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2023 Mar 26 - French Protests
The clocks are going back this weekend, which means that commuters on Southern Rail might be lucky enough to see the trains turn up 20 minutes early. Unfortunately it's a busy weekend for staff at Windsor Castle where gardening team will have to rotate all the sundials by 15 degrees
There was the inquiry into Partygate, setting out to determine whether Boris was suitable to manage a party, whether it be the the Conservative Party or that other one with all the wine
Anger in cheshire after a woman was buried at the wrong grave. I can't blame the husband for being angry at the gravedigger, I bet he lost the plot
Somewhere else that lost the plot this week was France and Paris especially where it's just been a constant orgy of destruction with protestors taking to the streets to protest the government. I saw a baker being interviewed and he said that his mother's sister was very angry, something about a cross aunt. Officially, the protesting is about the government's decision to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 but in reality there's a lot of other things going on here, from how much the sanitation workers get paid to the price of fuel and then you have the farmers enviously seeing what just happened across the border in Holland where there Farmer–Citizen Movement managed to somehow go from one seat to becoming the largest party in the upper chamber.
But back to France. Charles de Gaulle said "How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?" The answer in this case is a little part of the French Constitution, 49 subsection 3, which gives the President almost absolute power to push through laws unless the parliament votes to dissolve the assembly in protest. It's the power that De Gaulle himself designed for handling the Algerian crisis in the 60s and in this case they weren't keen to bring down the government over what would a common sense issue in most countries. Although it is of course not the same as other countries. They eat snails, for instance, largely I think due to a misunderstanding about it not being fast food. And the started building the Eiffel Tower but seemingly never finished it because the last time I visited, it looked like it still had a huge metal scaffolding around it. You also have its history as a hotbed of multiple revolutions although I was once told that you should never joke about French history because it is nothing to Lafayette. You can keep these jokes by the way, they're french and therefore royalty free. As to the protestors, best of luck to them I guess but if they don't like President Macron, they should maybe have not voted him in, twice. One other piece of advice I'll give out is that if you get arrested and want to escape, try shouting angrily in German, that seems to work from what I hear.
The clocks are going back this weekend, which means that commuters on Southern Rail might be lucky enough to see the trains turn up 20 minutes early. Unfortunately it's a busy weekend for staff at Windsor Castle where gardening team will have to rotate all the sundials by 15 degrees
There was the inquiry into Partygate, setting out to determine whether Boris was suitable to manage a party, whether it be the the Conservative Party or that other one with all the wine
Anger in cheshire after a wo ......
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2022 Apr 24 - French Election
- Amusing scenes at the world snooker championship as a pigeon flew onto the table. Although some of us are old enough to remember when a Parrot won the tournament in 1991
- A story about a double decker on fire in Glasgow, which is certainly a step up from a fried Mars Bar
- The UN have declared David Attenbourough 'champion of the earth' although I missed the fight, maybe it was on pay-per-view. He seems a bit old to be doing that sort of thing too although I guess that never stopped the later Rocky films.
The main story is potentially the French Election, Macron won although the way that the election was spun by the media was strange to say the least. Marine LePenn advocated for higher taxes, reducing the retirement age and a wave of socialist spending and therefore was portrayed as right wing extremist. In contrast, Macron is an arch capitalist and ex-Goldman Sachs banker who was therefore portrayed as a leftist candidate by a sympathetic media. In many respects that's far from the maddest set of ideas to emerge from France although to be honest neither of their ambitions boded well for anyone else other than the French although it's a moot point given that Emmanuel Macron is about as likely to enact any of his policies on the French public as I am mine. It's been several years after all since the gilets jaunes put a stop to any traction on his green policies and if people are buying fewer cars it's mostly down to endless industrial action bringing car factories in France to a standstill.
It is important to note the fact that despite Macron winning that election, nearly a half the country voted for a candidate that the media had spent months portraying as some sort of modern Elizabeth Báthory chracter. Surely it must raise eyebrows that despite the entire French establishment orchestrating a propaganda war against Le Penn, she still won nearly half the electorate, you have to wonder what would have happened if they'd remained neutral but France isn't historically the sort of place that sits on the philosophical fence about things. De Gaulle famously said "How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?"
