Oil Hopes Stoke Falklands Shift Away From Loyal Shrine to England: Travel
The dock in Stanley, the Falkland Islands. Tiny Stanley, a coastal town with about 2,300 residents, has a strong Cape Cod feel about it. Photographer: Michael Luongo/Bloomberg
Falkland Islands Governor Nigel Haywood, a native of the United Kingdom, in the greenhouse of the Governors Mansion, Stanley, Falklands Islands, a British Overseas Territory. Photographer: Michael Luongo/Bloomberg
Michael Butcher in his yard with whale bones, in Stanley, the Falkland Islands. A welder by trade, Butcher collects and assembles beached whale bones for display in his yard; his house is a favorite stopping point for tourists to Stanley. Photographer: Michael Luongo/Bloomberg
Jan Cheek and Bill Luxton, members of the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly, with a photograph of HRM Queen Elizabeth II, in Stanley, the Falkland Islands. Cheek and Luxton are natives of the islands, with their families going back several generations. Photographer: Michael Luongo/Bloomberg
The interior of the Falkland Islands Museum in Stanley, the Falkland Islands. The museum has a collection of artifacts dating to the earliest history of the islands. Photographer: Michael Luongo/Bloomberg
Christ Church Cathedral on Ross Road is shown in Stanley, Falkland Islands. The 1892 church is one of the largest buildings in Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands. It has a whale bone monument dedicated in 1933 to commemorate a century of British rule. Photographer: Michael Luongo/Bloomberg
About 8,000 miles from London, a
portrait of Queen Elizabeth II stares from the wall of the
Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly. Yet there’s a growing
question about how long the Union Jack will fly as oil
exploration stirs up visions of wealth and independence among a
shifting population.
The pervasive British presence in the Falkland Islands, an
archipelago off the southern tip of Argentina, reflects a
history of U.K. rule since 1833, bolstered by a surge in
patriotism and a homestead movement after the failed 1982
Argentine invasion. About 90 percent of the 2,500 inhabitants
claim birth in Britain or descent from Britons.
Legislative Assemblywoman Jan Cheek, whose family goes back
to 1842 on the islands, said her grandmother never left the
Falklands and “she still called the U.K. home.”
Cheek sees a new identity forming, however. “I think we’ve
reached the stage now where I’m definitely a Falkland Islander
first and British second,” she said.
I came to the Falklands mostly for its famous wildlife,
spread across two main islands, East and West Falkland, and 778
smaller islands in an area roughly the size of Connecticut.
Still, I found the reasons why people moved here just as
fascinating — and increasingly in recent years those people
aren’t Britons.
Pauline Hayward, owner of the Woodbine Cafe, came from
Yorkshire in 1983 because she saw a need she could fill: “I was
reading in the newspaper one day and they were just saying how
they haven’t got a fish-and-chips shop in the Falklands. So I
came. I’m just adventurous I guess.”
The cafe was a simple place, with a strong smell of fish
and grease. There were just a few chairs and tables, a backwards
clock on the wall that kept confusing me, and a long line of
customers who kept breaking into my chat with Hayward.
‘Most British Pub’
At night, loud young men and women spill from Globe Tavern.
Around the corner, the Victory Bar flies St. George flags.
Opened in 1946, it has been owned since 1984 by native Ally
Jacobson and his wife, Cathy, originally from Southampton, U.K.
She lifted a pint, proclaiming Victory “the most British pub in
the Falkland Islands.”
Still, oil worker Pete Taylor of Aberdeen, Scotland, sees
the capital city of Stanley “changing and expanding.” Falkland
Oil Gas Ltd. announced recently that it planned to run tests
in an area “with estimated reserves of 4.7 billion barrels,”
according to a June 9 report of the South Atlantic News Agency.
I met Taylor, who works on an exploratory offshore oil rig,
at the Malvina House Hotel, which recently doubled in size
largely to accommodate oil workers.
‘Only English Person’
Chef Matt Clarke of Surrey oversees the kitchen and
proclaims, “I am the only English person in the hotel.” His
wife, Canadian Jasper Gottschalk, manages the restaurant, a
space adorned with Victorian cast-iron columns and an enormous
window overlooking the harbor. Almost her entire staff is
Chilean.
