Jeremy

There are times when I feel smugly vindicated. I could have told you so, and occasionally I have told you so. Take Jeremy Clarkson. 5 February: Murder On The Dancefloor - this is what I said:

"It will be thronged with expats desperate to try and ingratiate themselves with the Top Gear trio. I would advise caution. Clarkson's vitriol would doubtless extend to mostly all expats. If I were you, I'd avoid the Top Gear-ists like the plague. Not that I don't like Clarkson; quite the opposite. And anyone who has seen fit to punch Piers Morgan is fine by me. One trusts that the programme will show some suitably pleasant landscapes and be a rather more positive representation of Mallorca than some Chardonnay who has vomited over a nurse in Muro hospital A&E. (But) if you think Clarkson might go easy on the local expattery, do be warned: remember he once said that anyone who had moved to Spain had held up a post office."

Good old Jezza. Along with May and Hammond, he managed to pack out the race track at the end of the Classic Car Rally gig. Word has it that the stands were thronged, not with classic-car-adoring Mallorcans but with self-regarding and needing-to-be-seen expats - British ones at that. There were doubtless a few like Ben who were there for a love of cars, things that make them work and getting grease and oil all over themselves. For the most part though, it was those who were notching up another event on the social calendar, those wanting a chance to show off the latest Rolex or Jimmy Choo's, those who are just plain mad, and also the chancers sniffing a business opportunity or just some hoped-for, aspiring-to stardust being sprinkled by being in the proximity of the famous. Poor bloody saps that they are. They should choose their celebs wisely - if at all. Clarkson was always going to be dangerous to know. I warned you, but you didn't listen, did you? Never under-estimate, though, the lather of excitement and vacuous expectation that can be whipped up by the froth of even minor celebrity in the air-filled heads of many expatriates.

There is a stratum of society which, when the merest whiff of a celeb comes wafting through the ether, loses all sense of propriety and seeks to prostrate and prostitute itself at the feet of whatever celeb it happens to be. I once took a flight from Heathrow to Leeds-Bradford. Next to me on the plane happened to be Mark James, the one-time Ryder Cup golfer and indeed captain. I knew James lived locally to the airport. His being on the flight was not, in itself, that unusual. He spent the journey reading a golfing magazine and turning down any refreshment. Thinking that he would probably rather not wish to speak to anyone, least of all myself, I didn't say a word to him other than to say "good evening" when I sat down. When it came to the time for everyone to disembark, there was an unholy scrum involving several passengers from the rear of the plane pushing their way past others, clutching business cards and calling out: "Mark", "Mark". They all thought they had found their new best friend. He was at least polite in telling them to get lost. Jeremy Clarkson on the other hand ...

You see, the problem is that not every celeb is actually a journo and a very funny one who has scant regard for whom he offends and who also writes for "The Sunday Times" the week after he has been in Mallorca. Jeremy Clarkson is and does, and you really should have banked on him having a go. Just be grateful if you are not an expatriate, because if you are, wherever you may be (with the exception of the USA), you are damned - by Clarkson - and a failure. It's no good you or indeed I saying that Clarkson's message does not apply. It does. You, you, you and you, all of you, you expats, you're all failures. That's his message. Thought he was coming to Mallorca to do some wonderful PR work? No he was not. The naïvite but also the superficiality of the expat community here beggars belief. The Top Gear presence was little more than an excuse for showing off on a grand scale. And why was the British Consul at the rally? What had it got to do with him? It was because it became an expats' function, which makes one ask who the rally is in fact for. My understanding is that Mallorcans stayed away from the race track and observed the rally only along the route and in the villages.

It may yet prove that, when the rally footage is broadcast, Mallorca is shown in a good light. But there must be a fear that Clarkson or one of the others will have a pop at the place and at the people, because that is what Clarkson has most certainly already done. I should feel offended, but I am not. Partly, that's because I knew it was coming and partly because, well, he isn't wrong.