And of course, Typically Russia was blamed for behind everything because of course they are. The place is portrayed as a skilful and calculating adversary that schemes things all around the world and undermines democracy through skill and a professionally run espionage service. Except it seems like they'd struggle to run a bath, let alone a subversive anti-democracy campaign. Le Penn was on the ballot because her views are highly popular, not because Vladimir Putin orchestrated it.
Putin's army has this year shown itself to be unable to win a war against a country with a GDP about the size of Birmingham. They constantly attempt to poison people yet somehow fail every time (Sergei and Yulia Skripal are still alive by the way) and Putin seems to have a success rate similar when it comes to killing his enemies, as that of the Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons. It honestly makes you think the cold war could have ended in the 60s if Kuschev had been nudged into starting a traditional land war, gotten bogged down and led to the USSR collapsing before the Beatles could sing about being back in it.
- Amusing scenes at the world snooker championship as a pigeon flew onto the table. Although some of us are old enough to remember when a Parrot won the tournament in 1991
- A story about a double decker on fire in Glasgow, which is certainly a step up from a fried Mars Bar
- The UN have declared David Attenbourough 'champion of the earth' although I missed the fight, maybe it was on pay-per-view. He seems a bit old to be doing that sort of thing too although I guess that never stopped the later ......
2021 Sep 19 - French Submarine Deal
This week:
There was also a cabinet reshuffle in the UK and there were reports that a lot of government ministers were sweating worst than the Prime Minister on Fathers Day
I saw a a report from Louisiana about a 200lb alligator on the lose that had eaten someone. Presumably though it was actually a 100lb alligator, at least before dinner
A number of venues are asking for proof of a negative test before they let you in, I have an old friend who’s taken to carrying around the letter saying he failed the 11-plus. It’s not that kind of test, no wonder he failed it…
But the big story was the news that Australia has canceled a deal to buy Submarines from France and will instead be doing a deal with the UK and America. The land down under is putting some boats down under (the ocean surface). This is all part of the ever increasing militarization of the pacific region as the US and Australia square off against China in what people are calling a new cold war, possibly inspired by the general trend to keep commission things based on 1970s & 80s nostalgia. I recently read a history book about year 1984 and you forget how different the world was back then, even the countries had different names like Oceania. I believe the author, a Mr G Orwell ended up writing policy for the European Commission.
Anyway, the submarine deal. The Australians had previously offered to pay €90bn to purchase diesel electric submarines but this last week this was torpedoed when they decided to buy nuclear submarines from a join UK-US proposal. There’s a sense of irony now that after Australia opted to literally go for the nuclear option, France has metaphorically gone for the nuclear option, recalling its ambassadors from Australia and the United States and accusing the UK of destroying any remaining sense of post-Brexit camaraderie. If you ask me, I think France probably did that, when they decided to task their navy with assisting economic migrants who wanted to sail from Calais to Britain. They’re now demanding compensation from the 3 countries involved, if I were in charge I’d send them a tanker full of cheap Ozzy wine, processed American cheese and a bill for the HMS Sheffield. Maybe appoint Katie Price as an ambassador while I’m at it in order to kill two birds with one stone.
Let’s finish with a submarine joke. A British, an American and a North Korean captain are bragging about their submarines and how long they can stay underwater. The British captain starts off saying: "Our submarines can stay underwater for 6 months before having to resurface!". The American replies: "Pff, that's nothing. Our submarines can go for a whole 3 years and never have to come to the surface once!". At this point the North Korean starts laughing and says: "Oh boys, that's really cute and all, but we launched a submarine in 1968 and it hasn't surfaced yet!".
This week:
There was also a cabinet reshuffle in the UK and there were reports that a lot of government ministers were sweating worst than the Prime Minister on Fathers Day
I saw a a report from Louisiana about a 200lb alligator on the lose that had eaten someone. Presumably though it was actually a 100lb alligator, at least before dinner
A number of venues are asking for proof of a negative test before they let you in, I have an old friend who’s taken to carrying around the letter saying he f ......
