Will the French Presidential Election Throw a Big Spanner in the Eurodeal?
The front page article in The Times is all about how Francois Hollande will change the economic direction of France when he becomes President. I said when rather than if, as the polls are strongly in his favour. He also said he would rip-up the EU’s fiscal treaty.
The psaper gives a detsiled analysis of what his policies will mean and I suspect David Cameron, Angela Merkel and anybody in France, who earns more than the average wage won’t like it. A lot of his proposals would also be against the rules of the single market.
Having read what Hollande said, I think it will be good for Britain and especially London and the City, as his proposed rules will drive entrepreneurs from France. Not that they have had many since Mitterand.
One thing I suspect that he won’t like is foreigners, who keep a house in France. I suspect thery’ll be taxed heavily and a pleasure will suddenly have become a nightmare.
Un Petit Amusement de la France
A friend sent me this amusing clock from France.
Just click it and it changes from analogue to digital and vice-versa.
Don’t worry if your French is not up to the level that is acceptable for a Republican presidential candidate as any liguaphobe can understand it.
By the way, I haven’t found a similar nude women clock.
Only In The United States Could Speaking French be a Disadvantage
According to this account on the BBC’s web site, Mitt Romney is being denounced for being able to speak French and actually doing it in public.
I think we have a rather different attitude in Europe, as although we argue with the French many of our politicians have used French when talking publicly in France. Although, we do make a joke of it between us. As two old friends would. Apparently, the French version of Allo Allo deliberately used bad French as a joke, even more than the English version did with Officer Crabtree being a deliberate parody of Edward Heath.
Remember too, the Queen speaks reasonable French, as this article attests.
We now live in a world, where many more people are bilingual, as their parents were immigrants. So the US has a large proportion of Spanish speakers and we have quite a lot of speakers of many other languages.
But go back to 1900 and has anything changed. Yiddish and German would have been heard in many places in London and New York for a start.
But now, only in America would the ability to speak a foreign language be considered to be a handicap for a politician!
Cantona For President
According to this article, one of Britain’s favourite Frenchman, wants to stand against Sarkozy to be French President.
More On Those French Breast Implants
The phone-in on Radio 5, this morning was all about the failing French breast implants. I’ve made my views clear before and my views haven’t changed.
As the phone-in proceeded, two thoughts occurred to me.
In the first place, if I do something that is dangerous, like driving a car or flying in an aeroplane, it is prudent to insure myself in case anything goes wrong.
Having an operation is a dangerous business, especially in a non A&E Hospital. A friend had a hip transplant privately in a good private clinic, but it all went wrong and he died. The general feeling is that if he’d had the same operation in the local hospital with A&E, he would have survived.
So before you have an operation, you should have insurance in case it all goes wrong! For most operations done by the NHS, this is the case. Another friend had a hip transplant that failed in I think Addenbrooke’s, so it was replaced and the second one is much better.
Judging by many of the women who spoke this morning, many had their implants inserted in clinics, where profit was the motive, not good care. Some can’t even have been that good, as they have now folded. But where is the insurance? Obviously, the patients didn’t check what would happen if all went wrong. But I suppose proper insurance, would have meant that the operation would have been too expensive.
The other thought occurred to me, when a doctor on the programme, said that implants of any sort, only rarely rupture.
C never had any form of plastic surgery, but she did have breast cancer.
It is interesting to note, how she might have got breast cancer. She had a Mercedes coupe, which could not be described as anything but a quality car. She was hit by another vehicle and the air-bag deployed as it should.
It left her with a large and deep bruise on her left breast.
And where did she get the cancer? In the same place as the bruise. She mentioned this to her oncologist and he said that he’d seen this sort of thing before. I also searched the Internet and found women who claimed their breast cancer occurred, where they had been hit hard by a tennis ball.
So when a doctor claims that a breast implant can’t rupture, I’m dubious!
Why Should I Pick Up The Tab For The Vanity or Stupidity of Others?
It looks like the French breast implants are not fit for purpose and that the French government will pay for their removal according to this report.
The report also says that there are up to 40,000 women with these implants in the UK and 250 have already contacted their lawyers.
Obviously, there are two classes of women, who have plastic surgery on their breasts; those that have suffered from breast cancer or perhaps an accident and the vane.
I don’t see why I should pay for any rectification surgery for the latter. After all they were stupid enough to have the operation in the first place and should accept the consequences.
The NHS is the National Health Service and those that bring problems on themselves should make an extra contribution.
C once did a divorce for a plastic surgeon. He told her, never to underestimate peoples’ vanity. He didn’t bother, as it made him a fair amount of money and enabled him to do operations that mattered on cancer and accident victims and children with birth defects.
In the current case it would appear that in the end, the real winners will be the lawyers. Just as they were in this other case.
France Annoys Another Friend
France is thinking about making it an offence to deny the Armenian genocide and a bill is passing through their parliament.
If you don’t know about the genocide, this is the first few paragraphs from the Wikipedia article.
The Armenian Genocide also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees. The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between 1 million and 1.5 million. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination.
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the systematic, organised manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians, and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events.
If you read the article, you’ll see that it was probably one of the most barbaric acts of history at the start of the twentieth century. And let’s face it there were quite a few atrocities.
The French action in their parliament, is very much resisted by Turkey, who still deny that the genocide happened There was a protest in Ankara yesterday, which is reported in the Guardian.
France in a Fitch
The French have been blaming everybody except themselves for the pickle the Euro is in.
They have used their biggest guns against the UK. But they have also had a go at the rating agencies, saying that they are part of the Anglo-Saxon plot against the euro. This report on the BBC concerns the view of the rating agency Fitch on the euro.
But Fitch is a French-owned company. Even so, they give France a less than perfect rating.
I shall be watching what they say in the future.
Transmanche Metro
This is an idea that I found on Wikipedia for Stratford station, which talks of the proposed “Transmanche Metro” service to Calais via local stations.
It appears to contain a certain degree of kite-flying and some of the references seem to link it with French politics. There is this article on a holiday home web site.
On the other hand a direct route from Stratford in East London to Lille, via Ebbsfleet, Ashford and Calais might prove to be a lower cost alternative to Eurostar, especially for commuters, business and families, especially if it offered a virtually turn-up-and-go service.
The problems with setting it up would probably be more to do with the vested interests of Eurostar and SNCF, than anything to do with access to the Channel Tunnel or safety issues.
Will it ever happen?
Probably not for a couple of years or so, but then who’d have thought that such as Ryanair and easyJet would grow so big, when they started by providing a low-cost alternative to the major airlines. So don’t predict anything!
The Anonymous Widower 