'I was in Majorca last weekend, which is jammed full of British expats all of whom would begin their explanation of how they got there with the same thing: “Well, after I sold the cab . . .”
'There they were, in their chips and footie bars with their desperate eyes and their booze-ruined noses, regaling everyone with their stuck-record views on life back in Blighty.
' “Don’t know how you can live in Britain. Bloody weather. Bloody Muslims. Bloody Brown,” and then, after a wistful pause, “. . . you don’t have a copy of today’s Telegraph do you?” '

Like moths to a flame, the expats were mindlessly attracted by the prospect of celebrity, only to find that they were then burned by the very thing that attracted them. Burned, ripped to pieces, shown up, made fun of, whole lives questioned, shat on. To hell with Clarkson, you might say. But I won't and can't, because I agree with him. Oh, and he's also very funny. Read the whole thing for yourselves. And if you don't read, I suspect you don't want to know the reality. Excellent stuff:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article5992555.ece


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The KLF once again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwtSdJaPCSI). Today's title - Jeremy? Truly brilliant song that came out of the grunge, some say it wasn't grunge, movement. Unquestionably, like Mark Hollis (Talk Talk), one of the most distinctive of vocalists. Who?



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Always The Sun

There is a story that you may have missed. It has to do with a town called La Muela in Aragon on the mainland. Though a story from "the peninsula", it could just as easily be of Mallorcan origin. And that is because it has to do with corruption in public life.

What makes La Muela particularly interesting is that it reveals that nothing in Spain, not even the sun and the wind, is immune to corrupt practices - allegedly - so long as there is a backhanded buck to be made. The story surrounds wind farms in La Muela and the boom in clean energy, which also includes solar "gardens", and the consequent boom in less-than-transparent behaviour and the acquisition of monies from questionable sources. All allegedly, it should be repeated.

As so often with these cases, a mayor is implicated: La Muela's in this instance. Other officials in other parts of Spain are under investigation in connection with certain suspicious activities, such as the trafficking of licences to provide solar gardens. In the wider sense, these are all environmentally sound manifestations of the malaise in the construction industry and among "notoriously corrupt real estate developers". These words come from a piece in "The Observer", as does the information for this blog item (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/22/la-muela-renewables-spain-corruption).

Apart from demonstrating that Mother Nature is herself corruptible or an unwitting party to corruption, these cases show just how widespread inappropriate behaviour is in Spanish public life. The spate of scandals in Mallorca, which now includes the latest tourism minister implicated in the case of a road scheme (always construction, you see), has led to some comment that not only is Balearic administration so riven with corruption it should be given over to central control from Madrid but also that there should be early elections to sort things out. The problems with these suggestions are that you wouldn't necessarily know if you could trust a central control system any more than the local one while early elections might bring back into power the Partido Popular, the party most exposed to corruption charges dating from the past few years.

One is left, I am afraid, to conclude that, rife though corruption is and has been in Mallorca, it is not the only part of Spain to suffer and that perhaps this is all just part of a cultural phenomenon. That seems a facile thing to conclude, but what else is one to make of all these cases? If you can steal from the sun and the wind, you can steal anything.


Mysteries of public provision
A whole series with that title must surely beckon, but let's try this one for starters. I was in Pollensa yesterday. The place was packed. Market day. Weather was very fine. Sun, sun and sun. Lots of tourists, and not only German and Swiss cyclists with their tell-tale Hürzeler accessories. And yet ... Why, on a Sunday of all days, when it's the market and there are quite so many people around, is the tourist office shut? I know Pollensa town hall is broke, but they may as well say to hell with it and pay double time.


Mallorca Top Gear Rally
Officially renamed thus as clearly no-one else took part, despite the best position in the race of the three only being 30th by Jeremy Clarkson. Above is a photo of said presenter/journo together with Ben, and there is a host of photos of Ben and Sara with the Top Gear-ists and other shots at http://picasaweb.google.com/mallorcaben/MallorcaClassicCarRally2009#.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Canned Heat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrljWGIHB7c). Today's title - and always the wind, too, but not in this song by ...?

