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The Riff-Raff Element

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Posts posted by The Riff-Raff Element

  1. [quote user="pachapapa"]

    [quote user="The Riff-Raff Element"]I know that "American justice" is a bit of an oxymoron, but I'm astounded that the prime witness in a case that is both sub judice and a bit wobbly is allowed anywhere near the media at this stage. In many other jurisdictions she'd now be facing contempt charges, wouldn't she?

    What a bloody circus.

    [/quote]

    I am astounded at your moderate plagiarism of the big fat ugly lawyers " unseemly circus" epithet but presumably you consider the insertion of swear words to be relevant or am I mistaken in that the "b" word is actually a synergistic replacement for your apparent inability to punctuate with an exclamation mark.

    [/quote]

    So would that be a "yes" or a "no" to the question? That's the bit in the original post I made just preceding the "?"  [kiss]

  2. I know that "American justice" is a bit of an oxymoron, but I'm astounded that the prime witness in a case that is both sub judice and a bit wobbly is allowed anywhere near the media at this stage. In many other jurisdictions she'd now be facing contempt charges, wouldn't she?

    What a bloody circus.

  3. [quote user="5-element"]

    Isn't it a little unusual that the killer gave himself up to the police - whereas in apparently similar cases, many seem to kill themselves before they can be arrested.

    Now I see he requests to appear in uniform for the court hearing. What uniform?

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8658855/Norway-killer-wants-to-wear-uniform-at-court-lawyer-claims.html

    [/quote]

    I have the nagging feeling that there is a certain amount of stage management going on here. If there were others involved, could this just be a "curtain-up" with some other acts to follow? Breivik has already succeeded to an extent - his appearance today will be in a closed court and there is pressure for a media blackout. This should be done openly, however difficult that might be.

  4. I've not heard of a justificatif de imposition. I've heard of a justificatif de domicile, which is, of course, your EDF bill. Or GDF, SAUR, assurance or a few other things. If you are here full time your mairie should be able to provide you with a piece of paper saying so, if time is pressing.

  5. [quote user="sweet 17"]

    [quote user="The Riff-Raff Element"]€3,50 for 100m of ordinary white string! Seems bloody pricey to me. It's been a long time since I bought string, so perhaps I'm just not up to date?

    [/quote]

    Well, Riff-Raff, what you do is you SAVE all the bits and pieces of string used to tie up whatever that you might come across!

    We bought a garden table yesterday afternoon and I saved up all the bit of crinkly plastic (to OH's amusement) to tie round presents at Christmas.

    I don't know if it's a good thing or not but I now seem to be this little old lady that NEVER throw anything away "in case it comes in useful"[:'(]

    [/quote]

    We hardly ever throw anything away. We have a lot of out buildings: because the gites are on different sites away from our house, they have out buildings too. Every kind of unmentionable old rubbish is kept. I have resolved that in October - amongst other things that I've been putting off while the children were very young and the business in its early days - I shall gird up my loins and start tacking the four garages full of assorted junk we have assembled.

    I reckon about a month should do it. [8-|]

  6. The bloke from Bordeux who lives up the road reckons that they should be cooked in red wine and served with the finest St Emillion that can be afforded. Personally, I think they taste like squash balls and should be served - raw - to the chickens. The chickens can then be eaten instead.

  7. [quote user="Boiling a frog"]If we become less tolerant of these right wing groups/people then the actions in Norway will have succeeded.

    We must show these people that their intolerance cannot win.[/quote]

    Exactly. I'm not talking about banning them. The trick is to make sure that they are exposed for what they are.

  8. Linking these events to religon is plain ludicrous: ticking the "Christian" box on a Facebook profile does not make one a Christian. I am hazy about the finer points of theology, but I do know that those actually following Christian teachings regard indulging in mass murder as being a big no-no.

    On the other hand, the links of the presumed perpitrator to right-wing extremism seem to be well established. We seem to have become a little too tolerent of these groups in recent years and they have gained a patina of respectibilty that they do not deserve. Mr Breivik was a great admirer, it would seem, of Geert Wilders, describing Wilders as leading the "only truly Conservative party in Europe."

    Mainstream parties have been cosying up in coalition  to the far right all over the place -in The Netherlands, Denmark and Austria, for example, they hold quite considerable sway in governement at many levels. In France the FN continue to garner a steady level of support and the BNP have managed to get themselves into the European parliment. The reprehensible activities of "islamist" extremists in particular have been meat and bread to them.

    Whatever image these parties may try to project, they are rooted in hate. And when hate is allowed to fester you sometimes get people like Anders Breivik.

  9. [quote user="Dog"]... but it's surprising that no comments were made when he must have purchased the same amount of sugar. [/quote]

    He wouldn't have needed to: since subtly was presumably not the order of the day, home heating oil would have been a perfectly adequate fuel and easy to obtain.

    What a mess.

  10. They did! Following received a scant five minutes ago:

    Monsieur,

    nous pensons qu'ils communiquent en anglais. De toute facon pour les

    discussion et conversations ils ont recours à leurs interprètes.

    Avec nos meilleures salutations

    l'équipe du Cidal

    I suppose
    there is something rather diplomatic about choosing a language that is a first one to neither of them. Bet Merkel does it better tho'. [:D]

  11. [quote user="Val_2"]It really shocked me to hear him rant on about the Calvanist,protestant german populations having to subsidise fat lazy people from the med. Very racial and almost Hitler-like in some ways especially the religious mention.[/quote]

    Inaccurate too - the Meditterranean populations are far leaner than the North.

