Avoiding Those Pesky French Civil Servants

In the fourteen years I lived in my house in Maidenhead, Berkshire, I cannot once recall anybody official coming to the door for any sort of government programme. OK – the police were there quite often and of course the Jehovah’s Witnesses would call now and again and there were the pizza delivery guys and then the gypsies trying to flog stuff they’d stolen from my neighbours, but there were no government callers, either local or national.

In France it’s different. You get calls from the government wanting to inspect your septic tank (fosse septique). EDF (the electricity company) wanting to check that you are using electricity the correct way, and then of course you get the Marie (town hall) and police turning up when you’re building to ensure you’re adhering to the building and planning regulations. Recently we had a woman climb into the jungle to give me my census forms and then she came to the house the following day to ensure we’d filled them in correctly! And she didn’t let me go until I’d told her all about the neighbours, when they’d be in, etc. The local council guys come round every summer to make sure your jungle is not too dense and if you have the temerity to light a fire in the garden, the spotter planes buzz you to ensure everything is in order. The firemen call round once a year just to show off their muscles to bored housewives and to sell you a calendar. The postman pees in the lane beside the post boxes and then expects you to buy a calendar from him as well. Invariably the calendars are the same!

It’s just another indication that the state in France is alive and well and employing everybody they can find on government business.

For my part, apart from when these organizations accost me in person and I cannot escape their attention, I ignore their letters and phone calls.

At a party over Xmas, I was talking to one of my friends who’d also received the ‘fosse septique’ letter sent to every household and being the good citizen he thought he was, he’d actually called them up and arranged an appointment for them to inspect his septic system.

A largish report landed on his doormat a few weeks later with recommendations for remedial repairs and a date by which the repairs had to be undertaken and a further date when the ‘government inspector’ would be back to ensure the repairs had been carried out. It was all going to cost a couple of thousand euros. And all because he’s a good citizen – unlike me!

He was staggered that I simply ignored the letter, and in fact, all letters and they just seem to forget about me. Of course, if we all ignored them it’d be a different matter!

The Pinot Noir Wine Scam

A couple of weeks ago, in the south-western town of Carcassonne, twelve people associated with the local wine industry were convicted of a lucrative scam in which E&J Gallo, the leading US winery, was conned into buying 18m bottles of plonk which had been repackaged and sold as more expensive pinot noir wine.

In one of quite a few scandals to have hit French vineyards in recent years, the executives from the Languedoc-Roussillon region were found to have fraudulently made a €7m (£6.1m) profit over a 30 month period until March 2008. Overall, 13.5m litres of fake cheap wine were shipped to the US to be drunk by unsuspecting consumers. Gallo, founded by brothers Ernest and Julio following the repeal of prohibition in 1933, is now the biggest family-run winery in the US, known internationally as the leading exporter of Californian wines and within the industry as the world's most powerful wine brand.

The court sentenced Claude Courset to a six month suspended jail sentence and a fine of €45,000. Courset was head of Ducasse wine merchants, who acted as an intermediary between local producers and a conglomerate which resold the wine to Gallo.

Other defendants, including eight co-operative wine cellars from the surrounding Aude and Hérault regions, were fined according to their responsibility in the affair.

Amazingly, Gallo never filed a complaint but during an audit of Ducasse in March 2008 investigators noticed that the business was buying pinot noir from local co-operatives for €58 a hectolitre despite a going rate of €97. Their suspicions were also raised by the sheer volume of pinot noir being produced in the region. Historically, Languedoc- Roussillon produced around 50,000hl a year. Suddenly, it had seen a dramatic upturn. Where, the inspectors wondered, were all the grapes coming from?

The answer was simple: the bottles being labelled pinot noir were in fact wine made from merlot or shiraz, less expensive grapes in plentiful supply around Carcassonne. Eight co- operatives were in on the con, supplying Ducasse with the produce; Ducasse then – for an estimated profit of €3.7m – sold the wine on to Sieur d'Arques, which resold it in bulk to Gallo.

American consumers, believing they were tasting the intoxicating red feted with such style in the Oscar-winning 2004 wine comedy Sideways, were none the wiser.

The revelations however, were a blow to the Red Bicyclette brand, launched in 2004 and made instantly popular in the aftermath of Sideways, the Hollywood film which fuelled a craze for pinot noir in the US. The surge in demand came as a godsend for French growers desperately trying to fight off competition from New World wines.

The realisation that vast sums could be made by labelling plonk as pinot noir for the US market was, for some, too much to resist and the inability of so-called experienced wine drinkers, who obviously couldn’t tell plonk from a good vintage just helped the fraudulent profits roll in.

I Vont My Money Back

I attended a lunch last year and blogged about a stunning villa which you could see from my friend’s terrace. It was called the Villa Leopolda. Here is an extract from that blog posting:

Much of the talk on the terrace was about a large property, surrounded by acres of land which stood in the distance, almost acting as a gateway to the Cap. Even from our vantage point a couple of miles away you could see the manicured lawns and lines of Cyprus trees. The extent of the grounds defied belief. Our hosts told us that the house had recently sold (true) and that it was Bill Gates who had sold it (untrue). The post described how the house was in the hands of a Mrs Safra who inherited it when her husband was killed in Monaco. See blog for full story.

