The Ex-Pat Pensions Con

I don’t receive a government (old age) pension yet. There’s another six years at least before that indignity befalls me but the ruling the other day by the European Court of Human Rights whereby ex-pats who have moved to non-EU countries such as Australia, Canada and South Africa will not receive increases that everybody else in the EU gets, is absurd.

And before you say, ‘quite right – they’ve moved elsewhere – they shouldn’t get it’, just remember that these people paid their subscriptions like everybody else and some even continued to pay their dues after they had moved abroad.

This has been a long-running dispute and was brought by 13 pensioners who have fought the issue at every stage of British and European law. Having now exhausted the last stage of the legal process they will now have to exist on annually decreasing pensions (due to inflation) with some receiving a miserly £25 a week whilst the ‘normal’ person gets £95.

There are approximately 540,000 pensioners in around 150 countries who are affected by this ruling and one old lady who moved to South Africa in 1989 has ‘lost’ the equivalent of £100,000 over the years.

Even government ministers declared the ruling ‘illogical’ but hamstrung by their lord and masters desire to hang on to every last penny, they have been particularly silent on the matter.

Before the ruling on Tuesday, I was absolutely convinced that the European Court would throw out the British Government’s case (not to award increases) but in a baffling statement they said, ’that denying pension increases did not breach a human rights convention declaration that "the enjoyment of (convention) rights and freedoms shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status’.

What really bugs me is that some layabout who has never worked in his or her life gets their contributions paid for by the state and so when the time comes, they will pick up a nice little pension, with annual increases for doing absolutely nothing.

Similarly, a Latvian or an Estonian who wanders across a few borders and ‘settles down’ in the UK for a few years and doesn’t earn very much but rakes it in in benefits will also receive a Pension Credit so they can live comfortably in their old age.

The world is crackers. The UK Government is crackers but of course they’re all on their inflation proofed pensions so they don’t really have to worry too much!

PMQs and the Comedian’s Forum

At 1pm on a Wednesday everything stops. The kids are exceptionally nice, even offering to clean away the lunch dishes (they have a half day on a Wednesday) and make me a cup of coffee. They know to close the kitchen door and leave me to it – it’s Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQ’s)on TV and I just have to watch it to see that lying toad, Gordon Brown, wriggle and lie his way through another 30 minutes of questions asked by various Members of Parliament.

Of course, his own side submit their pre-rehearsed questions ahead of time so ‘toady’ can research the subject and prepare his next pack of lies whereas he has little knowledge of what is coming from the ‘other sides’ although his henchmen will have predicted the sort of interrogation he is likely to get so he can be semi-briefed.

Yesterday was a classic – Brown decided to come clean under a beautifully crafted question from a Conservative member and admit that he made a mistake about the Defence budget which has been in the news recently because of the answers he (Toady) gave to the Chilcott Enquiry which has been looking at why the UK went to war with Iraq.

Now given that Toady infamously micro-managed the economy as Chancellor of the Exchequer and paid particular attention to large spending departments such as Defence, and has been spouting stats and spending details like a deranged maths professor for the last 13 years, admitting he got ‘something wrong’ with a set of numbers is akin to the Pope actually admitting he is a Protestant and a Rangers supporter to boot. Brown has never, NEVER admitted he got anything wrong but given that it was his specialist subject which he got wrong, every commentator concluded that what he’d been saying for months was a blatant lie.

