SALUTE TO FRANCIS CANTOS

Today I record the sad passing of Francis Cantos who was the Gibraltar Government’s Press Secretary and Media Director. He had been taking a well earned holiday in Sotogrande within sight of his beloved Rock when he suffered a fatal heart attack late on Wednesday night.

Francis Cantos, who was in his mid-50s, became the Gibraltar Chronicle’s first Gibraltarian editor in 1984. Previously he had been the newspapers chief reporter and had worked as a journalist both in the UK and on the Rock. After Chief Minister Peter Caruana’s GSD was elected to government in Gibraltar Francis Cantos joined his office in September 1996.

Gibraltar Chronicle editor Dominique Searle said: “The news has come as a great shock to all at the Chronicle, newspaper and printing works, who worked with him for many years. He was totally dedicated to his journalistic work and to playing a role in taking the project of Gibraltar forward. Our condolences go out to his family, wife Pamela and his two daughters.”

Gibraltar’s journalistic community is a small and tight one so there were also warm words from Joe Garcia editor of the rival daily Panorama. He stated: “I remember meeting Francis by chance at Gatwick airport when he was 18. He had got a job in a Kensington paper. He was on his way to Gibraltar, where he wanted to make journalism his career. I was the editor of the Gibraltar Post at the time and I approached Maurice Featherstone, who was the publisher, and Francis got his break locally. From there he went on to become editor of our contemporary the Gibraltar Chronicle, becoming Media Director for the Government in September 1996. He was a hard-worker who loved his profession. His death seems so unreal.”

I last met Francis Cantos outside the Rock Hotel in Gibraltar when he was coordinating events for the historic and controversial Tripartite meeting during which Spain’s Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, made the first visit by a Spanish Government minister to Gibraltar in an official capacity. He was as usual courteous and helpful in a job that I suspect had more than its fair share of stress. I pondered this morning why there had not been any official statement from the Gibraltar Government on his passing – then I realized that he hadn’t been there to organize it.

May he rest in peace.

(Francis Cantos, left, consults with senior police officers as the Foreign Ministers of Britain and Spain arrive at the Rock Hotel on July 21).

SHOULD A PEER BE RUNNING THE COUNTRY?

It’s the height of summer and I guess my mind should be running to the state of Britain’s piers – Southend, Brighton, Blackpool every charred Weston Super Mare. Instead of a breezy walk along battered planks my attention turns to the man running the country, Peter Mandelson – a peer of the realm.

This is the man who was twice forced to resign from the government of Tony Blair – men who were soul mates if only in the political sense. A man Blair wanted us to learn to love as he tells us he did.

This is the man who was then sent to Brussels as one of Britain’s EU Commissioners. There he raised many an eyebrow over his political antics and no doubt his snake hips.

Then he is hauled back to Britain by his former arch political enemy – Premier Gordon Brown. Suddenly he is a peer, Business Secretary and the power behind Brown’s tottering throne. In the reshuffle he emerges as deputy prime minister in all but name and the most powerful unelected man in the country.

I believe that the whole basis of being a democracy is that the people elect the government and those ministers should answer to the country both at the House of Commons dispatch box and at the ballot box.

However Mr Mandelson lords it over us in his ermine, sends his minions to face the political fire and is hence accountable to no one except himself.

When Britain gets round to reforming its badly dented political system may one of the first changes be that all ministers should be elected politicians, sit in the House of Commons and have to face the electorate every four years. If the Prime Minister of the day wants advisers, so be it, but only elected MPs should run our country.

In the meantime we have a politically disgraced peer running the country. Very queer!

SIR ALEX IS TOP OF THE ROCK

Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, has visited Gibraltar to inaugurate the new supporters’ club premises.

Arguably Britain’s greatest ever soccer coach must have had mixed feelings about the trip. If my memory serves me right, and it rarely does, Sir Alex was in a legal rumpus with former horse racing friends over the ownership of a successful nag called ‘Rock of Gibraltar’. However I believe that for much of his racing career, Rock of Gibraltar ran in the colours of Sir Alex, who was named as a part-owner along with Susan Magnier, wife of Coolmore owner John Magnier. When the Rock of Gibraltar retired and was sent for a lucrative time at stud, Ferguson and John Magnier were involved in a dispute over the exact nature of the ownership of the horse which was eventually settled out of court.

Still that didn’t deter Sir Alex from going to the Mons Calpe Suite at the top of the Rock to meet local supporters and to sign various memorabilia for them, the GBC charity day and a sick lad who couldn’t be present.

If Man U had 30,000 people at Old Trafford for a match the alarm bells would ring but that is around the same number of people who live on the Rock. Of them 560 are supporters of the ‘Reds’ so it is to the club’s credit that not only Sir Alex but team legend Bryan Robson and Mike Phelan also made the trip.

By coincidence I was writing a brief history of Algeciras CF at the weekend. Algeciras lies just across the bay from Gibraltar and in the late 1890s and onwards it was soccer fanatics of the British Forces and dockyard workers who lit the flame for the sport in the Spanish town. Indeed after Algeciras CF was formed in 1912 their first match was against Gibraltar side, Alexandra – the result 0-0.

There is another link between Algeciras CF and Britain. When the club was looking for a strip there were no sports shops in the town. So off they went to the Rock and chose a very striking shirt – red and white stripes – the famous kit of Southampton United which they play in to this very day.

MY HEART BLEEDS

Samantha Orobator, a mere 20 years of age, has been returned to the UK from Laos to serve her life term for smuggling drugs.

Obviously Laos isn’t totally heartless.

In a statement on her arrival in the UK she told the media: “I am enormously relieved and happy to be back on British soil. It has been an unimaginable nightmare.”

