New Smoking Law? madeira4u in risk of rockfall!
Blog of Friday 25th January, 2008
Source : Diário de Notícias 25/1/2008
The smoking issue just won’t go away. After the president of Madeira was caught earlier this week smoking illegally in a hotel restaurant, it now turns out that the government is looking into ways to make the filthy habit more acceptable in bars, cafes etc. It seems that the Spanish ‘no smoking’ (v2.0) model is the favoured approach, which would mean that any establishment, regardless of size and the existence of smoke extraction equipment, would be able to be either a ‘smoking’ or ‘non smoking’ establishment. Now that’s democracy, and now I realise why Madeira is called an ‘Autonomous’ region of Portugal. What an innovative suggestion … I wonder why no one had thought of that one before?
Normally I find most of the local news of little interest, even though often quite quaint. Stories about the governments inaugurations, lightweigh political squabbles, planning and construction blunders, school lunch menus, you know the sort of thing. However, in browsing through todays paper online, a small front page story caught my eye that I could have quite easily missed if it wasn’t for a vaguely familiar looking photographic view … exactly the same view I see when looking out from my veranda, and from more or less taken from the same position, but slightly above because my roof is clearly visible.
However, the second photo (shown above) was the one that makes this (for me that is) perhaps the most important news item I have ever covered in this blog, and it’s regarding an extremely large piece of mountain ready to drop off, complete with a couple of houses on top. So I popped outside and looked up, and sure enough I have exactly that same view as that shown in the second photograph.
With fingers a tremmmmbling I picked my way through the article which started … ”In the regional road Ribeira Brrrrava to Camponnnnário, next to the miradouro, the imminent risk of destruction … (and goes on) … an unstable rocky formation exists that threatens to collapse to any moment … the situation is well worse since there is dwelling under the cliff.” YES YOU GUESSED IT!
However, I read onnnn, and I quote:
“The councilman with the remit of the Environment admits him to the NEWSPAPER and guarantees that the intention is going to consolidate the rocky formation. But there are bureaucracies it follow, what also hinders the intervention in the land. José Irineu says that to Council already communicated the matter to the Regional Directiorate of Roads –
because the threat involves also a regional road – but not obtain answer. “
Boy, I feel so much better now that my local council is thinking about the matter.
So, if the blogs stop … fear the worst!
