Madeira News Blog

(6th July). ‘Another Illegal Extraction Of Aggregates – It takes place in Machico, threatens houses, has been identified officially, but it continues operating’. The council has authorised a reshaping of the land for agricultural purposes, but the construction company instead is taking out earth and gravel from the site for its own use, at the site in Landeiros. Despite involvement at police, council, and government level, the unlicensed activity continues. Dozens of houses located beneath the site are considered at risk, and residents are alarmed with the situation, and the apparent inability of the authorities to do something to stop the activity which has now been ongoing for 6 weeks. Some residents were minded to block the access route to the site to prevent lorries entering, but were warned by the police not to do so. The residents have particular concern in case there is heavy persistent rain. The construction company believes that it is acting within the terms of its licence.

‘Festival Has Always Been Rising – The 10th Jazz Festival worked out well’. It finished Saturday night and deserves a mention for the good organisation, getting better each year, and with the change of venue adding to the event. "Santa Catarina park is magical" said a spokesman. The president of Funchal council is already thinking about next year, and thinks that 2011 should be the year to pay homage to the women of jazz. Vânia Fernandez was a woman last time I looked?

‘To Have A Driving Licence It Is Needed To Know How To Drive In Tunnels – Community directive obliges knowledge in theory and practice’. Europe has demanded that Portugal incorporates this requirement, amongst other things, into domestic law. Any candidate for a driving licence must now have a good theoretical and practical knowledge of driving in tunnels, in order to improve safety in the criticised infrastructures. Several attempts have already been made to get Portugal to incorporate this requirement, so far without success, but it looks that this time it will happen, and is something clearly very relevant for Madeira. There are also other new safety requirements covering the need to revalidate driving licences for bikers aged over 50, and also new tougher requirements for medical assessments for conditions relating to eyesight, diabetes and epilepsy.

‘Walk Through The Serra Finishes In Tragedy – 53 year old man died after falling around 25 metres on the São Vicente levada’. The victim on a Sunday walk with his family and friends along the levada at Ribeira do Inferno, fell to his death. The reasons for the accident are unclear, he just fell and died almost immediately. A mountain rescue team took four hours to retrieve the body because of difficult access.

A new police station in São Vicente is to be inaugurated at 6pm tomorrow. 

At 6.28pm yesterday evening the Diário helpfully published a late bulletin that an 18 piece guitar group was performing in Ribeira Brava church square … starting at 6pm yesterday!

‘Vodafone wants To make Available New Smartphones At A very Cheap Price Until Christmas’. Aside from companies, those who want them most are young people, without sufficient money to buy them. To help, Vodafone and various partners, is to offer these powerful devices at less than €200.

In football and today’s main photo, a picture of a striding Cristiano Ronaldo, surrounded by trophies : ‘Ronaldo Tries His Luck In Madrid – The foreign journalists warn that the player won’t have an easy life in Real. Today 80 thousand supporters will welcome the star to Madrid’. At last CR737 makes the move, after what I thought had been a quiet few weeks since the transfer was agreed. It’s taking up about half of the TV and radio news this morning, and live pictures show fans gathering at the stadium for the introduction which doesn’t take place until tonight. I guess the introduction will be pretty long distance for 99.9% of the fans, the important thing for the club will be getting them to spend their cash on expensive new football merchandise with Ronaldo’s name.

I know there are lots of British readers who check in on this blog, and whilst that doesn’t imply that a love of Madeira also implies a liking for Madeiran music, I felt some duty to help boost the audiences for The Madeira Mandolin Orchestra, by announcing the dates for their tour of the United Kingdom this month. Accompanied by Portuguese tenor Carlos Guilherme, the program consists of performances of music by Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, and Bach, and they also accompany Carlos in a selection of Neapolitan songs. Established in 1913, the Madeira Mandolin Orchestra is the oldest established mandolin orchestra in Europe, but in terms of average age it is considered to be the youngest in the world. Performances :
July 16, 2009 – St. Paul’s Church Knightsbridge
July 17, 2009 – Petersfield Utd. Reformed Church – Petersfield
July 18, 2009 – Maldon Town Hall, Maldon Essex
July 19, 2009 – The Albert Hall – Nottingham
July 20, 2009 – Holy Trinity Church, Huddersfield
July 21, 2009 – The Grand, Clitheroe
July 22, 2009 – Brangwyn Hall, Swansea
July 23, 2009 – Lichfield Garrick
July 24, 2009 – The Forum, Bath
July 25, 2009 – St. George’s Bristol

(5th July). ’38 Confirmed Cases Of Gripe In Portugal’. 30 of the swine flu cases have been registered in the last week, including the first cases of direct transmission. UPDATE 6th July : A 20 year old woman was taken to hospital in Funchal suspected as having gripe A. She was known to have spent time recently in the company of people from Mexico, the United States, and other high risk countries, and the precaution was taken after she displayed the swine flu symptoms. Tests cleared the woman of the virus, and she has now been released. 

