Madeira News Blog

TODAY’S PHOTO : Thanks to Helen … our first shot of one of the tall ships, here as part of the Funchal 500 celebrations.

Front Page News : source : Diário de Notícias 29/9/2008

With both local teams playing on Sunday, of course most the front page is football. Nacional blew their 100% winning record with a 2-1 home defeat to Amadora, whilst Marítimo got their first win of the season, 2-0 against Académica.

A young man was found dead in the Ribeira dos Socorridos (Câmara de Lobos). As well as recovering the body from the river bed, firemen found an abandoned car near to the bridge around 140 metres above.

The day before the official inauguration of the new yellow sandy beach at Machico, a flutter of excitement hit the beach goers, when a number of ‘Skates’ were spotted near to the west pontoon. Movement in the water caught the attention of a number of people near to the new sand, and through the not so clear water it was possible to distinguish the shapes of the creatures. Skates do not normally come in so close, and there is a slight danger of injury to the public if the animal panics. It is thought that the yellow sand made them more visible when they would normally go unnoticed against the natural sea bed colours.

‘Easyhotels arrive on Madeira – a modern, comfortable, and simple hotel will open in the center of Funchal.’ I guess it won’t be a huge shock that the Easygroup (owners of Easyjet), have decided to expand their interests in Madeira by announcing the opening of a hotel, probably in 2010. The hotel will have 60 rooms, and will charge around €30 per night, regardless of whether there are one or two occupants. A spokesman for the group believes it will serve people on short breaks (less than 4 days).

Other News :

A group of Spanish soldiers, here on manoeuvres, were spotted by police vandalising the ship ‘Santa Maria’ in Funchal, and stealing the Portuguese flag. The yobs were on their way out of a discotheque early on Sunday morning, when they decided to make the detour. The flag was returned by the commander of one of the ships after the incident was reported. The matter is considered very serious as an ‘offence to the national emblem’ and can result in imprisonment of up to 2 years. In a similar incident in February, a Spanish sailor was arrested after pinching the flag of Madeira from the Regional Assembly building.

The ‘Lobo Marinho’, or Porto Santo Ferry, was delayed 4 hours on Sunday due to a mechanical breakdown. 

A ‘snatch and grab’ robbery took place in Pingo Doce in Ribeira Brava on Sunday afternoon, when a thief dipped into the cash till when the cashier briefly turned away to help a customer. €1,800 was taken, in what is believed to be the second hit on Pingo’s stores in a week, by some men known to be from Camacha. The two men inside the store even had a getaway driver parked outside.

Porto Santo makes finances a bit of a burden when it comes to council tax, with average bills of €613 in 2007, compared to the average for Portugal of €235. The rise was 67.1% on the previous year, and that puts it number 10 in the highest council tax league table for the whole of Portugal.

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Now, as promised, a bit of rare but relevant entertainment found on youtube. Put your sound on and click the 3 links. Probably not so good for those with a fear of flying :

1. A real plane landing at Madeira Airport … the pilots view, landing from a north-easterly direction

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld4RageIzg8&feature=related

2. A computer simulation landing from the south westerly end of Madeira Airport.

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=NFYdT5Fi0jc&feature=related

3. A real landing from the north-east again, but this is old footage in a turboprop plane, before the runway was extended. Watch right to the end if you dare.

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=kIuS4qx9WE4&feature=related

The 3 videos last about 12 minutes in total. Thanks to Ado for sending them.

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The ‘contact us’ form and the excursion and car hire booking forms on the main website have developed a fault which I only found out about yesterday. Nothing is coming through to me. If you have to send anything or have made a booking, or wish to, please email me. Very sorry for the inconvenience, I am trying to fix it asap.

www.madeira4u.com

Aside from your valued blog responses (you can reply direct using the form at the bottom of each blog comments page), please send any unreported Madeira news, photos, events information, or snippets for the madeira4u blog to blog@madeira4u.com – anyone can join in! Thank you!

TODAY’S PHOTO : Thanks to Tobi … one of the Spanish warships skulking around the island on secret operations at the weekend.

Front Page News : source : Diário de Notícias 28/9/2008

Most the front page is taken up with a photo of the football match Saturday night, in which Benfica beat Sporting 2-0 … that result keeps our very own Nacional at the top of the league, for the 5th consecutive week. Força rapazes!