There are more Chileans at the Falklands Brasserie, owned
by Santiago native Alex Olmedo. He arrived in 1990, when “there
were only 10 Chileans.” Now, almost 250 Chileans live here,
accounting for 10 percent of the population and making Spanish
the second language.
New Zealander Paul Trowell, general manager of the Falkland
Islands Tourist Board, said that with the islands so close to
South America, Chileans are “a really good fit for here. It
brings cultural diversity to the country.”
‘The New Force’
Yet Trowell feels the biggest change goes beyond
demographics. Tourism to the Falklands is rising, but hotel and
apartment rental expansion is really about oil, increasing the
cost of and strain on accommodation. “That’s what happens when
oil is the new force in the town,” he said.
The Falkland Islands economy is almost self-sufficient
thanks to commercial fishing-license fees. The revenue makes up
the major part of the annual 45.5 million pound budget.
One bill that isn’t covered locally is security, seen
partly in the 1,400 soldiers stationed on the Falklands military
base of Mount Pleasant. The motherland pays, but that could
change with major oil discoveries.
Phyl Rendell, the director of mineral resources for the
islands, says there is “really good progress, but no guarantees
that we’re going to get to have a production phase where we’re
going to have large sums of money coming in.”
Rendell, a Falklands native, said, “We’ve been paying our
own way, we’ve been doing that since the fishery was declared
back in 1987, so we’ve got control of our economy and how we
develop it. We’re not beholden to Britain.”
‘British Second’
Conscious of the sovereign in her own office smiling down
on her, Rendell added, “We’re very patriotic toward the Queen.”
But what the 85-year-old monarch represented is changing.
“People are very proud to be Falkland Islanders,” Rendell
said, then echoed the Assemblywoman Cheek. “If you ask a
Falkland Islander who are you, they will say a Falkland Islander
first and British second.”
With oil-exploration maps lying on a table between us, a
look of determination came into Rendell’s face as she said, “If
we could also pay for defense, that would be, you know,
fantastic. That would also be a real bonus.”
That brought up an awkward question: If oil paid for
defense, could the Falklands stop relying on Britain altogether?
“It’s certainly the direction we intend going,” Rendell
said, adding, “Oil revenue would help us to do that, to buy our
independence.”
(Michael Luongo writes on travel for Muse, the arts and
culture section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are
his own.)
To contact the writer of this column:
Michael Luongo at mtluongo@aol.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela
Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
A Solitary Victory for Fish at Wimbledon
The 10th-seeded Fish won his third-round match on Saturday when his opponent, Robin Haase of the Netherlands, retired after 2 hours 34 minutes with leg, back and knee pain. Fish was leading, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-2, 1-1.
Because he is so low-key, Fish is easy to overlook. In an interview Saturday, the American Alex Bogomolov Jr., who lost in the third round to Tomas Berdych in one of several matches played over two days because of rain, said, “Sad to see no more Americans.”
The last American man standing at the All England Club described the feeling.
“Lonely,” Fish said. “It doesn’t feel great. And that’s not the goal. You know, I want the guys here.”
Especially Andy Roddick, who is like a brother to Fish, who lived with Roddick and his parents in Boca Raton, Fla., while attending his senior year of high school at Boca Prep. Fish played alongside Roddick on the basketball and tennis teams, and had his own bedroom and curfew.
He loved Blanche Roddick’s cooking and feared Jerry Roddick’s no-nonsense manner, explaining once, “I didn’t want to do anything to get him mad and kick me out of the house.”
In 2001, two years removed from high school, Roddick cracked the world top 15. Fish, who was No. 141 at the time, needed 10 more years to get there. When he finally arrived inside the top 15, on April 4 of this year, he slipped past Roddick, whose ranking slipped to 14th from 8th.
They came to Wimbledon with Fish ranked No. 9, one spot ahead of Roddick. Stepping out from Roddick’s considerable shadow after more than a decade spent comfortably in it has been weird for Fish.
