The Dogs Of War

In the week when the bodies of six brave soldiers were repatriated from Afghanistan, I'm a bit nervous about posting this blog, but here goes......

I have a long held view that our brave guys in Iraq and Afghanistan actually quite like being out there and my view is based on the fact that as regular soldiers they’d rather be fighting an enemy than sitting in their barracks polishing their rifles, and toiling in the parade ground doing drills all day. I know this is a bit of a generalization, but bear with me.

Many of today’s soldiers, sailors and airmen have joined the forces knowing that Britain has been at war for the last 40 years in some way or another (Irish troubles included), and that there would be a strong chance they would be sent to one of the current conflict zones.

And in fairness to the Forces themselves, their TV adverts don’t shy away from showing life in a conflict zone, so anybody joining up thinking they’re going to swan around some of the ‘old colonies’ soaking up the sun and helping the locals build new huts, is deluding him or herself.

In a blog posting a few weeks ago (http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/book-about-home.html), I highlighted a video shot by some soldiers hunting the Taliban, and the camaraderie and sense of purpose, as well as their bravery was quite clear.

Despite this, I still felt a bit uneasy about my position (that the ‘boys’ like being at war) so I was quite heartened today when I read a Sky News Blog, part of which I reproduce below:

A couple of months ago I met up with a mentoring team of 10 British soldiers who had been held up in their base for months. Firefights every day and supplied by helicopter drops for weeks on end. They controlled no more than a few hundred yards of dusty road outside their front door. They were attacked night after night.

They were led by a very nice posh officer lad and a classic gruff sergeant . As a unit, they were the happiest blokes I have ever met.

“It was f****** great mate. The lads f****** loved it. Thank f*** we didn’t lose anyone but we f****** twatted them – every time we went out. We knew where it would start, we knew what they would do and we just went out and tried to f*** them up. F****** brilliant.” That was the sergeant talking.

The officer: “The lads did a great professional job. I think they relished the opportunity to engage with the enemy and implement the changes we and the other forces have been tasked with achieving. The goals are difficult and achievements will sometimes be difficult to quantify but we feel we achieved a fair, if modest, degree of success.”

After spending another long night on the floor of a dusty tent, with no air conditioning in the day and freezing cold at night, eating awful MRE’s (meals ready to eat) when it was clear there could be a cook (in the unit), I took it upon myself to ask the commanding officer why his men lived in such terrible conditions when it was pointless.

“ I don’t ask much of my men,” the colonel told me. “But I do ask them this: ‘Men, we will take that town tomorrow and we will prevail whatever the cost to you or your comrades.’

I am telling them to roll out of bed and kill people and risk being killed. That is why they live like animals, because I want them to behave like animals. It is war.”

They probably love it.

Zzzzzzzzzz

No Blog today - I'm suffering from an over exposure to socializing. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and yesterday is just more than my old, decrepit body can handle these days and it all starts again tomorrow and continues into Saturday. How I wish I was 20 again!

So apologies to one and all but I'm going back to sleep.

The Sun Tax

I’ve often mentioned the high cost of living down here on the Côte D,Azur but I’ve come to realize that it’s the cost of living in France which is the problem, not our sunny little enclave.

And calling it a 'sun tax’ is probably unfair as it’s the retailers and tradesmen who generally benefit, not the Government, although given the high social costs and benefits which prevail in this country as well as the restrictive nature of employment, (i.e. virtually no sackings, multitudes of ‘civil servants’ retiring at 50 on 2/3rds pay including gas, electricity and water workers), you can see how businesses might need to have higher charges to offset their higher costs.

This came home to me the other day after I’d bought my iPhone which came with a call plan. The phone cost me €149 (say £135) and the call plan included unlimited texts and just 2 hours of calls. In the UK, the same phone is free and comes with 10 hours of calls!

A Flymo Lawn Mower is €110 (£100) in our biggest and cheapest DIY store but it’s only £68 in B&Q in the UK.

Rather more mundane, a 2 litre carton of milk from Tesco costs £1.34 (€1.47) but costs €2.15 out here in our nation-wide supermarket. And if you think wine is cheaper, there are so many special deals in UK supermarkets that if I was driving south from the UK, I’d definitely think about bringing down a couple of cases with me.

One of our larger bills however is the local tax bills we get at this time of year. One is called Tax Fonciere which is paid by the homeowner and the other, Tax d’Habitation, is paid by the person who actually lives in the house. As I both own and live in the house, it’s a simple (but expensive) matter to add both together and come up with a bill of over €5200 per annum which is about £4700 a year. Looking up the council tax for an equivalent house in Maidenhead, Berkshire, the bill would be a ‘paltry’ £2560!!

Our beloved but battered Honda CRV would cost €27,700 to replace here but only €24,000 in the UK.

So after all this what price do you put on sun and quality of life? I reckon it costs our family about €8,000 a year more than it would back in the UK – but I think it’s worth every penny, sorry Euro cent.

What price can you put on your children going to school knowing they'll never get bullied or be in a fight? What price do you put on them and us walking around town knowing there'll never be any yobs about causing havoc? What price do you put on the roads being fixed as soon as a pothole appears? And what price do you put on a health care system which whips you into hospital as soon as there's a problem? And finally, what price do you put on raising the shutters each morning and feeling good because the sun is shining? That €8000 is a high price to pay but it's definitely worth it.

E-mail From The Prime Minister

So, I’m sitting watching the footie on the telly having a nice glass of Italian red when my e-mail alert sounds. If it’s another bloody message from e-Bay I’ll go beserk I’m thinking, having tried to delist myself from its mailing service several times over the course of the last week as it sends me countless e-mails begging me to buy the latest line in ladies weight reduction devices. Of course I could always be wrong and it’s the electronic bill from J’s visit to Marks and Spencers last week. I hope not! There’s not enough money in the global banking system to cover that bill!

