Mailwatch(ed) Forum

You hear a lot about the slowness of French bureaucracy, but I've experienced the opposite today.

We are unpacking the disaster to travel that is Brexit. It seems that to travel to our place in France we will need all sorts of documentation (but not a visa), such as an 'attestation d'habitation' which proves that we have a place to stay.

So this morning I contacted the maire, and within an hour I got a reply from the delightfully named Fanny Hénault, telling me what I needed, and how to get it - followed up by two further emails gicing more details (I need to supply a photocopy of a utility bill by post).

Cracking service. A local mairie for local people.

In a link I posted elsewhere, there is mention of a pass sanitaire?

The Assemblee Nationale voted it down, today I believe.

Now, I thought they'd just passed it?!

Apparently they voted against. Then there was another vote.

Yes, that's what I've seen too.

delightfully named Fanny Hénault

Know a French woman called Fanny, gave her a ringside seat to the inventiveness of puerile English double entendres.

Our local town has a Fanny Boutique...

Does it attract Kipper councillors and MEPs?

I'll have you know that Fanny isn't that sort of girl! And she never touched Nigel's Volvo...

I have a cousin called Francis. Now she's a middle aged woman, she calls herself Fran. When she was small her parents called her Fanny. Her parents clearly had a sadistic steak as they insisted on calling Fanny's brother Richard, Dicky. This caused me loads of hilarity when we were kids.
An incident which is etched on my mind was the two families sitting down to Christmas dinner together, kids on best behaviour.
Dicky, aged about 3, was winding up his big sister (5) and she was hitting him back.
My Aunt interjected with the memorable line, "Dick stop poking Fanny!".
This was all a bit too much for Young Winston (aged 11), who pissed himself laughing.
I was asked what was so funny, so I explained...AND I WAS IN TROUBLE!!
WHY ME!?!
I didn't name them, did I?
If you don't like being laughed at by eleven year olds, don't give your kids such funny names.
I'm 57 and the injustice still stings!

I profoundly disagree, and you know why!

It's more the combination.

Allons enfants de la patrie!

Aukus, how the hell will anyone every trust the UK or Australia ever again? The yanks are big enough not to care, even if it seriously tarnishes Biden's good-guy credentials. But that is not the half of it.

Allies simply don't pull stunts like this with all the deceit, contempt, and duplicity that Aukus entails and is becoming blindingly obvious. These two geopolitical minnows? What possessed them to do something which might easily turn out to be proven to be so provocatively stupid?

It is difficult to see how France can react in a material way apart from having a bit of a grumble with Berlin (whatever that means), and pissin' off Patel, but the stated target of Aukus is China.

Step 1: China choses a random moment to slowly dump UK and AUS bonds.
Step 1a: Frankfurt goes with the flow of the markets and follows suit.

Step 2: Well, is a further step even required? Both countries, desperately reliant upon imports, see their currencies obliterated by Christmas with interest rates through the roof and beyond.

I just popped over to the wider internet to try to find a Sun Tzu quote to a: prove a point and b: make myself look clever.

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3200649

All I have done is scare the shit out of myself. Hold very tight please, ding ding!

kreuzberger wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 11:51 pm Aukus, how the hell will anyone every trust the UK or Australia ever again? The yanks are big enough not to care, even if it seriously tarnishes Biden's good-guy credentials. But that is not the half of it.

Allies simply don't pull stunts like this with all the deceit, contempt, and duplicity that Aukus entails and is becoming blindingly obvious. These two geopolitical minnows? What possessed them to do something which might easily turn out to be proven to be so provocatively stupid?

It is difficult to see how France can react in a material way apart from having a bit of a grumble with Berlin (whatever that means), and pissin' off Patel, but the stated target of Aukus is China.

Step 1: China choses a random moment to slowly dump UK and AUS bonds.
Step 1a: Frankfurt goes with the flow of the markets and follows suit.

Step 2: Well, is a further step even required? Both countries, desperately reliant upon imports, see their currencies obliterated by Christmas with interest rates through the roof and beyond.

I just popped over to the wider internet to try to find a Sun Tzu quote to a: prove a point and b: make myself look clever.

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3200649

All I have done is scare the shit out of myself. Hold very tight please, ding ding!

America's Fox / Q-anon are currently runinng a war drive against "China greedily eyeing Taiwan".

America as wold power #1 has some interest in containing China in the South China Sea.
Australia sees this as part of their hinterland.

Why UK would get drawn into a shouting match half a hemisphere away beats me completely.
Clearly "owning the libs" or whatever this anglospheric imagined alliance is about, takes precedence over soldiers and sailors lives.

And then, if something does kick off, Biden simply points to the small print of the contract, that’s says UK and Aussie’s have to commit troops before USA

It all has the looks of Murdoch's wet dream of a white, right wing Anglosphere.

Macron didn't help matters by describing NATO as "brain dead" though, did he. Now he's having a paddy as he's been sidelined.

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:03 am Why UK would get drawn into a shouting match half a hemisphere away beats me completely.
Clearly "owning the libs" or whatever this anglospheric imagined alliance is about, takes precedence over soldiers and sailors lives.

Noticed Macron didn’t extend his hissy fit to withdrawing the UK ambassador. Trolling Johnson about his impotence maybe but more importantly, France still needs to keep the UK close as a serious European military power. And hope this East of Suez nonsense is a passing apparition.