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Always Shines On TV

The more I think about it, the more I think I might, were I in a position to worry about such things, be worried that this Top Gear Classic Car Rally thing might not be the wonderful advert for Mallorca some seem to believe that it will be. Put it this way - why are they coming to Mallorca, for this particular rally? Clarkson and the boys don't do veiled PR exercises for tourist authorities; they do taking the piss. And that, the more I think about it, is what might, perhaps should, worry some.

Oh that these were still the glory days of motoring - a sedate drive in the countryside, yer best girl by yer side, yer dashing moustache and yer Brylcreemed hair set in concrete against the open-topped breeze; the mountains in the background as yer pull up by a marina for a G and T stiffener with David Niven. Unfortunately, things aren't like that anymore. There is also the not inconsiderable factor of Clarkson's total absence of political correctness. This, as anyone who reads him will be aware, manifests itself in a variety of ways, such as the fact that he would be the last person who might be described as an environmentalism fellow traveller. Then there is the matter of killing wildlife.

I fear there may be this rather misguided impression that this is all going to be an advert for Mallorcan landscape and its wonderful environment. There may well indeed be landscape, but there will also be some serious pollution occurring. Those classic cars do about a kilometre to the gallon. Haring around the roads going into the Tramuntana could be bad news for local hares as well. Or indeed any other poor animal that happens to get in the way. A classic car rally is just about the single most environmentally damaging event that one could possibly dream up, which is probably part of the reason that they're taking part. Then there is the potential for, well, just taking the Michael, and there is no shortage of potential in this respect.

The Top Gear programme comes at a time when apparently there is to be some reality thing showing how expats here are coping, or not, with the credit crunch. Doubtless there will be some poor saps who put their hands up to take part and are made to look total idiots - for that is the way it is with TV. Take also this "Sun, Sea and A&E" reality docu (5 February: Murder On The Dancefloor). There have been three articles about this programme in "The Bulletin" over the past week. Why, do you suppose? Because it's news? I doubt it. Seems more like PR for the show, and moreover, if it has not received criticism for being patronising, then it should have; patronising because the message that has come out of the programme is that Mallorca has good health facilities - as if this should come as a big surprise. This is Mallorca, not some basket case bit of African jungle.

All these shows may, in some respects, be beneficial for Mallorca, but please don't let's be naïve in thinking that they exist just as a way of promoting the island.


Following on from yesterday's item about Brussels and Balearic money and fire runs and so on, a local councillor from Palma has apparently been impressing upon European commissioners that were it to be the case that fire runs were outlawed then legal action would probably be taken to reverse this. As I said before, how to win friends and influence bureaucracts. Here we have a councillor making a sort of threat while at the same time many - some other 149 or so - compatriots are attempting to extract money from the same political entity. Here's a scenario, a dilemma and a question for you to consider: You are a Mallorcan politician, you go to Brussels as part of a delegation to try and obtain a whole bunch more funding from the European piggy-bank. The Euro-meisters say, "ok, we'll give you the money, so long as you agree to stop setting fire to your streets and to conducting fire runs, and to following - to the letter - the European directive on pyrotechnics". Do you, as a Mallorcan politician, accept this as a reasonable compromise, dismiss it as a form of bribery or demand the money and the continuation of the tradition?

It's most unlikely that this scenario would occur, but there does come a point where you can't have your cake and set fire to it, too, which is what the 150 who have marched on Brussels would presumably want.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Deep Purple (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WX_4FNoto4). Today's title - for years I thought the lyric meant that the sun shone onto the television set.