2021 Jun 12 - St Ives G7
There’s been a G7 meeting in St Ives and Jo Biden even flew over earlier in the week to meet with Boris and discuss the really tough questions ahead of time: things like whether to get to Cornwall via the M4 or the A303, always a tough one that. You probably remember that nursery rhyme, “As I was gong to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives” but contrary to the lyrics, no middle eastern leaders were invited. I jest of course, the man with 7 wives is more likely to be the prime minister.
Joe Biden has of course been trying of course to get people to sign up to his minimum tax pledge which is likely to be good for the UK economy as the financial services industry signs lucrative contracts to help companies relocate the earnings overseas to a non-G7 country. As they say, tax needn’t be taxing though it should be if you do a good job organising your income, just ask any of my 28 declared dependants, I make so many deducations they should call me Sherlock. Amway, sleepy uncle Joe’s plan will work great, just as long as they somehow convince Hong Kong, Monaco, Bermuda and Switzerland to sign up to high taxes. Luxumberg is more likely to win this month’s football tournament than sign up to and, more importantly, enforce those tax proposals on foreign companies.
As the other leaders in attendance, there’s Emmanual Macron who’s enjoying his last summer as President before he gets trounced in next year’s election. France is a real mess these days, despite having a town called Nice. I should probably do an extended video on it one day but we’re in a situation similar to the Algeria crisis in the 60s with the army opening penning letters about a military takeover, all while members of the public hold Macron in utter distain, we was recently slapped in the face at a recent walkabout. In paris itself the un-rebuilt shell of Notre Dame cathedral stands as a metaphor for government incompetency and malaise. It’s going to take a decade or more and personally if I were Macron I’d bring in the Germans to get it sorted, I mean they finished a thousand year reich in under 12 years, they do things fast.
As to the conference itself, the only real questions being discussed were what to do with regards to Covid. If they had any nerve of course then they’d publish the evidence and go all in on China with a full set of economic sanctions, get the 7 economies to circle round Beijing like the Hyenas at the end of the Lion King. Or it’s President Jinping so maybe a Winnie the Poo reference would be more appropriate. As things stand nothing of substance has come out from it but as usual
“progress had been made on a number of major issues” by which of course they mean lunch, and perhaps agreeing on a release date for that new James Bond film. That’s been delayed so long they should rename it “for no eyes only”
There’s been a G7 meeting in St Ives and Jo Biden even flew over earlier in the week to meet with Boris and discuss the really tough questions ahead of time: things like whether to get to Cornwall via the M4 or the A303, always a tough one that. You probably remember that nursery rhyme, “As I was gong to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives” but contrary to the lyrics, no middle eastern leaders were invited. I jest of course, the man with 7 wives is more likely to be the prime minister.
......
2021 Apr 04 - France/EU/Astrazeneca
Tragedy as a 51 people were killed in a horrific train derailment, the accident was labeled, “made in Taiwan”
The BBC also announced that Sue Cook was going to be leaving A Question of Sport, presumably along with most of its viewers
And in Covid news, Scotland lifted its ‘stay at home’ rule, although it’s not expected to have any impact on whether the football team travels to the World Cup next year
The big story for me this week though has been the increasingly farcical situation involving France, the EU and the Astra Zeneca Vaccine. It’s perhaps worth looking at the timeline of what’s been going on
1. The EU made an absolute pigs ear of it’s Covid response, from evangelising on open borders in the midst of a pandemic, to promising a strong financial response that was a little bit like the dragon my little boy drew the other day, very cool on paper but utterly fictitious
2. The UK on the other hand is a world medical research leaders and was quick to test, license and roll out drugs faster than someone backstage at Woodstock. It even also rained a lot. But we ended up in a situation where for a while there were more vaccinated Germans living in the UK than there were in Germany
3. The president of France is Emmanual Macron and he played the EU anthem at his inauguration and sees the bloc as something to be embraced as a tool for French supremacy. He tried to block vaccine exports from Belgium and Italy in order to divert them to France and later when that failed miserably he was the ultimate bad loser and started spreading conspiracy theories about the Astrazenecca vaccine being deadly. It’s unknow whether he believes in other theories such as flat-earth or bigfoot, although he’s presumably called 30 cm in France. Either way, it’s like a petulant child claiming that they didn’t want any ice cream anyway.
