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Invest in one of these!

Did anyone scroll down - MADE IN CALIFORNIA, USA !

No thanks. Should be Texas, if anywhere in the US.

Time for a new look at this thread. "Well, it happened" - yes the Referendum happened. Since then: very little. I cannot decide whether the Saintly Theresa is playing a cool long game, or whether she hasn't any idea what to do next. My view at the time hasn't changed: she should have had a Parliamentary Debate while everyone was still shell-shocked and then declared Article 50. Swept into the Divorce and dealt with problems and anomalies as they arose. Instead here we are fluffing and dithering. Many people I speak to here in the Peoples Republic of Europe and in the UK think the UK is no longer a member of the EU. Others don't know - and most don't care, sunk into a sullen Austerity Depression as they are. Perhaps that's just the view of inhabitants of Spain, who are swimming at the bottom of the Recession Tank; Germans, Dutch etc. might think differently.

Whatever: time for Theresa to gird up her loins and do something.

I had an 'interesting' evening last night. Bunch of Brit ex-pats, when I told them I'd voted Brexit and was proud of having done so and delighted at the result, the temperature in the room dropped by about 10'. I am used to being a social outcast and pariah so it really didn't worry me. Then they started : " But it will impact you because you travel a lot and you earn in GBP which as dropped in value and a lot of your spend is in EUR or ZAR and you might have to get visa and you might have to change money ... etc."

Yes to all that. I saw it all coming. It's the very small price I'll gladly pay for liberation.

You know, before the referendum many of the people that I met around the various offices and hangars that I work in said that they believed that we would stay in the EU but would vote leave anyway, then the surprise, we voted out.
Now, the people who just don't get it are trying to water it down, we will leave, the EU will play nasty, so will we, and we will win.
The establishment figures, Bliar, Mark Carney just don't get it, even if we have to experience financial hardship and disruption for 10 or 15 years it will be worth it. I think that most people feel like this, even if the leftie campaign succeed in a second referendum I believe the vote to leave would be higher than the first referendum, whatever the terms might be.
I have complete confidence in Mrs May, thank goodness we have someone who is prepared to do the job and not sell us out for short term expediency.

Today's "Times":

UK trade gap narrows for the first time since Brexit vote: exports rose by 4.6% and imports fell by 3.6%. Pound at just under 1.20 euros.

Germany failing as exports fall short of expectations. Exports have grown by only 0.1% each month this year, fall over the year was 4.1%; imports fell by 2.2%. Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING, fears Brexit* and Trump's protectionist polices bodes ill for Germany's future and states "coming months will be challenging for the country's exports"..

* Dave Davis saying the UK may lower tax rates still further and cut red tape has really shaken the French.

Yeah, but still - it's in the air that French (the language) is planning to take over. Well, of course it would be nice to learn another language, but...

I always thought that French was rather a ladies language, all that lisping and so on.
No, I think that the English language has served all of the major nations well, if the Frogs wish to use their own whingy and pouting language, good for them, unfortunately they will find that no one understands them or wishes to undermine their masculinity by such effeminate communications.

Germany has sleep walked into a huge mess, their politicians have put theory before practical realities. Tough, it was their own making.

I agree re Germany and not just the next few months, the next few years could be a lot harder.


Re UK lower taxes and cutting red tape lower taxes are nice but cutting red tape and a "yes, you can do" attitude
goes a long way for businesses.

om15 wrote:No, I think that the English language has served all of the major nations well, if the Frogs wish to use their own whingy and pouting language, good for them, unfortunately they will find that no one understands them or wishes to undermine their masculinity by such effeminate communications.

Don't be so sure. A couple of days ago I kinda-followed a seminar, online video and all - until a Frenchman (in Germany) started to talk. Everyone grabbing for the headsets, no subtitles for online-participants (or maybe I didn't find the additional channel?). How long will it take to realize it's reasonable to learn it? Plus, it wouldn't hurt anyway. (I've started, btw.)

French is a horrible bloody language.

The women always sound as if they're moaning and shrugging and trout pouting ..... as they are, or they go all shrill.
The men sound like the effeminate handbag toting twats that they are.

