29 January 2010

France Is Ready To Ban The Burka

Well you can blame the French for lots of things but not for ducking some difficult social situations – they’re about to ban women from wearing the burka (pictured) and good on them.

In France’s secular society many religious symbols are banned including kids wearing crucifixes at school so it was only a matter of time before Sarko decided to do something about Muslim women wearing full face veils.

What the real reasons were we may never know. Was the wearing of a burka really a ‘challenge to the (secular) Republic’ or was it the fact that the majority (57%) of French people wanted it banned or was it the fact that whatever the origins of the burka, it does look threatening?

Whatever, the proposal for a full ban (i.e. the wearing of the burka anywhere in public),was backed by 190 MPs but rejected by a cross-party commission, which handed a list of compromise proposals to parliament recommending a ban of the burka or niqab in state facilities but not in the street.

The ban would apply to public places, including all schools, hospitals, public transport and government offices. The commission described the face-covering veil as an unacceptable "challenge to our republic" but after six months of hearings, the commission stopped short of outlawing the veil in the streets, in shopping centres and other public venues, due to doubts about the constitutionality of such a move.

Good on them but I think the reasoning of a ‘constitutionality’ argument is more likely to be a fear of a backlash from the 5 million strong Muslim community in France, Europe’s largest, despite the fact that only a very small proportion of women are in the Muslim 'sect' which demands the wearing of a burka.

Anyway, as I was writing this shortish post, I flicked onto the website of the Daily Telegraph to check something and there flashing on the right hand side of the page was …….. an advert for Muslim Brides – if you want one go to the link below:

http://www.muslima.com/

28 January 2010

And What Do You Do - Yawn!

You meet lots of interesting people out here with fascinating jobs. There’s an accountant to some TV and film stars, a chick-lit novelist, pilots, mega-yacht captains, photographers, villa builders, antique shop owners and my mate has just started his own wine business.

When we first meet new people, the conversation invariably turns to ‘what do you do?’ “I’m retired but I did work for British Telecom”, I reply. That’s usually the end of the conversation!

Obviously, the thought of quizzing me for 10 minutes or so on what I did in BT is not something they’d even consider in case it sends them to sleep (it was actually quite interesting) and makes them head for the bar but they don’t know the half of it. I could really bore them with some of the jobs I had when I first joined Chrysler in 1968.

Under the guise of a sort of management apprenticeship, we were shuttled around various parts of the car factory, trying our hand at different skills and administrative functions, the idea being that at the end of our 4 years we’d choose the function which suited us the best, or more likely, paid the most money! Whilst we all (there were 19 of us) tried our hardest to get into the Purchasing Department because all the girls worked there, we invariably ended up in dead-end places such as the Boiler House, the Training Department or, if you were particularly unlucky, as I was, the Die Shop.

Having previously spent one mind-numbingly boring month in the Boiler House (confusingly called the Siberia of the car plant because of its remoteness despite the fact that it was always roasting hot), I was then shunted off to the Die Shop which I embraced enthusiastically, despite not having a clue what it did. Anything to get away from boilers! I soon found out what happened in the Die Shop.

A car is made from a number of body panels; the roof, the bonnet etc. These panels are pressed on huge die machines (pictured) which take a piece of flat sheet metal and ‘mould’ it to shape. The die is the huge block of shaped and hardened steel on which the metal is moulded and in those days was hand-crafted. Today, I’m sure a robot takes over and carves the requisite shape but in those far off distant days, a huge cube of steel was delivered to the highly-skilled worker who then ‘scribed’ the basic shape on the block before it was crane-lifted off to be roughly machined to its basic shape. (Are you still awake ?).

Upon its return, the final shape had to be ‘carved’ out of the now misshapen block of metal using files, grinders and a variety of other tools but at the end of the day, it had to be hand finished and rubbed down to perfection. The tiniest flaw in the surface of the die block would show in every panel it ever pressed so the surfaces had to be perfect.

Now, whilst the guys who created the finished blocks were probably the highest skilled people in the factory, the actual job was almost as mind-numbingly boring as the good old Boiler House. Day after day, week after week, we'd rub away at the steel block, sometimes as big as a car itself, until it was a shining representation (in a reverse form) of the panel it would be used to create.