4. Now we’re in a bizarre situation where having backpedaled, the French public no longer trust the medical establishment and the country is sinking into another wave of death and a second summer of lockdown, all while the British tourism industry is preparing to reopen. There’s an old Christmas cracker joke about how France's favourite pharmaceutical is “Parisetamol” but those Parisians are more likely to be staying at home than going to the doctor and vast stocks of vaccines are now having to be systematically destroyed because they’re passing their use by dates. Medicine does not get better with age like a bottle of claret or a slab of Roquefort. If I was going to use a cheese pun, I’d say the situation is not gouda and if I was going to use a wine pun then I’d say that things were far from rosé
5. Michelle Barnier of all people is now attacking the EU for compliance and incompetency which for the UK is like watching the poacher become the gamekeeper. It’s also an election year coming up soon in France and Emmanuel Macron therefore has no option but to go all in and drag the EU further into the gutter. Thus we now see him blaming Brussels and London for holding back France, which is a gameplan that Marine Le Pen frankly knows how to play a lot better.
6. All the meanwhile Germany is letting all this happen, languishing under Angela Merkel’s slow departure and a lack of strong leadership. Although given what Germany’s like when do get a strong leader every hundred years or so, that’s probably a darned good thing. France and Germany, as bad as each other really. I once heard that the Germans conquered France by matching in backwards so that the frogs would think that the were leaving.
Tragedy as a 51 people were killed in a horrific train derailment, the accident was labeled, “made in Taiwan”
The BBC also announced that Sue Cook was going to be leaving A Question of Sport, presumably along with most of its viewers
And in Covid news, Scotland lifted its ‘stay at home’ rule, although it’s not expected to have any impact on whether the football team travels to the World Cup next year
The big story for me this week though has been the increasingly farcical situation in ......
2020 Oct 31 - France, Labour & Election 2020
Couple of big stories this week. First there was yet another terrorist attack in France, and after the terrorist tried to buy C4 explosives and accidentally ordered a Citroen C4, this one involved a knife instead and a beheading. I have to give credit to the French police who kept their calm whilst many others were losing their head. President Macron was already about to start a lockdown for Coronavirus so let's see if whether lockdown curfew prevents Tunisian migrants as effectively as it does Corona, I suspect it will be exactly just as effective, by which I mean "not very" Either way, the roads leading out of Paris are so jammed that you'd assume someone had spotted a German reconnaissance plane.
Talking of analogies to the 1930s, this week in Britain saw a bombshell report condemning the Labour Party of anti-semitism, claims that many of the party faithful ironically blame on a zionist conspiracy to smear Jeremy Corbyn. As if he needed help in that or had ever risked winning an election. These of course are the sort of left wing activists that have hammers and sickles on their Facebook page, but probably don't know how to spell the word sickle, the types of people who become geography teachers in order to have a platform to discuss the geography of the Middle East with impressionable children. A good portion of these people probably read that Corbyn had been suspended, and feared that he'd been suspended by a rope from Blackfriars Bridge just like in that conspiracy involving the Vatican in the early 80s. You have to give some credit to Kier Starmer I guess for at least having a go at turning the party into a centrist party, albeit one the doesn't have any sort of policy or clue what it's purpose is. There's a joke I heard that a man goes into a garage and explains that his car labours in first gear and pulls to the left and the mechanic asks, "what kind of car is it?" to which the owner replies "A Kia starmer"
Lastly to America where the poling day is next Tuesday and if some newspapers are talking about a civil war in the Labour Party then as they say they do things far bigger though not necessarily better in the US. Let's run through the possibilities because all of them are awful
1) A Biden win: this could go 2 ways. If he wins and takes the senate then be prepared for regressive tax and environmental laws at a federal level. Those laws will likely be declared unconstitutional, so the court will be topped up with more judges until they get things passed. Honestly, if this happens I could see a number of states openly ignore the law, and then as they say "we're not in Kansas anymore." Except we are because Kansas and most of the oil-rich south are key contenders for that secession.
