French Friday with Feux d’Artifice

Fiona Uncategorized

(Image Credit: French Today)

C’est le 14 juillet this coming Tuesday, so I thought it would be fun to celebrate the event, even if a bit early, with a French-themed (Frenchified?) Friday evening thread.

It is such a beautiful country:

(Image Credit: Calvados)

(Image Credit: Inter-France)

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

with such scrumptious food:

(Image Credit: Biba)

(Image Credit: L’Epicurieux)

(Image Credit: Journal Littéréticulaire de Berlol)

(Image Credit: Le Procrastinateur)

and drink:

(Image Credit: Belgian Experts)

(Image Credit: Canvas Holidays)

(Image Credit: Beverley S. Taylor)

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

(Image Credit: Burgundy Discovery)

with this for brunch next day . . .

(Image Credit: Ad-French-Ures)

Then there’s the music – first, from the 18th century:

Then the 19th century:

and last but not least the 20th century:

Finally, to bring the theme full circle:

441 thoughts on “French Friday with Feux d’Artifice”

  1. I just want to point something out –

    ChAFTA is not yet a done deal. It still has to be ratified by parliament. Labor says they will be looking at it closely, especially the bit about relaxing 457 rules and allowing Chinese workers on low pay into the country instead of Australian workers being employed.

    The Shenhua thing has come at a fortuitous time. The anger it has stirred up will make sure ChAFTA’s progress through parliament will be watched with a great deal of interest. Maybe Abbott hoped it could slip though with a quick senate rubber stamp and no-one would notice. That won’t happen now.

  2. ” What else do you expect a bunch of grandmothers to get up to?”….Ahh!..but “granny” knows all the secrets..she..is the keeper of the family vault!..you just have to “translate” that knowing look into words and phrases…FEED THE BEAST! , Leone….feed the beast!

  3. That little cameo of you in the rain read interesting, Ctar’…by the way, what does the “MI” in the MI5. stand for?

  4. jaycee,

    ‘Military Intelligence’ was one pseudonyms used … along with things like ‘Box 500’

  5. My grandmother was a strict and pious woman with a stern and handsome face. A prolific knitter, she’d never rest her hands a while during her visits to our place. With the sound of the needles we would be given lessons on obedience and discipline. The first few minutes of joy and expectation she had brought us when she unpacked and handed out some chocolate usually quickly turned into boredom.

  6. jaycee – The great coat (and gaiters, etc) I still have.

    Sometime late in summer I used to send it off to a dry cleaner who’d put it through any number of times to clean it and then apply water proofing to it.

    It would be ‘stiff’ for the first couple of walks. I must have looked like Ned Kelly in his armor.

  7. Bet CEFC money will be spent on spurious science of carbon capture. The Alice in Wonderland of clean fossil fuel.

  8. CTar1

    Really exciting stuff like walking along the Thames

    Yeah but only when youse were nae swimming across said river 😆

  9. kk

    swimming across said river

    A one off warm summer night. Not much clothing involved.

  10. My father’s mother’s dark north facing kitchen smelt of town gas and over ripe lemons. As kids we were aware of the antipathy between mum and her. Pop inhabited the dining room which had sofa and TV and the double block garden. Grandy showed her grandchildren her secret garden in the front drawing room that looked like terrainiums whith fine glass objects.

    Mum’s mother taught us to be proud of our family, value the arts, be proud of our country’s flood mitigation projects. I still remember the punishment meted out for hiding my infant sister in a drawer and the joy of eating her picnic lunches.

  12. billie

    Grand parents – I’ve got not much experience of these.

    Only my maternal grand father was alive by the time I was born.

  13. kk

    How is the ‘Silver goddess’ going ?

    Got an air suspension fault (the back keeps going ‘flat’) other than that good.

  15. http://www.afr.com/business/energy/electricity/wind-farm-ban-will-hurt-solar-renewable-industry-says-20150712-giaiab

    http://www.readfearn.com/2015/06/the-australian-misreports-study-on-influence-of-sun-on-global-warming/

    http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/reachtel-liberals-narrowly-holding-in.html

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/so-what-is-medical-research-exactly/story-e6frgcjx-1227437112346 no paywall

  16. Sneaky bastards.

    A few weeks ago the senate disallowed changes that would have increased family law fees on 1 July.
    http://www.familylawincanberra.com.au/family-law-in-canberra-divorce-tax-to-be-opposed-in-senate/

    The government has now created a regulation that not only brings in the increases immediately but makes them even greater by slapping $5 extra on everything.