Understanding French is not a problem. Understanding the bloody Frogs is the problem because they talk in convoluted meaningless drivel. Most of their words are just 'fillers'. (Normallement, en principe, dans mon avis, c'est a dire, effectivement, vous voyez, et bien, errrrr, alors .....)

Any nations that says 'four twenties and sixteen' instead of 'nonante six', or ninety six, deserves its language to head for oblivion.

Capetonian wrote:Any nations that says 'four twenties and sixteen' instead of 'nonante six', or ninety six, deserves its language to head for oblivion.

I always thought that was based on four full sets of fingers and toes, plus some.

Alison

How long will it take to realize it's reasonable to learn it?

As a child I was forced to speak, read and understand French. In the 48 years since then I have never, ever used the hideous language, despite spending time working and holidaying in France.
Clearly spoken English, loudly enunciated in a no nonsense manner is all it takes to get things done.
The French tongue should not be encouraged.

om15 wrote:The French tongue should not be encouraged.

I agree.

Found it hard to learn and hardly used it since.

Spent time in France as a teenager with a French family, can get by with English spoken as you said.

om15 wrote:The French tongue should not be encouraged.

yeah, I'm afraid it's not about encouraging, it's just there. Official as it is. Like it or not.
(me being on the 'not' side - not as it's done now)

Any language that adopts "foreign" words and phrases wholesale and then has to have a commission to think up the equivalent in its own language and then make that "official" is doomed.

Any language that adopts foreign words and phrases wholesale and then embraces them with gusto is the language that will prosper.

Any one for a cigarette? Is that your bête noir in which you delight in the schadenfreude?

In deference to OM15...

The French tongue should not be encouraged.

I fully encourage it's use by a clean, shaven young French minx...

Late sixties heard a jazz singer in Paris and was totally rapt. Place down between the Montparnasse station and the cemetery, forget it's name. Remembered her name though Frida Boccara. Years later found an LP of hers - "Valemosa", "Oublier". Long since my grasp of the language has evaporated, but still love the sound of her voice on a hot sultry Australian evening out on the balcony with G & T in hand. Sends shivers up and down the spine.

Alison

I have a CD that someone made for me of Frida Boccara and I agree with your assessment. France has produced some good performers in various arts but this doesn't change the fact that they are generally a nation with some pretty unpleasant characteristics, particularly in the workplace, although some of them are fine people.

Many of the people whom they claim are not really French, Frida Boccara being a case in point, she was half French but born and raised in Morocco, thus a 'pied-noir'. The French are ready to claim such people as French when it suits them, but to despise and victimise them when that suits them. Ironically those 'pied noirs' are some of the most pleasant people in France.

Sitting next to a young French man on a flight once, I had to listen to him telling me how wonderful the Frogs were at everything, specifically football as they had just won some championship or other. I commented that most of their players weren't French ....... and cited one called Zidane whom I happened to have heard of, saying that he was Algerian.
"No, he's French ..........."
"OK, let me ask you this. If you caught him breaking into your car at 3 in the morning, he wouldn't be French, he'd be a f***ing Arab, wouldn't he?"
"Uh, err, d'accord ......."

Language is a form of vocal and literary conveyance of what's inside someone's head into somebody else's head. If this can be done with success 100% of the time then that language will survive. If not it is doomed, although I never found out conclusively why Latin fell arse over tit (maybe it was all those confusing proVocative Dating Ablation and Genital cases).

[bbvideo=560,315]https://youtu.be/IIAdHEwiAy8[/bbvideo]

Classical French is just another language with its own rules. Why everything in it has to be male or female is beyond my understanding, just as the English indefinite article must sound weird to a Frog. French-speaking sluts in a porn movie sound like they invented sex, whereas fraulines in mid-fcuk sound like they're barking someone's marching orders to The Russian Front.

If you want a tongue that purely grates on one's ears then you can't go past Cantonese. More gutteral than German, it sounds more like a bloody collection of rough noises than a language.

German has three genders. A 'girl' is neuter.

For a really ugly language, it's hard to find worse than Danish. They always sound as if they are about to throw up all over the person they're speaking to. French is ugly too, specially when spoken by women, that horrid whining accompanied by the troutpout and shoulder shrugging.