Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

The one item that has arrived with a vengeance on the Christmas list for this year is the PSP.

Yeah, I know, we’re probably way behind the times with that one. However, it’s really caught the eye of both James (5) and John (3). Despite it being notionally “too old” for John, he really loves to play with the one that he has on loan at the moment so it’ll not be too easy to prise it out of his hands later.

Anyway, must see about finding a sensible way to acquire one plus a few games for it.

We’ve had quite a run of Brits who live in Spain stay with us on their way to/from the UK over the last few months.

With few exceptions, they have all assumed that southern France will be just like Spain. So the resorts will be fully open ’til November, the restaurants will start serving food from 9pm, and so on.

Well, it isn’t like that at all.

The beach resorts in France start closing up in the first week of September and are almost completely closed down by the end of the second week. Of course, that suits us as we get a jump in bookings for the second two weeks of September.

Far from opening at 9pm, the restaurants here have all closed by then and usually won’t serve you much after 8pm. In fact, by then your choice is usually limited to McDonalds and the like. Even in the busiest week of the year for Perpignan (which is this week), they still close at their normal times. This seems particularly daft this week as the town is full of journalists and there’s a very popular nightly show which runs to midnight yet everywhere is closed by the time it finishes.

It’s easy to get very blasé about the science and technology that we use every day simply because it’s so familiar to us.

Just about everyone has been on a plane yet only 100 years ago to have been able to fly would have been a truly wonderous thing. About 50 years ago the head of IBM predicted that there would be a need for at most FIVE computers in the world yet many people would have around that number of computers or computer type devices all by themselves, each one of which is much more powerful than the five that IBM had predicted – even the humblest pocket calculator is more powerful than the computers used to land the Apollo spacecraft.

Anyway, to highlight some of these wonders we’ve kicked off a blog which’ll pick out some of these wonders that you probably hardly give a second thought too…. it’s living at An Age of Magic.

One thing never to neglect when you’re living abroad is the cost of changing money from one currency to another yet virtually nobody considers it.

The costs can be quite substantial too. A friend of mine who was living in Brussels once casually remarked that he just used the Halifax as he did at home, lifting EUR 20 or EUR 30 whenever he needed it. He was more than a little takenaback when I pointed out that by doing that he was paying around 10% of his entire salary in bank charges. Yes, that much.

We’ve had quite a run of Brits living in Spain stopping with us on their way to/from the UK this year and I was very surprised to find that only one of them used the Nationwide credit card. Yet, that’s the only one that offers free exchange from sterling to other currencies (and all of the people concerned were living on a UK based income).

The other alternative for euro-zone countries is the Halifax which operates as Banco Halifax in Spain. They offer free transfers from UK based Halifax (and Bank of Scotland) accounts to Halifax in Spain. Although they don’t currently operate elsewhere in Europe, the Spanish outfit is quite sufficient for those in eurozone countries as you can, of course, use the supplied debit card outside Spain for purchases (it’s a bit expensive for ATM withdrawals outside Spain).

Very handy and the whole thing operates in English.

Many years ago when Belfast was in the peak of the troubles, Belfast airport was right up there with Tel Aviv as being the safest airport in the world to fly from.

There weren’t any of the fancy scanners in those days. None of the loop detectors to find metal on you either. Yet, nobody ever managed to carry anything onboard that they shouldn’t have. How come? Simple: the security people were really well trained and knew exactly what to look for ie who would be most likely to carry something on and where that they’d carry it.

It’s a different story these days. Just a few weeks ago, I flew from Belfast to Manchester and the security was a complete joke.

The security questions asked by the checkin staff were the usual joke. Nothing special there: they’re so rehearsed in them and the passengers are so rehearsed in the answers that there’s little point in asking them nowadays.

But then it gets really silly.

I’d forgotten to bring my trusty clear plastic bag so instead just put my 30ml and 60ml bottle of contact lens solution on the top of the pile. For a change, I’d remembered that my luggage scales cause the security people to panic so I took them out of the case and put them on top of a plastic bag with some magazines I’d just bought ie in plain view.

First off, my five year old had to remove his shoes before the scan which might seem a touch silly but in that he’d been randomly selected it is quite a sensible security check.

As expected, the luggage scales caused the usual panic and the security guy rushed over after they came out of the scanner. But he didn’t check them. Nope, instead he got all difficult about the two bottles not being in a plastic bag. Now, if he’d actually been trained he’d have realised that they should have been in a plastic bag so that they couldn’t be concealed so having them sitting in plain view on top of a plastic bag was OK.

All he could do was rant on about them being in a plastic bag and point to those on sale for £1 but I didn’t have the £1 coin.

Several minutes of ranting on and his colleague intervened. Was it OK to carry on contact lens solution at all? Well, yes actually it is and in fact they are specifically listed amongst the permitted items. Was it useful for his colleague to read the ingredients of one of the bottles? Not really as I doubt very much if he was sufficiently qualified in chemistry to say what could be done with that combination of chemicals.

A little more ranting and another colleague asked if she could test one of the bottles. OK, but knowing that the solution was pH neutral doesn’t really say a whole lot.

And finally, everything was OK.

Except that it wasn’t…. nobody even looked for the luggage scales and they do look incredibly suspicious on the scanner. They SHOULD have been checked and they weren’t. The only thing worse is runner beans which look like a string of detonators and if you ever want to see a security guy really scared try putting some in your handbaggage and watch the reaction.

Not only did he completely forget about the original reason for rushing over but he even ignored me when I reminded him about it several times. What was particularly bad in this is that he fixated on a minor thing (ie two tiny bottles in plain view when they should have been inside a clear plastic bag) and completely forgot about the major thing (ie something very suspicious picked up by the scanner).

That says to me that the quality threshold of security staff at the airports has had to be lowered considerably courtesy of all the extra “security” checks that are imposed these days.