    Have e-mailed the German Embassy in Paris to aske them. I wonder if they'll bother to answer?

  12. Another touching pictoral study here of Sarko and Angela:

    http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2011/07/21/paris-et-berlin-parviennent-a-un-accord-sur-la-grece-avant-le-sommet-de-la-zone-euro_1551044_3214.html#ens_id=1268560

    Now, I know that Sarko speaks English like a Dutch Donkey (the much-vaunted and slightly suspect Dutch talent for langauges does not extend to quadrupeds: trust me on this), so I assume that they must have some other language in common.

    Does the fragrant Angela speak French or is the Pocket Rocket fluent in German? Are they perhaps pursuing their agenda in Esperanto?

    Anyone know?

  13. [quote user="Sprogster"]Jon, French regulations discourages foreign entrants and don't forget the social security costs of employees is much higher for supermarkets in France.

    The British supermarkets have a lot of buying clout and import themselves direct from the producers, who in many cases are forced to absorb the currency risk.[/quote]

    I see what you mean, though if the margins are good enough, business will always find a way. After all, the regulations and social costs are the same for all players. Suppliers can be pushed only so far: remember when the British chains who were the only major buyers of satsumas squeezed the growers so much many of them grubbed up the trees and planted clementines for the broader European market instead?

    What really perplexes me as that no French chain has made a substansive push across the Channel into the UK market where employment rules and planning regs are so much more p-l-i-a-b-le.

  14. [quote user="Sprogster"]The high street in the UK is much more competitive and far less regulated than France. Hence why American giants like Walmart operate in the UK under the Asda brand and not France!

    Also with the weak £ it would be strange if comparative prices in the UK were not currently lower than France.

    PS. Diesel in France might be lower, but the price of new and second hand cars in France are much higher and toll fees on the autoroutes are becoming v expensive[/quote]

    Surely it would be better for them to operate where the competition is least hot and margins, therefore, higher [8-)] France should, on that basis, be perceived as a good place to come for the likes of Tesco & Walmart: lots of low hanging fruit, as it were. [:D]

    Come to think of it, aside from Lidl & Aldi, why don't more foreign chains operate here? Foreign firms manage well enough in other industries, so why not supermarket retailing? Likewise, why are there not French chains in the UK? Not that I've been there for a while, but I don't think there are.

    I would have thought that the weak £ makes imported food more expensive, and the UK imports a lot, particularly given the large amount of fresh and processed foods coming from the Eurozone into the UK.

    It's all very odd.

  15. [quote user="sweet 17"]

    Riff-Raff asks whether anyone knows who Murdoch's attacker was.

    Yes, R-R, a comedian (appropriate) called Johnny Marbles and I did give a clue from my earlier post quoted below:

    But Nick, he didn't say "humbling".  I'd have felt more sympathetic towards him if he had.  He said "humble day" thereby making me cringe!

    Anyway he's clearly losing his marbles (Isn't the attacker one named Marbles?Big Smile [:D])

    [/quote]

    Sorry - it was too subtle for me [:D]

    Good to see slapstick making a comeback though.

    It's a shame the Dirty Digger won't be put in front of the Beak (though - who knows - perhaps he'll be detained at Heathrow DSK style as he prepares to head home to the Land of the Best Justice Money Can Buy). A nasty piece of work.

  16. Curious. We had guests last week who waxed lyrical about how the prices of fruit & veg were so much lower and the quality so much higher here than in the UK. Can't say I'd noticed since most of our stuff comes from the garden.

    The general worldwide rise in the prices of basic foodstuff and commodities notwithstanding, it seems to me that our grocery bill is lower than it was a year ago. There's been some small changes to the pricing rules that mean supermarkets can offer more in the way of bogoffs & specials, and there is quite a little price war going on a the moment which Carrafour - I am told - are losing. The big winner, it seems, is the Le Clerc franchise.

    Heady stuff on a dull day.

    I've never any serious errors on my till receipt either. Some people have all the fun. The closest I got was when the till lady put through a pack of beer twice by mistake and then compounded the error by taking them both off. My children were there, so I 'fessed up to set a good example. Would that it had been something duller!

  17. "Actually Sian Lloyd of the ITV weather stable of fillies. Lamb in Orbit is well known in them parts of the world. Use to see him often with his 'girlfriends' at the local supermarket. The local joke was that he never knew which of the Cheeky Girls was 'hanging around' for favours. Certainly made a fool of his-self and it cost him his parliamentary seat, to which, in a welsh TV interview, he cried out was the fault of  the journos and newspapers and media to have painted a less than unfair picture of him. The truth is that the old liberal guard of the county just couldn't cope with his many ladies admirers taking precedence over important issues in the constituency, never mind what the papers said."

    I'd forgotten how he'd wronged young Sian. The cad. What I meant was that Ms Young was also at Bristol. She did geography, I think.

    Lembit was a bit of a prat even all those years ago. Never good at judging moods, but he had a ready smile and a witty repost and he seemed to get by quite well on that.

    Anyone know who tried to flan Murdoch Snr yet?

  18. [quote user="woolybanana"]

    (I do hear that people with first class honours in Pure Chemistry from Oxbridge are a great power broking group and as elite as they come. Any truth in this?[6])

    [/quote]

    I really couldn't say - I went to Bristol  [:)]  Well-known contempories of mine include Lembit Opik (mostly famous for inserting himself into a Cheeky Girl) and BBC weather girl Helen Young, neither of whom would know me from Adam. My influence is limited to the choice of tomato variety we grow on this manor. Mind you, in that sphere my word is law.  [;-)]

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