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/murder-mystery-intrigue-and-500m.html

Villa Leopolda was the house we stared at from our friend’s terrace. It is probably the best property on the whole of the Riviera and if money was no object (and you like that sort of thing – see picture), it’s just the sort of pad you’d go for…….as a wealthy Russian did in August of this year. Although there are rumours to the contrary, he reputedly slapped €500m cash on the table and poor old Mrs Safra had no option but to take the cash and run. Now the villa is probably worth no more than maybe €100m or at a stretch €150m but these Russians just don’t want any of those nasty little gazumpers coming in and spoiling their deal and so the ‘rather generous’ offer was made and accepted which made Villa Leopolda the most expensive property on the planet.

The thing is – nobody had ever heard of this Russian. Well nobody down here. He wasn’t in the papers. He didn’t own a football club. He was just a nobody with the odd €500m to spare.

But now there’s a twist to the story. The Russian billionaire, (we now know it was a Mikhail Prokhorov), didn’t actually buy the house, he simply put down the legal deposit, in this case, 10% or €50 million, prior to completion. And then the recession hit.

Being down to his last few billion, he’s tried to pull out of the deal and had asked for his ‘roubles’ back but French law has told him to ‘allez vous en’, I think is the term!

Under French property law, a deposit can only be refunded during a seven-day “cooling-off” period or if the buyer cannot secure a mortgage (which probably wasn't relevant in this case!) and so a court in Nice ruled that the villa's owner, 71-year-old Lily Safra, could keep the €50 million.

She has decided to give the 'windfall' to 10 charities, including almost one million pounds each for neuroscience research at King's College London and Imperial College London.

Any more Russians out there willing to donate to charity?

Oh and by the way, Nigel has provided an update on his goings on in New York. Remember, there's adult content. His blog can be found at the link below:

http://monaconigel.blogspot.com/

Save the World and Make a Fortune

Oil trading means buying and selling oil. Pig belly trading means buying and selling pig bellies. Orange juice trading means ….. yes, you’ve got it, buying and selling gallons of orange juice. Probably millions of gallons actually.

In each case, when they buyer eventually closes the loop and doesn’t sell the commodity onto anyone else, they have to take delivery of the oil, the pig bellies or the orange juice. It’s all very logical.

The traders buy at one price and sell it, hopefully for them, at a higher price. The traders can even buy the commodity, as it’s called, and keep it in storage if they think the price is likely to rise - for example if they think there’s going to be a severe frost six months later in Florida when the oranges will all go pear shaped! In that case, they’d buy orange juice and keep it in storage (frozen hopefully) and then sell it when the big freeze pushes up prices. That’s how the traders make money.

But carbon trading is a whole new ball game. You can’t see carbon. You can’t hold it (even if you could see it) but you can calculate how much it’s supposed to weigh, flog it and make a fortune.

Companies these days are given an emission allowance of carbon by their government agency and are encouraged, through penalties, not to exceed their ‘cap’ or allowance. Generally the allowance means the company in question has to put in carbon reduction measures just to meet their cap but if they exceed it, they have to pay the penalty charges. Or, and this is where the carbon trading comes into play, they can buy an extra allowance from another company who might not use all their own allowance or who might have put in more efficient carbon emission solutions.

Like any other market where there are buyers and sellers, traders or brokers set up in business and offer a service to the companies – finding buyers for the sellers (of carbon allowance) and conversely, sellers for the buyers. No doubt they charge a commission on both sides, so probably make a fortune.

And just in case there are not enough ‘allowance sellers’, there are people who wander around the world looking for green projects such as new forests, wind farms and hydro-electric schemes. Companies, who think they might not meet their carbon allowance target can invest in these ‘clean’ schemes and thereby earn ‘credits’ to offset against their targets. Logically enough this is called Carbon Offsetting. Traders scour the world to find these schemes and then market them to companies looking for extra credits. And charge them for the privilege naturally!

And so there you have it. You can’t see it, weigh it or capture it but you can flog it. And have you noticed the easiest way for the airlines to do carbon offsetting? Yup – they ask you for a couple of ££££s when you book your flight and then claim to invest it in forests in Patagonia and hydro schemes in Africa. It’s the easy option. I don’t pay it – they should be trying to reduce the carbon emitted from their planes by getting more efficient aircraft – paying them a carbon offsetting fee is just getting them off the hook.

How Not To Sell A Scooter (or two)

I don't know why but I put both my scooters up for sale last week. I suspect at the back of my mind was the money I'd get for them which would allow me to buy a slightly bigger, newer model but it my heart of hearts I didn't really want them to go.

It's pretty stupid having two scooters because I obviously cannot use both of them at the same time but coming from a strict Scottish family where you had a set of Sunday clothes which were kept for 'best', I reckon that principle has remained with me and so I keep one of my scooters for 'best'. I'm also thinking of the summer when my brother and sons are down and we can use the scooters for running into the village for fresh bread in the mornings - much more sensible than using the car which means parking etc.

And so I put the advert on AngloInfo our local 'selling' forum on Thursday and there was quite a bit of interest. I'd put pictures of both scooters on the site (both scooters have identical specifications - they're just different colours and one is two years younger) and I have to say that the pricing was pretty keen. €550 for the older one and €750 for the later model. New rear tyres on both and a new battery in one. Oil changes every three months and both lovingly cared for - what more could a buyer want?

The flurry of interest included a Filipino guy who came up that evening with his friend, also a scooter enthusiast. He couldn't make up his mind which one he wanted but eventually settled on the older model. 'You give me scooter cheaper? You take a cheque and I take scooter', he said. 'I don't think so', I said. 'That's not the way it works. You give me cheque, I cash cheque and then you pick up the scooter and I'm not reducing the price'. They said they'd be back on Saturday but I never saw or heard from them again although there's always a chance they could call this week.

