Not satisfied? Why visit?

Dear Sir, I WONDER why your contributors continue to go to Majorca, when they criticize non-stop when new laws and taxes are implemented? The island has so much to offer, but then so has the rest of the world. Every country has it's drawbacks to we Brits., but at the end of the day we are seeking sun, good food and wines, and convivial surroundings. No longer do we have to restrict ourselves to Spain because we think, unwisely, that it's less expensive than the rest of the world, and so easily accessible. Europe is generally expensive, and so many other countries are within reasonable reach. If we don't like the way “things” are going in a particular country, we go elsewhere. This may lead to a re-think by those countries who start to lose their tourist trade, although I doubt it as the mentality in Spain has been to increase the prices to make up for the shortfall in the income. I have to admit that I look back with fond memories of visiting Majorca for some twenty years, but it now rates low on my priorities. At the same time, I would not continue to criticize the internal workings of a country, I would just go elsewhere. THE mass media are developing a huge campaign on the supposed risks that bird flu could end up as a contagious disease among humans producing an epidemic of world proportions. Fear is promoted through taking advantage of the ignorance of the population and the absence of an effective vaccine. It is significant that after the first cases appearing in Europe, propaganda was intensified doing little apart from swelling the accounts of the Swiss multinational, Roche, which manufacturers the anti-viral drug Tamiflu. The problem of the spread of the disease is not approached in a rational and scientific way. A more fundamental way of tackling the “pandemic” would be to obtain vaccine for domestic birds. This should become the most essential part of measures to stop the spread of the disease but nowhere is there evidence of this being done. As Robert Welser and Diane Hulse, virologists of the Department of Infectious Diseases at St.Jude Children's Research Hospital in the United States, claim: “the technology and skills of inverse genetics is available and must be developed”. Nevertheless, millions of birds are being sacrificed and leaving pharmaceutical ethics to one side, some laboratories are becoming enormously wealthy.