by Mark Leigh
Given that British visitors are generally resented and treated like merde, it’s a wonder why anyone would ever want to go there in the first place.
As it’s often said, the best thing between England and France is the sea.
1. The French are so damn rude!
But don’t just take my word for it. French rudeness is there for all to see and hear in different ways. Take the Gallic shrug for example: this was invented by the French as a way to say ‘Up yours’ because they were too lazy to speak. Then there’s the French custom of pretending not to understand English when they so obviously do (a habit often accompanied by the Gallic shrug).
2. …and arrogant
They may have invented the word grandeur but they also have delusions of it. Not only do the French call their country La Grande Nation, but they also chose the cock as their national emblem. What’s more, they truly believe they invented not just the guillotine and the bidet but also food, wine, sex and fashion. This arrogance manifests itself in most French men thinking they’re God’s gift to women and most French women thinking they’re God’s gift to fashion designers. It’s no surprise then, to learn that Horace Walpole, the 4th Earl of Orford, described the French as having ‘insolent and unfounded airs of superiority’.
3. French music is as derivative as it is atrocious
Surprisingly for a country that has always encouraged and supported the arts, the French music scene hasn’t just failed to develop and evolve, it’s actually moved backwards. If you want to know what’s hot in the French music scene just cast your mind back to what was popular here fifteen years ago and you’ll hear a pale imitation of it nowadays on French radio and TV. Flick through the channels and you’ll see the Backstreet Boys topping the charts and a host of Prince and Spice Girls tribute acts. The biggest French music star, however, is Johnny Halliday, a 72-year-old known as the ‘French Elvis’ but who has aspirations to resemble Johnny Depp. Better known for his plastic surgery than any discernible talent.
4. Everyone moans
And I don’t mean in some sort of a sexy Jane Birkin way. I mean the French are never happier than when they’re complaining about someone or something. It started in 1789 and the tradition is alive and well today. They’ll strike and blockade roads or ports at the drop of a chapeau while protests, demonstrations and other acts of civil disobedience are as natural to the French as their cavalier attitude towards personal hygiene. Even their most famous son Napoleon once commented, ‘The French complain of everything, and always.’
5. Napoleon is bloody everywhere
You can understand celebrating Richard the Lionheart, Lord Nelson or Winston Churchill. These were truly great and inspirational leaders – but most obviously of all, they were victorious. When it comes to the French, however, the person they hold in the highest esteem is a failed French dictator and megalomaniac. Over two hundred French streets, institutions and monuments celebrate a man whose greatest legacy was not on the battlefield, but in lending his name to a psychological phenomenon involving aggressive behaviour in weedy, short men.
3 Useful Phrases to Use in France
How many different types of cheese do you actually need?
Combien de types de fromage vous réellement besoin?
I am aware that Albert Camus said, ‘I know of only one duty, and that is to love’, but that does not give you the automatic right to put your hand on my wife’s bottom.
Je suis conscient que Albert Camus dit: «Je ne connais qu’un seul devoir, et ce est d’aimer», mais cela ne vous donne pas automatiquement le droit de mettre la main sur les fesses de ma femme.
Thank you for asking but I do not want to purchase a beret. Why would I want any headwear that is modelled on a cowpat?
Merci de demander mais je ne veux pas acheter un béret. Pourquoi voudrais-je tout couvre-chef qui est calqué sur une bouse de vache?
Breastfeeding in Public. Just Say No.
Look, there seems to be a lot of confusion lately about our policy towards breastfeeding in public.
The first thing to note is that UKIP doesn’t actually have a policy on breastfeeding in public. Policies on controlled immigration, foreign aid and bespoke trade agreements, yes, but breastfeeding, no. I mean, that would be ridiculous; it would be like us having a policy on limiting the number of foreign players in British football teams, which we don’t, by the way. Yet.
Anyway, what happened was that I made some remarks during a radio interview about breastfeeding after a posh London hotel told a mother having tea there to cover up. Afterwards I got called a brute and a dinosaur by the growing lobby of breastfeeding fascists. Yes, that’s a strong term I know, but I’m comfortable using it since I know a thing or two about fascists.
I’m not some fuddy duddy who feels awkward about seeing breasts. Look, I’m the first one to shout, ‘Tits out for the lads!’ at closing time. What I am against, however is breastfeeding in public.
Like having children called Zebedee and Artemis, making your own pesto and watching foreign-language films on purpose, breastfeeding in public (or ‘attachment parenting’ as they pretentiously call it) is a middle-class affectation.
The Motherhood Mafia say ‘Breast is best’.
‘No it’s bloody not!’ I say.
10 Reasons Why Breastfeeding in Public is Wrong
Have you heard of the phrase ‘indecent exposure’? If a man flashed in public, especially that close to a baby, he’d be Tasered before you could say ‘exhibitionism’. You can’t have one rule for each gender; this isn’t Saudi Arabia, you know.