Over the weekend I washed and polished 'my little beauties' and I looked at them lovingly as they sat side by side on the drive. My heartstrings were being tugged!

Then a guy called from St Tropez. He wanted to buy both of them. I said one might already be spoken for (lie). Then several ladies called or e-mailed saying they wanted one or other of them. I replied that they'd both been sold (bigger lie).

But the guy from St Tropez was insistent. He knew the Honda was a good make and said they'd be ideal for running around town with his wife. 'Oh - a woman', I said. 'So, what's wrong with that', he replied. 'Oh it's just that the Honda has really bad, drum brakes and you really, really have to anticipate braking and you know women aren't quite so good at that sort of thing as men.'

'Oh drum brakes', he said. I never heard from him again. Yes - result!

Right - that's it for today. I'm off out on my scooter. Now which one should I use?

You Know It’s Going to be a **** Day When ……

The kids complain about the toast at breakfast – ‘It’s too burnt Thomas. I’m not eating it – why can’t mummy make our breakfast?’

I’m relaxing in the lounge after a battle over the breakfast toast and then driving the kids down to the bus stop (at 7.20am) and I get a text from the bedroom asking ‘where’s my tea?’ A text from the bedroom !!!!

I go all the way down to the jungle to cut some logs and within 5 minutes the chain has come off the chainsaw. That’s it finished for the day.

Later, I set off on the scooter to go to the bottle bank and I get a puncture before I get to the end of the lane.

Never having taken a scooter wheel off before, I think the best idea is to load the scooter into the trailer and go to the garage (8 km away) to get the tyre blown up (to establish if it really is a puncture) and when I get there the air machine is not working. I swear, to nobody in particular and the guy at the garage thinks I’m an English pratt.

I get home planning to have a nice fried lunch cause that’s what guy’s need when they’re stressed and I find that J has made me egg and tomato sandwiches – egg and tomato sandwiches !!!!

I spend all afternoon trying to get a good fire going and when J returns after having her nails done she says, ‘crap fire’.

I eventually decide to take the scooter wheel off but the wheel nut is tight and when I try and loosen it with a sharp hit from a hammer I hit my hand – blood everywhere - dumbo!

I finally get the wheel off and travel another 10 km to Chateauneuf to the scooter shop only to find it’s closed for the day.

I settle down to do some work on the PC and it crashes and now there’s no sound.

I get my PC working and sell some bank shares only to find they rise even further after I’ve sold them.

I try even harder to get the fire going and when J passes again she says it once more, ‘crap fire’.

I’m sitting on the sofa reflecting on what a crap life I have and thanking the UK for clarifying the laws on assisted suicide when I feel something moving in my hair. I pick it out and it’s a live wasp – I HATE wasps.

I go into the kitchen to see how dinner is coming along and I spot two empty champagne bottles waiting to go to the bottle bank – she can’t have drunk that much whilst preparing dinner – surely?

It’s been a really **** day and it’s only 6.30pm! Still – there’s always tomorrow but that could be worse!

And it hasn’t started well – 3am and I’m up sneezing with hay fever – still there’s always tomorrow!

Cricket - Scotland Vs Afghanistan – Yes Really

Scotland Defeated by Afghanistan 25th Feb 2015

OK – most people laugh when the Scotland Cricket Team is mentioned. Scotland – Cricket, an oxymoron if ever there was one. But it’s true – every year they take part in the UK and International Twenty20 and One Day series but generally get well beaten despite having players with names such as Moneeb Iqbal, Majid Haq and Qasim Sheikh!

But it was me who fell about laughing the other day when I read about the Afghanistan cricket team qualifying for the World Twenty20 tournament. I don’t know why – it just seemed strange that this war-torn country played cricket and yet when you think of it, the fact that they border Pakistan, who are a great cricketing nation, obviously rubs off on them. Pity it doesn’t work for Scotland that way!

Recently, Afghanistan won five of their six matches at the World Twenty20 qualifying tournament, beating Ireland twice and achieving an especially sweet and slightly ironic victory against the USA. They will now play in the World Twenty20 proper, which starts at the end of April.

Behind these recent results however are 10 years of hard work, not just by the Afghan cricketers but also from a variety of volunteers from across the cricketing world. Afghanistan became an associate member of the ICC in 2001, just four months before the first bombs fell on Kabul. Two documentaries about the rise and rise of Afghan cricket are already in production but if a film is ever made there will be some curious casting decisions to be made along the way.

Who, for example, will play Mike Gatting? It was Gatting who captained the MCC in a pioneering exhibition match against Afghanistan in Mumbai back in 2006. The MCC lost by 179 runs, and Gatting was caught behind without scoring.

Monty Panesar, a current England international player had his helmet broken by the first ball he received from an Afghan fast bowler. So they’re not woosies then?

I can’t wait for April – Scotland versus Afghanistan – what a match in prospect.

Song Writing Factories – Did You Know About Them?

There’s a tune on TV at the moment which I just love. It’s the Ford Focus advert music and I decided it would make a great ringtone for my iPhone. (See YouTube clip below). But what I job I had in finding the music on the internet. Eventually, after lots of Google searching I found out that the music is by a ‘group’ called ‘The Cool Hearts’ and the music track is called ‘Halfway Home’. Further research indicated that the writer (of the music) was a guy called Morgan Van Dam. Wrong! Morgan Van Dam is a music production company based in Soho, London and they specialize in writing music for adverts such as the recent one for Ford. They’ve also written the music ads for McDonalds, Shell, Citroen and many other leading brand adverts and it was after a bit of digging on this that I discovered the world of ‘music factories’.