God I was bored. I couldn’t wait for my 3 months to end. It was like a life sentence! One of these days if I ever get stuck in a corner at a party with a rather unlikeable, pompous git, I’ll tell them exactly how they made car body dies in the ‘old days’. I'll be able to make them fall asleep faster than Paul McKenna!

Finally, whilst doing some research for this posting I found articles on, ‘Development and Manufacture of Dies for Car Body Production' and ‘Visualization of Subtle Defects of Car Body Outer Panels’. I fell asleep before getting to the end of the first article!

27 January 2010

Woof Woof Stop Smoking

Hearing that I was going off to the DIY superstore yesterday morning J spotted an opportunity to get fed. ‘I know a lovely little restaurant down that way’ she said. ‘How many Michelin stars does it have’, I asked. ‘It won’t be that expensive’, she replied, ‘it’s only got two’.

After she picked me up off the floor, put the car keys in my hand and ushered me into the driver’s seat, we were off. My usual tactic in these circumstances didn’t work. I drove slowly hoping to miss the final lunch orders but sod’s law determined that all the lights were green and the roads were uncharacteristically quiet, quiet enough that I wasn’t able to get involved in any road rage incidents and slow us down further. And so I resigned myself to a huge boost for the French economy and enormous damage to mine.

As I was driving through the wooded countryside not far from Valbonne trying to calculate just what the damage to my wallet might be, we passed Le Bois Doré (the Golden Wood I think it means), a restaurant which a few years ago changed ownership and started to introduce lunchtime fixed price menus. The sign outside said the Formule was €17.50.

‘Fancy trying Le Bois’, I said. ‘No – let’s go to my place’, J insisted. ‘It was nice the last time we went’, I countered. She got the message. ‘Ok – let’s try it but remember the last time – you nearly got into a fight, they might remember you’.

Anyway, a quick u-turn later and we were heading up the winding path through the wood which surrounds the restaurant. It looked very quiet and it appeared that my hopes of a lunch coming in at less than €200 were going to be dashed. I needn’t have worried. Once inside the doors, the place was buzzing with an eclectic mix of diners – guys from the nearby business park, bosses with their secretaries, groups of women having girlie lunches and the occasional married couple (you can tell them a mile away – they don’t talk!). J also reckoned there were a couple of gay girls at the next table to ours but got extremely upset when I said they were ‘too gorgeous to be gay’. She thought that was sexist.

Anyway – lunch was terrific. An amuse bouche of mushroom soup with croutons was served followed by hot bread rolls. The starters were ceasar salad for J and a pepper and chorizo tart pour moi. The mains were daurade (fish) for J and I had the Shepherd’s Pie which was served in a glass jar – strange. A glass of wine was included in the price and it was fantastic value at £16 a head.

As we headed back to the car, we passed through the summer terrace which is where the previous altercation took place. It was a beautiful summer day and J and I had decided to try Le Bois Doré. In those days it was a really expensive place to eat and we were seated in the summer terrace with quite a few other people. I had taken my last cigarette with me but conscious that other people were still eating, I waited until they’d all finished whatever course they were eating and then I lit up (this was before the smoking ban).

No sooner had I started to puff away when the old guy at the next table came over and chastised me for smoking saying it was anti-social (I suppose it was), that it was harmful to my health (probably) and that I had no respect for other people (they were only French).

I told him to go away or something similar and finished my cigarette. The waiter then appeared at their table and set down three plates which confused me a little because there were only two of them. When their food appeared they started taking portions of their lamb and putting them on the third plate and then, to our amazement, this poodle appeared, sat up at the table and started eating the lamb. Right from the table from its own plate!

Well – that really started me off. I laid into the couple telling them that I’d never seen anything so disgusting but apparently this was not uncommon in France (you don’t see it so much these days thank God) and a bit of an argument ensued.