Is that the same nightmare that would have been endured by those who used the drugs she was carrying?

She escaped the death penalty because she became pregnant in an all-female jail.

So the child wasn’t conceived from a loving relationship but the need of Samantha Orobator to escape her terrible fate.

I expect in years to come her child will look back on her life and declared: “It has been an unimaginable nightmare.”

My heart truly bleeds…

I AM NO LONGER A TWIT

I accept that you dear reader may have your own opinion on this but let me say that as far as I am concerned I am no longer a twit.

It was Ron Callari of Kid Millenium who first suggested that I should sign up with Twitter. I duly did and each day posted my 140 characters worth of wisdom to a waiting cyber world.

Then I linked to the twitters from a leading, respected journalist who has worked with both the BBC and CNN. My first twit from him informed me of the state of his boiled breakfast egg. It may have been a yolk but he was a twit for sending it and was I a twit for reading it?

Hence I decided to twit no more.

Now I read that Twitter suffered major problems on Thursday from hacker attacks in a coordinated campaign against online social networks. The incidents are said to have “underscored the vulnerability of fast-growing Internet social networking sites that have been heralded as powerful new political tools to counter censorship and authoritarianism”.

I accept that Twitter became a key form of communication in Iran amid the protests and clampdown that followed the country’s disputed June elections. However the majority of messages are banal beyond belief and I cannot help think that the hacker did us all a favour even if the twits were only silenced for a couple of hours.

As my granny used to say – If you’ve got nothing useful to say – say nothing – and that would apply to most twitters. Thankfully she never read my blogs.

SWINE FLU: PANDEMIC OR PANIC-DEMIC

The other day I received an email from a reader that purported to come from a doctor in Peru. May be it does – may be it doesn’t – however what it does do is raise some interesting questions over the Swine Flu Panic-demic.

The text is in Spanish and I have edited it for brevity but the email asks:

“What interests? What economic move is behind swine flu?

In the world, two million people die each year victims of malaria, which can be prevented by a mosquito net.

And the news says nothing of this.

In the world, two million children die every year from diarrhoea, and these boys and girls could be cured with an oral serum costing 25 cents.

And the news says nothing of this.

Measles, pneumonia and other diseases that can be cured with cheap vaccines cause the death of ten million people worldwide each year.

And the news reports nothing.

But then the famous bird flu appeared.

The global media was flooded; tons of ink was used spreading the news and alarm...

Not just an epidemic but the most dangerous of all... a pandemic.

And yet the avian influenza only caused the death of 250 people around the world - 250 killed during 10 years, which gives an average of 25 victims per year.

The common flu kills half a million people each year worldwide.

Half a million against 25.

The pharmaceutical transnational Roche with its famous Tamiflu sold a million doses to the Asian countries.

Although the Tamiflu is of dubious effectiveness, the British Government bought 14 million doses to protect to its population.

With chicken flu, Roche and Relenza, two large pharmaceutical companies sold these anti-virals, making billions of dollars in earnings.

As with the chickens and now with the pigs.

Yes, now begins the swine flu psychosis. And the world news speaks only of this.

Look at what Executive Laboratories Roche says:

We are concerned very much by this epidemic therefore we put to the sale the miraculous Tamiflu.

And for how much do you sell the "miraculous" Tamiflu?

Well, let's see... $50 the box.

What $ 50? What a box of pills?

Understand, Madam... miracles are very expensive.”

Well the email goes on to draw its own conclusions but I am sure you have conclusions enough of your own. I also have to say that the price of Tamiflu I found on the internet was far higher than $50.

What is certain is that the biggest distributor of swine flu is the world media intent on bringing this Panic-demic in to your homes. And who benefits financially? Certainly not me and I doubt if it’s you!

FREE SPEECH OR INSULT?

I return today to the subject of the Spanish Royal Family and the public’s right to free speech.

I should first state that whilst in Britain I would now describe myself as a Republican as a foreign resident in Spain I have a positive view of this country’s royal family although I accept that some Spaniards do not.

Recently the co-ordinator general of far-left Izquierda Unida, Cayo Lara, pointed the finger at the Royal Family accusing it of being a fiscal paradise. He argued that in recent years the Royal Family has operated as “an opaque fiscal paradise” with a lack of absolute transparency. He added that this has a very negative impact especially at this time of financial crisis.

In an interview with Europa Press the far left politician viewed positively the recent High Court ruling by Santiago Pedraz on the insults that were shouted at King Juan Carlos at the final of the Copa del Rey in Valencia. The judge viewed them as no more than a freedom of expression.

This contrasts with the case of the IU mayor of Puerto Real, José Antonio Barroso, who was fined 6,840 euros in June by judge José María Vázquez Honrubia in the High Court in Madrid. Barroso was answering a case brought by the Ministerio Fiscal that in April last year at a Republican Rally in Los Barrios he had made statements in his speech that were injurious to the king – Juan Carlos I.

So if a soccer crowd shouts insults at the King and boos the Spanish national anthem it is displaying freedom of speech and expression. However if Barroso states his clearly held views on the Spanish Royal Family and the King’s father that is deemed as slandering the monarch.

I am sorry there is something wrong here. Freedom of speech is not something you can turn on or off. Whilst I broadly support the Spanish Royal Family I accept the rights of others to voice their genuinely held views without fear of prosecution. Or if the King felt Barroso had gone too far then he should have gone to court to seek remedy and not the public prosecutor at our expense. After all if Lara is correct, Juan Carlos can well afford it!

GOD SAVE THE ANTHEM
http://tiltingatwindmillsblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/god-save-our-anthem.html

DEAR KING PLEASE SEND US 6848 EUROS
http://tiltingatwindmillsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/dear-king-please-send-us-6848-euros.html