2) A Trump win: this will result in years screaming by left about conspiracies and asking why the vermin and dumb hicks in their Obama-voting districts didn't do as they were told this time around. Every celebrity will claim they're leaving, but none will unless you mean moving from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara or Santa Cruz or, well somewhere within a few hours drive of Los Angeles
3) Perhaps Biden will win but not have the senate this means gridlock: nothing happens for 4 years with the senate repeatedly voting down Biden's laws and refusing to appoint his court appointees. Eventually he retires and 2024 sees a rerun of this election but with younger and far more extremist candidates on the ballot.
4) The vote is contested with accusations of fraud (probably fact-based accusations) from both sides, and with some counties in key states having turnouts at over 100% which is to be expected I guess when both sides are adding ballots to the count. This scenario will of course go all the way to the top where Mr Trump's newly refreshed US Supreme court will almost certainly rule in favour of him. This is where we get to find out whether California really wants to go it alone or not like they keep threatening. And whether the silicon valley types and their money really do want to live under an independent high tax utopia like they've been so keen to promote in the Trump era when it was as likely to happen as their companies being open and transparent.
Couple of big stories this week. First there was yet another terrorist attack in France, and after the terrorist tried to buy C4 explosives and accidentally ordered a Citroen C4, this one involved a knife instead and a beheading. I have to give credit to the French police who kept their calm whilst many others were losing their head. President Macron was already about to start a lockdown for Coronavirus so let's see if whether lockdown curfew prevents Tunisian migrants as effectively as it does ......
2020 Oct 19 - French Terror & Biden Corruption
I realised it's now the middle of October so I have to ask, how is everyone enjoying their 6 month free trial to the new world order? On the Corona front there's a new 3 tiers system and the whole thing is about as made up and opaque as the 33 tiers of freemasonry. I wonder how that's going these days? Presumably less handshaking thanks to Covid. And none of those weird midnight ceremonies, what with a 10pm curfew.
The big story this past week was in France where a history teacher was decapitated by a terrorist, which I guess only goes to show the dangers of using a classroom practical to teach kids about the French Revolution. The situation actually occurred after the teacher taught a lesson about free speech that involved cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Cartoons which I chose not to replicate this week, partly out of fear of reprisals but also partly because being Scottish there's a slim chance that I am indeed one of those immortal people out of the movie Highlander and Sean Connery laid it down pretty firm about the rules of that game and not losing your head. As to the news story itself I'm not sure exactly how it went down or if the teacher put up much of a fight, though it is the french we're talking about here. The teaching association has since reiterated that it's important to discuss tough subjects though. To which I would respond that they're already teaching all of the lessons in french and that must make them pretty tough already. It is worth noting that this week's incident is but the tip of an iceberg of underlying tensions that seem to be covered up remarkably well, asides from when it spills into international news by way of the internet. The fire earlier this year at Nantes Cathedral for instance was portrayed by many outlets as a tragic accident which it absolutely wasn't. There is a level of denial and complicity at play here akin to when the titanic hit the iceberg and many peoples' reaction was to add some of the ice to their gin and tonic.
The other big story this week was out of America with only a few weeks to go until voting day. A few weeks back Joe Biden was odds on to win. Now Trump is even money and Biden is just odd. This was all compounded off the back of a major story about how Biden's son was up to his eyeballs in corruption with links to Ukraine, China and Joe himself was even offered shares in a multi-million dollar business venture as part of a negotiation that pretty much involved him being in the room and occasionally namedropping President Obama. I didn't think any candidate could out-Clinton the Clintons but the Democrats really went hardball this year it seems. None of this of course will change any supporters' minds. To paraphrase Mr Trump from a few years ago, Joe Biden could stand sneezing and coughing in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose one voter. However, the story will be a decisive blow for the argument that "all politicians are the same." While Trump and Biden represent two vehemently polarised political parties, both candidates are remarkably similar in their personal life whether it be murky business dealings, age, health or accusations of racism in a world where nobody even knows the definition of what that is on a day to day basis. What is known is that a reduced turnout is known to benefit the president, albeit at the polling station and not at his currently closed casinos where he's probably losing money faster than any of his punters ever did.
I realised it's now the middle of October so I have to ask, how is everyone enjoying their 6 month free trial to the new world order? On the Corona front there's a new 3 tiers system and the whole thing is about as made up and opaque as the 33 tiers of freemasonry. I wonder how that's going these days? Presumably less handshaking thanks to Covid. And none of those weird midnight ceremonies, what with a 10pm curfew.