So – two trips to Le Bois and different experiences. I think I preferred the gorgeous gay girls at the next table!

http://www.restaurant-leboisdore.com/

26 January 2010

A Bunch Of Bankers

I’ve commented before on French Banks. How they don’t really allow overdrafts (how does J do it though?) and the charges they levy for just running a current account including charges for having a debit card! Apart from that they seem to work just like UK banks, trying to sell you every financial services product under the sun. Getting loans is no real problem although you do have to prove that you have the salary to pay it back but even then, any bit of note-headed paper with some numbers on it will do. Paying in cheques though has always been a bit ‘iffy’ with the bank clerk quite happy to credit any old cheques, no matter who they're made out to, just as long you sign the back in front of him or her.

I was quite interested to read then of a bit of a scandal with some ex-pats over in the Dordogne who bank with Société Générale (Soc Gen is the common abbreviation) who whilst enjoying the sun, the foie gras and the scenery, lost tens of thousands of pounds, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds, to a British swindler.

It appears that this conman actually signed up with Soc Gen to sell some investment fund or other but when his unwitting victims, many of whom were retired, wrote their cheques out he paid them into his own account and did a runner with the cash.

So what’s new about this – it happens all the time, but in this case the cheques were actually made out to Société Générale, hence the victims were not suspicious at all about where their hard earned money was going. Unfortunately, the lax banking system, whilst protecting their money by being really stingy when agreeing to loans from their own cogffers, allowed the conman to pay the cheques into his own account and do the proverbial runner.

Now his mainly elderly victims are suing Société Générale for what they say was negligence over the fraud that cost them their life savings. They blame the French bank for failing to spot and stop the scam, which has left one British couple living in poverty in a caravan.

The case has exposed the obvious loophole in French banking rules and is generating more controversy for Soc Gen . This remember was the bank who lost billions of euros as it let an unsupervised trader, Jérôme Kerviel, make huge bets in the market when the sub-prime mortgage crisis was at its height. Jérôme Kerviel was caught, unlike our other ‘rogue trader’.

25 January 2010

Oh For Fish & Chips

It’s only fair and natural that a Scottish chippie has scooped the title of best fish and chip shop in the UK for the third year running. And it’s not the deep fried pizzas or battered haggis which won it the prize. Nope, the days of simply testing the crispness of the batter and the firmness of the chips is long gone. These days, the contest, now in its 22nd year, rewards the shops producing the best fish and chips, as well as raising industry standards in areas including seafood sustainability, customer service, training and innovation.

Giovanni Fionda (obviously of Italian extraction), of the Atlantic Fast Food chippie, in Coatbridge, near Glasgow, battered the competition (pun intended) to scoop the coveted crown although I bet many of his customers have absolutely no idea, or even care, about seafood sustainability! And as for customer service, like many chippies, the majority of the service is performed across a high counter so what that’s all about is also probably baffling them.

Ten shops were shortlisted for last week's London finals but Mr Fionda, whose family have been in the business for about 40 years, emerged with the title of National Fish and Chip Shop of the Year.

It’s one thing I miss now that I’m not travelling back to the UK so often these days.

I was ‘lucky’ enough to have a Glasgow client at one stage when I was based in London and on the first night I arrived (usually a Sunday night), I would dash down to the fish and chip shop under the Argyle Street bridge and order the ‘large special fish supper’.

I waited patiently as my ‘special fish’ was dipped in batter or egg and then a secret mix of breadcrumbs (or something – it was always a mystery) which was then carefully fried before being wrapped up in the iconic newspaper with obviously a more hygienic paper protecting the food. I then dashed back to my hotel which was only a couple of hundred yards away with my dinner, complete with a can of Irn Bru. I used to desperately hope that the lift to my floor would be empty as the overpowering smell of the fish and chips with lashings of malt vinegar would still permeate the air the following morning.

And then the deal finished and Glasgow was no longer a weekly trip to fish and chip heaven.

However on the occasions when London was particularly busy and I was ‘billeted’ in a smaller hotel in the Angel I was lucky enough to find a great chippie across the road but the problem was trying to get them when they had haddock on the menu and they weren’t too busy to accede to my request to take all the skin off!

So have a look at the Atlantic menu (below) and note – no skate wings, no coley, no cod – just good old haddock and my particular favourite – deep fried pizzas! They’ve even got deep fried Mars Bars! Now I've got my deep fat fryer I'll be trying to replicate the Atlantic soon.

http://www.atlanticfastfood.co.uk/menu.php