I glance at my iPhone and blink. I look again and blink again.

‘From : 10 Downing Street.'

Wow - I’ve hit the big time. Has the Prime Minister has discovered my blog and wants to discuss my radical approach to resolving British and global problems? But I’m also worried. Has he seen some of the less complimentary things I’ve written about him, of which there’s been a few? Maybe not. Has he, in his quest to develop a government of ‘all the talents’, realized that unless he gets me into a major ministerial role pretty soon, he’s going to lose the next election? Does he want me to be a sort of Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs with Special Responsibility for France? Maybe he knows how tight, sorry careful, I am with my cash and he wants me to replace Alistair Darling at the Treasury? Who knows? Excitedly, I open the e-mail.

It says, ‘You signed a petition asking the Prime Minister to resign. The Prime Minister's Office has responded to that petition and you can view it here’:

‘The Prime Minister is completely focussed on restoring the economy, getting people back to work and improving standards in public services. As the Prime Minister has consistently said, he is determined to build a stronger, fairer, better Britain for all.’

What a complete wazzock !

Lost in Translation

It always happens. I’m talking to someone French at a party or in town and they say, ‘How long have you been here?’ What they actually mean is, ‘Your French is so bad I can’t believe that you’ve lived in France for 10 years.’

It’s not my fault. I’ve had French lessons at school. I’ve had private French lessons in BT in London and they even paid for me to have private lessons in France when I wasn’t even supposed to be here but I just can’t get my head round it. I mean guys change flat tyres – no problem. Women can’t. Women can learn several languages – guys can’t. It’s just the way things are.

I ask the kids who are totally bilingual, to speak to me in French so I’ll learn but they absolutely refuse to do so. I demand that as a family we speak French at dinner twice a week but they refuse to do so. What am I to do? They say the best way to learn French (for a man) is to get a French mistress but then all I’d learn is, ‘Mon Dieu. Ah – c’est bon. Continuez. Encore ma Cherie’, and some other phrases, all of which I already know (don’t ask how).

And so my French education happens when I bump into my French neighbours or I’m out and about in town, but of course, despite being French, their politeness means that they never correct my appalling grammar and tenses. They just laugh!

It all came home to roost last week when I phoned to make an appointment for my quarterly haircut. I hate phoning French people - you don’t see their lips move (obviously) and cannot work out what they’re saying.

‘Bonjour Monsieur Patrice, je voudrais un rendezvous pour une coup sil-vous-plait.’ Basically, can I have an appointment for a haircut please. ‘Oui monsieur – trois heures?’, was the reply. 1 o’clock – no problem.

Now this is where things get tricky. I turned up at 1 o’clock and the place was distinctly closed. I looked at his ‘hours of business notice (horaires) and it said he didn’t open until 2pm. I went for lunch and saw the lights go on at 2pm and when I’d finished my café crème (which unusually wasn’t accompanied by the waiter asking sarcastically if I wanted a croissant with it – see later) I went over and threw Patrice’s door open and made it known that I wasn’t happy.

(I won’t do this bit in French) – ah Thomas – you are early – your appointment isn’t until 3pm – trois heures. Nope Patrice – you said 1 o’oclock - treize heures. No monsieur, I said trois heures. And there the problem lay.

The stupid French have virtually the same word for thirteen and three. Well at least when you put the word ‘heures’ after them.

So trying to put this down phonetically, 1 o’clock is thirteen hours which is ‘trez hours’, whereas 3pm is ‘trwaz hours’. Stupid, bloody French!

And the thing about the croissant with the coffee is classic French arrogance. The French never have milk in their coffee unless it’s breakfast when some of them have a small white coffee but they always have a croissant with it. So when the English order a white coffee at lunchtime, occasionally, and only when the waiter is a complete moron, they’ll ask if you want a croissant with it. I always look forward to that cause it means I don’t have to leave the pratt a tip !!

Cars, Trains, Buses and Scooters

Monday night and Guy’s telling me I need to be up at the crack of dawn next day to deliver him to his father’s office 20 miles away in Antibes whilst I am trying to find out where this female lives who is selling her Honda scooter . It just happens to be Antibes. Result!

The advert on the local forum had been promising. A scooter, apparently identical to the one I’ve already got but 3 years younger was available for a very good price but incredibly she couldn’t confirm the make, model or how many kilometers it had done (she did know the colour though – pretty silver !), but as I was driving Guy down that way it was worth having a look at it.

Her advert had said she was willing to negotiate as she was returning to England in a week’s time, which only made me more enthusiastic to get down there before anybody else beat me to it, and at 9.45am, 15 minutes early, there I was, standing outside the ‘Australian Outback Bar’ (yes really) on my phone asking exactly where she lived. ‘Look up to your left’, which I did and there she was, waving from a balcony of a rather swish apartment block, just off the harbour.

Probably no more than 25, speaking perfect English and French and with two under 5’s in tow, she took me into the yard and showed me the scooter. It had been lying there untouched for 3 months but it was immaculate. I managed to get it going and to cut a long story short, after a trial run, I bought it.

Now I won’t bore you with the logistics of getting a scooter back home when you’ve arrived at the seller’s apartment in a car, but needless to say, it involved quite a few journeys – cars, trains, buses and finally, scooters. The plan was to dump the car somewhere in Antibes, drive the new scooter along the coast to Cagnes and then get the train back to Antibes, pick up the car and drive it home. Then return to our ‘local’ station for the scooter.

