Thursday 10 November 2011

Escap



For the last few weeks it has been "heads down" try to drum up more work projects, so I have had less time to keep up to date with my blog. I am feeling a little guilty about this as I know some of my far flung relatives use the blog to keep in touch.
There is such gloom on all the news programmes currently - will the euro zone survive? will Greece default? will Italy go bankrupt? etc etc etc. Yesterday we had three separate protest marches taking place in London, at least they were predominantly peaceful but still it is hard not to get depressed - hence the photo above. Although I seem to be working just to pay the mortgage on our Spanish property, on grey days like today it cheers me up to know I can escape sometimes.
I have been promising for ages to show you all more of the property we renovated in Ibi [a town inland from Alicante in Spain] where we created an apartment for ourselves, an apartment for Brother and Sister-in-law, and two apartments for holiday lettings. It was a real labour of love and now, at last, we have started to have guests come to stay and received some great reviews on Trip Advisor.
For next season we have been approved by a company called Tots to Travel as ideal for family holidays and we are hoping this will lead to more bookings. We really love having people to stay especially as everyone who has come so far have loved Vista Alegre as much as we do. It is always interesting to meet new people, last Summer we had two families come from Holland who were delightful guests. If all our future guests are as nice we will be very lucky.
We are going out as usual over Christmas and the New Year period and two friends who regularly join us have signed up again. Luckily I booked and paid for our flights and car hire a few weeks ago before the new round of economic gloom hit the headlines so we are going whether we can afford it or not!
If anyone else wants to escape - get in touch.

Tuesday 1 November 2011

City of London Protests

Travelling to see clients in Central London yesterday I passed the Protest Camp at Finsbury Square and also the camp below the steps of St. Paul's. Big signs saying "Capitalism doesn't work there is another way" - but no signs saying what the other way actually is! Don't get me wrong peaceful protests like these should not be banned but I worry that whenever a spokesperson for the protest groups is interviewed they do not come across coherently.

What is the alternative? Communism didn't work, fascism didn't work - just hitting out at Capitalism as all bad, to my mind, is so narrow minded.

What is bad is GREED - ethical capitalism is what we need and it can be achieved.

We have a great deal of hypocracy in our country, people scream about the high salaries paid to captains of industry but not about the obscene wages paid to footballers.

Any new ideas out there?