And This Guy Criticises Youngsters For Their Taste !

Sometimes, like during the last few weeks, I struggle for something to write about and then, out of the blue, one of my favourite subjects pops up and it’s manna from heaven.

If I tell you it’s a footballer (and this is where the girls switch off – or so J says) and his taste in just about everything is so bad, you feel physically sick, you’ll know it’s good old Stephen Ireland featuring again. You may already have worked it out from the photo above, although that stupid hoodie he’s wearing might have confused you a bit. Why doesn’t the idiot just wear a burka if he wants to look a prat? It’s probably the car that allowed you to guess who it was anyway.

Now, I don’t have anything personal against Mr Ireland. He hasn’t scored a hat-trick of goals against my team nor crocked one of our best players, in fact I don’t think he’s even played against Rangers, it’s just that the guy is a 100 carat dipstick, a total wazzock, a stunning example of what can happen to a young man, when his wealth overtakes his ability to handle it sensibly and the size of his ego overtakes that of his bank balance.

So what’s he up to now? Well his last team, Manchester City, decided to trade him for an Aston Villa player, and once on Villa soil, Mr Ireland let rip at his previous employers and his former teammates, castigating young reserve footballers for coming to ‘work’ with £10,000 watches on their wrists.

This, from the guy who has a £10,000 fish tank installed in his bedroom, and who, reputedly, is trying to find a firm to install a glass floor in his kitchen under which he’ll have sharks swimming in a tank! You couldn’t make it up!

This is the guy who told so many porkies, particularly when he did not want to represent his country, Ireland, that eventually the authorities worked out that all three of his grandmothers had died – yup – all three! The game was up after that.

But of course, his main crime against humanity is what he does to cars. Now I love, just love the Audi R8, and having seen what he’s done to his (see picture), I actually think I’ll get a flight to Birmingham and tell him what I think of his taste. It stinks.

See this other post about Mr Ireland and his love of ruining nice cars:

 http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/loads-money-no-sense.html

And talking of guys who have absolutely no taste, Nigel has recounted a story of when he went on a client trip to the Netherlands. See what he has to say at the following URL:

http://monaconigel.blogspot.com/

Sorry About The Language, But ....

This post is short and concise.  It’s about the BP oil spill in the Gulf.

I’ve no interest in BP at this juncture. I don’t own any shares in the company directly although my pension fund probably does but the shares will recover so that’s not a problem. What is, is the detail of some of the claims coming out regarding the oil spill and which are being considered in the US courts.

Now I have no objection to those who suffered directly from the oil spill claiming some recompense, the fishermen, the cafe and restaurant owners and those whose livelihood depends on the highly polluted sea and beaches, but what I do object to in principle is the rash of claims from people who can’t sell their houses (they probably weren’t selling anyway), those hundreds of miles away who claim the smell of oil is affecting their health and worst of all, those, some thousands of miles away, who are now claiming that the pain and injury inflicted on wildlife in particular and America in general is causing them mental anguish. Mental anguish ! Two thousand miles away!

What a load of bollocks! What a load of litigious crap!

And worst of all, America has a system where this sort of claim (the mental anguish one) is actually acceptable to the courts and when worked out at an ‘agreed’ formula of €31 per household, means BP will have to pay some $3 blllion to the US Government!

What a load of bollocks!  Sorry America, I love your country but this is – no I won’t say it again. 

Injustices and The Col De Vence

J and I are sitting on the terrace after dinner. ‘I think I’ll take you for lunch in the mountains tomorrow’, she says.

In an effort to stem the flood of red ink which appears on her bank statements, I said we shouldn’t bother, ‘after all darling, we’ve had a lot of vet’s bills this month’.

‘You’re right of course – we’ll do it another time’, she replies.

The following morning, I come in from cutting the lavender and notice she’s all washed and made up. “I’m off to Mandelieu with Keren. Don’t wait for me – I’ll be lunching out.’ And with that the jeep shot off down the drive.

An hour later, I remembered Kitty was supposed to be going to a friend’s house. “It’s ok’ she said, ‘mummy is taking me.’

‘I don’t think so Kitty – she’s off. I’ll have to take you on the scooter.’ (the Alfa’s puncture hasn’t been fixed yet).

‘But Thomas – it’s in Coursegoules – it’s miles up in the mountains. Your scooter will never make it.’

And so we set off, heading through Vence, up the hill past the luxurious hotel, the Chateau St Martin and then into the mountain hinterland. And Kitty was right, well almost. The poor old 102cc Honda struggled and struggled, slowing down to 40 km/h at one stage and only just overtaking some poor tourists who had obviously hired bikes and thought they’d go out for a nice ride in the country!

Once at the top (see picture – the Col, despite Kitty standing in front of the sign!) we stopped for a look at the view and to allow the Honda to cool down. It was stunning at the Col. 1000 metres high (3,300 ft). The air was fresh and there was total silence. Then off we continued to Coursegoules, a village literally stuck onto the side of a mountain and where Kitty’s schoolfriend, Mary lives. We reached the village and as we passed one of the small bistros with pavement tables, I suddenly became very hungry.

‘Fancy some lunch Kitty’, I asked. ‘Oh yes Thomas – great.’

I parked the scooter and we were  just heading back to the main restaurant when Kitty’s phone rang. ‘Sorry Thomas, Mary’s waiting for me – they’re just about to serve lunch and they’ve invited me to join them’.