The big story this past week was in France where a history teacher was decapitat ......
2019 Jun 29 - European Heatwave
This week in Southern Europe, the wave of political populism gave way to the wave of heat, a heat wave, as temperatures crept high enough that the trees are beckoning dogs over to them. Yes, the mercury in the thermometers would be rising to the top, if the EU hadn't banned the use of mercury thermometers years ago. Remember that supposedly silly scene in the 4th Indiana Jones movie where he climbs into a lead-lined fridge, well that seems like a sensible idea now, it's probably quite cold in that fridge.
In France they recorded their highest recorded temperature - 45.9C (115F) and authorities have warned people not to venture outside at mid-day, a rule that the Spanish government has seemingly had in place since records began. That new heat record was measured in the southern village of Gallargues-le-Montueux which is actually quite close to Nimes, although I can imagine that the French deliberately made the recording in that village in order to make fun of British newscasters struggling to pronounce it. Perhaps they can retaliate by recording a world-beating rainfall record in an unassuming Welsh valley. Go on Jean-Paul, give it your best shot!
And of course, queue a line of politicians saying that this is all mankind's doing, including many who would single out the men in "mankind" There's even the occasionally utterly shameless ones who jumped on an airplane and flew there to make their point. They're usually the same sort of people who travel first class to Venice to warn people that the city is sinking, that's kind of the whole point of Venice really. Mind you, the weather does seem a lot hotter than it was back in January so maybe there's something in it after all.
This week in Southern Europe, the wave of political populism gave way to the wave of heat, a heat wave, as temperatures crept high enough that the trees are beckoning dogs over to them. Yes, the mercury in the thermometers would be rising to the top, if the EU hadn't banned the use of mercury thermometers years ago. Remember that supposedly silly scene in the 4th Indiana Jones movie where he climbs into a lead-lined fridge, well that seems like a sensible idea now, it's probably quite cold in th ......
2019 Apr 20 - Notre Dame & London Protests
This week started with the sad news that a fire had almost led to the destruction of Notre Dame, and certainly Quasimodo will have to spend the next couple of years living on the Phantom of the Opera's sofa. The atrocity drove to people around the world pledging hundreds of millions of Euros to rebuild and President Macron says it may be rebuilt in just a couple of years, presumably because there's an election in 2022 and he'd like to reopen the cathedral as a last act of office before he's kicked out for being about as unpopular as Henry V was back in 1415. Mind you, the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona has been under construction since 1882 and it's still not finished, although the wine is somehow even cheaper in Spain than it is in France (if such a thing is even legal) so that's maybe got something to do with the pace of things. This being the internet of course, the conspiracy theorists showed up faster than the fire brigade to deliver a torrent of not water but crazy ideas about how the government decided to start the fire in order to distract from President Macron's unpopularity although officials said since stated that the fire was almost certainly caused by a short circuit. Hang on a minute, wasn't the robot in the movie Short Circuit originally part of a secret military programme? Maybe those conspiracy theories have something to them.
The other news this week was the climate change protest in London in which many hundreds of people assembled in order to make demands, such as the demand that the BBC wildly overstate the attendance of the protest. For the most part, the marge was a jolly good time if you didn't have a job to attend that day, which most of the rich Islington mummies frankly didn't. The actual demands of course are fairly ludicrous and only achievable if we decided to ban modern agriculture, travelling abroad and making products that contain metal, especially aluminium which uses more energy to make a single soda can than a hair dryer would if you left it running for half an hour. The other issue of course is that China and India have about as much chance of signing up to any climate deal as MPs have to signing up to Theresa's tardy piece of parliamentary paperwork. I genuinely think that if the two asian superpowers ever went to war with each other, there would be an evironmentalist on Radio 4 brought in to give a spiel on how the deaths of half a billion people was ultimately a positive step forward for the environment. Did I say environmentalist? I mean to simply say "mentalist"
This week started with the sad news that a fire had almost led to the destruction of Notre Dame, and certainly Quasimodo will have to spend the next couple of years living on the Phantom of the Opera's sofa. The atrocity drove to people around the world pledging hundreds of millions of Euros to rebuild and President Macron says it may be rebuilt in just a couple of years, presumably because there's an election in 2022 and he'd like to reopen the cathedral as a last act of office before he's kick ......
