Every day when I drive into the Urbanisation on the Costa del Sol where I am spending a couple of months as a Locum Chaplain, I pass a sign which says Ferrovial Agroman.
This is the name of the company who built the urbanisation.
This is the third time in a year that we have been here.
There are routine failures, electric gates either don't open or stick open, power cuts are fairly routine, fortunately the lift is programmed to descend to the ground floor and open when there is a power cut.
Useful if your companion is a wheelchair user.
On this visit the street lighting was less efficient and we were told that some of the copper cable had been stolen and had not been replaced.
The cleaning and gardening staff appear to have had their hours dramatically reduced and the place is just not quite as clean and tidy as it was a year ago during our first visit.
Like many urbanisations in this part of Spain the building works are unfinished.
A result of the economic downturn.
Fortunately our tenure here is in part payment for the Locum Duties I fulfill as an unpaid chaplain.
Like so many of the public utilities that operate the infrastructure of the United Kingdom, Ferrovial Agroman is a European business, headquartered in Madrid.
They are, of course, major players in the big society.
As so much of UK energy, manufacturing, service sector, water and transport systems are owned by companies based in India, China and Europe, how does the UK Government exercise meaningful power?
As a nation we have surrendered control to external private and public interests.
The effect of this is seen in our inability to tax profits or determine any kind of meaningful employment policy: recently Honda announced that it was making a quarter of its workforce redundant, where will the next announcement come from?
As a friend of mine once commented about the opening of a Japanese manufacturing plant in the North East, it won't work here, we can't live in paper houses, the weather's too poor.
Like in the nursery rhyme, paper, wood, hay can all be blown down and since the 1980's our industrial strategy of selling UK plc to the not always highest bidder has resulted in the centre's of industrial power moving outwith the British Isles.
Two interesting signs of this are the speech we were meant to hear this week in which presumably to satisfy the right wing of the Conservative Party and head off the threat represented by UKIP, Mr Cameron was, we were led to understand, to distance himself from Europe?
Not especially sensible when much of UK industry is now Headquartered in the Rhine Ruhr Metropolitan District.
However the speech he did give, called for global co-operation in the fight against terrorism in Africa, not the least because of course, like diamonds, gold and now energy, the riches of the African sub continent are exploited and abstracted by European countries, leaving Africa as always, the poorer.
Yesterday I bought a pink elephant key ring from a beautiful young African woman on the promenade in Fuengirola, she was a refugee from central Africa seeking refuge in Europe, yet despite the fact that her country is exploited by the west, she is treated inhospitably, not a refugee, but an immigrant.
Britain needs to wake up to the reality of the globalised world, when world maps were coloured the red of colonial domination, Britain was always shown to be larger on maps and globes, now we are being cut back down to size.
Even the recent weather which has brought Britain to a standstill is Headquartered in America from where it sweeps across the Atlantic to bring Heathrow to a standstill.
And the owners of Heathrow? BAA, major shareholder Ferrovial Agroman ....... Headquarters? Madrid.
This is the name of the company who built the urbanisation.
This is the third time in a year that we have been here.
There are routine failures, electric gates either don't open or stick open, power cuts are fairly routine, fortunately the lift is programmed to descend to the ground floor and open when there is a power cut.
Useful if your companion is a wheelchair user.
On this visit the street lighting was less efficient and we were told that some of the copper cable had been stolen and had not been replaced.
The cleaning and gardening staff appear to have had their hours dramatically reduced and the place is just not quite as clean and tidy as it was a year ago during our first visit.
Like many urbanisations in this part of Spain the building works are unfinished.
A result of the economic downturn.
Fortunately our tenure here is in part payment for the Locum Duties I fulfill as an unpaid chaplain.
Like so many of the public utilities that operate the infrastructure of the United Kingdom, Ferrovial Agroman is a European business, headquartered in Madrid.
They are, of course, major players in the big society.
As so much of UK energy, manufacturing, service sector, water and transport systems are owned by companies based in India, China and Europe, how does the UK Government exercise meaningful power?
As a nation we have surrendered control to external private and public interests.
The effect of this is seen in our inability to tax profits or determine any kind of meaningful employment policy: recently Honda announced that it was making a quarter of its workforce redundant, where will the next announcement come from?
As a friend of mine once commented about the opening of a Japanese manufacturing plant in the North East, it won't work here, we can't live in paper houses, the weather's too poor.
Like in the nursery rhyme, paper, wood, hay can all be blown down and since the 1980's our industrial strategy of selling UK plc to the not always highest bidder has resulted in the centre's of industrial power moving outwith the British Isles.
Two interesting signs of this are the speech we were meant to hear this week in which presumably to satisfy the right wing of the Conservative Party and head off the threat represented by UKIP, Mr Cameron was, we were led to understand, to distance himself from Europe?
Not especially sensible when much of UK industry is now Headquartered in the Rhine Ruhr Metropolitan District.
However the speech he did give, called for global co-operation in the fight against terrorism in Africa, not the least because of course, like diamonds, gold and now energy, the riches of the African sub continent are exploited and abstracted by European countries, leaving Africa as always, the poorer.
Yesterday I bought a pink elephant key ring from a beautiful young African woman on the promenade in Fuengirola, she was a refugee from central Africa seeking refuge in Europe, yet despite the fact that her country is exploited by the west, she is treated inhospitably, not a refugee, but an immigrant.
Britain needs to wake up to the reality of the globalised world, when world maps were coloured the red of colonial domination, Britain was always shown to be larger on maps and globes, now we are being cut back down to size.
Even the recent weather which has brought Britain to a standstill is Headquartered in America from where it sweeps across the Atlantic to bring Heathrow to a standstill.
And the owners of Heathrow? BAA, major shareholder Ferrovial Agroman ....... Headquarters? Madrid.
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