Anyway, I’m sure this will blow up over the next day or so, so I’ll leave it there but what I really wanted to write about is the website I log onto when PMQ’s is on telly. It’s a forum on the Guido Fawkes Blog site for politic nuts like me and allows them to commentate on PMQ’s as it happens and some of the comments are classic – here are some of the cleaner ones from yesterday, with an explanation where needed:

Nice to see the pugnacious pie-vomiting bulimic prat from Hull showing his nice side on TV – a reference obviously to John Prescott

I miss Harperson’s old giraffe outfit – a first reference to the clothes worn by the lady members, in this case Harriet Harman

Was that Brown admitting a mistake? – somebody has spotted Brown grovelling at the Dispatch Box

He lied and they died – a reference to the fact that Brown has consistently denied cutting the Defence Budget for the troops in Iraq

Oh my God he’s admitting a mistake – somebody cannot believe it

Can you believe a liar when he admits he’s lied – a bit of philosophy here

Looks like Jacqui has been fighting over the pies again with Prescott- a reference to the fact that Jacqui Smith has been piling on the weight

Is that a yeti on the front bench? – another clothing reference

She looks like a sofa I once owned in 1989 – yet another clothing reference

Hain has topped up on the Creosote again – a reference to the permanently tanned Peter Hain, and finally,

More full of crap than King Kong’s colostomy bag – another reference to our esteemed Prime Minister

And that was just the first ten minutes.

Dominos Pizzas

We had some friends round the other night and I went out and picked up five pizzas. There were seven of us including Guy and Kitty and normally when we eat in the pizza restaurant itself, we'll have a pizza each but for some reason, on Friday night we managed only two between the seven of us! So I've been dragging bits of pizza out of the freezer each day and chomping my way through Avocado Surprise, Perfect Pepperoni and something else only J knows the name of.

Pizzas in France leave a lot to be desired. Very thin, crispy bases and a variety of toppings never before encountered – including the avocado one mentioned above.

And then you’re sitting in front of the telly and Dominos are sponsoring some show or another and your taste buds go wild. Now I reckon Dominos do the best pizzas going but I haven’t tasted one for several years! I love Pizza Hut’s stuffed crust and Pizza Express’s Sloppy Guiseppe, but I could kill a Dominos right now.

Quite a few years ago when my eldest son, Stephen, arrived at my bachelor pad in Maidenhead for a long weekend and decided to stay for two years, I eventually decided my philanthropy was going too far and started to charge him rent. I took £100 a month off him and said it would be used for eating out.

We went to the Mexican and the Italian and the French and the pub but eventually, most of the money actually went to a Dominos franchise about 250 yards from my house.

The conversation usually went as follows when I emerged from the car after a 2 hour drive home through central London, ‘what do you fancy eating tonight dad?’ ‘Oh I can’t be bothered going out tonight or cooking anything so why don’t we just get a Dominos.’

After several months of this, Stephen would call Dominos of a night and they’d actually be on first name terms and not need to take an order because they now knew what we wanted. They’d have a chat and we’d get a few freebies and the guy would be at the door within minutes because of the short trip on his scooter. The pizzas were always roasting hot which isn’t always the case with pizza deliveries, and they were deeeeelicious.

After spending quite a bit with them, I casually mentioned to Stephen that he should seriously consider taking on a Dominos franchise and that I would help him with the cash.

He’s probably reading this right now and either (a) cutting his wrists because he didn’t accept my offer or (b) desperately trying to think when I made this amazingly generous offer but needless to say, he declined and of course the rest is history.

Back then, Dominos was in start-up mode and were looking for Franchisees and about £150k to start a delivery/take away premises, but Stephen wasn’t sure – maybe he thought he’d get fat eating all the profits!

Today Dominos is 600 stores strong in the UK and it now needs £280k to start a franchise and their profits are booming thanks to the recession when people are eating in more.

Stephen, we could have made a fortune!

And with that we move on to a 'lady' who made one fortune in one business and is out to make another in a completely new line of activity. Monaco Nigel's latest post is now available but contains adult themes.

http://monaconigel.blogspot.com/2010/03/naked-came-vintner.html

Granny 69

Now this is not a joke and it’s not rude. It’s something to do with France, so anything goes - particularly when it comes to culture and in particular, music based culture.