2018 Dec 09 - Paris Yellow Vest Protests
It's the run up 'til Christmas and rather than the 2 calling birds or 3 french hens, the French government dispersed tear gas in Paris. Police fired into the crowd as a fourth weekend of anti-government protests turned violent. 8000 police and 12 armoured vehicles have been deployed in Paris and if you think you hear 12 drummers drumming, it's probably the sound of those 12 armoured vehicles being pelted with rocks, or possibly oyster shells and wine bottles because it's Paris and why not enjoy lunch if you're already making a day of it?
The "yellow vest" or "gilets jaunes" movement initially set out to protest the unpopular fuel tax increases in this year's budget, a tax that Emmanuel Macron has since changed his mind about, presumably as he contemplates a prohibitive duty on the sale of yellow vests. He also decided to freeze the price of Electricity and gas prices next year but then the president is a former Goldman Sachs banker so it's not as if fixing energy prices is anything new
The problem is that Mr Macron has opened Pandora's Box with protesters now thinking they have momentum and calling for higher wages, lower taxes, better pensions, easier university requirements a partridge in a pear tree and perhaps the abolition of normal toilets in favour of those weird trough things you used to see on holiday.
They've also demanded the resignation of the president and they may achieve that but only by means of the second definition of resignation: namely "acceptance of something undesirable but inevitable" It seems that for the next couple of weeks, the weekly protest movement will be just as much a part of Parisian life as the folk on the pavement selling tacky oil paintings, miniature Eiffel Towers and offering to take your photograph before either charging you €20 or possibly just running off with your phone.
It's also worth noting that the protest movement has also spread to Belgium with 70 people arrested in Brussels so far. I also saw a photo of a crowd of people violently brawling with the police outside a Weatherspoons in the north of England, although I'm not sure if that's a protest against Theresa May or a protest about someone looking at someone the wrong way.
It's the run up 'til Christmas and rather than the 2 calling birds or 3 french hens, the French government dispersed tear gas in Paris. Police fired into the crowd as a fourth weekend of anti-government protests turned violent. 8000 police and 12 armoured vehicles have been deployed in Paris and if you think you hear 12 drummers drumming, it's probably the sound of those 12 armoured vehicles being pelted with rocks, or possibly oyster shells and wine bottles because it's Paris and why not enjoy ......
2018 Apr 27 - Royal Baby + Trump + Macron
This week the UK saw an assault of royal commemorative plates being launched with Kate giving birth to another child and Prince Charles cracking open a tincture of homeopathic champagne to celebrate. The baby weighed just over 8 pounds making it just slightly heavier than the special commemorative supplement you'll be removing from this week's Sunday paper; I guess it's up to you whether you use it for lighting the barbecue or stash it away in a cupboard as an investment, it could potentially triple in value and be worth more than a fiver in years to come.
Prince William was very excited to announce the new heir, although later a palace official sat down with him and explained that the doctor had sad new "heir" - not hair "hair" - and that he should just embrace the bald look. Come on William, it doesn't matter how much you try to look like Bobby Charlton, it's still not going to help England get past the World Cup's group stages.
Talking about crazy haircuts though, this week has saw President Trump busy as always. He arranged a visit to the UK scheduled for July, he phoned into Fox & Friends and invited his french pen-pal Emmanual Macron over to play. Those letters presumably go along the line of J'habite dans le White House, chest terrific. Macron actually has pretty respectable hair so Trump made a point of supposedly brushing alleged dandruff from his shoulder during a press conference. Later Melania was sporting a eye-raising white chapeau hat and Kanye West managed to anger 10 million twitter followers after posting a picture of his Make America Great Again Trump baseball cap, It was all rather strange. In the middle of it all, Emmanual Macron made a speech about globalism and Iran although given France's recent track record with the middle east and islamic extremists, he would perhaps be better trying to focus his efforts on gastronomy and convincing President Trump to not add Ketchup to a New York strip steak.