I had always assumed that music was generally written by a single person who maybe used an arranger to fine-tune the melody. I had also known that many songs were collaborations between more than one person – e.g. Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Lennon and MCartney etc. What I hadn’t realized is that these ‘music factories’ exist to churn out tunes and songs by the dozen on a weekly basis. I suspect if you managed to get a glimpse inside the Soho factory, you’d find guys and girls sitting in booths just staring into space dreaming up great, catchy tunes. Of course, maybe they all collaborate and just sit in a big room together, smoking dope and dreaming up these tunes which get stuck in our minds and which we can’t forget – the sign of a great tune or advert.

I then came across a company called Xenomania – another music factory but this time churning out hit songs for the likes of Cher, Kylie Minogue, The Pet Shop Boys and the Sugarbabes to mention just a few. Based in Kent, Xenomania employ songwriters and musicians to produce the music we all know and love, and all along we probably thought that Kylie had maybe written her songs herself. Girls Aloud are probably their biggest success at the moment having written many of their hits however it seems that many artists are not quite happy enough with Xenomania's efforts and take the finished tune or song and then change it out of all recognition. This is what Brian Higgins of the company says about these ‘failed collaborations’: “the big artists were fine until they got into the mix room and then they basically pulled the record to pieces. So I took my name and writing credits off the record. Because they're assholes they only sold about 20,000 copies and they've never been seen since.”

Note the reference to ‘writing credits’. These guys must make an absolute fortune given that the songwriter generally gets up to 50% of the royalties every time one of their songs is played, so the next time you hear Girls Aloud’s ‘Sound of the Underground’ or ‘Something Kinda Oooh’ being played on the radio or MTV, somebody down in deepest Kent is raking in another few bob.

And as for getting the tune onto my iPhone - what a pain in the ass. 'Halfway Home is only released on iTunes in Germany and in any case the song is different from the advert music, so I had to find some software to 'capture' the music from the internet, then I had to find some more software to 'edit' it down to 30 seconds (iPhone doesn't like ringtones more than 30 seconds long apparently!) and then I did it - problem is I haven't had a call on my iPhone since I put the ringtone on it! Typical!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha4oYH-9WDI

Death at Dinner

We had Irish Dave chez nous for dinner last Monday night before he headed back to Belfast after a two week stay down here in the snow and rain – poor thing! As we chatted in the kitchen, (I was doing the cooking – a truly international dinner of meatloaf followed by crèpes suzettes!!) mention was made of his first visit to the Côte D’Azur a couple of years ago when he and his friend, Michael, were invited to a lady’s house for dinner. They’d met at church that morning and in true Christian spirit she (let’s call her Maxine) had invited them to dinner to relieve them of the burden of cooking at the camp site where they were staying.

Dave and Michael duly turned up at the appointed hour with the appropriate flowers and bottle of wine and after an aperitif sat down for dinner. Sometime during the meal when Maxine was preparing the next course in the kitchen, Michael got up from the table and went off to the toilet. Not having been told where to go he opened the first door he came to, switched on the lights and entered the room. He was back out in a flash as white as a sheet.

‘Dave’, he said, ‘there’s a dead man in that room’. Dave knew Michael didn’t drink alcohol so assumed that he’d maybe mistaken something for a body or was maybe even joking. Michael persisted with his claim of a body in the bedroom so Dave opened the door and switched on the light and there he was – an elderly man laid out on the bed as dead as a dodo.

Dave and Michael sat back down at the dinner table and waited for Maxine to return from the kitchen. They looked at each other waiting for the other to raise the subject of ‘the dead man in the bedroom’. Eventually Irish Dave could stand it no longer and as diplomatically as he could, said he’d gone into the bedroom by mistake and that he thought there was a dead man on the bed. ‘Oh that’s my dad’, said Maxine. ‘He died yesterday and I’m waiting for the undertakers to come tomorrow to pick him up’, and with that carried on serving dessert as if nothing had happened and it was all quite normal. Quite a dinner story – eh? And Dave who is a good Christian boy says it's all true.

Then there was Lisa, an expensively ‘sculpted’ blonde who was a friend of J and mine. We’d had lunch and dinner a few times with Lisa’s parents and it was obvious that Lisa’s dad did not have long to go, poor thing. A few months later he was taken into hospital in Nice and sadly, died. Lisa who did not have much money at the time attended the hospital to make the appropriate arrangements and was horrified to learn that it was going to cost a couple of hundred euros to have her dad’s body transported to the undertakers. ‘Do you think he’d fit into the back of my Ford Escort’, Lisa asked the mortuary nurse. ‘What’, was the reply. ‘I don’t have much money and if I could get some help to put him in the back of my car I could take him to the undertakers myself’, Lisa said quite seriously.

Now – that much is true. What happened after that we never found out because Lisa met a handsome, French aristocrat and we never saw her again!

PS – when trying to find an appropriate picture to accompany my posting, I came across the following site – have a look at some of the designs. J would probably like hers in the shape of a Prada handbag!

http://www.creativecoffins.com/?gclid=CO29rojG-Z8CFUsA4wodhmsiWA

All Socialized Out

Well – we did get to le Moulin de Mougin on Friday and very pleasant it was too. It’s great to receive really good service and from the minute I dropped the car off with the bell-hop (is that what you call them?) until the moment he escorted us back to an already started and heated car holding an umbrella to shelter us from the rain, it was terrific. Even the sommelier took the trouble to explain what the various wines were and seemed really chuffed when J refused the New Zealand white and stated her preference for a Côte de Gascogne aged in Armagnac barrels. The food was amazing and J positively shuddered with pleasure when her starter arrived – see picture (if only I looked like a king prawn !!!). From the moment they served us complimentary glasses of champagne when we arrived until my credit card melted in the machine when I paid the bill, we had a terrific time. I would recommend it. J has already said we should do it at least weekly !!!!