It was a nice drive along the coast in the sun and the 30 minute journey gave me a chance to properly try out my new toy. Delighted with its performance, I parked the scooter at Cagnes train station, bought my ticket and waited for the train heading back in the direction of Cannes.

I got back to Antibes, drove the 20 miles home in the car and then persuaded J to drive me into Vence to get the bus which was the next part of the logistical nightmare, the part of the multi-transport journey which brought me back down to earth and restored my faith in the crazy world of the French .

From Vence and according to the published timetables, the number 400 bus would take me to the train station (where the scooter was parked)about 10 miles away. It left in 20 minutes time from the town square and when I got there, it was sitting in its bay. I was just about to board it when it just drove off – 10 minutes early! I ran after it and shouted in my best French, ‘are you the 3.45, number 400 going to the station?’ The driver just shrugged and drove off. But hey – that’s France!

Concerned a bit by this stage as that was the last bus of the day heading towards the station at Cagnes, I boarded another bus which was, according to the timetable and its signs, going nowhere near my destination, but in a sort of forlorn hope, asked the driver if he was passing anywhere near the SNCF at Cagnes. ‘Bien sur (of course)’ he replied and within 20 minutes I was reunited with my new Scoot as the kids call them here.

Now this is typical France. The bus which is supposed to be going to the station doesn’t, but the bus which is going nowhere near the trains, actually stops right outside the platforms – weird but French! This is why I use a scooter to get around!

Unique In France

Occasionally, just occasionally I realize that I am unique in France. Is it because I fervently support Glasgow Rangers football team? Well probably not, because the owner of that great team actually has a house not too far away in Antibes, so on certain Saturdays when they’re playing and he has decided to forsake the freezing, pouring rain of Glasgow for the great weather of the Côte D’Azur, I’m almost certainly not alone in screaming, ‘stick it in the ******* net, you ******* ******.’

Is it because I like my steaks ‘bien cuit’ (well done)? Probably not. There's loads of 'heathens' like me who prefer not to have their plate swimming in the blood of the animal they're eating. Is it because I go berserk when I get awful service at the checkout in supermarkets and simply storm off leaving them to stick my €200 worth of groceries back on the shelves? I cannot believe so – poor service is so ubiquitous in France that there must be other fed-up, impatient Anglos like me.

Nope – every now and again I know with absolute certainty that I am UNIQUE in France and it does have something to do with ‘food’ although the French might dispute that.

So when I have Cheddar cheese and pickled onions for a snack – is anybody else in the whole of France doing the same? Unlikely, but possibly. When I make Scottish mince with onions and carrots (not chile – pleeeeease) and serve it with turnips and mashed potatoes, is anybody else eating as grandly? Maybe the Rangers guy down in Antibes so that might not be a unique meal.

But the other evening I reckon I was totally and unequivocally unique in France – no question about it.

At lunchtime, I’d taken J and Guy for lunch in town and we’d all had quite a bit to eat but that doesn’t mean that when it comes to 9 o’clock in the evening we don’t need something else. The kids were so hungry they were actually eating out of the cat’s bowl (sardines in case you’re wondering) when I noticed the time and asked J if she was making anything for dinner but of course, the answer was a resounding, ‘No. I’m too busy, I’m looking at the Marks and Spencer website’.

At that, the kids delved into the cupboards and started opening cans of baked beans and sticking bread in the toaster, but if you’re thinking Beans on Toast is the unique food in France, think again.

Nope – that distinction goes to me. With no baked beans left and only a packet of crisps visible (chips for any French reading this – some hope !!), I made myself – wait for it – wait for it – I made a crisp sandwich. There – was anybody else in France eating a crisp sandwich tonight? I bet they weren’t.

I’ve always known I was unique and that night I was. And now you know the relevance of the picture at the start of this posting.

Huntin,Shootin, Fishin

If you read my blog you’ll know that I’ve been on a mission recently to get back in contact with guys I worked with 40 years ago. I did see some of them 16 years ago, but there are others with whom I’ve not had contact since we finished our apprenticeship in 1972. It’s a fascinating exercise. We’ve got one left to find.

However, long before I started hunting for these guys, I was trying to trace an old mate of mine, Jeff Thomson, who I worked with in IBM (I suppose that should read – with whom I worked in IBM ???). When I got my first sales territory my boss said ‘right Tom – you’ve got the left hand side of Scotland, and there’s a guy called Jeff in Edinburgh who’s got the right hand side’. Real scientific stuff – eh ?

Anyway, a few weeks later I met Jeff and we were buddies from that moment on. We used to tell each other about our respective clients. He had the Cairngorm Ski Lift Company which meant a rather long, cold trek up a mountain whilst I told him about my new client, a major government office, 10 yards from IBM’s back door who employed a bunch of girls who insisted on partying, partying, partying and thankfully, clients who insisted on spending, spending, spending. A marriage made in heaven if ever there was one.

It wasn’t long though before I found that for Jeff, IBM was merely a vehicle for keeping him occupied during the week – he was really a member of the Edinburgh gentry, taking part in all sorts of country pursuits each weekend and making sure the office was fully stocked with everything the earth could supply. Bags of potatoes would litter the 16^th Century IBM Edinburgh office’s narrow corridors. Pheasants would be hanging in his office waiting to be collected by willing customers, but the worst thing was when he was delivering fish and shellfood to his mates – what a stink!

Occasionally, we had to do work together, and on one such occasion having spent a rather rumbustious couple of days in Aberdeen, we were heading back down the A9 to his house in Perthshire where I had left my car. As we passed some tiny fishing village, Jeff drove his car down onto the keyside where he started talking to some ‘fishing trawler’ types. A couple of minutes later a couple of baskets of huge, live crabs were loaded into his boot, some money changed hands and off we sped southwards.

