Archives for March 2008

Buying property in the Canary Islands

Have you ever considered buying a holiday flat on a sunny island?
If you have more than 300,000EUR to spare, then this may be just the time to do so.
Take Lanzarote, for example. Apparently most people are interested in looking at apartments and studios – priced below 300,000EUR, according to one of the islands largest property portals: Lanzarote Guidebook.
Anything above 300,000EUR is only attracting 13% of enquiries, so if you’re looking for something larger then you are going to be in the minority and may possibly have a good choice of properties available.
Whether you decide to move to the island on a permanent basis, or let out the property as an investment, you might get a better deal here than in some, more expensive European countries.

Hessen in Chaos

The political landscape in Hessen is in Chaos. After weeks of talking (or not talking, as the case may be), one of the parties finally made a move. The SPD decided to accept the support of the left-wing “Linke” party to get themselves into government.

However the support appears to have been limited to the vote on the position of Ministerpräsident(-in), after that there would have been a minority red-green coalition (SPD/Greens).

All went well until one MP, Dagmar Metzger from Darmstadt, decided that should could not accept this way forward and would not be voting for her own party.

Now Frau Ypsilanti now longer has the majority that she needs to be elected, so the Local Government remains in a state of limbo. Roland Koch remains as the Ministerpräsident until further notice and no party has a working majority.

This afternoon I even read that the SPD is being criticised for mobbing Frau Metzger into giving back her mandate.

Is it really mobbing to suggest that someone who got elected for a particular party is asked to hand their mandate back for not following the party line just a month after the election?

I’m undecided on this one. On the one hand I think the party could expect its MPs to follow its lead. In fact, they even asked at a meeting of MPs if they would be doing so and all agreed to. Frau Metzger did not even attend!

On the other hand, Frau Ypsilanti stated quite clearly both before and after the election that should would not be working together with the “Linke” party.

So who is going back on their principles? Who is right and who is wrong?

TNT: we are “the post”?

Saturday morning.  9.50am.  The doorbell rang and I answered using the intercom.  “Der Post” the man replied.

Actually, the postman doesn’t have to ring the bell to deliver the post, unless it’s something I have to sign for.  So I replied that I’d be right out.

The only trouble was, that I was still in my pyjamas having worked late the night before, so I quickly threw my dressing gown on and grabbed my keys and headed out of the flat.

Except there was no-one there.  I went outside to see a courier from TNT getting on his motorbike and riding off.  I called after him “what’s up?”  He looked in amazement “I only wanted to put something in one of the letter boxes” he replied.

Great! And there was me thinking that this sort of thing would stop (see this post).

Personally, I think it’s a bit off to let me think I need to come outside if he only needs access to a letter box.

Also, if he had said that he was from TNT, then I would have probably guessed what the problem was and let he into the building.  But identifying himself as “Der Post” (the postman) is misleading.

Only recently, a building contractor in a neighbouring flat did the same thing to get me to open the door.  I guess he didn’t think that I would bother going out to check!

So beware – just because someone at the front door identifies themselves as “the postman”, it doesn’t always mean that they are.  At the moment, it seems, they are more likely not.

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