Saturday was pretty much normal in the morning but as we had some people coming for dinner, I was left to clean the house in the afternoon (in between watching the footie on the telly) whilst J shopped for the food. I thought she was a bit longer than normal but didn’t give it a second thought until Linda arrived in the evening and said that she and J had had quite an afternoon drinking champers in the village bar!! What a lush!

Dinner was very pleasant and finished at 2am and it was only when I woke at 8.30am on Sunday did my head try and tell me just how much I’d drunk the previous evening. I wandered (or should it be staggered?) into the kitchen and J, who had risen early to go to church (she didn’t make it) asked me if I would like a nice breakfast. I envisaged a Full English with black pudding, bacon, fried bread, mushrooms, fried and scrambled eggs, hash browns, tomatoes, sausages and fried potatoes. What did I get? A reheated pain au chocolat from the microwave!

In order to clear my head I got my chainsaw out and headed off into the ‘jungle’ to cut some logs. I reappeared back chez moi (??) at just after noon. My head was still a bit ropey and the only cure by that time is a ‘hair of the dog’, so I poured a glass of wine, lit a cigarette and wandered over to the other side of the house to chat to Tan who was walking around his terrace.

No sooner had Tan and I started to chat than J appeared on the balcony, dressed only in a towel and told me we were off to lunch, which was a bit of a surprise, but the biggest surprise was when we reached the restaurant and I saw Tan and Angie and David and Sarah sitting there. It was my birthday treat – although I’m sure I paid the bill! How does that work?

Thereafter it was back to Le Brin, more champers, more cigs, the Spurs game on the telly and then bed at a ridiculously early hour. Hence why I’m now wide awake at 3am and posting this!

Rich Women, Poor Judgment

It’s not often you come across references to some of the smaller towns and villages down here in the UK papers unless it’s related to something happening in the larger communities of Nice, Cannes or Monte Carlo. I was therefore surprised when I saw the town of ‘Cagnes Sur Mer’ mentioned recently on one of the front pages of an UK Sunday newspaper.

Cagnes is a small but desirable place to live and is situated between Cannes in the west, and Nice further along the coast to the east. It has recently seen a lot of expensive new apartments built, and smart new pedestrian squares are springing up everywhere. It is very much an ‘up and coming’ place on the coast.

The Cagnes story however was not about the town or the snow which covered it last week but about a 64 year old, ‘rich’, British woman who had been murdered by her ‘toyboy’ lover.

As soon as I read the story it reminded me that this coastline is just full of rich, single, older women, looking to live out the remainder of their lives in the sun, having fun. Many of them, having been divorced, probably with large financial settlements, are just looking for a nice, quiet life with probably a bit of companionship thrown in. Many of them have been successful businesswomen in their own right and have come down to the Côte to escape the pressures of business life.

Whatever the reason and their background they are generally beautifully turned out, have used the best surgeons to ensure they retain their good looks and generally live in smart properties. They are therefore prime targets for ‘toboys’ and other ‘Casanovas’ looking for an easy ride. An allowance, a car, good clothes and the best restaurants. All they have to do is groom themselves, smell nice and be attentive both in and out of bed.

I just cannot fathom why these women don’t see it coming. Certainly, those who have founded and run businesses in the UK should have the nous to suss these scoundrels out, but all sense seems to go out the window and before you know it, the ‘toyboy’ has moved in and is beginning to take over their finances and the rest is usually a very sad story.

Finally, and this is a bit of a coincidence given his values and morals, my alter-ego, Nigel, is now writing a blog. It will not be a daily blog, probably bi-monthly and any postings will be highlighted here. It can be found at the following address but beware, it will sometimes contain ‘adult themes’:

http://monaconigel.blogspot.com/

No blog today. My friend Brian had a serious car accident in the South of England yesterday and after a tricky period has stabilised and will face further operations over the next few days to try and repair his broken body.

Apparently Brian was on his way to work when his car skidded on black ice and went off the road. As Brian got out of his car another vehicle did the same thing and as Brian helped the other driver escape through the rear hatch of his car, a third car also left the road and struck Brian. Details of the accident were reported in the Portsmouth News - URL below.

C'mon Brian. get yourself mended and let's see you smiling face down here soon.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Crash-dramas-outside-pub.6079744.jp

Banking on the Banks

I’ve been a stock market player from the early 80s when the UK government started selling off the phone, electricity, gas and water industries it owned. In addition, the building societies converted themselves into ‘normal’ banks and gave their ‘loyal’ customers shares in their businesses so after a few years I had built up quite a portfolio. Although I monitored my shares on a daily basis, I rarely, if ever, sold any, preferring to hold for the long run.

Along the way, there were a variety of successes and failures. The successes however were more than offset by some spectacular failures. Railtrack, the railway lines and stations business was taken back into public ownership after the Government declared the business bust and it was only after a long court battle and a few years, that investors got their money back. Similarly, British Energy went ‘bust’ and again was taken back into public ownership. This time however, I lost the lot.