Being the top-ranked American, he said, “is where you want to be, so it’s a good thing.” But he said he hated to see Roddick, a three-time runner-up here, ambushed in the third round by Feliciano López, who had never beaten him before.
“This is the one he wants to win the most,” Fish said of Roddick, who won the 2003 United States Open. “You’re bummed out for him. You sort of feel gutted for him a little bit.”
Wimbledon and its grass surface would seem a match made in heaven for Fish, who possesses a big serve and an assortment of shots, including a backhand slice that skids and stays low on grass. He is also at home at the net, a throwback who describes moving forward after a serve to hit a volley winner as “kind of a rush, like hitting a home run in baseball.”
Against Haase, Fish went to the net 53 times and won 41 of the points. He also earned 20 break points — including seven in one 28-point game in the second set — three of which he converted.
“It’s one of those things where you just kind of keep throwing darts at the wall and eventually something’s going to stick,” he said.
Fish’s direction and timing have been maddeningly off at Wimbledon. Despite his comfort on the surface, Fish never advanced past the third round in eight previous appearances.
“He’s underachieved here, there’s no doubt about it,” said Justin Gimelstob, a former tour member who works for the Tennis Channel. “He had a good draw last year and probably psyched himself out a little bit.”
Last year, Fish came to Wimbledon fresh off a runner-up appearance at a grass tuneup at Queen’s Club but felt stale in a second-round defeat to Florian Mayer. The loss, in which he produced 30 aces but went 0 for 9 on break points, caused him to look hard at his locomotion. Not on the court but between continents.
The timing of Wimbledon, which starts two weeks after the French Open, creates a conundrum for the American players. If they lose early at Roland Garros, as usually happens lately, they have to decide the best course. Do they travel across the Atlantic to lick their wounds at home for a few days, then fly back to Europe for a grass-court tuneup? Do they fly home, forgo the tuneups and return in time for a few days of practice on grass before Wimbledon? Do they remain in Europe for what amounts to nearly two months away from home?
Staying in Europe is the least appealing of the options for Fish. His homesickness has grown more acute since he and his wife, Stacey, acquired a dachshund, Charlie, who is cared for by a house sitter when they are gone.
This year, after a loss to Gilles Simon in the Round of 32 at the French Open, Fish flew home to Los Angeles and bypassed the Queen’s Club event so he could spend an extra week sleeping in his own bed and eating familiar foods.
“I think last year at this time, I was maybe seven or eight weeks into a trip,” Fish said, adding, “I was spent.”
His presence in the second week here is his rejoinder to the criticism he received for not playing a tuneup tournament.
“You know, I got a little heat for going home and not going to Queen’s,” he said, adding: “In past years, you know, if I didn’t go to Queen’s maybe and just came to Wimbledon straightaway, I probably would have questioned myself. I can’t question it now.”
It was no small deal to survive a match on Court 14, which is so cramped it makes Fenway Park seem cavernous. The crowd is so close, the players can feel its collective breath on their necks during changeovers, and the noise makes it hard for players to hear themselves overthink.
“You almost can’t breathe a little bit,” Fish said. “Security guards are moving around when you’re serving. It’s sort of an uncomfortable court to play on.”
But Fish has proved nothing if not adaptable, carrying his new stature as the United States’ best male tennis player as nimbly as his racket into the second week of Wimbledon. If he goes all the way, he will be the first American man to win a Grand Slam singles title since 2003. Since Roddick, naturally.
Dawson and Sanderson appoints Cook’s Harrison
North of England based high street travel agency chain Dawson and Sanderson has recruited Thomas Cook’s Chris Harrison to the new position of sales and marketing director.
Harrison, who is contracted to work for Cook until September, has been working in the scheduled part of the business based in Preston that incorporates Gold Medal and Netflights.
Chris Pattison, Dawson and Sanderson managing director, said the appointment of Harrison would allow him to relinquish some of his roles and was about “future-proofing� the business.
“We wanted someone of Chris’ calibre to join us and it will also allow me to take more of a back seat in the future. Chris will take a full overview of the business and modernise some of the processes we have here in relation to sales and marketing.
