Green Day

In Lisbon, Monday September 28, 2009


FUCKING BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!

Mark Knopfler in Lisbon

Mark Knopfler played at Campo Pequeno in Lisbon last night. I took my guitar-crazy elder son. It was SUPERB! Backed by excellent musicians with dozens of guitars and other instruments on stage, one of the all-time great guitarrists gave us a great show of musical prowess, though with his usual low-key presentation style.

I was worried that, like so many musicians who have been around for a long time, he would insist on playing only his recent music, but I was proven wrong. The balance between Dire Straits and his solo work was perfect. When the audience started getting restless with the wonderful, but unknown, recent guitar work, better known tracks appeared to liven us up again. Starting with Sailing to Philadelphia and Why Aye Man, he went on through more recent songs, that I must admit I can't name, to excellent versions of Romeo and Juliet, Sultans of Swing and Telegraph Road.

Campo Pequeno was packed with a very participative audience, including a lower than usual quota of adolescent idiots to disrupt proceedings. At the end Mark Knopfler and the band appeared impressed by the audience's enthusiasm, playing four encore songs, including Brothers in Arms before being sped away in comfort leaving the fans to face the only negative experience of the evening - more than half-an-hour to get out of the underground car park. So while I can recommend Campo Peqeuno as a venue, don't even think of parking there.

Nothing Doing

José Sá Fernandes yesterday went to the Feira das Galinheiras to meet the voters and complain how, in six years of PSD administration in Lisbon, nothing has been done in the area. The press went with him, to report on the stagnation in Lumiar - it's a shame he was actually in Ameixoeira.

In fact, the Feira has suffered from the construction of the Eixo Norte-Sul roundabout - a State highway project - and most of its patrons are probably from Loures anyway. The Lisbon side of the Feira has seen all the shanty housing demolished and the residents re-housed to a housing project that won this year's INH prize. There is renovation everywhere.

So what the hell was he talking about? Maybe it's that he, the great "embargador" has been unable to find anything to criticise in the Alta de Lisboa area during his time in office. So it's just sour grapes. More likely, it's just political opportunism of the worst kind, as we've come to expect from the man who cost the City 4 million euros just to get his name in the papers. We can but hope that he doesn't get elected, as looks likely from the latest polls...

Strange Democracy (2)

The other strange democratic happening of the last few weeks has been the collapse of Lisbon City Council. How is it possible that the PSD sees fit to paralise the largest City in Portugal because its (independent) mayor was asked by the public prosecutor to make declarations about a matter that clearly is not his fault nor responsability.

So now, rather than working to manage a complicated city and clear the backlog of payments, planning decisions, etc., the politicians have six weeks to make fatuous declarations, slander each other, and generally waste everybody's time.

First off the line was Helena Roseta, with her indignant insistence that the City's accounts should be published on its website for all to see. Brilliant! How many voters could actually make sense of such accounts? Is the treasury problem the fault of Carmona Rodrigues (doubt it), or Santana Lopes (probably) or even João Soares? What will she come up with next?

My principal hope is that voters send a message to the PSD, pushing them into 4th place behind the two independents. Not that the party would take much notice - the important party representatives are almost guaranteed to be elected with this party list system: proportional representation, for the benefit of the powerful, not the voter.