One of the spectacular successes was a bit of a tax fiddle to say the least. The government offered to pay you back the tax you’d paid on money invested in social programmes and when I read a particular prospectus about the refurbishment of nurses homes, I simply could not believe it was true. You sent them say £10,000 and a month later you got a cheque back for £16,000 – a 60% gain, which if extrapolated over a year would equate to a return of several thousand percent – incredible. I tried to talk the guys in my office into going for it but they simply believed it was ‘too good to be true’ and I was the only one who invested.

Then there was the time I pressed the wrong button and bought ten times as many shares as I intended and sweated blood all day until I could sell them again, unfortunately at a bit of a loss – even then I was lucky – it could have been a blood bath!

These days I’m a bit more careful although having invested all my spare cash in the UK banks, some people would say not. It’s a bit of a long shot but I reckon the UK banks are creaming it and hopefully some of that cream will come my way. The spread (difference) between what they’re borrowing money for and what they’re lending it out at is at historically high levels and although I believe they’re artificially keeping their profits low because of the public outrage at their recent behaviour, sometime soon, when all the hullabaloo dies down, their publicly stated profits will soar. Also – the UK government will want the billions it ploughed into the banks back, so I assume that they will ‘help’ the share prices climb so they can sell their stakes. As I say, it’s a long term bet but one I reckon will pay off.

PS – Barclays announced record profits yesterday.

Better Late Than Never

OK – it was Valentine’s day on Sunday and I’m afraid my efforts wouldn’t have won any prizes compared to past years. Normally, it’s a tray with Scrambled egg and smoked salmon, fresh baguette with a glass of bucks fizz and a large bunch of flowers served to my darling wife in bed but for various reasons not much of that happened. In fact, none of it happened!

For a start J doesn’t like my scrambled egg anymore – she says I put too much milk in it! She’s also on this everlasting diet so anything I produced for breakfast would, in her Weightwatcher’s opinion, have too many points in it, and as for champagne before lunchtime – sacre blue! I knew she’d be up to go to church as she’s not been recently and to turn up for a dose of religion smelling of booze just would not do. I’d also tried to get flowers but the shops only had a few straggly specimens left on Saturday so that wasn’t on. It was going to be a disaster so I came up with an alternative plan.

As you know J has been trying desperately trying to get me to forsake my small, cheapo bistros for something with stars on the board outside – namely Michelin Stars – so I decided to take her to arguably the best restaurant in the region, Le Moulin de Mougins. They’ve been promoting a €49 lunch so I thought I’d push the boat out and take her there – after all a nice lunch down here will cost between €20 - €30, so the extra for dining in a famous restaurant, headed by an equally famous chef, seemed like a good deal – to a Scotsman!

Unfortunately, all mentions of Le Moulin were met with incredulity and scorn. She simply did not believe I was serious - so nothing happened. On Sunday night when I repeated that I had actually offered something ‘special’ for our ‘special day’, I was met with a blast of invective and various swear words, which, considering she’d been praying that morning, was quite something to behold.

Sanity prevailed however. J cooled down and suggested we could go this week, but as we were scheduled to go for lunch on Friday to another smart place, I said it simply wasn’t on. I mean for a guy on a pension, eating out twice in a week just wasn’t good Scottish economics. But then our friends who were due to lunch with us on the Friday called off and I could see the glint in my devious wife’s eyes.

Being a pretty smart guy, I nonchalantly suggested we could therefore go to Le Moulin on Friday. Well, J did an excellent impression of an Olympic floor athlete, completing several double somersaults and a triple twist as she headed back to the kitchen to prepare lunch. Thereafter, choruses of ‘Love is a many splendoured thing’, came wafting through the kitchen door. Oh I do know how to please a woman!

We’ve booked for Friday – a late Valentine’s day treat. I’ll let you know how we get on.

Le Moulin’s website is below just in case you wish to salivate. Oh – and the picture is of Cupid.

http://www.moulindemougins.com/fr/index.php

It's All Gone - Well Nearly

One of the differences I can see in the winter weather down here is that when it snows, like it did on Thursday, it disappears pretty quickly (see picture and compare to Friday’s), unlike in the UK where it tends to lie for days if not weeks, thawing and freezing each day and night.

The deluge of white stuff kept us housebound on Thursday. I suppose we could have tried to go out in our 4x4 but we didn’t need to go into the village, so it wasn’t worth risking it. On Friday it had started to thaw and we ventured into the Midi and it was clear when we made it to the main road that there had been some real problems the day before. Cars were abandoned all over the place, even some 4x4s, trees littered the side of the road all the way into Tourrettes and it was deathly quiet – that is until we got to the Midi which was packed to the rafters. I don’t know whether this was because it was a Friday or whether people, who had been cooped up in their houses the day before, had decided that they should make a ‘go of it’ and head into the village.

Guy, of course, was constantly relaying the point of view that unlike the UK which he’s heard on the news grinds to a halt at the first sign of snow, the villages round here get to work immediately to restore things back to normal.

Certainly all the fallen trees and branches had been dragged off the roads and there were signs that bulldozers had been out moving the 8 inches of snow which fell, to the roadsides. It was remarkable that such a small community could sort itself out so quickly.

Some of the smaller roads, particularly those on hills, had been blocked off to prevent cars slithering off into oblivion but I did notice one thing - with all the house construction going on around the area, and small JCBs and mini-bulldozers used everywhere on building sites, they had all been utilized to clear the snow. Of course, the builders who operate these things will probably have asked for ‘zee bonus’ for doing something not in ‘zee contract’!

Anyway, after three days of thawing weather, all we’re left with now is a smattering of snow on the higher slopes and an attempt at a snowman on my upper terrace. Needless to say, everything is soaking but I’d rather have that than 8 inches of snow, no matter how pretty it looked.