Children are meant to be seen and not heard. If you’re rude enough to take a screaming brat to a public eatery and ruin the ambience for everyone else, then at least have the decency to leave the table to feed it. And don’t worry; no one will steal your poncey macchiato when you’re away from your table for a few minutes.
Women who flash their breasts and nipples in public are just wanton attention seekers.
Or are desperately trying to attract other men.
No one really wants to see blue-veined, bloated, milk-engorged lumpy bosoms while they’re trying to eat. Or if they do, then there’s more than enough niche websites to cater for them.
It can make less well-endowed or anorexic women feel uncomfortable about their bodies and they might go on to have serious body-image issues.
Similarly, it can make women who can’t breastfeed feel inferior and plunge them into an ever-deeper postnatal depression from which they might never recover.
The sight of an exposed breast can quite easily turn a man’s head, overwhelm him with desire and break up a marriage. One of my UKIP colleagues saw a woman nursing her baby on a train and left his wife that evening.
It can also cause men to become infatuated and lose focus. One of our funders was a chief executive of a successful FTSE 100 company. He saw a breastfeeding mother in a hotel lobby and became obsessed with nipples to such an effect that his job suffered. He lost a shareholder vote of confidence and now sells bunches of flowers at traffic lights.
Just because it’s natural doesn’t make it right. Sex, urination and defecation are all natural but you wouldn’t do those in the middle of Starbucks. I hope.
My Views On… Voluntary Service Overseas
There are some things to feel quite ashamed about, like once being a fan of Gordon Brown or stealing the Hospice Charity Box from the counter at McDonalds – but ‘colonial guilt’ is definitely not one of them.
Why would anyone ever give up their God-given freedom of choice and put themselves at the mercy of some smarmy ex-Foreign Office do-gooder who’ll stick a pin in a map of Africa, Asia or the Indian sub-continent and send you to some godforsaken country where you’ll need a course of injections just to stop you dying when you set foot across its border? And if you do survive hepatitis, beri-beri or Ebola and a monsoon season that lasts from January to December you’ll find yourself doing a job that’s far worse than the worst student holiday job yo
u’ve ever had, even if that job was artificially inseminating turkeys or working as a quality controller in a ball bearing factory. Let me tell you, digging latrines in Namibia or teaching English to a tribe of headhunters in a scorpion-infested grass hut in Papua New Guinea is no picnic.
We’re taught nowadays that Great Britain exploited most of the population of its former Empire and it’s time to make restitution. Well, consider this… The countries to which the VSO send you will be lacking in three things: a) running water, b) electricity and c) the concept of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Yes. That’s right. Not only are you expected to put up with conditions that would even have contestants in I’m A Celebrity walking out in disgust but you don’t even get paid for your time.
Now who’s being exploited?
Freedom of Choice #1 Smoking
Just as standing in queues and not reeking of garlic differentiates the British from foreigners, freedom of choice is what differentiates democracies from dictatorships.
This is a cornerstone of UKIP beliefs (the bit about freedom of choice, not the queuing or the reeking of garlic thing – although those are very important too). As a party we firmly believe that the individual should be free to do whatever he or she wants as long as this does not limit the freedom of choice of another individual in society.*
This principle applies to a number of issues which we’ll address throughout this book, starting with a freedom I hold particularly dear, and which is under severe threat from our so-called EU masters: the freedom to smoke.
25 Reasons Why It’s Good to Smoke
Buying cigarettes from corner shops helps support local businesses.
Buying cigarettes from anywhere helps fund new hospitals and schools.
You’ll always have something to do with your hands.
If you don’t smoke it looks like you can’t afford cigarettes.
If you work with dynamite or fireworks, you’ll always have a convenient method of lighting the fuse.
Having to stand outside your place of employment helps to break up the working day.
Having to stand outside a bar or restaurant is a great way to meet people.
That ingrained smell on your coat makes it easy to pick it out of a pile at a party.
It gives you a genuine excuse for loitering: ‘Sorry officer, I was just finishing my cigarette.’
You’ll have a real reason to repaint the ceilings.
Although I’m not condoning it, you can accept benefits from the government without guilt, knowing you’ve paid more in taxes.
You’ll keep your weight down.
You can amuse young children (and impressionable members of the opposite sex) by blowing smoke rings.
If you like feeling unwell it feeds your need for attention.
Accidentally burning holes in your clothes gives you a reason to keep updating your wardrobe and keep with the current trends.
Your ex-partner always wanted you to stop and you don’t want to give him/her the satisfaction.
Yellow fingers and teeth really coordinate with blonde hair.
It dulls your sense of smell so you can’t be tempted by the delicious aroma of fatty food.
Occasional house fires help keep the fire brigade on their toes.
Giving up would make you ratty and irritable… why inflict that on your friends?
A husky voice is very sexy.
That hacking cough and phlegm makes you realise you’re still alive.
That ashen expression and extra wrinkles around your mouth give you that ‘mature’ look.
It keeps tobacco factory workers in employment.
Ditto cancer specialists.