France is not well known for its singing stars. When Johnny Hallyday and Carla Bruni are feted as France’s finest, you know they are struggling to come up with anything or anybody remotely talented. So, the latest party circuit ‘princess’ to wow the night clubs and festivals of France with her DJ skills is a bit of a surprise, especially when you find out it’s a British granny who took a shine to the decks after going to a birthday disco for her grandson a few years ago.

Clad in her leopard-skin outfit and dark sunglasses, 69-year-old Ruth Flowers has conquered French clubland from the Cannes Film Festival to the top Paris nightspots with a mix of old-school hits, electrobeat and bling-bling style – whatever the latter two music genres might be.

"It started really when my grandson had a birthday party ... they always have a little disco, don't they, after the party," Flowers told Reuters, lounging on a white sofa in a Paris hotel in a green satin bomber jacket and trademark shades contrasting with her white hair.

While Flowers, a trained singer, was more used to church songs, she was so taken by the party that she decided there and then to become a disc jockey. "I had no idea at the time what electro music was," she said.

However, as someone with interests ranging from history to theatre and fashion, she was willing to learn. A friend put her in touch with French producer Aurelien Simon who taught her how to spin records and helped her to develop a style, sprinkling her techno sets with tunes from Abba, Queen and the Rolling Stones.

As I said, any country who has a tone deaf dinosaur, and a tuneless, guitar strumming chanteuse who is also the first lady who just happens to look good, as their national music treasures, then anything goes and usually does!

PS – where the 69 comes from, I have no idea, unless she’s 69 years old – yuck!

PPS - yup she's 69 years old and you can book her here for your very own party:

http://www.mamyrock.com/home.htm

Justice The French Way

Now I think if a person looks guilty, acts guilty and smells guilty then they probably are guilty but of course in a contradictory sense and to counteract that view, I also believe in the due process of law, the trial, the evidence, the jury and the verdict. But in my adopted country (France), all of that seems to go out of the window.

Take the latest criminal/trial sensation. André Bamberski, 72, a retired accountant from Toulouse, whose daughter Kalinka was aged 14 years when she died under particularly mysterious circumstances, has been pursuing a German doctor (Dieter Krombach) who injected his daughter with a substance that was supposed to encourage a tan. Later, on trial in Germany for causing her death, Krombach changed his statement to say it was a remedy for anaemia. He was cleared.

Bamberski never for a moment believed that Krombach was innocent and for 27 years has waged a campaign to have him tried in France for murder but the Germans refused to hand him over and so Bamberski was resigned to publicizing his campaign against Krombach wherever and whenever he could.

Last year, Krombach was kidnapped in Germany by a Croatian who claimed he was acting on purely altruistic reasons. Krombach was beaten, transported in a car boot across Germany and then dumped in a small French town. Bamberski had been told that this was about to happen and to his credit, he contacted the police and flew there immediately to see the ‘perpetrator’, whom he’d been chasing for 27 years.

Now at this stage it’s fair to point out that in the 27 years since Kalinka’s death, several things happened:

Kalinka’s post mortem did not establish the cause of death

Rape was strongly suspected but never investigated

Krombach was tried in Germany for the murder but was acquitted

Despite the German verdict, France tried Krombach in his absence and found him guilty, sentencing him to 15 years for manslaughter

Krombach is convicted in a German court of injecting a 16 year old with a dubious substance and is banned from practicing medicine

Krombach is convicted of fraud for continuing to work as a doctor in Germany despite the previous ban

Nine French judges rule that Krombach must stand trial in France, even though he had been kidnapped in Bavaria, taken across the border and delivered, bound and gagged, to French police

Bamberski, now also on trial in France for kidnap, along with the Croat who actually abducted Krombach, denies that his obsession with the German doctor has anything to do with the fact that he has a passionate dislike of Germans that was forged in the war when he and his sister were taken by the Nazis from their parents in France in 1940 and kept in prisons and homes in Poland and Germany.

So, just another ‘murder’ trial in France with no body, no real evidence, no witnesses but a hidden, political agenda. However, I still think Krombach sounds guilty.