And that was that. There’s nothing sadder than a poor old lonely guy having lunch on his own so I got back on the Honda and headed round the mountain, still hungry, having been ‘dumped’ twice in the one day. The injustice of it all! 

Immigrants - How Sarkozy is Dealing With Them

We’ve all got immigration stories. My youngest son bought his first house in a slightly shabby area of Glasgow only to find that the place went totally downhill when the council turned a housing estate across from his very presentable flat into an immigration and asylum seekers enclave. Within months, the longer-established residents whose houses faced the estate, re-christened the area, Bosnia! The place was a complete tip. Tim did well to sell when he did.

My brother (Robert) lives in a nice area just to the west of Glasgow, but once again instead of tearing down the no longer desirable high-rise flats located half a mile from his house, the council have filled them with asylum seekers waiting for their cases to be heard. That’s ok, but the pond populated with beautiful, elegant swans, no more than 200 yards from his house, is no more. Well, the pond is still there but the swans are not – guess where they’ve gone? And when they disappear, they seem to do so at the dead of night!

Now down here in the south of France, things are slightly different – there are quite a few Moroccan and Algerian  immigrants in the local area but generally there is work for them with no shortage of villas going up requiring their excellent building skills. The Polish people are terrific carpenters and true to their race characteristics, are terrifically hard workers. If building work dries up, they will paint or do gardening.

But things are different in Marseille. There, Sarkozy’s storm-troopers are rounding up Roma immigrants (gypsies) and are turfing them out of France using a law which maybe the UK should consider. The law says, that despite the fact that, in many cases, their countries of origin, e.g. Romania and Bulgaria, are members of the EEC, the Roma immigrants can be sent home if they do not have ‘adequate means or resources to support themselves’. My god, if the UK authorities adopted this type of legal requirement, the population would fall by several million!

But back to Marseille. When I was there a few years ago, I got lost in my car and ended up in an area where the first thing you did was to lock your doors and hope that you didn’t break down. It was like the ‘Bosnia’ area of Glasgow I described earlier, but far closer to the elegant centre of that great Mediterranean city. It was crying out for a clean-up and it seems that Sarkozy has finally got around to it.

Good or bad, the Romas (and it’s not a targeted programme aimed at these EEC citizens, it’s just that they have formed an enclave within a slum), are being rounded up if they have no jobs or work papers are being ‘repatriated’ back to their home countries, no doubt on nice scheduled aircraft and with €300 in their pocket. The problem is, being EEC citizens, they simply spend their €300 in their homeland and then hop on the next lorry heading south and hey-presto, they’re back in Marseille!

Sharks and Crocs

No longer will I be able to laugh at Angie and her mum, Tina, complaining about the millipedes and spiders wandering around the terrace. ‘But you’ve got crocodiles and racoons wandering around your garden and sharks swimming all over the place in Florida’, I say. ‘Compared to that, bugs are positively civilised.’

But no more – last week the beaches down here were closed because of a sighting of a ‘2 metre shark’. I was initially sceptical as to whether it was a shark but I read a report which described the situation as follows:

“The sighting was reported by a lifeguard patrolling in a motorboat who saw a 7 feet long shark. Immediately after the news, lifeguards at the beach raised a red flag which signifies danger and asked tourists not to go into the water. There was a rumour that it was a Great White but lifeguards have not confirmed the report. Swimming was banned at Cagnes-sur-Mer, Villeneuve-Loubet and Saint-Laurent-du-Var at least for Tuesday with lifeguards insisting they may check out the ocean (it’s a sea) before allowing tourists back in the water (what about the locals ?)”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, our northern cousins had a croc to deal with – apparently.

Beaches along the French coast of the English Channel were closed after a killer crocodile was spotted lurking in the sea. The alarm was raised after two men said they had seen a 12ft monster near the northern French port of Boulogne, less than 30 miles from Britain's south coast. When more warnings came in, officials decided to close all nearby beaches, packed with high-season holidaymakers.

In a very rare bit of French humour, locals have decided to call the beast,  ‘Croc Monsieur’ after the commonly eaten toasted sandwich of the same name but spelled Croque. It now turns out however that the ‘croc’ was actually a piece of wood! How come several French fishermen, on different boats, all made the same mistake?

Down here, sharks are a bit more of a serious matter, but ironically a shark joke appeared in my e-mail in-tray on exactly the same day as the sighting. Here it is:

The Pope was cruising along the beach in the Pope-mobile when there was a frantic commotion just off-shore. A helpless man, wearing a Celtic football shirt was struggling frantically to free himself from the jaws of a 25 foot shark.

As the Pope watched in horror, a speedboat pulled up with three men wearing Rangers football jerseys. One quickly fired a harpoon into the shark's side while the other two reached out and pulled the hapless Celtic fan from the water. Then, using long clubs, the three beat the shark to death and hauled it into the boat.

Immediately the Pope shouted and summoned them to him. "I give you my blessing for your brave actions. I heard that there is bitter hatred between Rangers and Celtic football  fans, but now I have seen with my own eyes that this is not true."

As the Pope drove off, the harpooner asked his friends: "Who was that?"

"It was the Pope," one replied. "He is in direct contact with God and has access to all of God's wisdom and knowledge."

"Well" the harpooner said, looking at the blood soaked, shark ravaged Celtic fan in the bottom of the boat,   "he may have access to God and his wisdom, but he doesn't know anything about shark fishing. Is our bait holding up OK or do we need to get another one?"