    This was done while we were all looking at Bill Shorten and mines.
    https://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2015L01138/Explanatory%20Statement/Text

    Bastards! Abbott and Co forcing their narrow-minded, misguided, faux Christian beliefs on everyone by making divorce too expensive for many. So you either have to suck it up and stay in a failed marriage or live in what Abbott would consider an adulterous relationship with your new love because you can’t afford that divorce.

    Again – Bastards!

  19. There is a two storey high aquarium in the foyer of the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne:

    Our two-storey reef aquarium is visible from Emergency on Lower Ground (Underwater) and Main Street on Ground floor (Beach).

    It is home to approximately 40 different species of fish, two black tip reef sharks and one epaulette shark. All species can be found on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The biggest fish is a hump head Maori Wrasse whose name is ‘Humpy’.

    The aquarium is managed by Advanced Aquarium Technologies as part of the hospital’s community partnership program.

    The fish are fed twice a day, and the sharks are fed every two days. Their diet consists of foods such as whiting, squid, bonito, tailor, prawns, sardines, pilchards, pipis, mysis shrimp, brine shrimp, nori and wombok.

    The tank is cleaned daily. Divers wipe algae from the acrylic walls with a cloth, vacuum dirt from the gravel on the bottom of the tank and scrub algae off the coral.

    The tank is 7.5 metres deep, four metres in diameter and holds 153,000 litres of salt water (including filtration system). The walls are eight centimetres thick and the water temperature is 25.5 to 26 degrees Celsius.

  20. Tony Abbott lines up double-dissolution election over workplace relations

    The Abbott government plans to give itself the option of calling a double-dissolution election based on trade union corruption when Parliament resumes in mid-August.

    Banking on its Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption inflicting reputational damage on Labor leader Bill Shorten, the government will use the resumption of Parliament to put two bills back before the Senate that seek to curb union excess.

    The bills would restore the powers of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which were diluted by the previous Labor government, and subject corrupt officials of unions and employers’ groups to the same penalties that apply to corrupt business executives.

    The government, which wants the option of an early election, has no meaningful trigger for calling a double-dissolution election, which it must hold if it wants to go to the polls before mid-July next year. If the bills on the ABCC and registered organisations are rejected by the Senate again, both would become triggers.

    Could turn out interesting… Pulling an election based on a smear of the Opposition, rather than any actual policy platform or record of achievement of their own.

  21. Socks,

    abbott and rabble would also see it as a delicious revenge for the 2007 defeat, largely attributable to WorkChoices.

  22. The bills would restore the powers of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which were diluted by the previous Labor government, and subject corrupt officials of unions and employers’ groups to the same penalties that apply to corrupt business executives.

    What, a seat at the Liberal policy table?

  23. I don’t believe it anyway. That might have been the plan at some stage, but nothing that’s happening indicates they’ll be able to implement it. Union-bashing just isn’t a vote-winner. This is somebody’s pipe-dream, begging for a miracle.

    There seems to be some kind of race within the LNP to deliver everything they promised to various business groups before they get turfed out. The coal industry must be owed a few favours given what Abbott’s now doing to renewable energy and solar panels. They’re probably already working on ways to stymie the incoming ALP government’s attempts to rectify the damage. I’d suggest to the government backbenchers that there’s still time for a lot of them to save their seats by forcing Abbott out, but they don’t appear to have backbones. And they probably realise that the party has already been sold to business interests so a change of leader won’t achieve much anyway.

  24. I think that in the early days of the Abbott government, swinging voters were outraged, and thought they could ‘send a message’ to Abbott by shifting their votes. At that point they were still open to switching back, and looked to Abbott for a response. It didn’t take them long to realise that Abbott doesn’t listen to messages, and after that the votes were locked in.

    Abbott still thinks those votes can be won back by dragging down the ALP, but it doesn’t work that way any more. Only when your party is a clean sheet. People aren’t focused on what a future ALP government might be like; they’re not even open to the suggestion. They’re firmly in the “nothing could be worse than this” frame of mind. When that happens you can say what you like about the opposition, it won’t make a shred of difference.

  25. Aguirre,

    They’re probably already working on ways to stymie the incoming ALP government’s attempts to rectify the damage.

