Iona Napier
BRITISH Prime Minister David Cameron has retreated to Lanzarote for a week of sunshine following a stressful week of budget u-turns and the resignation of Iain Duncan-Smith.
But Cameron probably doesn’t know that his hotel, the Hotel Gran Castillo in Playa Blanca, is in fact illegal.
The five star pad’s building permit was quashed by the Canary Islands Supreme Court in 2007 having breached the 1991 building plan and exceeding the capacity of the Las Coloradas area and ‘not fitting in with the landscape’.
The list of irregularities goes on: the building exceeds the height allowed and flouts numerous building regulations.
Cameron is fond of this part of the world, having stayed around the corner in San Bartolome, two years ago, and the town hall believes it has had an advertising value of more than €1.2 million.
Cameron heads back to the UK this Wednesday March 30.
Nearly all construction projects are illegal in Spain. Regulations are designed that way to require a special council variance, which keeps the window to pay-off opportunities open as long as possible. Whether a building is -truly- illegal for negligence or siting on beaches etc., or just -illegal- in some politically obstructive and petty way, only to cause trouble is another matter.
Fancy Cameron not knowing about illegal builds in Spain, Politicians all the same, clearly Blair didn’t know Berlusconi parties were in fact bunga bunga probably allocated to the defence budget lol
Now where’s that impeccably honest politician Rajoy lately?
Just more proof that Spanish politicians and bureaucratic regulators can’t see the Forest through the trees. Clearly these properties were built at the time legally, or they would not have had zoning permissions to do so. The fact that the local politicians and councils were found out to be corrupt after the fact is the issue. Not the building and the investors who built them, all legally at the time. If the authorized government official issued a license in violation of the law, etc., they are the responsible party.
Mike, he’s got to deal with all his brown envelopes, it takes time you know when there are a lot of them.
Dave knows all about the so called illegal building situation in Spain, I wrote and told him although I doubt he read my letter personally. I also wrote to my useless MP (got the usual standard reply) and my MEP who is UKIP and he was very helpful and tackled the Spanish foreign minister in Brussels, not that it did much good.
Chas and Rubicon, the Spanish authorities knew what was going on for years and did nothing about it so they were negligent. In Andalucia, the Junta decided to move the goal posts and suddenly declare properties illegal having previously turned a blind eye. They could resolve the whole thing tomorrow but are too bloody minded to do so and instead prefer to sit around blaming everyone but themselves.
Meanwhile, it’s costing them a fortune in lost revenue from inward investment.
One has to stop expecting rational, just action from government officials governed by formalistic Latin Law concepts and rigid party discipline. Municipal politicians do what is good for their local parties and local economic notables according to local regulations, which they enact at the municipal level. According to the Constitution, municipal government have all the zoning and urbanisation powers. Common sense and Anglo common law has no impact at all. Until there is a Constitutional amendment, nothing can change. And we know how tough that is to achieve in a ‘winner take all’ attitude of governance, one in which the orthodox nature of party ideology has created ‘fachas izquerda’ and ‘fachas derecha’.
Chas,
well said and your words apply to more countries than just Spain. FPTP has been crippling the UK and the US for a long time. Jane G – denial syndrome is part of the Spanish mentality, I don’t think that even with starvation it will change.
Chas is right about Roman Law but he forgets that especially in the south the caliphate mentality is still embedded in the descendants of the Semitic peoples.
Stuart, Very true about the caliphate mentality. Combine that with the top-down thought system of the Roman Catholic church and its no wonder that the flock finds critical thinking and action so difficult to achieve, and the top party officials encourage their anxiety.
Aristotle’s critique of Platonist thought in The Ethics is enlightening: Plato, uses geometry for his model to derive his as one would solve a geometry problem (start with the theorem, and everything else follows), whereas Aristotle constructs principles little by little from sensory observations and ordinary experience in order to construct fitting rational – not formal – explanations for phenomena.
Religious or ideological fundamentalists are basically Platonists: they arrive at from first principles which they accept at the start as absolute , e.g., Biblical, Quoranic, Stalinist, corporatist, Milton Friedmanists, literal constitutionalists (the mess in the USA Supreme Court and extreme political parties), etc.
Which is to say: the hierarchical structure of a thought system is likely much more important than so-called content, which changes with time and place to necessitate re-interpretation. Orthodoxical structures leave no room for negotiation or compromise. That rigidity is the basis of totalist politics/religions, regardless of stated aims, progressive of otherwise.
Living systems do not flourish in over-connected systems based on machine-like, input-output metaphors. Or as in the current case, literal interpretations of no-longer applicable law applied in a manner which protects the current structural hierarchy, EU bosses, local party bosses, religious hierarchies or wherever they are found.
The difference between Common law and Roman law.
My Text should have said.
– Plato uses geometry … to derive his – truths – as one would solve a geometry problem … whereas Aristotle constructs principles little by little from sensory observations and ordinary experience in order to construct fitting rational -, not formal – , explanations …
Religious or ideological fundamentalists are basically Platonists: they arrive at -what to think- from principles which they accept at the start as – absolute truth – , e.g., Biblical, etc.
The point is that a distinction between formalism as a thought system, as opposed to rationality as a means of thinking, is important to understanding how people arrive at conclusions. In formalism, so-called -truths- are derived from presumed absolute givens, whereas in -rationality-, any conclusions are working temporary hypotheses constructed on the availability of the evidence pertaining to the task at hand, but subject to change through practice.
That would explain the vast difference in flexibility between Common law and Roman law.
Got that folks? If not, Chas will surely explain further.
Discussions sometimes suggest responses with more import than, say, Simon Cowell.
stef, got it, read the input’s of Chas and his understanding of the vast difference in flexibility, but I suppose he could have just cut the chase by stating that common law is based on Roman law and we are stuck with the basis of Roman law.
No ,,, but I’ll take his word for it! Cheers
Chas – do you detect more than a hint of jealousy from someone who cannot construct a rational argument but only uses insults and b/s to compensate.
People do the best they can…
Stuart, not being argumentative, but are you referring to yourself, as I do find you being most argumentative.
What you actually detect Stuart is, irritated boredom with irrelevant, ego-tripping, philosophical dissertations.