Ownership

I've finally finished my article for planeta about ownership: http://www.planeta.com/planeta/06/0607ownership.html
Thank God for that.

And now got launched into a heatening debate on pro-poor tourism which I seem to have written a lot about lately.

We're a complicated bunch (us humans I mean) I think we all mean well but sometimes we get it sooo wrong. Take propoor tourism. There's a lot of poverty in the world. Places like Spain were quite poor in the 1950's. They made loads of money by creating a tourism industry, and everybody shared in the tourism currency. Now we've got more poor people, let's help them to develop tourism of their own and make lots of money like the Spanish did. That's how the thinking goes.

We're right up to the line in the MDG's (remember, we agreed to halve poverty by 2015?). Tourism may do, think the Development agencies. "Let's make it happen" they say.

Now the big discussion is young tourism consultants who charge $1000 a day to help tourism eradicate poverty. They're only doing their jobs. It's not charity. They had to submit to a recruitment formula.

It may not be wrong but it's perhaps a little inept, isn't it? Or do the basket-case economies get the cheap consultants?

By the way, I'm still formenting over my trip back from London last Sunday (after the stag). It was hot, the train was packed and the train company (South West Trains) took a carriage off. Who knows why.

Over the last 20 years we've been fed so much rubbish in the travel business, we don't believe anything anymore. Friends of mine (accountants) were so happy to break up and sell off the railways to people who'd actually make money out of them. Nobody said how they'd do it. By screwing the customers, that's how, it always is.