At his house in Blackford, he asked me if I wanted some crabs and as I had an English mother-in-law at the time, I said I’d take some. I had no receptacle in which to keep the crabs so Jeff just dumped about six of them into my boot and off I set. A couple of hours later I stopped outside my house in Glasgow, opened the boot to get the crabs, which I was sure would be dead by now and there was – nothing! They’d crawled into every conceivable crevice. Getting a torch from the house only helped in that I could spot their beady eyes well back into the voids in a car boot that most people don’t even know exist. By now, a crowd of nosey, but well-meaning neighbours had gathered, all offering advice about how to get the crustaceans from their new, dry lairs. After about an hour of viciously poking them with sticks (the crabs not the neighbours) they’d all given up and were heading for the pot. I watched in a sadistic sort of glee as my mother-in-law popped them into the large pan, switched on the heat and then had to hold the lid down as they battled to escape.

Thanks Jeff !

Film 2009 Presented By Tom Cupples

With books I read and films I watch, if I can’t get into them in the first 10 minutes or so, I go off and do something else. I can’t think of too many films which have gone on to be great movies after a crap opening and anyway, I would be devastated if I spent 2 hours watching a movie, hoping that it was going to get better – and it didn’t! A couple of months ago J, against my better judgment, made me sit and watch Brad Pitt in the film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and it was utter tosh. So, the fact that my last 3 choices were, in my opinion, all great films, restored my confidence that my judgment is alive, well and as brilliant as ever.

Firstly – ‘The Taking of Pelham 123’. Now remakes are usually rubbish (Omega Man springs to mind) but this was just brilliant. I don’t think it got a great write up when it was released but almost as soon as I started watching it I could see it was going to surpass the original which had Gene Hackman in the leading role as the New York Subway operator (that’s trains not sandwiches!) negotiating with crooks who had hijacked a train. From memory, the action in the original was better but being a bit older and cerebral, I look to screenplay (that’s dialogue) to make me appreciate a film these days and the screenplay in Pelham 123 was superb …. with Travolta making the film. He was utterly brilliant. OK – Denzel Washington was probably the leading actor but Travolta ‘stole it’. Great film. Great performance.

Next – Knowing, starring Nicolas cage. Now I can’t work out whether Cage is a great actor or a truly appalling one so I keep watching his films trying to work out the answer. Luckily, his films all seem to be quite good so it’s not too onerous a task trying to judge his performances. In Knowing, he is the main character as you would expect and is convinced that a lady from the past had known about future disasters. Of course, he’s correct and the disasters duly take place. The special effects (particularly a crashing plane) are very impressive and with some scary aliens around, it didn’t take long before the hairs on my arms were standing straight up. It also had a quite unusual ending so all in all, it was a very good film. Disasters, aliens, and an unexpected, unusual ending made sure it was right up my street.

Finally, the new Sci-Fi movie, District 9. The film features a huge alien space ship which has been hovering above Johannesburg for the last 20 years. The authorities have to house the aliens somewhere so create a new township, just for them – it’s called District 9. The film is actually shot like a documentary and has no well-known actors in it and will not be the ‘film of choice’ for quite a few people, but I thought it was brilliantly made with a very original storyline and with quite a bit of humour interspersed throughout the film. Excellent.

Can’t wait for Avatar though which is released in December. James Cameron, he of Titanic, Aliens, The Abyss and Terminator 2 fame is the director and doesn’t spare a buck when making his films. Shot in a new form of 3D, it promises to be the film sensation of the last few years and of course, it's just in time for the Oscars.

Barry Norman – eat your heart out.

Tony Blair’s A Saint !!

I’ve previously written about the French mayoral system which basically allows, nay encourages, local mayors to run their towns as personal fiefdoms. I’ve not heard anything bad about our Monsieur Bertaina but did encounter his absolute power when he arbitrarily stopped our housebuilding project for about 10 months and hauled J and I up before him to get a ‘royal dressing down’.

I also explained that this culture does not restrict itself to small towns and villages and goes right to the very top, mentioning the ex President, Chirac (pictured), as someone tainted by stories of corruption when he was Mayor of Paris. Of course, his financial shenanigans only came to light when he left his mayoral position and became President of France but like all these nasty little foreign countries, e.g. Italy, there is a law which protects any serving President from prosecution, no matter the alleged crime.

However, now that Chirac is no longer in power, the authorities are chasing him, with all sorts of people crawling out of the woodwork to give their side of the story and what a story it is. It makes the UK MP’s Expenses scandal seem like an insignificant little issue.

So what was Chirac alleged to have done? It all comes down to the fact that the all-powerful mayors have the ability to offer huge public works contracts to companies without too much in the way of corporate governance.

Kick-backs for these contracts in the form of suitcases full of banknotes were routinely delivered to the Mayor’s office and it is rumoured that Chirac and his family spent €18,000 a month on food alone and when you consider the small salary French politicians are paid, that ‘s quite a food bill. The money was also used to favour important, but low ranking employees by providing them with chauffeur driven cars, whilst union leaders were provided with ‘inducements’ presumably to lessen the likliehood of any public disorder.

But most, if not all of this, probably went unnoticed in Paris, where French government ministers were routinely handed bundles of cash on a monthly basis as a way of increasing their meagre salaries – and this was legal. No receipts were necessary , no books or records were kept of who got the cash and how much – the cash was just handed out from a ‘special fund’ as it was known. You can see the potential for a bit of skimming here and there can’t you?