Celebrating a 25th anniversary in primary teaching, the Diário spoke to teachers about what has changed in school since 1983, for better or worse. In 1983 the hardest problem was getting to school due to poor roads and transport, that has completely changed for the better. Now the students are less “stable” and have less respect for their teachers, and the school has to take far more responsibility than it used to, particularly as often both parents work these days. “The students always want more and the teachers nowadays have a certain difficulty in dealing with them” said one teacher. Teachers in 1983 worked as a team, but now there is competition between them. All those interviewed all said that they had no regrets in their chosen profession, and one said if they could go back in time they would still choose the same job.

Cardiovascular disease on the up for younger victims’. On ‘The World Day of the Heart’ the watchword continues it be ‘Prevention’. In the last couple of decades heart attacks here were in the realm of the more elderly, but now the tendency has already reversed. It used to be that the women were much less affected than men, and that is also changing. Funchal Hospital recently treated an 18 year old youth who suffered a heart attack. The director of the Service of Cardiology there said “We are now a developed country and the  development increases some risks in cardiovascular terms. Persons begin to eat worse, are busier and begin to do less exercise, obesity increases and people continue to smoke, and it seems like that more and more, for the women specially.”. 

Both those stories just really prove the point that technology and cultural development etc. whilst making life much more comfortable for the majority, do also deliver some major problems for society. This once quiet beautiful little island has changed beyond recognition in such little time, sometimes with good things, other times not. Globalization has certainly hit Madeira big time!

If you missed yesterday’s blog, please go back and take a look.

Other News :

From Wednesday flu vaccines (vacinas contra a gripe) will be available through chemists, at a price and with a doctors prescription. ‘At risk’ groups get theirs free, with 27,500 doses sent here just for that purpose. In 2007 the region received 7,000 ‘doses’ of the treatment to sell, but demand was low so many were returned to the suppliers, and as a result this winter less supplies will be sent to the chemists in the region.

Whether you are Portuguese, English, or another eligible nationality, getting access to America (USA)  without a whole lot of hassle and waiting has just become a whole lot easier. You can actually apply and get your entry authorisation (visa waiver) online at https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/ If all goes well, once the online form is completed, your authorisation should take just seconds.

The Câmara (council) of Santa Cruz owes €10.7 million to it’s suppliers. It will have to apply for a bank loan to meet it’s obligations, but that may mean getting authorisation from a court.

Ribeira Brava Câmara has voted not to increase council tax (IMI) for its residents. Newer buildings will still be taxed at 0.35% (0.0035) of building valuation, and older and rustic buildings at 0.8% (0.008). The Câmara Municipal of São Vicente, has also agreed to freeze it’s IMI taxes at 0.3% and 0.6%. As a Rib. Bra resident I suppose I should be happy, but as I am still in my 10 year council tax exemption period, I am ever happier.

Saturday was supposed to be a fuel protest day across Portugal and including Madeira, when drivers left their cars at home and certainly not to go to a petrol station and fill up. The Diário did a quick look around Funchal to see if anything was noticeable, but concluded it was a pretty normal quiet Saturday. The organisers say that the campaign had a big following, the petrol stations and fuel suppliers said ‘what boycott?’. (OK, I made that last bit up, but that was the gist of it).

The company Zon, formerly known as CaboTV will announce today that it is going to enter into the mobile phone market, making it the fifth operator available to the Portuguese public. However in reality, although ZON will be the face and body of it’s new product, somewhere behind the scenes will be those fine people from Vodafone pressing the buttons. The new prefix will be 929 (hence the announcement on the 29th of September). No surprise for most of us then, as PT (Portugal Telephone) is eating away at Zon’s TV client base. Zon have just given me the home phone absolutely free with unlimited free land-line calls for 12 months, so I will be licking my lips in anticipation of that trendy new mobile, or maybe just a SIM card,  dropping into my mailbox.

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The ‘contact us’ form and the excursion and car hire booking forms on the main website have developed a fault which I only found out about yesterday. Nothing is coming through to me. If you have send anything or made a booking please email me. Very sorry for the inconvenience, I am trying to fix it asap.

www.madeira4u.com

Aside from your valued blog responses (you can reply direct using the form at the bottom of each blog comments page), please send any unreported Madeira news, photos, events information, or snippets for the madeira4u blog to blog@madeira4u.com – anyone can join in! Thank you!

TODAY’S PHOTO : Thanks to yesterdays Diário de Notícias … This is Conceição Estudante, the Regional Secretary for Tourism and Transport (on and to Madeira), the focus of today’s blog.

source : Diário de Notícias 27/9/2008

Inspection is going to act to guarantee quality. Conceição Estudante has weighed up the results of the last year and is satisfied.  She is going to fight to improve the quality of tourism, and to better the remuneration of those who work in the tourism sector.