Bonkers or What?

In the UK the boss of a recruitment firm said she was told she could not place an advert for ''reliable workers'' because it discriminated against unreliable people. Yes – you read it right.

Nicole Mamo, 48, wanted to post an advert for a £5.80-an-hour domestic cleaner on her local Jobcentre Plus website.The text of the advert ended by stating that any applicants for the post ''must be very reliable and hard-working''.

A Jobcentre Plus worker claimed that the word ''reliable'' meant they could be sued for discriminating against unreliable workers. Bonkers or what?

You cannot now take pictures in London, particularly near Government buildings without being stopped by the police checking that you’re not a terrorist. Similarly, you cannot take pictures on a beach or near a school or a public playground without risking being called a paedophile. Bonkers or what?

Spotted Dick is now deemed too rude to be included on menus.

Warwickshire police chiefs have advised officers against saying ‘Evening All’, over worries of cultural confusion. ‘Evening’ has been deemed by bosses as a ‘subjective term’, which does not necessarily mean the same across cultures and nationalities.

Children are no longer encouraged to sing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ for fear of upsetting those in schools who are not quite white.

Even in America, it is reported that the Obama family changed the name of their festive tree from ‘Christmas Tree’ to ‘Holiday Tree’.

Jim Fitzpatrick, a transport minister, has said that drivers who display the Union Flag, the cross of St George, the Welsh dragon or the Scottish saltire on their number plates are liable to a £60 fine and a failed MoT for having an illegal plate. Only the blue flag with gold stars of the EU is permitted.

And do you know that it is technically illegal to fly any national flags (e..g. the Union Jack) from sloping poles or from windows in the UK without permission but as the EU flag is deemed to be an advertisement, it does require clearance from the local planning authority. Bonkers or what?

And talking about local authorities, have you heard that a teacher who put up "missing" posters in a bid to find her beloved cat Fluffy was astonished to be hit with a £75 for graffiti by her local council?

I could go on and on but I’d go bonkers.

PS - lovely weather we're having at the moment - see picture - 8 inches of snow yesterday!

What’s Happening at Le Brin ?

It’s been a busy week. We had Irish Dave staying with us and then had another four guests turn up unexpectedly. The house looked like Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night but they’ve all gone now so I can get back on my X-box and blast a few aliens. The cats are also quite relieved as they no longer find their tails tied together by the marauding 3 year old who never gave them a moment’s peace!

The weather has been quite nice for the last few days so I’ve been doing ‘outside’ work and neglecting all the boring admin stuff such as renewing insurance, fixing my TV subscription etc, but I’m sure there’s a rainy day just around the corner when I’ll be ‘desk bound’.

J, on the other hand has been basking in the glory of an 86% pass mark for her recent assignment for her Degree in Kitchen and Fridge Management. The exercise involved the highly complex task of making sure your pantry drawers were properly arranged with cans the right way up so that you didn’t end up with Senurp instead of Prunes, Snaeb instead of Beans or Eplup Seotamot (Pulpe Tomatoes). Unfortunately, she missed the Denroc Feeb (Corned Beef – see picture) and lost a few marks. I’m sure she’ll recover the lost ground though when she writes her essay on ‘the hygienic considerations of a kitchen waste disposal’. And in case you’re wondering why she’s going through all this stress for a bit of parchment with a coffee stain on it (that’s the degree stationary design), she tells me that it will mean that when she gets her job at McDonalds, she’ll get three gold stars immediately instead of having to work three years for them like everybody else. A good idea I think you’ll agree?

Guy, for his part, has been wandering around in a love-struck stupor, bumping into things as he walks about the house with his eyes closed, murmuring, “Je t’aime, Je t’aime”. At least his latest girlfriend seems to have stopped him smoking which I said might have looked ‘cool’ but decidedly wasn’t. I also reminded him that love-bites on the end of your nose weren’t cool . Of course I did put my foot in it when he told me her name (Tiffany Mauve – no kidding) and I said she sounded like a Hooters Waitress. He’s been to Hooters so he knows that it was actually a compliment but he didn’t take it that way. Oh well!

And as far as Kitty is concerned, she has been an absolute delight recently - well in comparison to the Rottweiler with toothache who used to make our lives a living hell. Renditions of ‘Go Compare, Go Compare’ ,and ‘We’ll Buy Any Car.com. We’ll Buy Any car.com. Any, Any,Any,Any ’, permeate round the house creating an atmosphere of happiness and contentment. Well that’s the case until she finds out I used her best nail varnish to touch up the paint on my scooter!

Turkey

We’re all desperate to get Turkey into the European Union – aren’t we? The Americans are particularly keen as they have quite a few military bases in the east of the country and it would make things a whole lot easier if they were part of the ‘European group’. On the other hand, the French are not at all keen. Well anything the Americans want to do whilst Sarkozy is still in a huff at being frequently ‘snubbed’ by Obama is anathema to them, and there’s also the fact that the French don’t particularly want any more Muslims in Europe, thank you. With 5 million of their own, they think that’s quite enough! They’ve even gone as far as to change the French constitution so that they’ll have to have a referendum if Turkey gets close to membership.

Then there’s Austria who are recalling some old skirmishes when the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna, to block their route to full membership (Turkey is an associate member of the EU). And there’s the Cyprus issue of course.