So, it’s all happening here in the courts of the French capital. The ex-President (Chirac) is being chased by the Justice Department and the current President (Sarkozy) is using the very same Justice Department to prosecute the ex-prime Minister (Dominique de Villepin) on conspiracy charges. Bet Tony Blair is glad he wasn’t a politician here! He looks like a saint compared to this lot.

The Class Of 68

In the 16 months I’ve been writing my blog I’ve mentioned, on quite a few occasions, my time in Chrysler when I served my apprenticeship with 17 other guys from 1968 to 1972. In March of this year, one of those 17, Harry, stumbled across my blog and got in touch. He mentioned a couple of others; Garry who had been shipwrecked in the Pacific and Eddie who was now running an engineering business in Germany. I managed to find Garry on Facebook and from memory was given Eddie’s e-mail address by Harry, who has German relatives. I’ve always kept in touch with another Eddie so that was five who were now in contact – but what about the other 13? I set out to try and trace them – after all I’ve nothing else to do with my time! Our last reunion was in 1992 but what had happened to the missing 13 members of the Class of 68 during the intervening 17 years?

I started off with Douglas - I recalled that he was employed in the Scotch Whisky industry. Accessing the part of my brain which generally holds masses of useless information, I came up with the name of his employer and an e-mail to his old company managed to trace him quite quickly.

That was the easy one but after that it became increasingly difficult however I’m pleased to say that Douglas joined me in the task. The first thing to be said is that the internet is amazing and without it, the search would have been significantly more difficult and time consuming but the ease with which guys who ‘disappeared’ 17 years ago were traced was quite amazing.

Remembering that Graeme had been involved with the auto industry in the Midlands, I simply typed his name into Google, sent an e-mail off to the last company mentioned and there he was – in my in box within 24 hours. Similarly with Allan who worked in the oil services industry in the North of Scotland – a simple search on Google and an e-mail to his company and he had joined the list of the rediscovered.

Meanwhile Douglas was taking the easy option. He already knew where Jim was and had a good idea about Robert but managed to get his PA to do the searching for him for the others and on a daily basis the Class of 68 were gradually brought together again.

It became something of a race between myself and Douglas’s PA. Charles was proving elusive but I reckoned he was working in Angus Council and sure enough the PA won the race and Charles was found. She also found Peter, Herbert, Tommy (another one) and Kenny.

The inboxes were now bulging with long lost tales of what we got up to in those halcyon days in Chrysler but we were still missing a few souls. There was Alistair who I reckoned was in the teaching profession and who was traced a few days ago by, yes you’ve guessed it, the amazing PA! And so we’re down to one missing apprentice – Jim Shields who was supposedly working in the shipping construction industry in Glasgow. I reckon we’re only a few days from reaching him and that will end the search for the Class of 68.

Whether we’ll all make it to the reunion we hope to hold next year remains to be seen but I’ll be there for sure.

The tankard, which was presented to Garry on his 21^st birthday, shows the names of the 18 who made up the Class of 68.

The following URLs will take you to the previous Blog postings about the ‘Chrysler days’.

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/sloop-john-b-finally-finally.html

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/pure-and-unadulterated-nostalgia-i.html

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/interviews.html

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/go-and-get-bucket-of-steam.html

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/chrysler-goes-bust.html

Update On Recent Blogs

Thought I’d update you on a couple of things I blogged about recently. Firstly, there is a new investigation into the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. If you read my last post on this subject (5^th October), you’ll realize that the Al Megrahi trial was a bit of a farce and the conviction would never have stood in a ‘normal’ court.

I’m sure there were all sorts of deals happening in the background of the trial and the subsequent conviction and appeal, but most commentators accepted that Megrahi could not have acted alone (if indeed he was involved at all) and the new investigation is designed to establish if anyone else was involved.

I reckon that with Megrahi supposedly dying, they wont bother to prove or disprove his innocence or guilt and so the focus of the new investigation is into the eight other suspects, none of whom were even interviewed.

You know – the more you hear of this, the more you realize that something really smelly went on!

Secondly, I wrote the other day about Sarkozy trying to force his son, Jean, into the chairmanship of La Défense, the Canary Wharf look-alike. Well Jean, or Prince Jean as the French press have dubbed him, has withdrawn from the ‘race’ despite the fact that there was NO race. He cited the bad publicity his father was getting and explained that it would be best for all concerned if he continued colouring-in and listening to stories at his kindergarten, rather than run one of Europe’s most important business centres. A good result for La Défense but of course the Sarkozy clan are trying to claim some credit for actually listening to the French public. Have they no shame? Sorry – they’re politicians and as we know from the floating duck house, the bath plug and the porn films, all claimed for on expenses, politicians don’t know the meaning of the word !

PS – a bit of a cop-out this blog but I had a late dinner party last night and looking at the half-empty (half full ?) port decanter, I’m surprised I that I can even open my PC and boot it up!

The Tory Joker

The House of Commons must be a depressing place to be at the moment. No more troughing in the almost unlimited expense system which existed until recently and which most MPs (of all parties it has to be said) regarded as a legitimate extension to their parliamentary salary of £64,000 per year. The Labour MPs face humiliation within the next 6 months or so at the next election, forcing many of them onto the streets where the prospect of finding a job, for the first time, terrifies them, whilst the Tories, salivating power for the first time since 1997, are still appalled at the thought that the polls might be wrong and they won’t actually be voted into office.

