29th April 2018

A week of babies. Poor Alfie Evans lost his life at Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool after they switched off his life support system. But the big question: should the UK government have banned Alfie’s family from taking him to Italy for treatment? Who does the child belong to, the parents or the state? In complete contrast came news of Prince Louis Arthur Charles, his surprisingly French name coming hot on the heels of President Macron’s love affair with Donald Trump in Washington. That new kid on the block, Macron, seems to be spreading his influence far and wide in his pursuit to be the first President of a United States of Europe. Yes I know that Prince Louis was probably named after the late Louis Mountbatten, but go tell that to France! And who does baby Louis belong to, William and Kate or the State? I’ll leave you to decide.

21st April 2018

Increasingly I need hospital appointments for different ailments, often at the same hospital. However the different departments sometimes ask me to arrive on the same day but at completely different times. I had one at 10.15 a.m in ophthalmology and another in audiology at 5 p.m. This week I was listening to the BBC’s Today programme where they were discussing NHS issues like this, so I sent them the following response: “..Why doesn’t the NHS adopt the French carte vitale and encrypt every person’s medical history onto one medical card. Then the NHS could co-ordinate each persons’s different health issues, avoid appointments hours apart on the same day and encourage separate hospital departments to liaise over each patient. Ergo, treat the whole person, not each illness.” Maybe I should have quoted Macron, who said recently “..we need bottom up democracy..” No answer to that!

15th April 2018

Some 46 years ago, the British trades unions were in full cry. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie - out, out, out! Who could forget? Certainly not me back then in a cold house without heat nor light, no rubbish collection nor even burial services! Today in France, President Macron is studying exactly how Mrs Thatcher turned things around. On the one hand he was elected as a man of the people in a country steeped in die-hard trade unionism. On the other, he’s a committed European, wanting to match Germany’s famed efficiency step by step. But how to change the unions without getting his head cut off? He knows he’s right. As a symbol of post-war regeneration, the rail union SNCF, for example, remains a bastion of unionised labour, heavily subsidised despite being currently c.50bn euros in debt! Yet still the union insists on a retirement age of 52! Bon chance M. Macron. Let’s hope the banlieus don’t soon resound to the cry Mannie, Mannie, Mannie - sortez, sortez, sortez!

8th April 2018

Wednesday marked 50 years since Martin Luther King Jnr was shot in Memphis, whilst shouting out the need for freedom to live without persecution. Elsewhere, whilst the leaders of Qatar and Bahrain were telling the world that Israel had a right to their own land, others continued their fight to eradicate Israel completely or to propagate yet again that insidious trope, anti-semitism. In the ‘peaceful’ West, the French were on the march again against President Macron’s attempts to modernise France’s obsolete working practices. They don’t realise how lucky they are. I wrote the following poem some time ago, which I think Martin Luther King would have liked:
At early ‘morn I had a dream
that man would cease his evil scheme
Blazing battles, suicide missions
Murder, hatred, crazed seditions
Plumb the depths, re-appraise
Be none so blind, none so fazed
Halt the fight, tribe v tribe
suffused with hate, with diatribe
But see with eyes afresh from birth
We’re all one tribe - that of Earth!

1st April 2018

I’ve never liked practical jokes. So April Fools’ Day for me is a stupid tradition. In France in 1508 poet Eloy d’Aqueval called it Poisson d’Avril. Perhaps the news of the new post-Brexit blue British passport being produced by the French should have been announced today. Where’s the French passport produced? The French would laugh at such a question. Something with such serious national security issues, of course needs to be made by the French. This overrides normal global trading and tendering laws. The French also understand how to preserve manufacturing jobs in their own country. Why are there so many French cars on their autoroutes? Because of a clever ruse where French car insurers give driver discounts for French-made vehicles. Whatever next for Britain - a monarch who comes from Germany??  Now, for real humour - and not just for today either - pre-order my comic sequel From Paradis to Perdition on authl.it/9v7, and follow a year in France written in Him indoors’ Jack Benny-like style. Enjoy!