Madeira Consorcio

76 Madeira Consorcio Meeting 22.1.2016

We met in the Station in the Lunch room, and started off with a bread tasting. Ca. brought some very good ginger cookies, made by himself!  What a Surgeon’s hands can do…

Z.,  represented her parents, so U and E gave a brief introduction of our work and goals.

We are trying to develop ideas for new business on the island, such as medicinal herbs. We also visit places of interest; such as the Sugar Cane factory in Ribeiro Seco/Funchal, the Meia Serra waste processing plant and the firefighters in Funchal.

One of the issues facing us now if that, if we have good ideas, they cannot come to fruition if we cannot find the person/s best suited to pick them up and turn them into reality. We also want to have more exposure of our work to the public.

E and Uhad a meeting with the managing Director of JM (former Jornal da Madeira) and presented our idea of a communication channel from the population (and from us) to the Government by way of short ads with ideas (not complaints!).

He didn’t pick this up but instead wants us to publish our ideas every two weeks in a column (he said, with 3000 words, it’s more likely that he meant  3000 characters).

U. would like to wait until the newspaper is sold – which according to E’s info, should be soon. D.is also of the opinion that it is better to go in with the New instead of going out with the Old (in this case, the management).

In another project with the JM, D. and U. are working with them to develop a once-per-week English page ( A3 folded once =4 pages)  as an add-in and a stand-alone, to reach the foreign Residents and Tourists. Advertising should be able to support the cost. This would fill the gap left by the demise of The Brit a few years ago. In this paper, we could also place our ideas  and have (anonymous) food critics’ reports.

The ferry to the mainland:

We also talked about the subsidy game going on for the Ferry which is still not visible anywhere. Subsidies are killing entrepreneurial efforts. E.said that the group of interested shipping companies is now ganging up to pressure the Government for higher subsidies. The Sousa group which seems to hold an amazing number of essential enterprises on both islands, is probably going to come out on the top again.

The Ferry to Porto Santo:

E.said that there should be a continuation of territorial continuity; this is not a problem in the Canary islands. Ferry traffic there is voluminous and never interrupted.

Public transport is (like water) a public service and should not be in the hands of private enterprises. (Ca. mentioned that for example, telephone connection is not a public service per se.) The ferry to Porto Santo should have a contract which stipulates that it must run 52 weeks of the year. If the transport company is not willing to provide the service around the year, then it should lose the license.

Every discussion leads to the problem of corruption, part of the human nature. Added to this is the fact that the Portuguese, especially the Madeirans, do not have a fighting spirit.

Such corruption can be fought with transparency, another issue for publication in a newspaper. The Diario publishes a list of public contracts every month, with the top ten contractors and amounts. Old Contracts as the one for the Porto Santo Ferry should also be published; in the case of Sousa, his holdings should be made public as well. U. said that if such information is not allowed to be forgotten, by persistently repeating it, it will finally sink in, and  people will react at some point. The question is how far the future owners of JM will be willing to go to publish information which is uncomfortable to the Have’s on the island.

We also spoke briefly about E’s project. He will make an experiment and dry his product(for preservation and export) to see how it comes out. It may, however, turn out to be too hard.

D.said that E.should grow his grains exclusively on the island. These grains are kept in seed preservation chambers, but why not use them now and keep them unaltered?

Z introduced us to the concept of the Hash House Harriers, a movement which organizes running events to support charities, with chapters all over the world.  This is also an expat movement as the organizer used to come from the British Army. Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_House_Harriers

Our next meeting will be in mid-February