Those of us who take an interest in politics find it all fascinating and the most fascinating aspect of it all is the continued attacks on Mr Gordon Brown, our poor, downtrodden Prime Minister. Now those of you who read my blog, know that I cannot stand the man. He may well be good company in the pub watching the footie with a pint in his hand but never has a man been so clearly ill-equipped to run a country as this guy. Even his own party knows it and occasionally, they let him know that if they’re all out of work in 6 months time, it’ll most certainly be his fault. Piling misery upon misery are the Tories whose current strategy is to attack, attack, attack. This can become a rather unedifying spectacle but when they do it with style and above all humour, it becomes good fun and game sport for all.

I have to say it doesn’t take much to reduce Brown to an embarrassing side show in the Commons. A bit of wit and repartee with the Prime Minister is met by sullen looks and humourless ripostes. It’s probably just as well that he doesn’t have staplers to throw or fax machines to reduce to their electronic components as he hurls them to the floor and so he sits and growls, completely incapable of humerous debate. A few jokes. A bit of repartee with the Opposition. A smile or two. It would all help but at the end of the day, when the Tories wish to reduce the Prime Minister to a complete laughing stock, up steps William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

You may remember him stepping into the highlight as a 16 year old at the 1977 Tory party conference. He then entered politics, as he was destined to do with a middle name of Jefferson, and ended up becoming the Leader of the Opposition in 1997 after the Labour landslide win but then had to resign when Labour won their second term in Parliament in 2001. During his 4 years as Leader of the Tories, his time at the Dispatch Box was wonderful to watch. He was constructive, knew his brief inside out and more, nearly every speech was liberally sprinkled with humour.

These days, when the opportunity calls for the Opposition to ‘have a go’ at the Government, the Tories press him into action and up he steps . The Labour MPs cringe because they know that here is a speaker with authority and who will reduce their Minister to a gibbering wreck.

Last week, as Shadow Foreign Secretary, he was debating the proposal to put Tony Blair into the seat as President of The European Union. As usual, he managed to get his point across with great good humour and at the same time, poke relentless fun at Gordon Brown, despite the fact that it was David Milliband who was his opposite number that day. Look at the YouTube video of his speech. Milliband just sits there in hysterics.

http://order-order.com/2009/10/22/sarko-says-non-to-president-blair/

Scotland …. Scotland … Oops!

He stood up and screamed , West Ham scarf tied round his wrist, shaven head beaded with sweat, veins protruding from his neck, jaw jutting forwards and teeth bared, his face scarlet with rage. He managed to fit the c-word once and the f-word three times into one busy little sentence.

Reading that paragraph written by a journalist covering a recent football match brought it all back to me in a flash; those vicious West Ham fans, desperate for blood, heading in our direction, ready to tear us limb from limb. It did not look good. In fact, on reflection, it looked positively suicidal.

We’d bought some corporate tickets to take two senior clients to the football. It was England vs Scotland at Wembley. The winners, over two legs, would go through to the European championships. The ‘corporate’ tickets cost £750 each and included a pre-match meal, a post match dinner with special guests and unlimited booze. It was still expensive but we’d been working on this deal for nearly four years and we were getting to the end so a bit of ‘corporate hospitality’ was not amiss, even at these prices.

The problem was quite apparent as soon as we took our seats. We were in the England ‘end’ of the ground and whilst there’s quite a few things you can do to remain inconspicuous in hostile territory, wearing full Scottish dress (i.e. – a kilt- as one of the clients was), is not one of them.

Despite the occasional neanderthal glances in our direction, the first half was passing relatively peacefully, that is until right against the run of play, Scotland had the temerity to score a goal. Now it’s rare enough for Scotland to score a goal but for them to score against England, well, wrong end or not, two of the four of us (the Scots) instinctively stood and cheered.

Bad move. As the elation poured from us in shrieks of ‘C’mon Scotland’ and our colleagues tried to drag us back into our seats, it was noticeable that quite a few of the surrounding England ‘supporters’ had left their seats and were heading in our direction. I immediately noticed the West Ham scarves and remembered that good footballing club or not, their fans were amongst the worst on the planet.

I refused to be intimidated by this show of ungentlemanly behaviour by the ‘home’ fans and continued to cheer my team’s goal whilst goading the approaching mob, happy in the knowledge that there were several stewards around who, no doubt, would calm the Neanderthals down and we could continue to watch the game. No such luck. The stewards took one look at the shaven-headed thugs and did the best vanishing act you’ve seen since David Copperfield made that Jumbo Jet disappear!

My life was just passing before me. I was wondering if, upon reports of our deaths, the deal would still be completed. Would the company categorize this as ‘death on business’ and my heirs would get four times my salary as an insurance payout? And just as the first thug was close enough that I could read the tattoos on his tongue, the long arm of the law intervened and we were surrounded by the boys in blue. Phew!

The outcome was that we were ‘arrested’ , held by the police until they could establish what had happened (wrong tickets – wrong end etc) and eventually, despite our protestations, we were ejected from the game.

Needless to say that managing to get two senior banking clients ‘arrested’ and thrown out of a football game caused a bit of consternation within BT but I’m pleased to say the deal was completed and we celebrated by – yup – you’ve guessed it - by going to another football match. This time in Paris where hopefully there would be no West Ham supporters.

Where's The Beef ?

Guy and I were a bit early for his appointment at the hospital last Wednesday so we decided to get lunch at McDonalds (McDo to the French). We didn’t have enough time to actually sit down so we went through the McDo Drive and really impressive it was too. It might have been due to the fact that it was lunchtime but there were McDo staff everywhere. It was just like when you arrive at an American airport Hire Car compound – you’re assaulted by people at every turn and before you know it you’re in your car and off you go. It was just like that. The car hadn’t even stopped when a guy accosted us and asked what we wanted. We placed our order and were given a ticket. We continued driving and then somebody took our ticket off us and then asked for the money. We continued driving (very slowly I may add) and another person took our ticket again and shouted through the window (of the restaurant) and then a carrier bag was thrust through the car window and we were waved off.

