Ops-Normal.org

OFSO wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 01, 2021 3:04 pm

Big pipe lies across the bed of the med. Algeria is at least as trustworthy if not more so than Marocco. (Discuss)

Provided a repeat of the early 1990's doesn't happen again.

Cant they connect to the frog gas system?

This just has to go on this thread

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... sage-field

Thank goodness for that, they had been holidaying in Dorset this summer, I am very happy for them.

Only Dutch and Frog tourists here, so many of the latter that local address strangers in French. Well, nobody speaks Dutch, do they? Gets mistaken for throat-clearing and snot-gobbling.

Spain has 'thought about' connecting to the European gas network many times, but never got round to it....

Woody wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 04, 2021 2:25 pm

This just has to go on this thread

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... sage-field

A most attractive crowd there - NOT!!

PP

Please don't make me go there..................

You'd love it.

The Supreme Court has ruled that all or part of the Spanish 'plusvalia tax' is illegal. The plusvalía is a local (municipal) tax charged by the town hall on properties when they are sold and paid by the vendor. It is calculated on the rateable value of property and the number of years that have passed since the property last changed hands. The objective is to tax the increase in the value of the land on which the property stands, some of which is due to improvements to the area carried out by the local government and the community at large.

The base for this tax is the valor catastral (an administrative value that is usually lower than the market value, sometimes considerably so) of the property. The amount due in tax will depend on how long the seller has owned the property: the longer the period, the higher the amount of tax.

Even less income for the municipalities, already reeling from the loss of part of the motorway tolls. Catalunia is having to find millions of euros to repay the 23,000 people fined illegally during lockdown last year.

Spanish police search for passengers who fled plane after emergency landing in Mallorca

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/spai ... index.html

(CNN) — Spanish authorities have arrested 12 people who were part of a group of 21 passengers that fled a plane after it was forced to make an emergency landing at Palma airport on the Balearic island of Mallorca, Spain, state news agency EFE reports.
The incident took place on an AirArabia flight from Morocco to Turkey, which was re-routed to Palma on Friday, due to a medical emergency.
According to EFE, one of the detained passengers faked a diabetic coma to facilitate the escape of 20 other people. When the plane landed, the group fled the aircraft and ran through the tarmac, the Spanish government's delegate in the Balearics, Aina Calvo, told reporters.
A video shared by Jorge Campos, leader of the far-right party VOX in the Balearic islands shows several passengers fleeing a AirArabia flight after the plane landed in Spain's Palma de Mallorca airport on Friday over what authorities say was a "fake" health emergency.

"It's usual that we receive these kind of requests for emergency landings, when a passenger is sick and the captain decides it's important to land. What is not usual and is unheard of, is that we see 21 people running on the airport's tarmac," Calvo said.
The Palma de Mallorca airport was briefly closed and 13 flights were rerouted before operations resumed at 11 p.m. on Friday, AENA, the airport authority said on Twitter.
Related content
Man arrested in Mallorca town on suspicion of infecting 22 people with Covid-19
"Palma's airport is operating normally, but the feeling is general: what happened cannot repeat itself and it's necessary that the responsible authorities review their protocols to guarantee the safety of all," the President of the Balearic Islands, Francina Armengol, said in a tweet.
Daniel Zamit, a spokesperson for USCA, the Spanish Air Traffic Controllers Union, called the incident a "grave breach of security" and said the protocols in place would be reviewed, in an interview with Spanish broadcaster TVE.
AENA and the Spanish authorities were not immediately available for comment.

PP

OTOH there are signs that the volcanic erruption on the other Palma location is dying down.

Tourists having sex in the dunes is ruining a Spanish beach

OSFOs, Ibbies, and Wodricks are off the hook as they are "locals".

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/gran ... index.html

(CNN) — Overtourism is regularly blamed for choking historic cities, covering world-famous sights in trash, and killing local life in tourist hotspots across the world. Now tourists having sex is said to be behind the gradual destruction of a beach and nature reserve in Europe.
The Dunas de Maspalomas Special Nature Reserve, on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria, is known for its wild sand dunes rippling out behind its lighthouse perched on the seafront, and regularly tops the lists of things to see on the island.
Its dunes -- which have been legally protected since 1982 -- are one of the last remaining shifting dune systems in Europe, provide a resting spot for birds migrating between Africa and Europe.
But now it's providing a different kind of rest spot, with tourists taking to the dunes to get frisky.

