Jump to content

Clarkkent

Members
  • Posts

    1,410
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

Everything posted by Clarkkent

  1. By the way, Dick, I think you'll find that Lucy died. I wouldn't want to fall out with my "friends" in Parliament. According to the Independent, Bob Marshall-Andrews - a Labour MP - said: "I think one is dealing here with somebody who it appears, certainly to many people in the Commons and the country, is quite seriously unbalanced." The MP told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It is the Caligula principle really. Caligula made his horse a senator. "He did it not because he thought his horse would be a good senator but because he wanted to demonstrate he could do what he wanted to do." Et tu Brute.   ... And Russethouse, where should they live: with their putative father? Be farmed out for foster care? Be forcibly adopted? Mr Quinn seems prepared to take them!
  2. Bet he never saw that coming! Funny the difference between French and British politic's. Here people would have said good on him and just made a joke of it. But that isn't why he has had to resign. If that's all it had been he would have ridden out the storm. He ratted on his mates to his biographer so they are now refusing to work with him. Anyway, good riddance. I doubt there was an idea in his head that hadn't been approved by the editor of the Sun.
  3. [quote]Is anyone old enough to remember this? http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,764904,00.html tells the story. I'm enjoying the dvd; the landscape, weather and accents are very different ...[/quote] I was a child at the time, but I do remember the incident and the continued furore which followed. If I recall correctly the British press adopted an air of superiority about French police methods (possibly justified) and the existence of a peasant culture.
  4. On page 10 of January's Living France is a spread about a "country club community" with 58 "period-style newly built individual homes for sale off plan." At the end of the article it states that the properties, on 999 year leases and share of freehold, will use "a UK company structure, which ... avoids the complexity of French succession laws." Can this be real?
  5. I know nothing about your circumstances or motives but can make inferences from what you have written. The proposed move is many months away and is "planned" - the impression I gain is that you want a lifestyle change. I do not know what competence you have in French nor what skills you can bring to a job market where there is high unemployment. My judgement is that you would be better finding a house to rent rather than buy. Leave decisions about mortgages until you have fully evaluated your new situation.
  6.  ... How would you feel if Mr Blair said that imams in the UK should all speak English? This isn't like you, SB. You are five months out of date - the British are already there! The following is taken from the BBC on 22 July: Imams and other foreign ministers of religion will have to sit an English test, under new Home Office rules. From September they will need to prove they have a "basic" grasp of spoken English before coming to the UK. In two years the Home Office plans to raise the level of English required before entry from basic to "competent". Home Secretary David Blunkett said the tests were necessary so ministers could speak for the communities they represented. In the future ministers of religion may also be required to demonstrate a knowledge of the British way of life and other faiths.  
  7. Over the last couple of days I have noticed that this site is loading very much more quickly. EDIT On second thoughts - it is quite variable. Sometimes access is quite fast (though not upto ADSL expectations) and other times quite plodding. Perhaps it it related to time of dasy and traffic levels.
  8. The following table is taken from the Institut National d’Etudes Demographiques (www.ined.fr):     1982 1990 1999 All the Immigrants 4 037 036 4 165 952 4 306 094 men 2 178 816 2 168 271 2 166 318 women 1 858 220 1 997681 2 139 776
  9.   Maigret's first name is Jules and he was born in the village of St Fiacre in Allier where his father was a bailiff. Worthy though Michael Gambon is in the role, he does not hold a candle to Rupert Davies who manages to give Maigret great humanity. Incidentally, nowhere does Simenon give Mme Maigret a name. The BBC decided to call her Louise. The Gambon series was filmed in Hungary - Budapest looks nothing like Paris and the rural settings might just as well be on the Moon for all their lack of French "feel". And Simenon was not French but Belgian ... ... as for the legal niceties? The novels are about psychological insight, they are not really procedurals.
  10. He did it that way because he is a rank amateur and tried to do the whole creation thing in a week. When Mother Nature did it she took several million years and approached the problem from the other direction. Man is a variant of woman but Mother Nature didn't quite manage to perfect him, after all he still has nipples on his chest - but then he doesn't need strong elastic to restrain them.
  11. I've just been to my local Tesco. In floor area it's about the same as the Carrefour I often use. The main difference between the two stores is the space devoted to non-foods: perhaps 50% in Carrefour, perhaps 20% in Tesco. There is much more space in Tesco available for food and - I hazard to guess - a much greater variety of food. Tesco has, for example, English, French, Italian and other styles of bread and baked products. Tesco has wines from France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany, Chile, Australia, South Africa and California. The French section has AOCs from all areas as well as grape variety products. The starting price is about £2.50 per bottle and then goes up and up. My experience in France has been that some (certainly not all) cheap wines shouldn't even be used as paint stripper. I think that shopping for the French is something of a parochial affair. They have been led to believe that their cuisine and wine is the best in the world and see no need to look elsewhere. The English are not shackled to such a myopic view (mixed metaphor!) and now reap a considerable benefit.
  12. It was difficult to explain why he was so unceremoniously ejected from his post.  For the French, mistresses and corruption are just part of being a politician.  French people don't expect anything better from their politicians!!  And now, post-Boris, we have the unedifying spectacle of the former leader of the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire being accused by his ex-mistress of such wrong doings as giving her a rail ticket and expediting a visa application by her nanny. He is reported as (still) having the support of the prime minister - but the tumbril is being hosed down and Mme Lafarge is looking out her knitting patterns ...  
