Thank you my esteemed rock friend. This is from one of the many granite outcrops down here, a place called Carn Galva. Which I believe was an ancient Volcano
Yeah, did do. Heat helped Was meant to be driving around today, not a chance. Can't turn my ****ing head.
I heard from my friend Khalid in Morocco the other day. Most of it was in Arabic and French, but he was basically telling me that he had been appealing to the authorities to stop the destruction and that his business was legally registered as a tourist guesthouse. I've just heard tonight that they finally knocked down his Auberge earlier today. 25 years of his work destroyed. The whole village has been raised to the ground. Homes and businesses gone, just like that. I am gutted for him
Because ****s like me want a straight run from the airport and air con with room service on arrival. I'm not even joking that's probably the reason. I don't think it's right btw but I am part of the problem. I'm happy to go to Spain though so there's no need for any of this.
Imsouane, like a lot of rural and coastal towns and villages, were just built by local people with local permissions back in the day. Nobody really bothered them, because they went under the radar and so they just got on with it. As the years have gone by, Morocco and especially the popular surf spots have become more and more popular and thus quite lucrative, with Europeans visiting and bringing in a fair amount of money. The authorities have seen this and knowing that there is money to be made, coupled with the fact that the locals have no legal written rights, deeds, mortgages etc have decided that this now prime 'tourist' real estate can be sold off to rich developers to make even more money. And the locals have no legal recourse whatsoever. So they gave local residents and businesses 24 hours notice that the bulldozers would be moving in. My friend Khalid had a guesthouse there, which was registered as an Auberge, he had some registration with local authorities that he was running a tourist business, but it seems it wasn't enough to save his place. Imsouane has literally been raised to the ground in a week, to make way for a mega complex.
I think this is part of a wider agenda to develop large parts of Morocco as they play joint host to the 2030 world cup. Some of the games are being played in Agadir, which is about 50 miles south of Imsouane. Another town called Tifnit which is closer to Agadir was also demolished a few weeks ago. I think you'll see new modern hotels being built in what were quirky little ramshakle towns with bags of character. The locals will probably end up working as chamber maids and waiters in these soulless new mega complexes to meet the needs and whims of international delegates, officials, teams, and fans from across the globe for the tournament.
Mad to me that places like Morocco would come in, smash up things built up naturally by locals to allow some foreign mega corp to come in and build yet another copy and paste resort.
As always it comes down to money. A few already wealthy people are going to make some more for themselves, so **** the locals and screw the people who are already poor and have no rights or a voice. Like you say, it will be another copy and paste identikit resort. There were things about places like Imsouane that needed improving, better sewage and sanitation for example, because the place had grown but the infrastructure hadn't caught up. But they could have improved the place without smashing it to pieces, kicking out the locals and starting again. When I first started going there around 2002-03. There was no running water or electricity. You had to get your water from the well and when it got dark at night, you ate by candlelight. But that was part of the charm of the place. It was off grid and out in the sticks. You could catch fish, or buy some from the local fishermen and your local hosts would cook up Goat or Lamb tagine. They have ripped the soul out of that place. And I am really sad for my friend who has seen a business he built up over 25 years where his kids grew up too, literally bulldozed to the ground within a few hours
You look at our towns and cities and they are practically all the same these days. Everywhere has the same shops, McDonalds, a drive through Costa, B&M, The Range, PC world, Furniture stores that all sell the same ****, so that everybody's homes all look the same too Proper Pubs closing down left right and centre, and being replaced by Spoonies or some other pub chain. Everybody wearing the same clothes, eating the same ****e junk food and and watching the same vacuous nonsense on the TV It's soulless corporate plastic consumerist ****e. We're so far down that route in the UK that it's just become the norm now. But I ****ing hate it that this sort of **** is now creeping into rural parts of countries that hadn't changed much for hundreds of years. There'll be a Taco Bell in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest soon and it will be sold as progress and giving jobs to the locals, indigenous tribes people whose land has been destroyed and their way of life wiped out.
Anyway I'm ranting now, but this is the reason I choose to spend nights in a tent under the stars in -4 deg out in the middle of nowhere on the moors Because I just need an escape from the ****e that's served up by corporate society.
What surprises me is that some of the really old pubs haven't been protected as heritage sites, I think the best we get is if locals change them to community hubs, but mainly they are being replaced by micropubs as owners of old pubs are cashing in on them as development flats - and if you try and stall them through planning, they burn the place down, it's the biggest insurance scam been going on for ages and no one appears to be doing anything about it....although there was one pub that made national media after it was bulldozed, can't remember if that was after a fire that one. We should be protecting our pubs, they are our community hubs much like other European Countries have plazas. Thankfully we've got micropubs, but it's not the point destroying our social heritage, our culture, tbph I find it quite sad everytime I hear or read of another place closing down. Yeah it solves a housing problem but it's not the fooking point, knock a castle down and build on that lol.
Yeah I agree with all of that, and especially that part in bold Pubs are the social hubs of a community, like you say, akin to the plazas that European towns have. Thankfully there are still some wonderful little pubs around, but they really need protecting, especially in the towns and villages that seem to be getting eaten up by the same chain stores and the like.