(13th June). Today’s main news headline : Porto Santo Closes Chinese Shop – The challenge started 3 months ago, with a petition of signatures to condemn the "invasion". The case involved SEF, Police, and the courts. The shop, in a building on the golden isle, hasn’t opened for two days’. The owner of the shop was up in court last week, and was ordered to leave the country as he was not legally allowed to be here. The clothes and accessories shop has now closed down. The case, according to the Diário, has been a considerable conflict over the last 3 months, since a petition with 25 signatures of local businessmen was given to the council. OK it was all resolved through the proper channels in the end, but from what I have read it seems some may detect a slight whiff of racism left hanging in the air. (SEF = Service for foreigners and border controls).

‘Roque Gives Hope To Personnel At The Savoy’. At a time when the Savoy Hotel is going through a controversial stage for dismissal of over a hundred workers, Horacio Roque gives a public guarantee that the company will give job priority in the new hotel to be built to former staff. The administrator of SIET that operates the soon to be demolished hotel, wished to give a sign of recognition to all those soon to be unemployed. There there, didn’t hurt that much did it, and after all it will probably take years anyway … but will he want the redundancy money refunded? And what about that rude cleaner and clumsy waiterperson, surely you’re not going to employ them again?

‘Real Madrid Pays For Ronaldo 57 Times His Weight In Gold’. That’s the headline from the Spanish newspaper ‘El Mundo’ (didn’t know I could read Spanish did you? nor did I until today). The Diário has a picture showing several Spanish newspapers, all featuring Cristiano on the front page. The Diário headline for it’s own news article is ‘Transfer Of Ronaldo Shocks – Spanish in crisis criticise so many millions spent. And there is one person of Portuguese descent in baseball that actually earns more than Cristiano’. The Diário also points out that a CR7 costs more than a Boeing 737 (although I reworded it to make it sound funnier). In fact perhaps he should now be known as CR737, what do you think?

‘Earth Tremors In South Africa Damage Houses Of Emigrant Madeirans – Four families were forced to leave their houses after hours of continuous violent tremors’. I don’t think we have much interest in emigrants living in South Africa, but of course I hope it sorts itself out OK.

The government of Madeira has decided to increase the price of fuel again, and from Monday petrol will go up to €1.20 a litre, whilst diesel will go up to €0.931.

‘Creches : Law Regulates Breaking Point. Before the existing void, only a legal intervention will be able to define what constitutes minimum services’. This goes back to the story a couple of days ago about a court case that decided that public creche services were not essential, leaving the government free to provide just a minimum service level. That means there are now just 6 creches on this island, and nearly a thousand children enrolled to use them. Now it seems no one has any idea what ‘minimum services’ actually means, and the creches themselves are being staffed by auxiliaries rather than child care professionals, just to confuse the issue.

The two public holidays Wednesday and Thursday saw 22 road accidents, resulting in two seriously injured and two light injuries. 10 arrests were made for drink driving, half of them in Santa Cruz.

The minister of health from the Portuguese government is here at a convention of charity organisations involved in health care. Ana Jorge welcomed the idea of constructing a new public hospital on Madeira, but wouldn’t commit herself on whether the state would stump up the money, or contribute. However, she added that it is a matter also under investigation by her colleagues in government, particularly in terms of finances, but there was no decision to announce yet. Of course not, that will be in the week before the national elections in 3 or 4 months, if the answer is yes, or later if no. Silly question Sr. Reporter!

She was also questioned on the subject that dominates the world headlines, influenza A and the maximum degree of alert decreed by the World Health Organization. The minister stressed that the entire national system is ready to tackle the problem, and that the testing undertaken when bird flu broke out will be capitalized in the prevention of the current pandemic. Ana Jorge also stressed the good cooperation that exists between central and regional health authorities. So flying pigs really do exist?

