Urbanisation Debt

Our Urbanisation, like all those in Spain have to have by law a Committee. One of their tasks is to set a local tax to pay for urbanisation services, electricity, maintenance, community pool etc.
Our urbanisation has set a levy of 300 Eros a year, this has not changed for the 5 years the urbanisation has been in existence. However, villa owners are failing to pay, for whatever reason and their debt to the community is now 16,500 euros.
Time for the Bailiffs me thinks!

Best European Country to Live in

I. from time to time look at a web site called International Living. Each year it produces a league table of the best countries to live in throughout the World. Here is an edited version (It only contains European countries). Spain is 12th with the UK 20th. The last country in the whole world – Somalia!

Country	Score
France	82
Switzerland	81
Germany	81
Luxembourg	78
Belgium	78
Italy	77
Netherlands	77
Austria	77
Liechtenstein	76
Malta	76
Denmark	76
Spain	76
Finland	75
Hungary	74
Portugal	73
Lithuania	73
Andorra	73
Czech Republic	73
United Kingdom	73

Preferential Voting

I see that the Labour Party used Preferential Voting in their quest to select a New Party Leader.
Preferential Voting method a.ka. as the instant-runoff voting (IRV), or the "alternative vote"  which uses voters' preferences to simulate an elimination runoff election without multiple voting events.
As the votes are tallied, the option with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated. In successive rounds of counting, the next preferred choice still available from each eliminated ballot is transferred to candidates not yet eliminated.
The least preferred option is eliminated in each round of counting until there is a majority winner, with all ballots being considered in every round of counting.
Why then do they then insist upon a First Past The Post voting System in a General Election?

Blockbuster to slash debt by $900 million via bankruptcy

Do you remember in you a long time ago your area having a local video store? In the village I lived in we had two a Betamax and a VHS. Both were run ‘part time’, one was in an off licence the other in an ‘open all hours’ store.

Not a fantastic collection but run on a honesty type of operation, if you return a day late it was no bother. As the growth of ownership in video players grew so did their business.

However in the background big brother or Blockbuster came along and shut them down by either buying them up or getting the video makers to only sell to them. The operation was rigid with fines for late return, snooty staff and overpriced popcorn and sweets. Well now its their turn!

Video/DVD rental chain Blockbuster Inc filed for bankruptcy as part of a pre-arranged deal with bondholders that would slash the company's debt by about $900 million. The company's senior debt holders have agreed to support the plan and provide $125 million in "debtor-in-possession" (DIP) financing to help support Blockbuster's operations while it is under bankruptcy.

Internet downloads no doubt taking business away. Lol. What comes around goes around.

Text Messages

I am not a great texter. In fact when I first got a mobile phone I refused to text on the grounds it was anti social and preferred to phone. Now I have grown up I do from time to time text but much prefer to leave a message.
My brother is a great texter, mostly jokes and mostly about Liverpool FC (he is a bluenose, Everton supporter to the uninitiated). In the press we are always told the number of texts is increasing and recently I was talking to a friend who works in the industry about the increase.
He says its how the companies really add the cream to their profit. They have people who make the jokes up and then send them to the most prolific texters who send it on and so on until it goes around the country and beyond.
Each time a joke is sent (it can be monitored) the creator gets a fee or commission on the text. A fortune can be made! 

Spanish Will

Living in Spain as an ex-pat we obviously have assets in that country, a villa, a car, bank accounts etc.
So it came to pass that we needed to explore what happens if either of us dies or we both die. This came a more serious problem after my uncle died recently and I was the executor of his will. It sparked us into life. The question was, what happens in Spain?
We did not need to see a solicitor in Spain, we had to see an accountant who helped us draw up the wills and help avoid taxes (an absolute must for the Lady of the Villa who hates paying anymore taxes than she has too!).
Once the will was drawn up it had to be notarised by a Spanish Notary, then legally filled with us and the accountant holding copies. All very straight forward, except any beneficiary of the will has to have a Spanish NIE number. This is the equivalent of our National Insurance Number (the one you get at birth but can never remember).
So our children will have to apply for one if they ever want a share of our Spanish assets.

Spanish Council Business

As part of the duties of being on the committee of the urbanisation we live on, is making sure that the council know about problems in and around the urbanisation.
This mostly covers, lighting, road maintenance, rubbish collection etc. In the recent past all this has taken is a trip down to the Town Hall and a chat in part Spanish, part English with the appropriate department and usually, after two trips, the work is completed.
Now things have changed. As part of the Spanish austerity measures the council staff have had a 5% reduction in salary. Harsh but…. Now the staff are fighting back, instead of talking and getting things done a form has too be completed in Spanish for every work item. Even if the work is to be done on a regular basis.
Ok if you are Spanish but not if you are English, German, French etc. It is costing the urbanisation each time to have the form completed in Spanish. We keep a copy each time as the work at the moment is never ever done!
W have a season ticket for each department at the minute!