    Almost certainly, but given their lack of nous they’ll do a napthine. Sure, that will mean a whole lot of money unnecessarily spent, but in the long run it will be better for Australia.

  27. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.

    Peter Martin on some forecasts for housing price movements.
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/property/melbourne-house-prices-tipped-to-dive-while-sydneys-climb-then-plateau-20150712-giaesx.html
    And now Abbott goes after household and small scale solar energy. He’s gone troppo.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/government-pulls-the-plug-on-household-solar-20150712-gian0u.html
    Meanwhile the heat will be right on him as we are due to make public our commitment to climate change action targets ahead of the Paris talks.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/heat-on-abbott-as-climate-council-finds-australia-lags-in-emission-cuts-20150712-giajgh.html
    And “View from the Street” has a dig at Abbott’s Energy Wars Episode IV. He piles on the ridicule.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/view-from-the-street/view-from-the-street-energy-wars-episode-iv-the-government-strikes-back-20150712-giafiv.html
    Tensions are running high at Denpasar airport.
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/terminal-tensions-amid-bali-flight-chaos-as-volcanic-ash-cloud-shuts-airport-20150712-giaktr.html
    We must have got our gun laws right. The NRA says they are no good. What better recommendation could we have?
    http://www.smh.com.au/world/your-gun-laws-are-a-mistake-national-rifle-association-to-australia-20150712-giaqal.html
    The travel expenses of the hand-picked Commissioner Wilson are under the spotlight.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/questions-over-freedom-commissioners-claim-to-no-luxury-travel-20150712-giajie.html
    Paul Sheehan says that the Greeks will be paying for their narcissism.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-greeks-invented-narcissism-and-it-has-caught-up-with-them-20150712-giak9y.html
    Today is day 1 of the Royal Commission into family violence. It will first examine who experiences it and what drives it.
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/13/day-one-royal-commission-family-violence-victims-causes
    Aldi has doubled its profit in the space of four years.
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/retail/aldi-lifts-lid-on-its-profits-and-tax-20150712-giapnm.html

  28. Section 2 . . .

    Ross Gittins in defence of our falling dollar.
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/gittins-column-for-monday-20150712-gia469
    The archbishop of Sydney tells (bullies?) parishioners not to be bullied into accepting gay marriage.
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/12/archbishop-tells-catholics-resist-being-bullied-supporting-gay-marriage
    An essay from John Brumby on how to fix our democracy.
    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/lets-subtract-confrontation-from-politics-and-add-training-20150712-gi8h20
    How Turnbull has wedged both the Coalition and Labor.
    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/malcolm-turnbull-the-abc-and-the-mystery-of-the-red-carpet,7933
    What was Turnbull’s real reason for pulling out of appearing on Q and A?
    http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2015/07/12/malcolm-turnbull-qanda-appearance-cancel/
    Tim Dick tells us why Gina Rinehart rubs us up the wrong way.
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/why-gina-rineharts-sense-of-entitlement-rubs-us-the-wrong-way-20150712-giaeqy.html
    Bill Shorten has challenged Abbott to a parliamentary debate on the role of unions.
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/12/bill-shorten-challenges-tony-abbott-to-unions-debate-in-parliament
    Our food health star rating system is starting to show some cracks.
    https://theconversation.com/a-year-on-australias-health-star-food-rating-system-is-showing-cracks-42911
    According to Alan Austin our economy is tanking at the half way mark.
    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australian-economy-tanking-at-the-halfway-mark,7931
    Peter Costello is wrong about superannuation.
    http://thenewdaily.com.au/money/2015/07/08/costello-wrong-can-trust-super/

  29. Section 3 . . .

    It’s strange how the media rarely question anything.
    http://theaimn.com/strange-how-rarely-the-media-questions-anything/
    The inquiry into Q and A must be robust and as critical as it needs to be.
    https://theconversation.com/managing-the-mallah-fallout-qanda-under-scrutiny-44556
    The moral imperative of climate action.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-moral-imperative-of-climate-action-20150710-gi9hhd.html
    Time to give a bit back to TAFE,
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-editorial/time-for-donors-and-graduates-to-give-to-tafe-20150712-giaf2d.html
    To stop the boats we must stop the warming. Ouch!
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/climate-change-will-force-millions-to-look-for-new-homes-20150710-gi9g36.html
    Our taxi industry has a rotten core.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/shining-a-light-into-the-rotten-core-of-the-taxi-industry-20150712-gi9h1x

  30. Section 4 . . . Cartoon Corner

    Alan Moir was there as Greece fires its last shot.

