Frank and Joan's news for 25 January 2009 in Northern Cyprus

Frank and Joan's Adventures in Northern Cyprus

Our adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....

At last some substantial amounts of rain. It has in fact been pouring steady rain for the last 24 hours to the extent that our garden is flooding. Guess that all this extra rain in the pool has overflowed into the balance tank, so now, when it is dryer outside I will have to drop in the submersible pump and pump it out in to our garden tank. Lets just hope that it continues for the next week, so that the reservoirs and wells start to fill up ready for the summer.

Is it me or is everything I read these days designed to make us even more gloomy and downcast. The UK papers are just full of depression and now it is starting here as well. The only bright thing this week was the presidential inauguration in USA. Let us hope that all that people hope from him comes true. The man has a tremendous job in front of him, time will tell if he is up to it.

This weeks newspaper is supposed to be an economy special. The headline starts off "New businesses doomed

to fail". Nice positive stuff. In fact the article suggests that as many as 600 businesses per month are going broke here and hundreds more start up already doomed to failure. It is a statistical fact here that one in every two families own their own business, as they believe that this is the way forward, but most don't realise how difficult it is to financially manage your own business and that the size of the population here doesn't justify all these shops and businesses. Still they try and when it goes wrong start pleading with the government for money to resolve the problems. This is private enterprise?

The other section of the paper is an Election Special. There is a general election on April 19th 2009 and already the infighting is starting. Begs the question, does any possible replacement have enough experience to ride the world storm and to change things here.

Lots of articles on the property situation and the Greek Cypriot are supposedly taking a hard line on ownership of land and waiting in the wings to pounce on any EU ruling on the Orams case. All of this is not surprising as both Presidents are about to start discussions on the property issue. What I find outstanding still is that there is no TRNC propaganda that tells the rest of the world and particularly to EU, that the world did not start here in 1974 and the original cause of the problem came from Greece and the South. A typical example of this is a speech made by the Greek Cypriot member of the EU at a dinner, where he described the Turkish army in Cyprus as an invasion force. For goodness sake, what did he expect Turkey to do, stand around and watch whilst their own people here where massacred. A huge propaganda opportunity for the Turks, which seems to be going begging.

Enough of all this negative, I am going to watch Liverpool/Everton so that I can come back with a smile on my face.