Catalonia bans bullfighting

The parliament of Catalonia has voted to ban bullfighting - the first region of mainland Spain to do so. The vote took place as the result of a petition brought to parliament, signed by 180,000 people who say the practice is barbaric and outdated. The ban takes effect in January 2012.

In Wednesday's vote, 68 backed a ban, 55 voted against and nine abstained.

But while the official debate is over animal rights, many believe this process is an attempt by nationalist-minded Catalans to mark their difference from the rest of Spain by rejecting one of its best known traditions.

The end of e-mail?

Sheryl Sandberg  chief operating officer of the world's biggest social network Facebook, says e-mail is a dying means of communication.

She bases that assertion on the behaviour of the nearly 500 million users who gather on Facebook. Speaking at the Neilsen Consumer  conference in Las Vegas, Ms Sandberg claims: "If you want to know what you'll be doing tomorrow, look at what teens are doing today."
Ms Sandberg, claims that only 11% of teens use e-mail, preferring text messaging and social networks. Even though 90% of e-mail may be spam or other useless twaddle, it is hard to believe it is nearing its sell-by date.
A report by the Radicati Group says that e-mail is still on the rise and projects that e-mail accounts will increase from 2.9 billion today to over 3.8 billion by 2014. At the same time, social networking is predicted to climb from over 2.1 billion accounts in 2010 to over 3.6 billion by 2014.
e-mails, in my opinion are still and will be for the future (10 years ahead), the main means of intra company and company to company communication. Texting is the teens way of communicating, but, commerce will always stick to the written word and not texting. I cant see the end of e-mail, just, as I cant see the end of letters (snail-mail).

It’s my Birthday

Today is my Birthday. So Happy Birthday to me.
For the first time in many a year I have my brothers with me. Because of the World Cup we are all together in Spain. My sisters are in the UK. Here is my horoscope:

• A transitional year is forecast--one in which little changes foretell new directions to come. Most of the year, Jupiter blesses you with the ability to take things in stride as it harmonizes with your own sign from fellow Water sign, Pisces.
• You are more intellectually curious this year, and you may have opportunities to travel, study, go abroad, expand your horizons, and meet people who are of diverse backgrounds.
• Business dealings, particularly long-distance ones and those involving publicity and promotion, are likely to be profitable in 2010. Work might be readily found through these avenues. September can bring a surprising opportunity for an adventure.
• Career matters, while they might begin rather sluggishly in the first few months of the year, are approaching a very pleasant peak. Building your skills and expanding your reach are very advisable now, as they will benefit you greatly as you move towards an especially successful period in your life.
• There are likely to be some pressures on the home front, but also opportunities to really get our domestic life into order. Organizing or reorganizing your home, downsizing and streamlining where necessary, and establishing better and more efficient routines will be helpful.
• There is a sense of "old versus new" again this year, as you weight the pros and cons of sticking to tried and true patterns and moving forward to unexplored territory. Some of you will be struggling with a strong desire to reach new levels of achievement and success, and the simultaneous desire for security by keeping the status quo.
• Big decisions shouldn't be made on the spur of the moment, but do keep your eyes open for ways to break out of any rut you might have gotten yourself into.
• Relationships are intense, serious, and changeful, but also extremely rewarding. Depth in your connections is what you seek.
• Finances are also going through some changes, starting off on the sluggish side, but improving as the year moves forward. Great opportunities for increasing income from your job arrive this year, as well as sponsorships, loans, refunds related to health, and other such forms of support. May 20-June 14 brings special opportunities for love and romance.

Royal Yacht Britannia

So here we are looking at the Royal Yacht Britannia, what you cannot see is the big shopping centre to the right. You can only get to the ship by going through the shopping centre and entering via the top gantry in the picture.
Also as you pass through the ship when you egress each deck you see a Debenhams sign! Her Maj was so upset about the location she vowed never to return. Anyway on with the tour.

This a very crowded whell house with not a sailor in sight!        

 The Flag Locker

One of the Funnels with a Gym inside. Never saw it but we were told a small one was inside!

 The Queens Bedroom

The DOE bedroom.

Small bedrooms and very small beds!

    Promenade Deck

This is the Dining Room, now used for Corporate events.

The Quatermasters bedroom for six!

                                                                 The quatermasters Mess

The Ships Laundry

Here is the Engine Room it was sectioned off by glass partitions

Liver Bird Walk

The annual Liver Birds Midnight Walk took place on Friday, May 14. More than 800 women took part including the Lady of the Villa and the youngest daughter, raising £70,000 for the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.
The 9km route starts and finishes at the Pier Head and takes in various city sites.
Well done both of you.