“He will be involved in all areas of the business but our main focus will still be on the high street. He has a good track record at Thomas Cook working in tour operations for a number of years and we have worked with him closely while he has been at Cooks.�
Dawson and Sanderson is poised to mark its 50th anniversary claiming to be one of the few travel firms that has remained in family ownership for such a long period. It has 22 shops spread across the north of England and operates the holidayco.co.uk website which Pattison said has been actively trading for the last 18 months.
Pattison said the site has seen “massive growth�, although conceded that did not mean a “massive amount of business� adding trade on the high street, while down on five years ago, had picked up.
“This is the third recession I have worked through in my travel carreer, it’s not better than the last one and no worse than the last one. The business is still coming in steadily. It bottomed out two years ago, we saw a bit of growth last year and a bit this year.
“Interestingly enough people in the north still book their holidays quite early – we have most business in for this financial year, which ends in August.� Pattison said he would not rule out further expansion on the high street if the right opportunities came along.
Premium air travel growth dropping, economy up-IATA
GENEVA |
GENEVA (Reuters) – International air travel in first and business class has slumped because of Japan’s nuclear crisis, weakening world trade and Middle East turmoil, the industry body IATA said on Monday.
It said economy class travel rebounded in April, ending 3 percent up on the start of the year, but the surge could be curbed by fuel cost rises that weigh more on price-sensitive flights used by tourists and individual travellers.
In April the so-called premium travel market was 1.3 percent smaller than at the start of the year and was growing at only half the 5-6 percent annual rate it hit in the second half of 2010, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Much of the weakness was due to the fall-out of the devastating March tsunami and ensuing nuclear crisis in Japan, and partly to political upheaval scaring off travel to the Middle East and North Africa, the monthly IATA report said.
“But business confidence and world trade have also weakened. As a result, this softness in premium travel is expected to extend through the rest of the second quarter.”
IATA represents carriers accounting for some 93 percent of global flights.
IATA chief economist Brian Pearce told the association’s annual conference in Singapore earlier this month that business travel was still solid and the current dip was unlikely to be permanent.
But Monday’s report said the outlook was for the soft patch to continue for the next few months.
IATA said comparisons of the April figures with the same months last year, when there was a huge drop in international travel due to the Iceland volcanic ash crisis that shut down much European air space for several days, were invalid.
“Stripping out distortions, our best estimate is that annualised growth has slowed from 5-6 percent in the second half of last year to around half that so far this year,” it said. (Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Rain threatens to ruin players’ Wimbledon preparations
Heavy rain on Friday played havoc with the schedule at the AEGON International and put players’ Wimbledon preparations in jeopardy.
With the grass-court slam starting on Monday, the event is scheduled to finish on Saturday to allow players time to travel to London and get in some practice at the All England Club.
But with the men’s and women’s semi-finalists yet to make it onto the court, the players face having to play both the semi-finals and final in one day.
And with the likes of Sam Stosur and Petra Kvitova still in the draw at Devonshire Park, they will be keen to get proceedings done and dusted.
Fifth seed Kvitova is due to face Daniela Hantuchova in the first of the women’s semi-finals, while Stosur, who came from behind to beat top seed Vera Zvonareva on Thursday, takes on former Wimbledon finalist Marion Bartoli.
Janko Tipsarevic, who had to play two matches on Thursday, is the lone seed remaining in the men’s draw. Tipsarevic is drawn to face Japan’s Kei Nishikori, while Andreas Seppi and Igor Kunitsyn go head-to-head in the second semi-final.
Should conditions improve later on Friday, officials have confirmed they will use two courts in a bid to make up for lost time.
Meanwhile at the UNICEF Open in the Netherlands, Jelena Dokic remains on course for a second title of the year after Italy’s Romina Oprandi gifted her a place
in Saturday’s final. Dokic was a set and a break to the good when the Italian retired with a wrist injury. Dokic will face another Italian in the final after Roberta Vinci beat Dominika Cibulkova 7-5 6-1.
In the men’s final, Dimitry Tursunov will take on Ivan Dodig after the pair won their respective semi-finals against Xavier Malisse and Marcos Baghdatis.
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