Racism in Albion

I've not been to the UK for a long time - a brief transit at Heathrow; a few days in Salisbury three years ago and before that, twenty four hours in London about six years back. Really, for better than thirty five years, I have hardly set foot in the country where I was born.
So, all I know about Today's England is what I see on Facebook, or the TV, or from what people tell me. I say England, because I'm from there, born in Norfolk many years ago, and because things seem to be a little different in the rest of the UK (or, perhaps not).
The issue, of course, is racism. Following the Brexit, the good people of England have apparently decided on embracing racism and racial hatred. Is this true?
Can it be true?
I see so many articles and clips in the Media - here's one just now - showing a kind of horrific hatred for foreigners coming from the place where I was born.
My Godfather was a racist. He hated Jews and Blacks. He was briefly a Conservative MP before breaking away to form the National Front in the 'fifties. He told my Dad once 'We don't want the upper classes, or the educated - they like to ask questions and worry the subject. We want to speak for the little people, the workers, the mob'.
Brexit - from the point of view of any ex-pat (with a modicum of intelligence) - is bad. At least for those of us who live in Europe. If this racism, apparently encouraged and abetted by those who should know better, is going to direct policy on the European Union, then we are in for a tough time.
But, to get back to my question - has racism, jingoism and nationalism really taken hold in England?

Palomares - The Glowing Report

The Government has agreed, following pressure from the American Department of Energy, to reduce the area of Palomares considered to have a high enough level of radiation (following the nuclear accident in January 1966) to just 28,000 square metres - about half of the earlier 50,000 m2. This remaining area remains earmarked for future decontamination by the Americans.
If the limits are finally agreed by all parties, then the land '...may be fenced off for all time', worries the Izquierda Unida, '...giving a permanent stigma to Palomares'.
Furthermore, the limit of radioactivity within the new radius would be accepted (as it were) at forty times higher than Spanish guidelines - and 400 times the limits accepted by the American Department of Energy and the IAEA. Worse still, affected habitable and agricultural land could remain at anything up to 100 times recommended IAEA levels.
More at El Mundo here. 

The Functionary

It’s a fine old job if you can manage to obtain it, fourteen monthly payments, all the pencils you could wish for and a comfy position at a desk next to the radiator for life: in short, a funcionario working for the State – and in a recent offer of 400 places in Madrid and other major cities, an astonishing 38,000 people showed up for the exams. One chance in a hundred. Story at El País here.

Donkey Baseball

Back in the mid eighties and nineties, we used to have an odd sounding sporting event in Mojácar called burro béisbol - or in English, donkey baseball. The venue was down in the valley, either near the cemetery or on the land under the Old Mojácar mountain.
The rules were unclear.
In theory, you had to be sat on  a donkey to run the three bases (baseball is like rounders) and the fielders were only allowed to move or throw from the back of a donkey. As for the twelve stout-hearted donkeys themselves, mostly they just wanted to go home. Or bite someone.
This caused a lot more merriment than the game itself, which was just as well,  because they always made me the umpire.
The American naval base at Morón, outside Cádiz, would send us the balls, gloves and bats, and one year they sent a team of marines, who, while not much good with donkeys, at least had a grounding in the rules of baseball.
One of them married our eldest daughter.
My wife Barbara organised the whole thing, of course. She had seen the sport in California and thought it would work here. The beer money went to Animo, our charity. The Red Cross would send an ambulance for the skinned fingers and other small accidents. The mayor would come along, and the owners of the donkeys would be present, each discussing the mischievousness of his particular burro.

EU Rights for Immigrants and Ex-pats

There are a few groups around that are supporting the rights of the British ex-pats in Spain and the Spaniards in the UK. Not many, but a few. The problem being that we foreigners, whether British here or Spanish there - (or German or French...) - have no voice in the political process. We are often referred to as 'hostages' these days.
What will happen - work-permits, visas, convertible accounts? The loss of health insurance and the vote in local elections? Perhaps deportation?
We managed before the EU, and Spain was a great place to live. Small comfort if things get really bad.
But we don't know, do we? Indeed not. It's a bit like those Britons in the Almanzora Valley who may... or may not... get their house legalised one day. Or maybe demolished.
This is the blog from EuroCitizens (based in Madrid) here and their Facebook page here.
Our local Europats: Representation in Spain page is here and Facebook page here.
Consider - if we don't care, do you think that the politicians will care for us?

