency, so we might expect ever more tanked-up Icaruses flying into the sun and pool, or concrete.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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