*Unless of course you’re part of a minority group because another cornerstone of our beliefs is that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
My Views On… Fairtrade
Whatever happened to market forces and the laws of supply and demand? Have we suddenly abandoned these bedrocks of the economy? And why aren’t we giving British growers of cocoa, bananas or coffee financial assistance?
By subsidising Fairtrade farmers in developing countries we’re sending out a message that it’s okay to be inefficient, that competition is unfair and that ‘yes’, in these times of an uncertain economy and the need for fiscal prudence, it’s quite acceptable for us to pay a 20p premium for a grande skinny cinnamon dolce mocha Frappuccino. Is that what we really want?
And just look at the Fairtrade products supermarkets are foisting on us. They’re all basically like Lidl versions of the real products we love, but with an odd taste. Take chocolate for example. Supporters of Fairtrade say it’s more than just chocolate; it’s hope in a bar. No it’s not. It’s laxative in a bar. Something made with 80 per cent cocoa can only give you two things: a bitter taste and the squits. And then there’s Fairtrade wine. Apparently we drink over 10 million litres of Fairtrade wine in the UK each year. I say ‘we’ because I’ve only drunk half a mouthful before spitting it out like mouthwash… which it bore more than a passing resemblance to. Chile is better known for producing military dictatorships than fine wines and I once tried a Pinot Grigio produced by a cooperative vineyard in the Huasco Valley. The label said the wine had a ‘perky’ favour; it was half right. It should have said Pinky and Perky because it tasted like pork.
Those misguided fools who support Fairtrade say they’re quite happy to pay extra in order to fund social developmental projects on plantations. Well I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it hard enough to pay for my own kids’ education, let alone fund some dump of a junior school in Guatemala.
Great Britons No. 1 William Shakespeare
Playwright, poet, actor and all-round decent bloke!
As far as I’m concerned, Shakespeare is the world’s preeminent dramatist but don’t just take my word for it, even Wikipedia agrees. He grew up in middle England in Stratford-upon-Avon, a charming English Cotswolds town with some really nice, traditional pubs, and he was a self-made man. Despite not having an Eton education or a privileged upbringing, not only did he rise to be one of the greatest playwrights in the world but he married an A-list actress too. As they say, the boy done good!
Shakespeare’s plays are performed more often than those of any other playwright in the world including Tim Rice, and that’s quite an achievement. And don’t even bother comparing him to some of your foreign playwrights; there’s no contest! Take Molière for instance. He’s meant to be one of the greatest masters of comedy (not my words, God no) but have you seen The Misanthrope or The Imaginary Invalid? Mr Bean or Benny Hill would knock both of these into a cocked hat. What’s more, Molière only wrote 31 plays compared to Shakespeare’s 38: another example of your typical Gallic lethargy.
Like UKIP, Shakespeare was very broadminded in his outlook on life. He was just as happy writing about those from Bongo Bongo land (Othello), the gays (Antonio from Twelfth Night), the Jews (Shylock) and cripples (Richard III), as he was writing about normal people, and that’s to be highly commended. Apart from being prolific he could turn his hand to anything… historical plays, tragedies, comedies – even tragi-comedies, whatever they are – and whatever he wrote was good and there were no cheesy songs like ‘Any Dream Will Do’ or ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’. What’s more, at that time women weren’t allowed to act, so that meant that when you visited the Globe Theatre you didn’t have to suffer the Elizabethan equivalent of Elaine Paige.
Shakespeare is also recognised for giving the English language upwards of 1,700 new words, including ‘zany’, ‘madcap’ and ‘scuffle’. But what’s even better is that he also came up with some great insults, such as this one from As You Like It: ‘Thou art like a toad; ugly and venomous.’
It’s as if he actually knew Angela Merkel.
Charity Begins at Home
These days you can’t walk down the high street without going past retail outlets that resemble more of an explosion at a jumble sale than anything that looks remotely like o
ffering an appealing shopping experience. These are charity shops.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not against charity shops per se. Anything that supports the fight against terrible ailments and diseases or helps old folk is laudable. The fact that our town centres are blighted with so many of them is a damning indictment against Coalition cutbacks in health care and clinical research.
What I do have a problem with, however, is charity shops where the money collected goes overseas. Why on earth would you want to do that? A pound given to the Romanian orphans is a pound less for the Spastics. And anyway, their parents should be taking care of them – not UK taxpayers.
But what gets my goat more than anything is Oxfam charity shops where the money goes to the third world. Or as they call it, ‘developing countries’. And as a side note, most of these so-called developing countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, which have had civilisations dating back to 2500BC… Bloody hell! How many years does it take for a country to develop?
Anyway, I digress. My other problem is that there’s absolutely no way of telling if the money will actually reach the so-called needy people in these countries. Ask a member of staff for a written assurance that any money you spend will actually go to the poor and not end up in the pocket of some third-world despot who’ll spend it all on AK-47 machine guns, gold-plated taps for his palace en suite or a new top-of-the-range convertible Bentley, and you’ll get a puzzled look from someone scratching their beard. And that’s just the women.