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Two Lanes Will Take Us Anywhere

The power of shaming. Sara did duly send me some snippets, one of which confirmed that it would indeed be illegal to drive with one's wing mirrors detached or in some way not meeting the requirements. The local driving theory book - in its English version, it must be pointed out - is full of "requirements", "obligations" and so on, which suggests it was originally written in fact by a German. Anyway, perhaps the most important thing to emerge has to do with roundabouts, the negotiation of which - for anyone who has ever attempted this here - is open to considerable interpretation as to precisely what one should do. So, here we go, and definitely wake up at the back because this is important stuff.

Right, you have two lanes going towards a roundabout. Let's assume, for one moment, that it is the Pointed Thing, some say Fish Hook Roundabout at the great Muro-Alcúdia divide, itself a roundabout of two lanes - theoretically at any rate - and that you are coming from Can Picafort. Now, the left exit goes to Palma and Sa Pobla, and that is where you want to go. So, the question is this. In which lane do you approach the roundabout and then remain as you circumnavigate the Pointed Thing?

If you have said the left-hand lane, you would be wrong, because it's the right. But for those of you with hands-on or should that be wheels-on experience of this particular roundabout, you will know that virtually no-one follows this procedure. I include myself in this. Indeed, those who do cause considerable confusion (see below). Yet, here is the evidence:

"As the exits are situated on the right (by which it means, one presumes, that you leave a roundabout by turning right), the driver must, as a general rule, situate himself in the right hand lane in order to exit. The exit must always take place using the right turn signal (indicating right) in advance but ensuring that no confusion is caused to other road users."

All clear? Well, of course, it isn't thanks, in particular, to that marvellous caveat "as a general rule". Anything that explains itself by reference to "as a general rule" can of course be interpreted in an entirely different way. One should also note the second brackets in the above, which are from the book and are not my own. They contain the mysterious word "indicating". For you and I this might well be understandable, but local Mallorcan folk would struggle even with a Catalan translation of the word. It comes as something of a surprise that the act of indicating is even mentioned, especially as it is intended to ensure that "no confusion is caused to other road users", because the creation of maximum confusion has always seemed to me to be uppermost in the minds of those using local roundabouts. And the indication "using the right turn signal" does seem to rather contradict convention which is, when the indicator is used at all, to signal left.

Still, I am immensely grateful to Sara, and I'm sure you will all wish to thank her as well and to wish her great success with her driving lessons. And may she always, as a general rule, exit using her right turn signal.


One wonders, still on matters of an automotive nature, whether those taking part in the Classic Car Rally are subject to the same rules, or absence of the rules of the Mallorcan road as others. It is a not unimportant issue because, as mentioned before, the Top Gear boys are going to be hacking around the tarmac of the island this year, and one would hate for them to fall foul of Trafico. Were they to do so might cast a shadow over what otherwise should prove to be a very positive thing for Mallorca. Top Gear has not only a large audience in the UK, it is has a worldwide following. It all does rather depend, though, on how much coverage there is and of what. Meanwhile, "The Bulletin" says that, following its breaking of the news that Clarkson and his chums were on their way, the British community has been "thrown into a frenzy". Perhaps I am one of those because a frenzy means a state of mental derangement, and, along with all British expats, I am mentally deranged as a consequence of knowing that Jeremy Clarkson will be in Mallorca. Actually, this frenzy has been a "long list of people wishing to get involved". And you could just about have predicted it - all manner of bloody wannabes and hangers-on will be wishing to grab a piece of the action. The expat socialite set will be seeking to decamp from their normal places of vacuity for some photo ops with Jezza and co. Platinum blondes of wrinkly brownness tottering in a Barbara Windsor manner atop non-sensible twin towers of Jimmy Choo's accompanied by their husbands - the Blingmaster Flashes. I trust that Clarkson will bring with him his sharpest of pens.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Whitney Houston (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiJ_2zQYUFg). Today's title - comes from what is considered one of his finest; he's a bossy sort and the song has a weather element.

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