Conservation Area - Build if you can!

I was out yesterday in the Serra de Arrábida, doing a spot of Geocaching (of which more on another occasion) and was amazed to find, up on the top of a hill, apparently new houses. All along the road that crosses the summit are markers defining the limits of plots.

The markers are painted with the red letters "AXL", which everybody south of the Tagus knows stands for António Xavier de Lima, known for being the major landowner ever since the 1974 revolution. How he can possibly have registered the land and a zoning plan in a Conservation Area beats me, but there is definitely construction going on up there. Does Setúbal council know, or just choose not to look?

Another example of the sad culture of getting away with as much as possible...

BCP Directors unfit?

Once again the genius who runs the Bank of Portugal (BoP) leaves us amazed. After many, many years of supervising BCP, he reaches the conclusion that no former Board Directors (Administradores) of BCP may run for office in the new administration! However, no details are released of formal action being taken against any of them, for breach of statutory duty, negligence, fraud, tax evasion....

Hang on a minute. If the BoP has such sweeping powers to disqualify directors, what took it so long? If not, as appears obvious, where is due process?

Once again, he had descended from his ivory tower, issued inane statements and retreated, leaving everyone to wonder what is really going on. How did the BoP inspection teams fail to analyse the loan write-offs to related parties? What does the BoP really do, other than pay fat salaries to its staff? I said he should go two years ago. How much longer must we wait?