The Bin And The Plasma Screen

In the last couple of months we had purchased a new Plasma screen. The old one, was 10 years old and unfortunately ‘passed away’. Being 10 years old it was a really heavy object and was attached to the wall by a heavy bracket and 10 bolts.
Because it was so heavy I needed more strength than The lady of the Villa could provide. As luck would have it, the visiting season had just opened and our good business partners and friends from Crewe had arrived.
CA and I took the old screen down and placed it near our refuse bin. In Spain you don’t have individual bins you have a communal one that is emptied every night (believe it or not) seven days a week. I had placed it next to the bin too see what happens. Within 20 minutes the screen had gone!
Best of luck to the guy who took it. It needs some special hardware boxes which I had not placed with it to get it to work, providing he can fix the screen.

Correos

The Correos to anybody in the UK is the Royal Mail. The people who move the letters and parcels around Spain and if you are lucky deliver them to your Urbanisation.
There is no door delivery in Spain. Each urbanisation or apartment has its own set of mail boxes and the mail is delivered into them, in our case by men (or woman) on yellow scooters.
It has taken a lot of time and effort on the urbanisation committee and our Spanish Administrators to get  the post through. Due to some internal “cock-up” the local town hall and the builders provided the 75% of the residents with the wrong address, a road name was incorrect. Why this stopped the other 25% from getting through was a mystery.
Having got this correct we had to wait 6 months for a “blue sign” with numbers on to be erected by the council. Then the Correos lost the master key to the mail boxes (we have one at each end of the (Urbanisation). Once we got a locksmith to change the locks and provide the local Correos office with the key, they then found the original key and started to use that. Obviously it did not work and we spent some time getting the keys sorted out.
Eventually, we had agreement that all was well, however, test postings from the UK, Spain and the USA and our Spanish Administrators all failed. On making, through our Spanish administrators, an official complaint the post came through.
Asking about back post we were told that it all had been destroyed! Evidently a common occurrence in Spain. Saves having a backlog I suppose. We were told officially that all post was destroyed that could not be delivered as this saved the customer money as they would have to charge for storage!
Now that we have been down this long and winding road of attrition we have regular post. We do check deliveries on a monthly basis by having or Administrators send us post. That way we now its getting through.
You could not make this story up!

Little Britain

The area that we live in I call little Britain. And that is not just the Urbanisation we live on. We have 83 properties on the urbanisation with all but 10 owned by brits.
The surrounding area is mostly of the same percentage of ownership.
All the bars and restaurants for a five mile radius are mostly owned by brits. All the supermarkets (ALDI, Eroski, Carrafour, SupuValu) are local owned, however, all the staff speak English and are proud to show off their linguistic talents.
So much so that trying to use what Spanish we have proves more difficult than you think. It is possible not to speak Spanish at all! If you do need to go to hospital, the Town Hall, The Police Station or the doctors there are more than enough translators to go with you. At a cost, usually 15 – 25 euros an hour.
At weekends we can go to any number of bars and restaurants all owned by brits. In fact the local plaza has twenty bars or restaurants brat owned, 3 Indian, 2 German, and 2 Spanish restaurants.
The Shoe, hardware, paper, confectionary and clothes shops are all owned and operated by Brits.
We did not move here because it was ‘Little Britain’ it just suited us, near the sea, in the sun, the type of villa we wanted and could afford. having said that we could have got more for our money now than we did 5 years ago but we did not have 20/20 hindsight. LOL.  

Granada Trip – Day 3

After another sound sleep and another excellent breakfast we headed off to the Cathedral. Once we had paid our entrance fee and entered we were astounded by the size not just the height but the ground space. You could easily get a football field in the inside.

This is 6 stories up!

 This picture shortens the depth, its longer in real life.

 The Church organ!

The number of entrance doors and the size of them was another astounding feature.






We had enough time to do another bus tour as the tickets we purchased lasted 48 hours. After lunch we headed back to the hotel were our bus was waiting and soon we were off back home.

All in all we enjoyed the trip and will no doubt do another. Granada, apart from the Alhambra Palaces and the Cathedral was, for me, a bit of a disappointment, but the Lady of the Villa enjoyed every minute.

Granada Trip – Day 2

Having had a good nights sleep, an excellent breakfast at the hotel we headed off on a mini bus to the Alhambra Palace, the reason we were making the trip.

 Arriving at 11:15 and joining the queue for entrance tickets we found after a twenty minute queue that we could not enter until 14:00 and that our entry into the main palace was 18:00!

We headed back to town and decided to take the tourist bus around the city to see the rest of the sites.
I was stunned at the traffic in the city it was dog eat dog or mans inhumanity to man. No quarter was given any gap was big enough and the car horns were in use good style!