‘€11.50 – that’s expensive for two McDonalds’, I said to Guy – ‘what happened to the 99p burger deal.’ ‘That’s Burger King, dongo’, he said. A bit confused, I drove onto the hospital where we parked in the basement (and yes – you pay to park at French hospitals) and eagerly opened the carrier bag. Yup – there were the fries and the orange juices and then the burgers. What a disappointment. You see these adverts on the telly where the guy takes hold of his burger with both hands and then finds his jaws don’t open wide enough for him to take a bite. I could have swallowed my excuse for a burger in one fell swoop. It was pathetic. I've seen bigger fairy cakes! Has no-one ever taken these robbing bandits to the Trading Standards for complete and utter misrepresentation?

Like many crap places I go for lunch (the Fawlty Pergola for one), I swear I will never return but I just had to give McDo one more chance. It is, after all, where divorced parents go to hand their kids over for the weekend so it has a special place in children’s (and step-parents) hearts, but they’re a bit old for ‘Happy Meals’ now so we’ve upgraded to Big Macs – ha! Big Macs – that’s gotta be a joke!

And so today, just as the memory of a rubbish €11.50 meal was fading, I read that McDonalds worldwide profits have increased, primarily due to their new innovation – a 1/3^rd pound burger! I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or look in the French Yellow Pages for the equivalent of the Trading Standards office.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

After my ‘Universe’ posting which has probably had most of you cancelling your subscription to my blog, I thought we’d continue the ‘education’ theme with some interesting statistics and facts.

Did you know that the dear old Frenchies have the longest sleep time of any people on earth, taking 8 hours 50 minutes to catch 40 winks? So that’s where my tiredness comes from.

Did you know that Qatar has the highest ratio of men to women, an astonishing 307 men per 100 women which maybe explains why my son, Tim, who’s serving out there at the moment with the RAF, has been chasing camels! Just remember Tim – they spit, but then maybe the girls you meet in Glasgow do so as well!

Which country produces more gold than any other country in the world – 270 tonnes a year? Nope – it’s not South Africa as we all thought, it’s China, and J has most of it in her jewellery box by my reckoning!

Iraq is the largest recipient of aid, at $9.1 billion in 2007. And all because of the black, liquid stuff under its desert.

The United States uses the most energy, 2,321 million barrels of oil equivalent. No surprise there is there? The United Kingdom is 10th with 231 million. So your average American uses 10 times as much energy as your average Brit. Does this explain a few things about US foreign policy?

Qatar has the least safe drivers, with 9,989 injuries and 33 deaths in road accidents per 100,000 people. And it’s probably risen since Tim went out there – what a driver!

The largest number of tourists head to la belle France, at 81,900,000 in 2007. And most of them seem to bloody well come to Tourrettes and drive around at 15km per hour!

Of the 100 largest ‘economies’ in the world, 57 of those are actually companies. The other 43 are countries. And as an example, Wal-Mart with annual sales of $246 billion is the world’s 19^th largest ‘economy’!

Before the seafaring nations discovered them, the Americas (both North and South) had a population of some 100 million people, most of which were wiped out, not by slavery or fighting, but by European diseases.

When a city in Montana (US) banned smoking in public places in June 2002, the heart attack rate in its citizens fell by 58%. And when the tobacco lobby overturned the ban, the heart attack rate climbed back to its original level.

Of the 530,000 or so soldiers killed during the American Civil War, an estimated 315,000 died of disease.

It’s strange but true but more people die of donkey kicks than are killed in air crashes.

And finally – let’s come clean about this ……. toilet seats are usually one of the cleanest surfaces around the home or office, probably because they are frequently cleaned. Phones, computer keyboards, desktops and doorknobs are commonly inhabited by between 10,000 and up to 100,000 bacteria per square inch. It’s also said that your toothbrush, assuming it’s kept in the bathroom, will have more bacteria on it than your toilet brush. Since I told J, my blonde wife this, she’s started cleaning her teeth with the toilet brush. We don’t kiss anymore!

Have a great weekend.

Sarkozy Mark II

The little dictator is at it again. Not only did he manage to get his son by his first marriage, Jean, a job as a councilor on his old mayoral patch in a fancy part of Paris but now he’s trying to force him onto the La Défense district (pictured) as chairman.

OK – so what’s wrong with a bit of nepotism here and there? Let me tell you what’s wrong with it. First of all, Jean is still at school (ok – university). And secondly, he’s never had a proper job, which is probably an obvious statement, given that he’s still at kindergarten. The guy is 23 for goodness sake and Sarko is trying force him into a job, against the establishment’s wishes, where he’ll be running the biggest financial district in Europe outside London’s Canary Wharf.

I’ve worked in La Défense. All the big firms are there. BT, IBM, Honeywell. The big consultancies. The big hotels. It’s like Canary Wharf in that it’s a city in its own right with a Gross Domestic Product bigger than many developed countries.

It’s not a particularly great place to work but it’s a lot closer to central Paris than Canary Wharf is to central London and there’s no getting away from it, when you work there, you know you’re at the centre of something big and important. The same feeling you get when you work in the City (of London) or Manhatten.

So what is Sarkozy thinking about? I reckon it’s him having a go at the ‘establishment’ again. He’s well known for it. Most of France’s top business leaders and its civil servant mandarins have attended the École nationale d'administration (ENA), France's highly selective post-graduate school. If you go there, you’re made. It’s like a ‘club’ and to prove how selective it is, the ENA produces fewer than 90 graduates a year.

