Justin's Life

On the 31st May this year, nine men from Paddle4Heroes are going to paddle from Gibraltar to Marbella in Spain by kayak to raise funds for Help for Heroes and a new charity called Families of The Fallen. Both of these charities should touch the heart of anyone British, as they are at the forefront of helping servicemen and women recover from the trauma of war.

Find out more information on Nick Snelling's blog

My good friend Chris Marshall recently wrote an article for the Telegraph website title "Doing something you love is the secret to expat happiness" which those looking to move to Spain and setting up a business here should read.

It's tough enough setting yourself up in business but it's so much easier to do it when it's about something you love or a topic which you are passionate about.

I also get mentioned in the article so it's worth reading just for that really

And if you're wondering who this Chris Marshall guy is, well, in addition to his Telegraph Expat column Chris runs a couple of expat blogs (www.almerimarlife.com and www.expatlifespain.com), is heavily involved in his wires cat re-homing and transport project (www.alstrays.com), and pays the bills contributing to a number of sites including www.campaya.co.uk the Word Wide holiday rental specialists and www.spain-holiday.com the holiday lettings in Spain specialists.

I was reading this article on the BBC news website today and wondering how Spain can possibly sustain an ever increasing number of unemployed people in the country.

The figure now stands at 5.3 million unemployed, representing a difficult-to-believe, 22.8% of the population.

And it gets worse if you're young.  If you're fortunate to be between 16 - 24 then you'll be unfortunate in being 48.6% likely to be unemployed.

These are shocking statistics. 

If nearly a quarter of the population aren't working and half the young people aren't either, and the jobless rate keeps increasing, I can't see this getting any better for years to come.  The problem appears to be too big with no obvious or immediate solution.

With so many people out of work it means they have less money to spend, which means more businesses will start to struggle, which means that more people will be heading towards the (un)employment office.

It also means that the government will be earning less money in taxes and shelling out even more money to cover the spiraling jobless rate.

I'd love to be more positive about things but realistically it does seem that things have to get worse still before they get better.

And anyone reading this hoping to move to Spain and get a job here....I don't think I need to say anything further.

Manilva is a small village.  There's only a handful of shops, a chemist, an opticians and more importantly, a few bars.

But being small it also only has one bank and therefore one cash machine.  If you're in Manilva and you've no cash on you to buy a beer, you need to use the local cash machine to withdraw some crispy new notes.

That was me today.

The bank in Manilva is Unicaja and it belongs to a network of cash machines which display the "Euro 6000" logo.

My bank doesn't belong to this network, instead it's part of the Servired network of cash machines.

But, I needed a beer this evening and proceeded to squeeze my card into the cash machine.  I requested €30 and was then shocked to see that they were going to charge me €2.40 for the privilege!  That's just extortionate.  That's the price of two and half small beers.

But the draw of the beer was too great so I begrudingly accepted it and trotted off down to the bar to recover from the ordeal.

Surely they cannot justify such a ridiculous fee?

Next time I go into Manilva I'll be much better prepared...cash in pocket or no beer.

Graham Hunt has done it again.  Every time he does something new he just seems to nail it so well.

His latest endeavour is a new weekly PDF magazine called Spain Is Different, and I really like it!  He highlights some great stuff in it, all very honest and real.  None of this fluffed-up crap you get so often.

He's just published his third issue and I would recommend you subscribe to it so that you get it in your inbox every week.

Have a read of the latest issue here (best to right-click that link and save it to your PC as it's a PDF).

And you can subscribe to it yourself here.

I'm really keen to see how Graham develops this magazine going forward.  It's the best I've seen in ages...I just don't know how he finds the time to do so much these days!

Hope you enjoy the mag.