The motor scooters were the worst elbowing their way to the front and roaring off like demons to try and beat the next set of lights!
After the your we ended up at 14:15 in the Alhambra Palace gardens. The actual area contains many palaces, some in ruins some being restored and one the Kings Place the jewel in the Crown. The whole place was surrounded by thick walls and keeps. It really gave an idea of how big the Palaces (or mini town) was in the 9th Centaury.

The Lady of the Villa was well enamoured with the Wisteria that abounded around the Palaces.

We actually exhausted all the Palaces and grounds by 16:30 but we still had a 1:30 hour wait to gain entry to the Kings Palace so we waited outside and chatted to the other visitors. Eventually we got in at our elected time (you could not get in before as each ticket was electronically timed).




Here are some of the pictures I took. A really fabulous place now never mind in the 9th Centaury!

This last photo is a view over the city of Granada from the highest Keep in the Palace. The city has grown a bit since the 9th Centaury. 







We returned to our hotel, showered and changed and went off to the Moorish part of the town. We had found three restaurants that had been recommended in the tour books, but it was soon whittled down to one, the others did not serve alcohol! It was called the Kasbah and the food was excellent as was the service.
Back to the hotel were we swapped tourist stories with our fellow tourist in the hotel bar.

Granada Trip – Day 1

“I want to see the Alhambra Palace’s” said the Lady of the Villa. Brilliant I thought a Curry Trip around all The Alhambra Palace’s in the UK. Reaching over for “Curry Houses in the UK I felt a slap around my head.
“Not those  Alhambra Palaces, but the ones in Granada, in Spain” OK I thought I reached over for the PC to get the Tom Tom up to date and get maps from www.multimap.com. SLAP!
“Don’t bother with those, I have organised the whole thing. We are going by coach!” Is she mad I thought, I haven’t been on a coach trip since I was at Secondary School and I did not think I was that old I needed a driver.
Anyway that is why I am standing at 7;30 am (yes am!) waiting at a pickup point for the coach. Nice coach, nice reclining seats, air conditioning, and only a third full and complete with driver and tour guide. And off we go stopping twice for “driver breaks” to arrive in Granada at 13:15. Once there the coach took us on a bus tour of the city centre to give us a flavour of Granada. Once at the hotel and unpacked we were off to the town to have a look around for the afternoon.

We walked around the outside of the Cathedral and walked around the Christian area and identified places that we could eat at in the evening. Then it was off to the Moorish part of the town about 5 minutes away. This was very interesting with very narrow streets and it had a bazaar and very Arabic atmosphere.
Arrived back at the hotel at 16:00 and had one of the great Spanish traditions, a siesta. Later we then went out for an evening meal. We had decided on Spanish meal that night with a Moorish meal the next night. So we ended up, after a few aperitifs, in the main square at installed ourselves in the Centro restaurant.
A really nice Spanish meal with a lovely red wine unfortunately accompanied by very poor service. We had finished our mains and were asked straight away if we wanted a sweet. We asked for a 5 minute break. Twenty minutes later we managed to find a waiter and asked for the bill (la quinta) having gone passed waiting for a sweet. Another 10 minutes went by before we stood over a waiter and insisted we paid the bill. I was all in favour of leaving no tip but was over ruled by the Lady of the Villa.
Off we went to the hotel bar only to find even worse service and it was only 23:30. After a drink we left for bed.

Smoking Ban in Spain: Will It Ever Happen?

The proposed smoking ban in Spain has been put back until 2011, raising some doubts over whether it will ever happen at all.
With most countries in Western Europe having brought in smoking ban several years ago, Spain stalled and put in place some half-baked legislation in the hope that that would see off any laws being imposed from on high by the European Union.
Since late 2005, small bars and cafes in Spain have been in the curious position of being allowed to choose whether to permit smoking not. Unsurprisingly (as most bar staff and their patrons smoke), they chose to allow it. Larger establishments were, in theory, asked to fit an expensive ventilated partition. Most ignored it, including Madrid airport.
Realising that the current system was doing nothing to decrease the amount of smoking in public places in Spain, the government threatened to completely ban lighting up in bars and cafes in 2010. But the law has been creeping further and further back - first until the summer and now until 2011.

Do you Know who it is yet?

As Rolf Harris used to say ‘Do you know who it is yet?’ Who you are going to vote for that is?
In my opinion there is not a great deal to choose from, what we had before or two unknowns, who will probably give just the same old guff. ‘It wasn’t me it was the last lot made me do it!’ Whatever IT is.
Well there is not much time to go to make a decision. Lets hope it’s not a hung parliament, because not matter what deals are struck to keep one of them in power, it will all fall down in a year or two and we will go through the whole thing again.
Sometimes I wonder if the month before a General Election is worse than the whole life of a parliament. All those ‘promises’ said so unctuously, ‘all that we can get you out of this mess messages’, smiles galore until election night and then the losers party have their ‘Night of the long knives’ and the blood letting begins.