Atlantic Festival Underway ; Insolvencies Rise ; 50,000 ‘Phantom’ Voters ; Fatherless Families Affect Crime
(6th June). ‘Italy Start The Atlantic Festival – Jetty Of Funchal Port Hosts Saturday Night The First Of Four Piromusicals’, and a second article ‘Italian Fire Opens Atlantic Festival In The Bay’. The 20 minute show of music and fireworks from Parente Fireworks (last year’s competition winners) at 10.30pm followed street entertainment and the municipal band of Funchal. Italy’s offering was titled ‘Dreams of Movies on a Spring Night’, and through it’s effects was supposed to represent the history of Italian cinema in its various spaces and eras, a mixture of elegance and style, design and innovation, melody and rhythm. The show was greatly applauded by the huge crowd that filled the Avenida do Mar, the harbour, marina, and beach. It’s the turn of Russia next week.
So what would be the main front page story today, elections for sure, or last nights fireworks at least, but no it’s a half page photo of Bruno Alves after scoring a last minute goal to scrape a win in Albania, and save Portugal from almost certain World Cup elimination. ‘Bruno Alves Saves Us From The Interference Of Queiroz – The manager returns to making changes that nobody understands and only a last minute goal avoids World Cup elimination’.
The other main news headline today is ’32 Insolvencies Already This year – The number of actions started to close companies rises. In the first 5 months of 2009, almost already the number has hit the number of 36 for the whole of 2008′. Over the last 6 or 7 weeks, it works out at 2 insolvencies a week. The requests for insolvency come for either unpaid creditors, or from the struggling company itself. The crisis does not spare anyone or any activity : from traditional commerce and restaurants, to ‘heavyweights’ of the Madeira economy in construction and tourism, and lesser known estate agents and businesses in industry and transport. The Diário looks a bit closer at some of the cases to see what the impacts were. One, HNS, is a metal company in Caniçal (free Zone) that employed 60 people and owes €290,000 in unpaid taxes, another, C.J. Sousa Andrada, was founded in 1937 and employed 45 people. Apparently you can find details on this website, but I have put it here for reference only. I didn’t recognise the names of any of the 32 companies listed. MINISTRY OF JUSTICE
‘Absence Of Fathers Worsens Crimes Of Minors – The court has 50 cases to resolve and establish blame in families that fail in education’. Absent fathers push children into crime. The judge points the finger at families, and especially fathers in the failure in education of their children. In the Family and Juvenile Court of Funchal (TFMF), around 50 cases are waiting to be heard, all about children who have committed criminal offences. Judge Mário Silva points to "family dysfunction" as the main reason that pushes children and young people to commit crimes, such as theft or robbery. At the household level, the criticism of the judge is particularly directed to the father of these children, "because he is absent, or because he doesn’t intervene". The crimes associated with these children normally involve theft, and the judge is also concerned about the effects of high unemployment, citing "inactivity of parents" as one of the causes of crime, as some "live dependent on state benefits, with income from the social security and unemployment benefit". Although it is a disturbing article, Madeira does actually fare quite well compared to Portugal, with the relative numbers low and generally declining, thanks to the good work by the police and other child protection institutions.
‘Europeans Today With 50 Thousand Phantom Voters’. Madeira has 50,000 thousand ‘ghosts’ on the electoral roll, and has more voters registered than there are people. At the last estimate of the Office of National Statistics, for 2007, the Autonomous Region of Madeira had 246,689 inhabitants. Of these, 44,046 were aged between 0 and 14. According to more recent figures Madeira now has 260,230 eligible voters for today’s European elections, 57,000 more than people think it should have. This situation, which has been known about for a long time, but was never resolved. Madeira, according to statistical studies, is the region of Portugal where there is the greatest discrepancy of voter numbers. Most are immigrants who maintained their voting rights in their counties of origin, but many others are young people who were registered automatically, following new census laws. I saw the number of 260,230 voters yesterday and thought that was higher than the resident population here, but I put it down to the huge number of Madeiran emigrants, who still have family / property / financial interests here, but live mostly abroad. I can’t really follow the logic of the Diário in attributing the massive difference to immigrants, as they boost population numbers but are not necessarily registered voters.