The regional secretary for Tourism and Transport, said in an interview given to the Diário, that from next month she will be launching inspections and supervisory activities to verify and guarantee the standards of quality in the tourism market. 

The initiative will be a joint operation between the regional directorates of Transports and Tourism to standardise some characteristics in the area of tourist transportation, to ensure that properly qualified people are being utilised, and that the quality in the delivery of the services is the key target. She believes that “when some companies utilize people that are not adequately prepared they run the risk of delivering incorrect information, not by bad intention, but because those persons are not qualified to give the correct information. There is not a lack of labour in the market, and we should think that the professionals should have, more and more, and better qualifications, more than in previous years when poor training proved to be a liability. For that to happen it is also necessary to change the rewards for employees in the tourism sector”.

“There is a value chain that should be rethought, that adequately balances the service that the tourism companies provide, particularly the standard of quality, and what the customer pays. We should qualify the service, and that has costs. In providing the necessary qualified and prepared personnel for the delivery of information, means that the revenues go up according to the quality of the product”. 

During the interview she also commented on several other areas:

Summarising on the events of this last year Conceição Estudante says:  “It was a year of experience with a new reality, a very intense year.  Looking back I see that what has happened has had a good return.  There are needs in the area of transport and in the area of tourism, the results have started to be favorable and positive, an indication that the work and the developing strategy were well demonstrated”. 

She considers that “all the expectation that was placed on air travel, through the introduction of new companies in the region has been achieved extremely favorably and the arrival of EasyJet from the United Kingdom, can consider itself a gamble that paid off very well. The numbers hit percentages of growth never achieved in the past”.  Regarding the liberalization of the route between Madeira and Portugal, she believes that the situation is consolidating itself, especially in the prices charged by the regular companies, feeling that in the future there will be a yet bigger scenario with the entrance of other airlines, some already announced, others on the way to formalizing an entrance.  She concludes from the progress so far “we are going to anticipate a second year that will be the consolidation of the delivery of the expectations that the first year achieved”. 

Another important question for the regional secretary concerned the privatization of the airports.  “It was announced about the privatization of ANA, the company that manages the airports and infrastructures on Madeira (ANAM), Portugal, and on the Azores, and that should be completed next year”.  On the eventual appearance of private companies interested in the management of the airports, she says “The airport of Madeira is the entrance of the Region, and, by that, the strategic interest must be safeguarded”.  The preferred option is a public-private partnership to guarantee and safeguard the strategic and public interests of Madeira, controlled with regulation, and allowing the government to intervene in the operation in defined circumstances. 

I have done my best to translate the interview accurately, and I am certain I have got the gist correct, but in the detail my interpretation could vary slightly from the quotes made. This is a shortened version of the complete interview.

Anyway the reason for focusing on this today, is that if they are going to do a quality audit/inspection of transport and tourism, how do they know where to focus? Have they actually asked anyone for opinions on what the problems are? It certainly doesn’t say so. What CE talks about mainly is that the guides and support staff are well trained to give the correct information, well who cares if Pico Ruivo loses a few metres as you drive by in a minibus, but I might care if that minibus runs over a stray dog that should be in care, and I know that is a regular source of complaint. 

As most of the blog readers are either tourists, or are seen as tourists who live here, don’t you think we would be giving Conceição Estudante a helping hand by telling here what problems foreigners really experience here, at such an opportune moment … such as those issues that often get coverage through the blog or the readers comments. I may not care if Pico Ruivo is ten metres shorter than the official height, but I do care if the taxi driver who tells me stitches me up for an extra €10 at the end of the trip. The long term impacts are that someone might not come here again, and they tell a friend, who tells a friend and so on. 

Anyway, here are the contact details for Conceição Estudante, all legally obtained and in the public domain. I believe she is a well balanced and hardworking politician, and puts her job before her politics, and will listen. Go on, send her an email, you know you ought to. By all means make if feedback rather than a whinge if that is more appealing to you. Also please tell anyone else you know who might have had an experience(s) that they didn’t like about this, and try and get them to write in also. You can also phone, as she does speak English as does her secretary.

Av. Arriaga, 18

9004-519 Funchal

Telephone : (00351) 291 211 900

Fax : (00351) 291 231 569

Email: srtt@gov-madeira.pt

Back to a normal blog tomorrow.

www.madeira4u.com

Aside from your valued blog responses (you can reply direct using the form at the bottom of each blog comments page), please send any unreported Madeira news, photos, events information, or snippets for the madeira4u blog to blog@madeira4u.com – anyone can join in! Thank you!