A new paper in the Journal of Environmental Management -- "Sand, Sun, Sea and Sex with Strangers, the 'five S's. Characterizing 'cruising' activity and its environmental impacts on a protected coastal dunefield" -- looks for the first time at the environmental impact on the coastal reserve being used as a cruising area.
Researchers inventoried 298 "sex spots" on the beach, over a total area of over two square miles, mainly among "bushy and dense vegetation" and nebkhas -- dunes that wad up around vegetation. They studied them during May 2018, a period which included the local Gay Pride festival.
The tourists' sex, and "cruiser trampling," impacts "directly" not only on the nebkhas, but also on eight native plant species, three of which are endemic, they found.
Sex 'nests' in the dunes

The dunes at Maspalomas are a top draw on Gran Canaria.
Giulio Andreini/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
Tourists trample over the vegetation, remove plants and sand, make their own "nests" -- even fencing them off -- and dump waste including cigarettes, condoms, toilet paper, wipes and cans.
They also use the dunes as a toilet, with researchers finding "urination and defecation locations."
The more remote the sex spot is, the more it had been used and the more trash was left in it, researchers noticed. Although the authorities leave trash bags in some of the larger areas, they were normally full.
Even the dunes' "exclusion zone" -- which is completely off-limits to the public, where other areas are restricted -- was found to have 56 sex spots.
As a result of the tourists' activities, there has been a "complete abandonment" of environmental education in the reserve, according to the study. The reserve was originally created with education as a "primary activity."
What's more, Gran Canaria giant lizards -- a popular sight in the Canary islands -- have "died after eating condoms left behind by pleasure seekers," wrote Patrick Hesp, one of the report's authors, in an article for The Conversation.

Hosting up to 14 million visitors a year, Gran Canaria is a gay-friendly tourist destination, with visitors from the US, UK and Germany among the main markets, and while the authors are quick to emphasize that there is "no intention to criticize some of the LGBTI community," and stressed that it was not just LGBTQ visitors having sex in the dunes, they note that "cruising is openly practiced" on Maspalomas.
Coastal dune systems are a crucial part of the marine landscape, but have been used to attract tourism around the world -- with devastating consequences, the authors write.
"Their degradation, in many cases, has been a direct consequence of tourism development," reads the paper.
As Hesp wrote in his separate article: "We're not calling for an end to public sex -- but we do want people to be aware of the damage it can do."
One couple having sex on the beach, he wrote, is one thing; but having hundreds converge on the same area every day damages the dunes as much as off-road driving does.

pp

For trash read used condoms... We had that problem on Clifton Beach in Cape Town. I mean we are glad people are taking precautions, but just take them home with you folks!

A definite case of 'What's in it for me?"

Boac wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 11, 2021 5:40 pm

A definite case of 'What's in it for me?"

You are in an abrasive mood tonight!

Just a little gritty.

Chance would be a fine thing....

TheGreenGoblin wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 11, 2021 5:35 pm

For trash read used condoms... We had that problem on Clifton Beach in Cape Town. I mean we are glad people are taking precautions, but just take them home with you folks!

With Clifton Beach being on the Atlantic side of Cape Point and the water being bloody freezing, surprising that anyone’s thawed out enough to need a condom🥶

Woody wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 12, 2021 8:35 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 11, 2021 5:35 pm

For trash read used condoms... We had that problem on Clifton Beach in Cape Town. I mean we are glad people are taking precautions, but just take them home with you folks!

With Clifton Beach being on the Atlantic side of Cape Point and the water being bloody freezing, surprising that anyone’s thawed out enough to need a condom🥶

Too right. I was once stupid enough to go surfing naked at Sandy Bay and noticed two nude girls looking and laughing and realised that my knackers had partly disappeared into my body it was so cold. I quickly sank onto my board and scuttled off like a crab to hide my shame behind a rock!

..........and to think they could have offered to warm it up for you.