You Couldn’t Make This Up
Imagine the scene. You are relaxing in your home on a Saturday morning, just after breakfast, pottering about tidying up a few things, when a neighbour calls round to see you. She had been in a local bar the evening before, and had overheard people discussing a demolition order from the courts… and it is YOUR house that is to be demolished! What would you do? Who would you turn to for help?
Well, this is exactly what happened to Mrs Ella Dring just a few weeks ago, and she had no idea what to do. Fortunately, her kind neighbour had some very good advice for Ella, “get in touch with Bob Preston, here is his phone number”. The Mayor of Albox had also received the demolition order and had already contacted Bob, the President of the AUAN, for help in making contact with Ella. As Ella was not, at that time, a member of the AUAN, Bob didn’t have any contact details but, using Google Earth, committee members, and other members, he was working to track down where Ella lived. Ella found Bob first, but it was Saturday and there was nothing more to be done until Monday. Although terrified about what might be about to happen to her home, Ella was reassured by Bob’s promise that he would get her an appointment to see the Mayor on the Monday.
True to his word, Bob took Ella to see the Mayor on the Monday, who was with a Town Hall legal expert from Almeria. When they looked closely at the demolition order, they realised that the original court order was dated before Ella’s house had even been built, and also that the address of the property, due for demolition, changed as they read through the document. Although the court order had been signed by various court officials, and finally a Judge, it became clear that these officials had not noticed the document discrepancies. The Mayor was thus able to send the demolition order back to the court for clarification, and a stay of demolition was affected.
Bob Preston said “Although Ella was not a member of the AUAN, the Mayor asked for our help, and we were happy to be in a position to be able to provide it. We have received information about another 8 demolition orders that are ‘well advanced’, for properties owned by people with Brit names, but we have no knowledge of these people at the AUAN, so we are unable to alert them. The AUAN will demonstrate and protest demolitions for members and non-members alike, but our first duty is to our members, and we do not have the resources to locate non-members when we have only a name”.
The final words come from Ella herself. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am to Bob Preston, and the AUAN. Without their help, I have no idea what would have happened. I hope people will realise that what happened to me, could also happen to them”. Contact: A.U.A.N.
Contact: Dave Dunthorn
Telephone: 617118209
Email: info@almanzora-au.or
The Adventures of Cool FM As the owner of Cool FM in collaboration with Radio Mojacar S.L., I was intrigued to note the news in this morning's "Radio World News Digest" which as a registered broadcaster I receive from the US each fortnight:- 'African broadcaster Radio Canal Satellite in Tshikapa, Democratic Republic of Congo, was ordered off the air on 9 June by government agents who accused the station of "intoxicating the population" and "broadcasting in bad French." 'Seems similar in hilarity to the situation here in Andalucía where my perfectly ordinary commercial local radio station was shut down on the 14th of June by "government agents". The reason? This is the real one. The owner of a well-established pirate radio station broadcasting in English for the past 4 years here in Mojacar, mainly relaying the output of another pirate radio station with the same name
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located in Malaga, has important friends in the Junta de Andalusia’s Department of Communications. He told me plainly last year that if I had the temerity to launch a competing station to his here in Mojacar, that he would have me shut down within a year. That's what he has achieved. Almost to the day. Why? Because he never wanted to suffer the indignity of having his audience nicked by a competent competitor, and because the negotiations we had more than a year ago for me to join his station and show him how a real British commercial radio station should sound, fell into acrimony because of his refusal to strike a fair deal with me and allow me to run his music and speech policy on professional lines. Here in Spain his attitude is categorised as "macho". i.e. an assumption that in Spain the Spaniards know best and a total refusal to acknowledge that any foreigner might know more about a particular business than a Spaniard does. Imagine me as a quarter-competent Spanish speaker trying to run a Spanish local radio station. Knowing virtually nothing of Spanish popular music and nothing but a general impression of how a modern Spanish radio station should sound. The pirate broadcaster in question speaks virtually no English at all and has to rely on his English-speaking contributors to interpret what his station actually sounds like to a British audience. In fact it's an absolute abomination and an insult to its listeners - and particularly it's an insult to a professional broadcaster like me with decades of experience in local, regional and network BBC Radio and similar experience working in British regional commercial radio. Listen to the advertising spots which I produced for him (for which he still owes me around 3,000 euro in production fees and refuses point blank to pay) - spots which are still on his programme advertising the Cous-Cous Restaurant which closed more than a year ago; mentioning the Bucanero Restaurant which changed owners and name months ago, and Hathaways Supermarket which changed ownership half-a-year ago - and so on and so on. The fact that I'm forced off the air and this disgraceful display of incompetence and shamateurism is still on-air is a source of immense frustration and pain to me and my co-workers on Cool FM. Hopefully despite his spoiling tactics, we will be returning to the airwaves in the not-too-distant future to continue showing this person how professional local commercial radio should sound.
Alan Sykes El Ejido, The Rule of Profit.
A new prize-winning Belgian film has upset the good people of El Ejido, the city at the western end of Almería and world’s capital of farming under plastic. The documentary suggests that not all of the people working under the hot plastic sheeting are making a fortune. Many northern Europeans boycott El Ejido produce, because of alleged high levels of insecticide and this documentary is certain to hit the town’s reputation even further. LSN
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