Sarko never went to the ENA and after being elected, he ensured that unlike French governments of the past which had battalions of ENA alumni in the most senior posts, he would promote ‘normal’ people, friends and acolytes to the new government.

Forcing his son into one of France’s most important jobs is just another example of his attempt to stuff the establishment but he’s coming under significant pressure on this one. The ridiculous nature of the proposed appointment has even got the French public up in arms and Sarkozy’s popularity rating has plummeted since his high following the G7 and G20 summits.

This is one to follow.

And The Good Book Says .....

Readers of my blog will know that I’m a bit of a right winger and have previously called for capital punishment to be brought back to sort out the increasingly violent society in which we live. I’m therefore all in favour of the capital punishment programme in the US where certain states execute killers, rapists and terrorists.

There’s been a few stories recently about executions in the US, the latest being a situation where after two hours of trying, the death penalty of a murderer could not continue as they could not find any veins in his body into which they were supposed to put the lethal injection. There is now a group asking for his death sentence to be commuted to life but did this guy take any pity on his victims, who may have been begging for their lives? No ! My view - if they can’t find a vein – shoot him.

The other article about capital punishment in the US was where a 32 year old murderer who blasted his victim in the face with a shotgun was sentenced to the death penalty. Nothing unusual there except that I thought that it was the judge who decided on the capital punishment option but here, it was the jury. And in order to come to their recommendation they first consulted the Bible, which apparently has a passage which says, ‘And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.’

And therein lies the problem. The defence lawyers found out about this and appealed on the basis that the jurors had been ‘improperly influenced’ by the Bible but the trial judge rejected the claim, a decision later upheld by a Texas appeals court.

In the US, the constitution calls for the separation of state and religion and in 2005, the supreme court in Colorado overturned a death penalty on a convicted murderer because jurors had consulted the Bible while deliberating over his sentence.

Commuting Robert Harlan's sentence to life imprisonment without parole, the Colorado court ruled that the Bible constituted an "improper outside influence" and a reliance on what it called a "higher authority".

However, a federal appeals court ruled last year that while the Bible should not have been allowed into the deliberation room in the Texas trial, there was no clear evidence to indicate that its actual use in that trial had influenced the jurors' decision.

And do you know what the prisoner’s name was in this trial where a bible most definitely decided his fate? His name was Khristian (OK it was Christian with a ‘K’) but how ironic is that ?

The Royal Mail Strike – Look At The Picture

I am no stranger to strikes. At Chrysler, when the company’s car park was full of unsold cars and management wanted a walk-out (strike) they’d simply instruct me to speed up the production line and within minutes the workers would be heading out the door and making tracks for the nearest pub or betting shop.

Nobody really lost out on these occasions because, the spare cars would be sold and then the factory would have to work overtime to make up stocks. The workers would make more money than they would have (prior to the strike) because they would be paid overtime rates and management would use the down-time (during the strike) to perform critical maintenance on the lines. It was all a bit of a game – everybody knew what was going on so there was no real animosity.

Not so the proposed Royal Mail strike threatened for this week. It won’t really impact me of course but all the discussions on the TV with the union bosses and the mail management is just a throwback to years ago when strikes blighted the UK on a weekly basis. Management want to modernize the Royal Mail systems and the workers are opposed to it because getting machines to do more of the work means fewer employed union members.

I’ll simply say two things about this. When my father-in-law got totally fed up with running a very successful and lucrative shop in Glasgow, primarily because of the stress involved with frequent break-ins and the long hours, he looked around for a job which had absolutely no stress, had no responsibilities attached to it and would allow him loads of free time. After a lengthy period of research he chose his ideal job ….. and got it. A Postman!

Secondly, look at the picture at the start of this blog posting. That’s a betting shop in the background. Those little red buggies are postman’s trolleys. The guy walking past doesn’t look like a postman because his shirt is the wrong colour. All the posties are inside. Says it all really doesn’t it?

PS – the picture from one of the UK nationals wasn’t associated with the Royal Mail, it was actually about William Hill, the bookies.

What’s Out There?

I was watching a programme on the universe the other night and far from helping me understand what it’s all about, which is what I was hoping it would do, I switched off after it had finished, more confused than ever. I mean, what exactly is going on out there? Anybody know?

Take the earth – we’re part of the Solar System which formed from some bits of gas, sand, rocks and stuff approximately 4.6 billion years ago. An awfully long time. And it seems that the sun, the centre of our solar system and on which all life on earth depends, will flicker and die in about another 5 billion years (according to the programme) so worry not – we’ve got as long to go as we’ve already had.

But back to the main part of the lesson. Earth is in a galaxy called the Milky Way (why’s it all about chocolate bars – galaxy – milky way ?) and there are apparently at least a billion stars in a galaxy. Now there are supposedly billions of galaxies – our nearest is Andromeda which is only 2.5 million light years away, a light year being 5.8 trillion miles. So, go on then – work that one out. What’s 2.5 million miles multiplied by 5.8 trillion miles? Quite far I would say.

My point is – how do they know this? I guess some bright spark (pun intended) worked out how far light travels in a vacuum (the speed of light) but how did they then know how far Andromeda is? It’s definitely not on the AA Route Planner. And how do they know there are at least a billion stars in your ‘normal’ galaxy? Did someone do a count?

And so we get to the main point of this posting. WE ARE NOT ALONE. How can we be? If a galaxy such as ours has over 1 billion stars and there are over 1 billion galaxies, it would be awfully churlish to say that life does not exist out there somewhere amongst the billion billion things floating in space. And if you’re of a religious persuasion which insists that God created life, who’s to say that there aren’t other God’s out there creating garden paradises and messing about with ribs and apples and stuff?