A very nice little Welcome to 2009 card (no mention of Christmas, just the new year) turns up in the post from Sevillana Endesa. It’s a third bigger than most Christmas cards, as it has an extra sheet, although 3 pages are blank and another just has a nonsensical, Dali style diagram on it.
It waffles on about the sea, the mountains, the valleys, the flowers, the trees, the environment, the trees, you, me, him, us…. reminds us that Sevillana is “environmentally friendly” and wishes us all a sustainable 2009, for us and for the future of our children.
Now, ignoring the fact that they probably sent this piece of crap to about half a million subscribers, cutting down around a thousand trees, plus the postage and transport costs, if they really cared about sending us seasons greetings “sustainably” they could have sent me an e-card – I’m a member of their virtual office and receive an email a week from the blighters.
Juan Antonio Segura Vizcaino, PSOE Andalucian Spokesman has announced that the Almeria to Seville air bridge could be operation by 2009, with 60,000 passengers a year. It is expected to take 50 minutes (only takes 65 to Madrid or 130 to London; what sort of planes are they expecting to use?).
One million euros has been allocated to start this up, together with another million euros put aside in case the airline makes a loss on this route. Although the money has been set aside in the budget, it require EU permission to concede the line, so that is the last hurdle to vault before being able to fly from Almeria to Seville.
The idea is to use taxes to pay for the line until the new AVE lines are built (if you know when this will be, please tell both me and the politicians), as Almeria is “a long way away from Seville and this is necessary to keep Andalucia competitive”. It currently takes 5-6 hours to drive to Seville.
And don’t forget that Flysur, our Cordoba to godforsaken places in Spain airline, went bankrupt after only a month (as the government kept moving the control tower from landing strip to landing strip without prior notice).
Guess what? I’m naming this my Biggest waste of money of the week.
Step up those who bet on “30 days” and collect your winnings. That’s how long it took for FlySur (www.flysur.com), “Andalucias first airline” to cease operations.
They were flying out of Cordoba airport with a single plane, to Barcelona, Vigo & Bilbao. It seems that Cordoba airport only has a “mobile” control tower, so when it was towed elsewhere, or if it was foggy, they had to land in Seville. This, as you can image, annoyed a few people. On some flights they had as few as one passenger. Average occupancy was under 25%.
Somebody lost one and half million euros on this nonsense. I mean, how many people want to go from Vigo to Cordoba on a daily basis?
A fun program currently running on Canal Sur (Andalucia) is an X-Factor style program, but for Coplas. A Copla, for those of you who don’t know, is a style of sung poetry put to music, usually flamenco style – very popular down south. I’m enjoying it!
A load of young hopefuls are whittled down by a panel comprising of a moustached gitano who models himself on Simon Cowell (called Pive Amador, a name I hope is a non de artiste), an elderly homosexual whose name I forget and the niece of Isabel Pantoja (Isabel Pantoja is the ex mayor of Marbellas girlfriend, a famous singer in her youth now known for helping Julian Munoz hide oodles of euros).
To cut a long story short, the final is next weekend and the final winner will be choosed by the public via sms or phone call. Two of the three finalists are from Cadiz, and the third is from Almeria (hurrah!). However, while watching “Andalucia Directo” on TV this afternoon, they were interviewing the close friends and families of the three finalists. Two of them were busy putting out posters and urging friends to call and vote. Fair enough. The third, Laura Gallego, from the town of Algar in Cadiz, is being supported by the town hall, which has thrown open the doors to allow anyone to vote for her using the town hall phones. An excited funcionario was saying that yesterday they had to open late because so many people wanted to use the phones.
So, if you live in Algar, Cadiz, and pay taxes to the local town hall, and want to know what they spend their money on…. it’s all going to a TV company called EuroTV. And the overtime incurred keeping the doors open. And probably a bit to Telefonica. And yes, it’s this week biggest waste of money.
Laura (Algar, Cadiz) - Tamara (Cadiz) - Maria Jose (Torrecardenas, Almeria)
I thought that this little prize would go to the Yank NBA player Doug Christie and his wife for spending $6000 buying some 3000 shares of failed insurance company AIG – they thought that the money would go to the company, rather then the investor who owned those shares before, and trumpeted this saying it was the duty of all patriotic Americans to buy stock in the company. A naive yet slightly charming story. (Read it here). And no doubt leaving someone happy to get the cash before trading in it’s shares stop.
But then I heard that J.K. Rowling (her of Harry Potter fame) has given Gordon Brown a cheque for a million quid. One Million Pounds. Currently €1,266,710.00. A lot of cash. But Gordon (him of ”Mr Fiscal Prudence” fame) still has to find another 17 odd million quid to pay off the overdraft before he can even think of taking out an advert in the local press begging for votes.
Maybe he should have brought some of the gold he sold off so cheaply a few years ago. It’s doubled in price since he flogged it off at the low end of the market, so he would have been quids in, like the Asians who brought it at the time. Sorry, how did he get the nickname “Mr Fiscal Prudence” again?
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