Here’s a French lesson in three Rs: revolution, riot and rudeness
We may call the French cheese-eating surrender monkeys, but actually, this is a long way from the truth, their boy president recently upped the tax on fags and fuel
WE learned one thing this week. The French definitely know how to get things done.
We may call them cheese-eating surrender monkeys and claim they will raise the white flag of surrender at the first whiff of trouble, but actually, this is a long way from the truth . . .
Here, when the Americans were littering our countryside with nuclear missiles, some unshaved women with a love of alternative art house movies about Gertrude Stein chained themselves to a fence at Greenham Common . . . and achieved absolutely nothing at all.
Then we had Swampy and his mates, who went to live in a tree to stop the Newbury by-pass from being built. Which it subsequently was.
Remember the Countryside Alliance protest? Half a million people mooched through London demanding the right to kill foxes, and what happened?
Yup. They were ignored.
Later, twice as many went to let Tony Blair know that his harebrained idea about having a war in Iraq was madness. And they were ignored as well.
I’m sure at this point you’re all jumping up and down saying: “Yes. But what about the poll tax riots? They achieved something.”
Absolutely. Some people with dirty hair came to London and after they’d thrown a wheelie bin through a shop window, Mrs Thatcher backed down. And changed the name of her hated tax to something else. And that was that.
Whereas in France, things are very different.
Their boy president recently upped the tax on fags and fuel and, within about 40 minutes, Paris was on fire, the Arc de Triomphe looked like the Berlin Wall and he was having to say: “I give in.”
This always happens. Farmers don’t like British sheeps being imported so they blockade the autoroutes until the practice is stopped.
Fishermen don’t like our boys catching sprats and they jam up the Channel.
And when the criminal element in Paris think the Police are being too energetic, they set fire to some shops until Le Plod goes back to eating cheese and doing the crossword puzzle.
They once had something called the champagne riots. Seriously. After three years of bad weather, people who worked on the vineyards decided it was the government’s fault and ran amok.
And let’s not forget, shall we, that when they’d had enough of their Monarchy, they stormed the Bastille and pretty soon, Louis XVI’s head was in a bucket.
The only problem with all of this is that France is actually run by people who know they can win any argument by setting fire to something.
It’s probably why Mrs May has been so feeble with her Brexit negotiations.
She daren’t upset Monsieur Macron in case he empties a can of petrol over her head and lights a match.
Proposal ruined
THIS week, as a young woman gazed over the railings of a woodland bridge, her boyfriend got down on one knee behind her and waited, ring in hand, for her to turn round.
And then along came a cyclist.
He could see what was going on. It was obvious. And he could have pulled to a halt while the proposal of marriage was delivered.
This would have been the kind thing to do, the human thing to do.
But cyclists are not kind and they have none of the social niceties that the rest of us have.
They are bitter and angry about how badly their lives have turned out. They resent having to get about on a child’s toy.
They are fuelled by a cocktail of hate, bile and resentment.
So he rode right through the young couple’s dream moment.
What an arse.
Boris not on Grindr
THE newly single Boris Johnson revealed this week that he’s not on the dating app, Grindr.
Er, no Boris. That’s not really . . . Oh never mind.
Unholy stir
A SECRETARY revealed this week that her old and now dead boss, a vicar, explained in her job interview that he had a problem with his libido and to rectify that, he would dispense with his clothes as often as possible and walk around naked.
He said this was the medical advice he’d been given and that he saw it as a gift from God.
She now claims that she had a problem with this, especially as he was often not just naked but also aroused.
Hmmm. Yes. I’m sure. But I have one question.
Why, after he admitted it during the interview, did you take the job?
Right to remove portrait
THE Lord Mayor of Bristol took down a portrait from the city hall this week saying that the man in the picture was involved with the slave trade and that he therefore has no place in our diverse, nuclear free, transgender friendly eco world.
Naturally enough, it’s been replaced by a picture of some American no one has ever heard of.
Initially, my shoulders sagged and I was about to lay into this silly Mayor woman, Cleo Lake, pictured, explaining that the picture was painted by Gainsborough and how Bristol was built on the slave trade and how she was a here-today, gone-tomorrow politician who should mend some pot holes and shut up.
But the fact is that people in Austria – mostly – don’t hang up pictures of Hitler and no one in Britain should display pictures of people who trafficked people.
She was right to do what she’s done.
Fresh less
I PASSED a delivery van this morning which, according to a sign on the side, was delivering fresh food.
However, as it said on the back that the van in question was limited to 56mph, I can’t help wondering if the food was as fresh as it could have been . . .
Gwynie
GOOD old Gwyneth Paltrow. She was asked recently by the check-in girl at a Los Angeles gym if she’d ever done yoga before.
This amazed Gwyneth, pictured, who admits she thought: “You have this job because I’ve done yoga before.”
It seems then, that our heroine reckons she invented the idea of bending over and humming.
But actually, they were doing that in India about 5,000 years ago.
It's time US got civilised
A CONVICTED murderer called David Earl Miller has told the authorities in Tennessee that he’d like to be executed in the electric chair rather than by lethal injection.
This comes in the wake of a recent execution where something went wrong and the injection caused some poor lag to turn purple and writhe about for 20 minutes in agony before his heart gave out.
Small wonder Mr Miller would rather bite his own tongue off while the authorities cook his organs using electricity.
I don’t understand this. The US constitution forbids the state from using “cruel and unusual” punishment, so why give those on death row a choice that’s actually no choice at all?
most read in opinion
Why can’t they be shot, like they are in North Korea, with an anti-aircraft gun? Or hit on the head with a baseball bat? Or why aren’t they allowed to jump off a tall building?
Or better still, why doesn’t America join the ranks of the civilised world, step out of the cowboy movie it calls home and abolish the death penalty altogether.
Apart from when someone has stopped in a yellow box at a junction obviously. Or if they’ve dropped litter.