Just a warning via the local press that the A9 here at the spanish border will be blocked on tuesday next, 19th by the agriculturers in a protest once again. This will be west of Perpignan at the last toll exit ( la Boulou).
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Thanks, checked your local press, as we’re driving down to Spain on Thurs, but can’t see if this specific disruption is Tues only or will be ongoing. Had expected something near the border as usual, but had understood they were only going to target roundabouts and prefectures.
Could you pick me up a head of cabbage and a kilo of sprouts pls.
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On our return journey the car’ll probably be full with Catalan vermut…
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Couldn,t see any mention of what the farmers blockade is for,anybody shed any light on what the latest problem is,thanks.
Several things - but the main one is the possibility of an EU - Mercosur trade agreement that be signed in the near future and which they not only feel would undercut them, but would also allow meat products into the EU that would not conform to internal meat production standards.
Despite Michel Barnier having said that no way would France accept this, Occitanie farmers are going to block Spanish imports in protest.
Because they can’t drive their tractors to South America?
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Thanks for the detail.As this was agreed 25 years ago but never implemented and the fact that Germany and Spain are in favour ,i think it may well go ahead.Obviously the UK must have implemented it as i remember buying a lot of sirloin steak imported from Argentina(very good it was too),when we lived in England in the early 2000,s,when the UK was a major player in the EU(remember the good old days).
I’d also always had a high opinion of Argentinian steak and was surprised too. Just found this
Why is Argentine Beef the Best? | WorldClass.
I’m sure the beef’s already been coming in for years as a couple of times we’ve eaten in a superb grill house in a small town (whose name I forget) NE of Toulouse.
Anyhow, even if the beef’s OK, looking at comments in our local press, it’s obviously all Macron’s fault, as of course is everything. Which is why they need to block Spanish imports.
La Jonquera shopping mall has been enlarged so take a bit of time to check the brand name stores that have arrived.
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Argentine beef heading to England has a long history. There was a whole shipping line built on it, Blue Star.
I sailed back to the UK on the last Blue Star Line sailing out of Santos Brazil in 1979.
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Exactly.
They want to avoid the same type of disastrous trade treaty that Liz Truss agreed with Australia.
Argentina is going MAGA and leaves the COP27…
Brazils environmentsl record is not exactly great either.
Both could torpedo a deal with the EU (mercosur).
I think the farmers in Europe are right to protest. And sure hope the EU trade negotiators will re negotiate for another 25 years
Didn’t realise that they were no more.
On a related subject, how many passengers did they carry on what was, after all, a freighter?
I have long thought that if ever I was to travel overseas again, unlikely, it would only be as passenger on a cargo ship. I had heard that they have an upper age limit though for insurance purposes, not carrying medical staff on board.
There were 5 of us. And we were a strange bunch! Elderly couple (Brits) who spent their lives travelling the world. A sad elderly Jewish lady whose husband had to be taken off at Montevideo - heart trouble. And an elderly Anglo-Argentinian lady who was a Nazi and unbelievable in her comments to the Jewish lady.
We had wonderful wood and brass private ensuite cabins and a lounge where we met in the evenings (til I found the crew’s bar!) We ate at the Captain’s table and he regaled us with stories of Blue Star Line in its heyday. The only one I remember is how the ships used to be restocked by Harrods before every trip.
Only time in my life I’ve been a sex symbol! Mind you, there wasn’t much competition.
I get sick on planes and on boats and decided as it was my journey home to try the boat - I took travel sickness pills every day for 10 days til I got my sea legs. I had two huge wooden boxes made for me which contained my luggage and they were craned on board and stored in the sick bay (at no extra cost).
The hold contained Argentinian oranges which were loaded wet. By the time the hold was opened in Rotterdam the fruit was rotten - no one seemed that fussed.
We came into Newhaven and I remember the crew panicking about where to hide the Argentinian beef they were bringing into the country (illegally I assume) as the customs guys came on board.
I’m glad I’ve done it but wouldn’t do it again. You have to be very tolerant of other human beings to be in that close proximity with a small group like that. It was the crew who kept me sane!
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Sounds wonderful, so you came aboard outward bound to BA then?
My first ship, the St. John, my first coast, SA, calling at Recife, Rio, Santos, Rio Grande do Sul, BA and up the Parana river to Rosario. If only I’d known it was my best ship, 2 trips on her and then it all went downhill via New York, the Gulf and Sydney.
Because I hate flying I have often thought over the years when urged to answer invitations to Oz and Bangkok, that a sea voyage like that would be just the ticket, but probably too old now as I said before about insurance etc.
I once worked for the owners of Blue Star, back in about 1960, the Vestey family owned Weddels (the wholesale meat company where I was a clerk in Nottingham and then Bedford), Dewhursts the butchers and a very large cattle station in the NT of Oz. Independant, or bloody, minded, Lord Vesty eschewed both the outgoing road train British marques and the incoming US ones and imported specially 2 monsters from England called Rotinoffs. Not sure how long they lasted but one of them is preserved in Alice Springs I believe.
I might enquire but I fear too late. 
No, I was going back to the UK so the ship had come up from Buenos Aires and then Montevideo. I boarded in Santos and it then went up to Rio where I met friends and sat in their flat on their sofa, which moved up and down as I sat on it - most disconcerting. But then I used to get seasick on a swing.
This is what my cabin looked like:
Thinking about it now, I’m not sure it was the last crossing for Blue Star Line, just the last sailing of the ship I was on. I must see if I can find the photos I took of it.
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I too once worked for the Vesteys, in a very minor capacity - when I was a student I had a holiday job as a shop assistant at the Tannery Shop behind their tannery in Gomshall, Surrey (now long gone and replaced with a housing estate).
The tannery was quite smelly but I learned a bit about different leathers and sheepskins working there. The shop was run by a formidable blonde Austrian lady called Mrs Dale (married to a very placid Englishman), whose politics were somewhat reminiscent of her former compatriot Mr A Hitler…
The Vesteys were a bunch of tax-dodging crooks though… 
In 1915, the Vestey brothers moved to Buenos Aires to avoid paying income tax in the UK after being refused an exemption by David Lloyd George. * In 1980, a Financial Times investigation revealed the tax avoidance scheme. The Vesteys paid only ÂŁ10 tax on profits of ÂŁ2.3 million in 1978.
One Inland Revenue officer described dealing with the Vesteys’ tax affairs as “like trying to squeeze a rice pudding”.
The Vesteys’ grandson, also named Edmund, said, “Let’s face it. Nobody pays more tax than they have to. We’re all tax dodgers aren’t we?”.
By 1999, the Vesteys had fallen from being the second wealthiest family in the UK to 150th.
That’s posh, my single berth on the St. John was only a little bit smaller though. My next ship, the awful Queen Mary, was totally different, we lived below the waterline in what seemed like cramped barracks, couldn’t wait to get off when we got back to Southampton.
Then to the tanker. The ship was ok but tanker life is very different, in and out of port in 24 hours, not much shore leave and surrounded by died in the wool tankermen who liked that kind of life. I crept off it in Sydney and then hid under the Harbour Bridge 'till I watched her sail away. 
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