And finally, it’s the wider EU membership who are worried about Turkey’s admittance into the world’s biggest ‘club’. With 71 million of a population, accession into the EU would give Turkey the largest number of delegates and therefore the biggest voice in the Parliament. Not quite fair if you’ve been in the ‘club’ for the last 20 years or so and suddenly this upstart comes along and starts hijacking the political and financial agenda.

However, despite all these little difficulties, formal negotiations with Turkey are continuing with the earliest date of membership being set at 2013. There are 33 areas, ranging from Transport to Freedom of Movement, Transport to Taxation being discussed, but one negotiation area stands out for me – Justice, Freedom and Security.

And they’ve some way to go in this area if the following extract from an article is anything to go by……

Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an "honour" killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.

The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.

An informant told the police she had been killed following a family "council" meeting.

A post mortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. Her body showed no signs of bruising.

I know that there are all sorts of strange ‘customs’ across the world but thankfully, these places don’t want to join the EU. Turkey still has some way to go.

The picture at the start is of Istanbul at night.

The Internet – I Was There At The Birth

There’s a lot of talk about ‘the internet’ at the moment - the amazing advance it’s brought to information dissemination and learning. There’s even talk about ‘awarding’ the Internet the Nobel Peace Prize although I’m not sure who they would give the award to – Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the ‘inventor’ of the Internet, possibly?

First of all, let’s just put the Internet into historical perspective from my point of view.

Back in 1979, not long after I joined IBM, I took some senior executives of a large Glasgow company down to IBM’s Head Office on the south coast of England. They had heard about this new thing called e-mail. I duly flew them down to Havant and we witnessed a guy sending a PROFs message to Paris and waited excitedly for the reply which came through a few minutes later. Apparently this was a huge advance over the then ‘telex’ method of sending and receiving messages – anyone remember typing out their messages and taking them to the ‘telex’ room?

Well, e-mail took off as we all know and I feel privileged to have been there right at the start.

A few years later in BT, I was sent to CERN in Geneva (the place where they are trying to smash atomic particles into each other – see original blog below) and was told they wanted to move enormous amounts of data around the world. Knowing BT’s network wasn’t up to the task, I did as best I could and then left. You can imagine my astonishment and disappointment when I realized that Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN when I did my call and only months previously had made CERN the first web site on the internet. If only BT's network had been just that little bit bigger!

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/end-might-be-nigh-7-days-to-go-those-of.html

Fast forward a few years and the internet is now well and truly established but I still don’t really understand it so I ask one of my technical guys to explain it to me. As it turns out, it’s all very simple (just computers around the world interlinked with telephone wires) and something which had, in theory, been around for quite a while, albeit in a different form.

For years, whilst boffins in CERN developed the concept of the internet, we’d desperately tried to sell a service called EDI (Electronic data Interchange) where companies would send each other large files of data over communication lines. Amazingly, despite the fact that it saved enormous amounts of clerical effort, companies just did not like the fact that another company’s data would be entering their computer systems and so EDI basically died a death before it was even born.

And so the internet was announced to the world after a way was developed to interconnect and ‘protect’ companies’ computer systems. Today, we take it for granted but was I really there all along the way?

Babe

I read that the use of pig lungs in transplants into humans has moved a step closer with a medical breakthrough. Scientists in Melbourne, Australia, used a ventilator and pump to keep pig lungs alive and "breathing" while human blood flowed in them. Experts estimated that the work could lead to the first animal-human transplants within five years.

I should phone them and tell them about a sales guy I had working for me in BT (he shall remain nameless) who had a heart bypass operation and they used a pig valve to replace one of his faulty ones.

When I took over the sales unit and inherited this guy (let’s call him Fred), almost immediately I recognized that Fred was NOT a salesman. Month after month, there were no sales and even worse, no sales prospects despite the fact that his ‘entertaining’ expenses were the highest in the unit. Eventually, at one of our formal reviews I informed him that I thought we should look at other opportunities within the company because he was never going to make any money in sales. I suggested that we explore a marketing role because whilst Fred was good at capturing the client’s initial interest, he was no good at closing.

Well – talk about a reaction. He started taping every discussion we had, consulted the union and started talking to HR on a regular basis. Unfortunately Fred thought he was God’s gift to the sales profession and my suggestion of a move was abhorrent to him.

Fast forward a couple of months and Fred was unfortunately diagnosed with heart problems and was whisked into hospital. With no previous experience of sick employees I ‘read the HR manual’ and thereafter duly called his wife every couple of days to see how Fred was and after his operation asked whether he’d prefer the company flowers or the company fruit basket. His wife’s reply that she’d consulted Fred and he’d stated that he would prefer a case of wine did not go down too well. He got a fruit basket!

Anyway, it was during one of my pastoral phone calls that his wife said that Fred had received a pig’s valve and at my next sales meeting I updated my guys on Fred’s improving condition but probably unwisely, said that he’d received a pig’s valve.

Well, the next thing I hear from the comedians who worked for me is that Fred has been rechristened ‘Babe’ after the talking pig in the film of that name.

Fred eventually returned to work and in addition to his ongoing issue about being relocated within BT, he was apoplectic when the guys started calling him ‘Babe’. I personally thought it was all a bit of fun ….. until HR contacted me, after a formal complaint from Fred, and demanded that I receive counseling to help me improve my employee relationship skills.

Needless to say, I told HR where to go, got rid of Fred into Marketing and the rest of the unit worked happily ever after. Fred had never been ‘one of the boys’.

Postscript – several months after Fred left for his new job, we bumped into each other and he said, which I think was very gracious of him, that his move to Marketing was, in retrospect, the best move he could have made. He was incredibly satisfied with his new job.

Aaaaah!