  13. [quote]If any users of the lap top are trained typists beware. The spacing of the keys, although in QWERTY order, is not the same as a standard keyboard and pesonally I find them difficult to use.Liz (29)[/quote] For only a few pounds you can buy an additional standard keyboard and connect via a USB port. If you have a AZERTY laptop you could connect a QWERTY keyboard.
  14.  So to my surprise there are few of these little boots to be had this year. In fact having just returned from the UK, the boots in both countries seem to have very similar boot styles at the moment. Have I come to the end of an era, I'll really be sorry to see the soft little ankle boots go.   I suspect that this may be a consequence of the flight of manufacturing from rich western to poorer Third World countries. Shoes made by the million in Indonesian sweatshops for peanuts. Economies of scale mean fewer designs or less willingness to cater for small quantity variations.
  15. Anyone still disputing level crossings on main TGV lines should read the back page of todays Le Telegramme - UN TGV PERCUTE UNE VOITURE. A Paris-Quimper TGV crashed into a car on a level crossing yesterday morning at Crissé in Sarthe,killing one of the occupants and mangling the car.Other trains were diverted for approx 40mins. Investigations are continuing The railway line in question is not an LGV, but an ordinary non-high speed railway line. The LGV ends at Connerre which is on the Paris side of Le Mans. The car on the level crossing could have been struck by any train using that line, it just happened to be a TGV using a non-LGV line. There are no level crossings on LGVs.  
  16. TGVs only travel at full speed on specially constructed lignes a grandes vitesse. On other lines they travel at the prevailing line speed. A feature of LGVs is that there is seperation of grade - flyovers when routes diverge and NO level crossings. However, from Paris to Bordeaux, for instance, the LGV ends at Tours and the remaining route uses the "classic" main line, level crossings and all! A number of people, including the respected transport journalist Christian Wolmer, have pointed out that the death rate at level crossings in many European countries (including France) is several times greater than in Britain. From my own observation, the warning time for an approaching train is very much shorter in France than in Britain. There is a level crossing on the N10 north of Tours where the oncoming train can be seen before the lights start to flash and the half barrier comes down. Maddening when you've got a plane to catch and the damn thing is stooging around the Paris suburbs with OH moaning, "we should have driven". But was the train running to time? The fact that a TGV is travelling slowly doesn't mean that it has abandonned the timetable!
  17. There were reports in our local paper in late winter/ early spring about new lambs and sheep in the Haute Pyrenees being attacked by bears.  Local shepherds were taking defensive action. I know that this is different from the present situation but bears can be a threat too. Like foxes in sheep-rearing areas of uk. Pat. But foxes are common and bears are very, very rare and to compare the risk from each as though it were equivalent is clouding the issue. The number of lambs taken by bears will be miniscule in comparison to losses to foxes. The locations of bears are constantly monitored and shepherds will be given warnings.
  18. This isn't a direct answer to the question you posed, but he might find the BBC link below of value. It may be a mistake to think that "tabloid" and "broadsheet" are concepts that translate into direct equivalents in France. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3614785.stm
  19. The Mail is successful in England because it follows a broadly "little Englander" policy and will run any story that denigrates "abroad" - especially France and those who live there or hold favourable opinions about the country. Alistair Campbell (not one of my heroes normally) got it dead right when he said that the Mail upholds some of the less pleasing aspects of human behaviour as "middle class values."
  20. In today's Le Monde there is a story which makes me very unhappy. It seems some hunters, out with their dogs and guns and looking for sangliers, took it upon themselves to kill a female bear named Cannelle. Cannelle, it seems, was the last remaining female pyrenean bear. These noble hunters have despatched a sub-species to history. As Le Monde puts it " ... [this] shows once again the unwillingness of France to accept the cohabitation with animals living in their natural habitat ..." This happened on the day that Americans showed their contempt for the well-being of the planet.  
  21. You must see an expert in French property law - in France. As I understand it, the insistance on property being inherited along the bloodline is paramount. You will NOT be able to disinherit your children from your earlier marriage. This cannot be changed. All a tontine will do is delay the ultimate disposal of the property among ALL descendents of BOTH spouses. Would it be possible for your wife to buy the property on her own, thus ensuring that her children will inherit and then use usufruit to give you a life interest in the property (should she die before you) which will end with your own death?  
  22. To the best of my knowledge, all the cheap chains allow animals to be kept in their rooms. Formule 1 and Villages-Hotels certainly do.
  23.  Quote: The bit in the Church is just a blessing type ceremony Not for we Catholics it isn'tI'm afraid I don't understand you.  It is the Mairie that marries you.   The Church has nothing to do with marriage at all, Catholic or not.  Which we are. No. The maire does not marry you. You marry each other. I suspect that what Evaniers means is that it is making promises to each other before God that is important not the formalising of a contract in front of a government agent.  
  24. Clarkkent

    Specs and the UK

    The high street opticians (Boots, Specsavers, D&A, VisionExpress etc) are commercial organisations who operate in the marketplace. There is NO reason at all why you should not use them. If you want a free eye test you may have to provide them with your NI number - otherwise the cost is about £15. VisionExpress will grind and polish lenses while you wait (you may have to book an eye test, though, but waiting may only be a day or so at the most) and Specsavers will also make up your glasses if they have the standard lenses in stock. In general terms, NI contributions fund the retirement pension. The NHS is paid for out of general taxation. There is no moral dimension to this.
  25. [quote]Christmas comes but once a year.........but last 3 month's. Ho Ho Ho.[/quote] As it says in The Good Book ... ... and there shall be a great profit throughout the land.
×
×
  • Create New...