CYPRUS produces more smooth-talking lawyers and politicians per head of the population than any of its EU partners.
Occupied and exploited for millennia, perhaps we adopted artifice as a means to survive; seemingly hospitable, smiling and submissive we welcome anyone to our shores. Wine and dine them and then rob them.
Yet why permit several bad apples to give an entire orchard a bad name? At least our government doesn’t forcibly extort money from citizens like most of our EU partners do with their crippling tax regimes. Ours prefers to nibble at the corners of your wealth not tax it at source, and that’s why expats come, stay and enjoy our wonderful climate, scenery, exceptionally low crime rate and delicious fodder.
When I bought a house in France the notary (merely a collector of government taxes who acts for both vendor and purchaser) claimed that every foreign purchaser brings another five. Twenty years later, the number of foreign residents in that region had risen from six to 600. I was personally responsible for bringing 30, mostly non-French speaking friends, who relied on my command of the language and acquaintance with the locals, their customs – builders, plumbers, electricians, etc.
We all dream of a house in the sun, a peaceful and secure existence, especially during those twilight years. Yet few bother with the locals or where a house is situated prior to purchase other than not near a pig farm – easy to spot when standing downwind.
Near the village of Kornos there are pig farms set in hills, rolling fields and a variety of established and well dispersed trees. You can see and smell the farms from the Limassol/Nicosia highway; no residential property is situated within half a mile.
“Welcome sir,” said the beaming developer to the prospectors. “Sit down, how do you take your coffee? Would Madam care for one of our renowned sweetmeats and a soft drink?”
The prospectors sat and then posed a few direct questions at the developer, who artfully avoided giving direct answers, and before they’d even sipped the cream of the coffee or Madam had taken a dainty bite of the sweetmeat, they’d purchased a concrete slab from plan situated 100 metres from one of those pigs farms screened by a variety of established and well dispersed trees.
Developments near animal farms, sewerage works, planned motorways, quarries, industrial estates, and on the coast fronted by wasteland that can later be built on obstructing the view, are all no go areas for a peaceful and secure existence in one’s twilight years.
Then why do some prospectors sign on the dotted line and hand over huge deposits so easily? Is it because developers, lawyers, planning departments and banks treat prospectors like mushrooms – keeping them in the dark? Partly yes, but the main reason is due to a clash of cultures – total ignorance by prospectors of our centuries’ old artful ways.
Transparency must become a byword; transparent contracts, Land Registry, easy access to Planning Departments and their area plans, banker’s Terms & Conditions and the liquidity or not of a developer’s accounts, property and land deeds held by banks as collateral, etc. This done, opportunities abound for development and growth on this wonderful island.
Europeans are growing older and refusing to die; I can see it now, retiree estates littering the landscape were it not for our sell and be damned philosophy.
When it comes to a new car, home, household goods, legal advice, etc after-sales service here is non-existent. We are fast buck merchants and little else! Unless this economy offers adequate after-sales service, competent health care, non EU migrant home help and hordes of sub-continental handymen and gardeners, Cyprus is doomed to suffer the worst effects of this recession.
New golf courses, motorways and marinas are not the answer to our economic woes. Retirees are! Who needs Qatar? We should be building bingo halls, social centres for the aged, warden assisted housing estates, care homes, and of course, crematoria! Dying is guaranteed – eventually!
Thousands of new builds stand unsold in the north, many unfinished on the road linking the towns of Famagusta and Bhogazi. Similar examples exist in the district of Paphos, less so in those of Limassol and Larnaca. But our myopic Minister of Finance, Charlilaos Stavrakis pretends that yet another billion euro bond to be issued this autumn will extricate our bankrupt housing market from this mess. Can we believe him or, like the last three issues, will this one simply further delay the muck from hitting the fan?
The EU Agricultural Policy forces farmers to specialise, why not specify countries for retirees? Why not advertise Cyprus as ‘the island of Aphrodite and those twilight years’? Now that’s what I call vision! Who are today’s big spenders if not the over sixties, who would willingly invest in a Cyprus designated by the EU as The Retirement Home of Tomorrow? Besides, retirees are so much easier to rob…especially when they don’t speak the language and are totally unfamiliar with the artful ways of this island’s people.
