Madeira News Blog

Oh dear! Anyone who doesn’t like football isn’t going to enjoy today’s news blog much. It nearly all revolves around an interview with the president of Nacional, Rui Alves, and with about 70% of the Diário front page, I guess it has a high profile because of tomorrow’s huge game here with Werder Bremen in the Europa League.

(16th September). Today’s main news headline : ‘Ambitious Nacional – The alvinegro sporting city will have a central photovoltaic system, road connection direct to the Caminho dos Pretos, a rugby pitch and athletics track’. Alvinegro is the club nickname for CD Nacional da Madeira. Alves says he is optimistic about tomorrows game. The club is approaching an average of 3 thousand supporters for its games, and has a growing membership list. The club is looking at some changes in the stadium complex, including solar power, access changes, and also acquiring nearby land to host an rugby pitch and athletics track.

That headline then has 3 more sub headlines:
- ‘In An Interview With The Diário, Rui Alves Believes That A Victory Over Werder Bremen Is Going To Confuse European Opponents’.
- ‘Race For The Presidency Of The League Of Clubs Continues In The Plans Of Rui Alves’.
- ‘Players Of Nacional Make The Set In The ‘Powerade’ Awards’. The players won plenty of awards for their achievements last season.
But as I suspect this is of little interest to most, I will move on.

‘Ronaldo, Happy For His Father, Sent Message And Scored Two Goals In Zurich’. His father was posthumously awarded for his contribution to sport, at the ‘Powerade’ Awards’ yesterday. CR737 then went on to score two of the five goals for his new team, Real Madrid, in the champions league victory last night.

‘Car Parks In The Centre ‘Summon’ Drivers – In the opinion of the environmental agency, Quercus, and drivers, the existence of accessible and diverse parking in Funchal feeds and fattens the traffic indulgence’. A vice president of Funchal Council says that they are developing a project, with the bus company Horários do Funchal, for a ‘park and ride’ scheme, where one drives to the outskirts of the city, parks ones car, and then catches a very frequent bus service from the car park to the city centre. The Funchal central traffic problem is getting steadily worse, just because parking facilities exist, and it also it still being possible to park without paying. "Paying to park is very cheap, and it shouldn’t be", says the president of the Madeira branch of Quercus. He believes that the comfort and speed of a car journey should be challenged by better public transport, and that there should be bus lanes on the main routes to improve public transport travel times. Around 47 thousand vehicles are believed to enter Funchal daily.

‘Armed Masked Robbers Raid Cash Desk’. They struck twice yesterday, firstly at the Hotel Funchal Design (Rua da Alegria), where they surprised the receptionist at 4.30 am. The two robbers had a knife, and forced the receptionist to hand over €57 from the cash till. Then sometime after 11 am, masked men appeared at Elos cash and carry in Viveiros, and forced checkout staff to hand over "a significant sum". They then fled on foot, chased by shop staff, but managed to lose their pursuers in the street labyrinths of Viveiros.

‘Elderly With Keys Around The neck – The robberies in the top of Ribeira Brava give rise to appeal : "The police must have compassion for the people". The call comes from ‘up top’, from the people in São João. "We asked the police to have compassion for the people". Celina Gonçalves, 75, lives alone in Lombo da Levada, and this Summer has been robbed three times. She is not the only one. The ‘nightmare’ started late in July when her house was freshly painted and wide open, and two individuals tried separately to steal the €400 she had set aside to pay the decorator, the second attempt was successful. She had been duped, so she she didn’t report the matter to the police or tell her family. Not long after, €300 she had set aside for another job that needed doing in her house, and after that another €200, were all stolen. She now has lock on every door, and wears the keys on a cord around her neck. Another story along the same lines follows, and the victim aged 67, reported to the Ribeira Brava police an attempt to rob her home, and was concerned that the response was not compassionate towards her. Even the church of São João has been a victim, with the donations from a mass and a box of candles stolen. They say "they only don’t take [steal] more because the people don’t have".

‘Eleven In The Final Of ‘Funchal A Cantar – Vânia Fernandes will be the patron on Saturday in the final, that will include fireworks’. The final of the singing competition will be held in the Praça do Município (town hall square) at 8 pm, and promises to be an unforgettable event, with a total of 65 artists involved. The 11 individual finalists were whittled down from the 30 in the preliminary round, held on Monday night.

‘Four New Cases Of H1N1 On Madeira – 21 suspected cases were investigated by the laboratory in the last week’. The Institute for Health Administration IASAÚDE confirmed 4 new case of Gripe A swine flu, taking the total to 39 since 12th July. One case came from Canada, the other three were secondary infections. On a related theme, vaccines for seasonal flu were starting to be delivered to pharmacies yesterday afternoon. Medical prescriptions for these vaccines are valid until 31st December.

‘Man Aged 29 Caught Selling Drugs In Night Spot (club or bar?) – 120 doses of cocaine and 600 Euros seized’. He was caught in the act by police with the drugs, and money presumed to be the takings from the drugs sold. In Funchal a police operation resulted in the seizure of hashish sufficient for 2,400 fixes.

‘Linha Saúde 24 Strengthened – 400 nurses with the capacity to answer 15 thousand calls a day’. Currently the health service hotline is taking 4,500 calls a day, 1,000 of those being specific to Gripe A concerns, but if necessary can deal with up to 15,000 enquiries daily. The centre is run by a private company, and should they fail to deal with 15% or more of the enquiries, they will be penalised, as they have already been 3 times for failing to meet half-yearly performance targets, since it was set up in 2007. The short term objective is to recruit 200 more nurses, to raise the call answering capacity to 20,000 per day, and then longer term, to cope with new cases of Gripe A swine flu, 800 to 900 nurses will be required.