pint-sized rants

A rant about short memories

2012-01-25T17:49:00.000+01:00

There is a rarely a week that goes by without the Daily Mail highlighting some family, normally with immigrant parents or a single mother (the Mail can't decide which is worse) who have some children and live on benefits, their rent paid by the council and therefore "hard working taxpayers". Each article is met with an outcry from its readers. The benefit cap plan which was derailed by the

When the press DO respect privacy

2012-01-23T18:18:00.000+01:00

Yesterday the wife of the French Minister for Education was found dead at her home - apparently suicide. You wouldn't know about it if you weren't following French news pretty closely as it has hardly been mentioned. This is a good thing. Suicide is a private tragedy. The French press have been asked to respect the family's privacy, and as far as I can see are doing. Click on the French news

French Children Don't Throw Food

2012-01-19T19:08:00.000+01:00

I am really looking forward to reading French Children Don't Throw Food by Pamela Druckerman. It has been billed in the Daily Mail as being another smug book about how the French do everything better than the Brits, especially the women. But in dissing it (and other books with similar comparisons) like this they are missing the point. There are massive differences between the way children are

A rant about unpaid internships

2012-01-18T19:05:00.000+01:00

Unpaid internships have come into the press the last week as Cait Reilly is taking legal action against the government for forcing her to work, unpaid, in Poundland. The tabloids have picked this up and are ranting about her, giving the false impression that she believes stacking shelves and cleaning floors in a shop is beneath her. Richard Littlejohn refers to her as a "dopey bird" in his

A rant about a yacht for the Queen

2012-01-16T19:17:00.000+01:00

Fortunately it looks like the idea Gove had to buy the Queen a yacht for her 65th year as our monarch won't go ahead. I can, however, hardly believe that the idea was put forward in the first place. I'm not saying she doesn't deserve a yacht. I like the Queen - I think she is an excellent ambassador for the country and the Commonwealth. She has worked hard, through some really bad times for the

Women only parking spaces

2012-01-15T14:59:00.000+01:00

Since working in Luxembourg I have come across something that I have never seen anywhere else : parking spaces reserved only for women. I'm not talking about disabled parking, or parent and child parking (we have those spaces too, of course). These spaces are areas of parking lots where only women are supposed to park. In the big park and ride car parks dotted around the border entry points

A rant about negativity towards mothers and random stuff

2012-01-13T18:27:00.001+01:00

Has anyone heard of fetus parties? Anyone? I hadn't until today. It is the head of the Royal College of Midwives who alerted us to their apparent existence, as she, a leader of women supposed to be there to help and guide and support us, lashed out at expectant mothers for all kinds of issues. As it was a pretty anti-woman rant the Daily Mail (surprise surprise) reported it gleefully. "There is

A rant about pharmaceutical companies

2012-01-11T19:08:00.001+01:00

I hadn't heard of the expression the "worried well" until this week, when I have read several articles about how scientists are amending their attitude to aspirin. I know several people who take an aspirin a day to ward off heart problems, and have always been a little surprised at the needless self medication. Especially since I learnt, the very hard way, of the dangers of aspirin and

A rant about the lack of enthusiasm for the Olympic Games

2012-01-09T18:35:00.001+01:00

I remember the day it was announced that London would host the Olympics in 2012. I was the only Brit in an office full of French people, crowded round the TV in the coffee area of the company in which I was working at the time. Everyone knew it was a close call between London and Paris, and everyone assumed Paris would win. Let's face it, they had a better bid, better infrastructure, and, to be

A rant about scary baby toys

2012-01-06T18:47:00.000+01:00

I have given many a noisy gift to babies over the years. It has always been with a smirk that I have wrapped up a music player, or a keyboard. And it appears karma exists, and my mischief is coming back to haunt me. My daughter has been given talking books, loud keyboards and flashy shrill balls. I have been promised drum kits and toy guitars. And that's fine, actually. Except when they turn

David Cameron reaches out to Daily Mail readers.. again

2012-01-05T19:08:00.000+01:00

" 'Elf 'n' Safety" is possibly one of the most irritating phrases the Daily Mail has ever produced, along with "Her Royal Hotness". It isn't funny, or clever, to refuse to say Health and Safety, is it? And it isn't funny or clever to blame health and safety laws for pretty much anything, is it? I am not sure, so correct me if I am wrong, but H&S laws across the EU are pretty similar. There is,

A rant about having to give credit where it is due

2012-01-04T18:03:00.001+01:00

Regular readers know that I hate the tabloid press. Particularly the Daily Mail, closely followed by Rupert Murdoch's Sun, and the now dead and buried News of the World. The only one I don't mind as much is the Mirror, because it peddles less hate and bigotry than the right wing red tops. Most of the time. However in the interest of fairness I believe the Mail should be praised for one thing:

A rant about resisting advances in medecine

2012-01-03T18:25:00.000+01:00

Well, what a random post to start the year. This is something I have been thinking about for a while, and I am wondering if people agree with me. This isn't the place for a debate about the NHS, so place disbelief aside for a moment (or pretend you live in France) and remember that we now have almost instant access to: - detailed ultrasounds - effective painkillers - safe anaesthetic -

A rant about blasts from the past

2011-12-30T13:18:00.000+01:00

They say that of the five senses scent is the most evocative. And I do tend to agree. Living a couple of hundred miles from the coast I miss the sea. On very rare occasions the smell of the sea comes in the wind, and it takes me home immediately. The smell of an oil burning stove takes me back to family holidays as a child on the lovely Bessiestown Farm, though I am not quite sure why. I was

A very personal review of 2011

2011-12-29T11:42:00.000+01:00

It is with really mixed emotions that I look back on 2011. It has been both the hardest and best year of my life. Here are the high/low lights: 1. My maternity leave started in January, and not a moment too soon, as my stress levels were through the roof. To alleviate boredom I had enrolled on a distance learning course, which I have enjoyed. So much, that I am dreading my return to work in the

A rant about having too much food porn

2011-12-27T18:51:00.000+01:00

Being the proud owner of over sixty cookbooks, at least one of which I have used on occasion, and as a keen subscriber to several cookery magazines, which are great for bedtime reading, my new year resolution for 2011 was to cook something new every day. Ambitious as I was expecting a baby in March, but hey. I have to say I enjoy cooking, and cook every day, from scratch. But I am more of the

Five tips for driving in France

2011-12-27T11:42:00.000+01:00

I have decided to have a neutral day on the blog, so will post about driving in France, following my very long drive to the in-laws and back this weekend. 1. The French have a reputation for driving dangerously. If you replace the word 'dangerous' with 'different' you will have a much more positive experience. A French driver sees a space, no matter how small, he will get his car in it. This

A rant about Cameron's ego boosting trip to Afghanistan

2011-12-21T13:39:00.000+01:00

Whether you are for or against the various wars the UK has been dragged into over the past few years it is hard not to have respect for the soldiers out there fighting for what their government believes in, whether or not they themselves agree. It is always a great photo opportunity for politicians or celebrities to go out to the war zone and be snapped with soldiers. It is generally billed as a

A rant about the HMRC scandal

2011-12-20T10:27:00.001+01:00

Today's papers are full of the latest tax scandal. Big businesses apparently have a "cosy" relationship with HMRC and are apparently benefiting from generous agreements which effectively cut the tax they owe to the country. In a world which is increasingly asking for transpareny and fairness, HMRC won't publish the deals they have made with various big companies. £25bn is the figure mentioned

A rant about being insulted anonymously

2011-12-19T10:55:00.000+01:00

I have ranted before about the hate mail I received when I wrote a critical post about a certain newspaper. I have received more mean emails since, about various things I have posted, and sometimes my comments on here are less than complimentary. But that's all fine - it's the nature of blogging and one of the good things about having the freedom to say pretty much what we want to say. But

A rant about a hypothetical war

2011-12-16T13:29:00.000+01:00

I have been living in France for over thirteen years. Thirteen years. That's almost all my adult life. I don't think there will ever again be another war between the UK and France, so this is a purely hypothetical post, inspired by the war of words going on at the moment between our two governments. What would I do today if France and the UK declared real war? Where would my loyalties lie? And

A rant about the drinking culture

2011-12-15T11:31:00.000+01:00

I only worked less than two years in the UK before escaping back to France and there is one thing in particular that sticks in my mind. Monday mornings were spent, as in many offices across the world, discussing the weekend. And whereas in France when you ask what people did at the weekend they will tell you about a meal, or a trip to the theatre, or a walk in the woods, I remember the

A rant about so much criticism of the BBC

2011-12-14T10:43:00.000+01:00

So they filmed part of their wildlife documentary in the zoo. So what? The purpose of a documentary is to inform, to reflect reality. If they tried to film all of it out in the wild they wouldn't be able to show us so much. It would be too intrusive for the animals, and too dangerous for the cameramen. And, for the bleaters, too expensive, and you'd complain about your licence fee being wasted.

The Day Zero Project

2011-12-13T16:21:00.000+01:00

Today I heard about the Day Zero Project on this blog. Basically you create a list of things you want to do in the next 1,001 days. You can also add your dreams to a Someday list. Wow. So I have spent a happy hour making a list of things I want to achieve in the next 1,001 days. I have tried to make them all achievable (so no cartwheeling on the Great Wall of China for me, or at least not in the

A rant about the 'gender apartheid' debate

2011-12-13T12:23:00.000+01:00

Apparently Hamleys have stopped separating the girls' and boys' toys onto different floors and will no long use pink and blue signs to differentiate between the two. In theory this is great. Girls shouldn't just be encouraged to play with dolls, and boys aren't just interested in cars and trains or whatever they play with now. But then I thought about it a little and decided, does it really