26/07/2013 00:00
TW
0
By Jason Moore THE general view from officials is that while tourism is down the Balearics is doing much better than the rest of Spain. The general view from business owners in the resorts is that they are facing a nightmare scenario and takings have dropped by half. Who do you believe? Well obviously the business owners because afterall they have little to gain from saying that their takings are down (in fact quite the opposite). So it appears that there are plenty of tourists coming to the island but they are spending little. What rather surprised me as well is the major fall in German tourism. Before the start of the summer the local authorities were saying that there would be no reduction in German tourists, it would be the British who would be staying away. Unfortunately for the local authorities they were right on one count and wrong on the other; both British and German tourism are down. A bit of a nightmare scenario.

LAST week in this space I wrote that I was amazed that Britain did not have anymore battlefield helicopters in Afghanistan and I blamed the top brass for not doing enough. Therefore I was pleased to see David Cameron, the Conservative leader, asking why out of 500 battlefield helicopters in the British armed services only 30 had been sent to Afghanistan.