You may have noticed that I couldn’t resist a spoof article today … sorry, but I thought I had better come clean in case someone took the tsunami threat seriously, and I have been preparing you for this for two weeks. I bet for some it didn’t even register.

(11th June). Today’s main news headline : ‘Works Costing €83 Million Get Thumbs Down From The Auditors – Madeira is one of the regions of Portugal where projects get more attention from the Accounting Tribunal. The ‘fails’ in 2008 hit 15.2% of the contracts put forward by the government and councils of Madeira’. The auditing body refused to ‘pass’ as acceptable expenditure contracts worth €631 million across Portugal, with €83 million of that total here in this region, according to the report for 2008 released this week. Certain types of contracts need pre-approval by the TC (accounting tribunal) before they can proceed, and it seem that either Madeira gets a lot of attention, or the worth or quality of the proposals is low. The report says that most permit refusals  were related to "contracts of a financial nature referred by local authorities" and of "supply to the regional government of Madeira". The TC also includes the case of Machico, where they have found "irregularities in the amount of 19.2 million Euros". According to the report this was because measures were not taken to prevent "illegal practices in the authorization of expenditures and commitments". Nobody likes an audit, but I suspect that this lot are the only thing that stops Uncle Bertie running Madeira as if it were his own back garden.

The main picture today shows a farmer and young boy helping to shear a sheep in a rural location : ‘Dedication Supports Tradition Of The Shearers – The wool of a sheep is not worth more than €0.75 and really no longer has a market’. Young Diogo is 13, and wants to be a shepherd when he finishes school. School for him has not gone well, and he feels more at home with a pair of shearing scissors in hand. He doesn’t yet seem to understand what a dull life it is, with very little reward. The passion for the work is shared by the 80 members of the Association of Cattle Breeders of the Serra do Poiso, who together have around 800 animals to raise, and they do it through like and stubbornness. The wool itself sells for €0.50 per kilo, and a good sheep provides around a kilo and a half, so it is really not worth the effort financially. A lovely story about the lives of the shepherds, but it doesn’t really belong on the front page of a newspaper.

‘Another Disappointment Before The Holidays – Queiroz took the opportunity to try out players in Estonia but the performance (0-0) was again mediocre’. That pretty much sums up last night’s friendly football match as Portugal went  to Estonia.

It’s not in the newspaper yet, but the story has already broken on this blog that Manchester United have accepted an offer for around €90 million for Cristiano Ronaldo. If all terms are agreed, he will be a Real Madrid player by the end of this month.

(10th June). There was an article about more problems with the tendering process for the redevelopment of the Marítimo Stadium (Barreiros, Funchal), a project costing €46.9 million, funded by the Madeira government. A complicated piece, so I didn’t attempt to cover it, but I thought the photo might be of interest as to what the stadium will become, or so I presume.

‘Marítimo Player Accused Of Assaulting His Wife’. Fernando Silva is accused of an assault that happened on Sunday, but denies the charge of domestic violence, saying it was just an argument. His wife took the matter to the police after being taken to hospital by ambulance, with injuries to her face and a fractured leg. It’s quite a shocking story, depending on which side you hear, but the sister of the wife says the drunk footballer punched and kicked her sister, and then fled, returning later with more aggression. And it’s not the first time the wife has been to the police with such a complaint.

A new road inaugurated by President Jardim on Tuesday, has turned a ‘shortcut’ into a decent road, at the cost of €1 million, in Santo da Serra. The street named ‘Caminho Mary Jane Wilson’, is named in tribute to a former British Sister and founder of the Franciscan congregation of our Lady of the Victories. She was well recognized by her work, and through the creation of orphanages and schools. There is also a museum in Funchal (56 – 61 Rua do Carmo) dedicated to her.

‘Tenant Protests Against Eviction Order And Destroys Building’. The tenant, in protest about an eviction order from the courts, decided to vandalise his former residence before returning it to the owner. When the solicitor for enforcement went to the building in Funchal to follow the court order, he was met with a space "transformed into a real dump". Nothing escaped the wrath of the person who destroyed everything he could including structural parts of the property, and the handrail of the stairs, and electricity wiring. It is likely that the owner of the property will prosecute. Watch out if you have a property to rent, as there will be somebody rather undesirable looking for a new home.

Tobi dropped me a line about an invasion of jelly fish. There is nothing yet in the newspaper about it, but they do usually come very year, normally earlier if I recall, and then just disappear again in a few days. Tobi says there are loads at Garajau and also at Lido.