This week the UK saw an assault of royal commemorative plates being launched with Kate giving birth to another child and Prince Charles cracking open a tincture of homeopathic champagne to celebrate. The baby weighed just over 8 pounds making it just slightly heavier than the special commemorative supplement you'll be removing from this week's Sunday paper; I guess it's up to you whether you use it for lighting the barbecue or stash it away in a cupboard as an investment, it could potentially tr ......
2017 Apr 27 - French Election 2017
This week I thought we’d take a look at France: they take a more laid back approach to life there and are sometimes slow to copy things that the UK did years ago, like modernising employment law or discouraging children from smoking but this week they were quick to crank up the election fever just like us and soon we’re going to have a new French President sworn in – before the UK’s even had a chance to vote. And unlike the UK election, nobody knows who’s going to win the French one. So who are the candidates?
Emmanuel Macron would be the youngest leader since Napoleon. He’s fanatically pro EU and big business which, this being France, means big government, crony capitalism and helping to run the economy into the ground. Think of him maybe as a French David Milliband except with a glass of wine instead of a banana. Unsurprisingly he wants “transformation” which the kind of lazy undefined slogan that people go for these days supposedly and he’s never held public office but he was a former economic advisor for President Hollande which I suppose is like if you were applying for a job as a Theresa May’s hairdresser you let her know that your previous clients were William Hague and Ian Duncan Smith.
Marine Le Pen I think we all know, she’s the populist “Trump” style candidate running on a platform of opposing people who aren’t French enough. Policy wise, she’s the candidate described by the BBC as ‘Far Right’ which, this being France, means by BBC standards she’s to the center left on almost every issue. Workers should have to work less, they should be be paid more and they should be able to retire earlier. In many EU countries they manage to actually achieve this by scamming Germany into bankrolling it but Le Pen is also very anti-EU so I’ve no idea she intends to pay for any of it.
Anyway, overall if you had to compare it to the Westminster election, imagine that on June the 8th you went into your ballot box and the only 2 options on the card were Jeremy Corbyn or Caroline Lucas, except that one of them was also wildly islamophobic for whatever reason.
One last thing, there is one good policy from Macron I think we’d all agree with: namely he’s pledging to cut the size of the French parliament by a third. Maybe that’s one idea that Theresa May might want to think about copying…
This week I thought we’d take a look at France: they take a more laid back approach to life there and are sometimes slow to copy things that the UK did years ago, like modernising employment law or discouraging children from smoking but this week they were quick to crank up the election fever just like us and soon we’re going to have a new French President sworn in – before the UK’s even had a chance to vote. And unlike the UK election, nobody knows who’s going to win the French one. S ......
2017 Mar 30 - Article 50 Triggered
Article 50 has finally been triggered! It’s like the starting pistol of a race going off, if that race was about 400 miles long and nobody had gone near a gym in years and everyone was already bored hearing about it.
So what else has been happening? Well we’re a currently a few weeksinto Lent and for those who are curious, Theresa May decided to give up crisps for 6 weeks. Shortly afterwards, true story, Walkers Crisps announced that they were closing their factory in County Durham with the loss of up to 400 jobs. Makes you wonder how many crisps she was eating, can’t be healthy for you.
On the subject of Health though, America this week saw the latest plan to reform health care fail. As with the Russian stuff and the immigration situation, it’s another ongoing mess, but as Trump himself put it, “Nobody Knew That Healthcare Could Be So Complicated”
It is a tough nut to crack though and I wonder how long it will be until we get a Facebook group set up in order to find a solution? Sean Spicer could put out ideas and his followers could Like or Dislike the suggestions. We do after all live in an age of crowd sourcing. If you’re a businessman short on cash you go on Kickstarter. If you disagree with a news site’s coherent or balanced reporting, you can check out the comments section beneath it for some alternative facts and if you’re the attorney general, you can always ask your twitter followers for legal advice.
Article 50 has finally been triggered! It’s like the starting pistol of a race going off, if that race was about 400 miles long and nobody had gone near a gym in years and everyone was already bored hearing about it.
So what else has been happening? Well we’re a currently a few weeksinto Lent and for those who are curious, Theresa May decided to give up crisps for 6 weeks. Shortly afterwards, true story, Walkers Crisps announced that they were closing their factory in County Durham with the ......