The Hotel Algarrobico: Unresolved

Unsurprisingly, the ghastly hotel outside Carboneras, halted just before competition a decade ago by the starry-eyed ecologists (Motto: 'no jobs, please: we're serious'), remains as an unattractive hulk, just like it did when the tree-huggers struck in 2005, twelve years ago. The Hotel Algarrobico was almost completed at the time of the order to cease work, but it was, itself, part of a larger project - to include shops, bars, restaurants and apartments within the complex. The hills behind and around the hotel were cut and shaped as part of the early work on the site, long before the twenty stories hotel, with 411 rooms, was almost ready to open.
Why did the ecologists wait so long?
Well, the hotel at the time, was legal. It had all the paperwork in line, since, when the plans were approved, the land was not inside the rather extensive 'Parque Natural Cabo de Gata-Níjar' natural park.
But now, it is. Sigh.
The only plant-life in this – and most – of the Parque Natural is scrub: no doubt of huge environmental value to our friends the ecologists but, dress it how you will, it’s scrub none the less.
Whether the hotel, its urbanisation, shops, restaurants and bars would have bought jobs to the good people of Carboneras is, of course, immaterial; and, much more so to the government in far-off Seville. Perhaps, with the fall in tourism following the 2008 'crisis', the hotel should never have been built anyway since- but, what am I saying? Spain's tourist industry in 2016 was over 74 million people. Most of them looking for the beach, the sun and a fish dinner. QED: Carboneras.
To demolish the hotel and repair the surrounds, removing any trace of the project and leaving an attractive spread of 500 metres of scrub, indeed matching the scrub to the left and the right, is impossible. Not expensive, or very expensive... it's impossible.
Then again, with so much of the province of Almería in the public domain (around 3,100 hectares are protected: that's 35% of the entire province) - does a couple of extra hectares really make any difference? Are we so short of scrub in Almería that we need to conserve every straggly bush?
The weak idea of the ecologists to hire the good people of Carboneras to take the hotel down piece-meal and load all the rubble into the back of a few trucks; to lovingly carve the rock itself back into natural lines, and to then tiptoe away and study basket-weaving or help uproot all the agave plants thereabouts (don't ask), is frankly ludicrous.

To spend enormous amounts of public money to attain this - money that could be spent on a hospital or a residence for the elderly (hey - maybe in the Hotel Algarrobico itself), plus the money that would need to be paid to Azata del Sol, who - we remember - started the project when it was legal and approved, is madness. The politician who rubber-stamps such a haemorrhage of funds would soon find himself without much of a career to enjoy. Probably wouldn't even get a position on the board in the electric company either (there's one of the most dirty power stations in Spain in Carboneras, remember).
So, we read this week of a group called Salvemos Mojácar (it's really little more than one fellow, called Jaime del Val) which insists that the demolition starts right away - and that the town hall of Carboneras organises the job.
The hotel could have helped tourism here and provided jobs. It's ugly as sin, but it's even uglier as a hulk. After gently rotting for the past decade, they certainly can't fix it now - short of starting from scratch. So, will they ever demolish it?
Sure... one day.

Some Links I Like

Business over Tapas on Facebook 
Europats on Facebook 
 
Fritz Mooney art: http://fritzmooney.blogspot.com.es/
Colin Davies blog: https://colindavies.blogspot.com.es/
David Jackson blog: http://www.davidjackson.info/
Leftbanker blog: https://leftbankview.blogspot.com.es/
Standing in a Spanish Doorway blog: http://bretthetherington.blogspot.com.es/
Anything but Paella blog: http://www.anythingbutpaella.com/
Ian and Spain food blog: https://www.eyeonspain.com/blogs/ianandspain.aspx
A Novel Spain: https://anovelspain.com/
Piccavey blog: http://www.piccavey.com/
The Good, the Bad and the Spanish blog: https://elibrava.wordpress.com/
Meridianos Spanish video blog: http://elzo-meridianos.blogspot.com.es/
Aeropuerto de Almería blog: http://aeropuertoalmeria.info/
Guirilandia - Spaniards in the UK: http://www.guirilandia.com/
La Opinión de Almería: http://www.laopiniondealmeria.com/
Spain's daily newspapers: http://en.kiosko.net/es/