    Mark Knight. “BRING BACK THE BOATS!”

    Andrew Dyson and a conflict of interest.

    I don’t know who the cartoonist for The Australian is here but it’s a good one.

    Bill Leak continues on Shorten.

    David Rowe really goes to town on Abbott’s psyche.

  31. It seems to me that abbott thinks he is invincible and can get away whatever his insane, warped brain decides to pursue. And, it is no wonder he’s running amok because no matter how outrageous his agenda, our media hardly raises an eyebrow.

    Surely this country’s citizens will awaken from their current malaise and put an end to the reign of this mad man and his party of sycophants who are blindly following their leader to push us over the cliff into oblivion.

  32. Hello Janice…I agree..but I doubt Abbott’s nuttiness is an ideology thing, because it’s increasingly obvious that he and his ministerial box of fungi haven’t a clue how to govern and many of the big poilcy ambitions have nothing behind them but good ol’ fashioned greed!…So that would point to the usual suspects as the “steering committee” behind the ugly Abbott facade….; Big Business, Banks, Mining,Energy, Religion, Communications, Medical…because if one looks at the “lineal” direction of those policies, they seem to be linked to and supportive of each other….:

  33. Joel Fitzgibbon made a mistake yesterday during his Insiders interview. He confused Eric Abetz with George Brandis and said $17 million of funding for TURC had gone to Erica’s former law firm. I – a granny who is not supposed to be politically aware because all us oldies, allegedly, have no interests in politics and allegedly automatically vote Liberal – noticed that mistake, as soon as he said it. Barry Cassidy, allegedly a leading political journalist and in charge of a program about politics, did not notice.

    That little fact about the setting up of TURC favouring Brandis’ old legal firm Minter Ellison has been all over the media for months now, yet the ABC’s top political commentator missed it.
    http://www.afr.com/business/legal/royal-commission-a-boon-for-minter-ellison-20150226-13nruw

    The video and transcript of Fitzgibbon’s entire interview has been removed from the Insiders website, Instead there is a ‘clarification’ statement.The video of the entire episode has been removed too, and is not available on iview either.
    http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/

    Either Their ABC is really, really scared or a certain legal firm has made some very serious threats.

  34. The reason I went to the Insiders site was because I wanted to check something that was said just before Fitzgibbon’s interview. I wasn’t sure I had it right.

    The panel were discussing Abbott’s insane decision on the CEFC and wind energy. I’m pretty sure Mike Seccombe just shrugged it off and said something about the CEFC needing to look at newer alternative sources rather than wind. I could have that wrong, but I’m pretty sure the panel treated Abbott’s order as something of no great importance, just the usual ‘Tony being Tony’ excuse, move on now, nothing to see here sort of thing.

  37. My control group have already forgotten Shorten. They’ve noticed the defunding of wind power and solar energy, and they’re furious. This weekend will probably go down as the moment people realised Abbott’s given up on winning the next election. Who knows when he actually came to that conclusion, but he’s telegraphing it now.

    I’m 90% certain that this talk of a DD and an early election is just some people throwing a feeler out to see how the electorate respond. The electorate will respond with apathy. Abbott will see the term out. He’ll go through his roster of fears and smears a couple more times, but he really has no plan for winning another term. All his strategies have been used up. All he can do now is use the time paying off favours to the business community.

    Abbott’s probably also going to use the time to play out some of his fantasies. We’ll likely see him in a lot of uniforms etc.

  41. Not long after the election I predicted polls would shift to about 53-47 to the ALP and just stay there until the next election. I didn’t say it with much confidence at the time, but I’m feeling more bullish about it now. My feeling was that the LNP only had a plan to get into power, and that plan was to jettison any and every pretence to good policy direction or economic management, and just bully the electorate into voting for them. They had no plan for what they would do once in power, because all their efforts were expended in getting there. You could see that in the piecemeal policy-on-the-run directions they were taking. Abbott was clearly giving the message: “Just by having us in power confidence will rise and everything will be great!” Details swapped and changed based on neutralising anything the ALP did that resonated. So the LNP spent some considerable time contradicting themselves just to position their stance as unthreatening.

    In the interests of full disclosure, I thought the strategy would fall apart before the election. I thought the electorate would have to see through it once the campaign got under way. I miscalculated the sheer ferocity of the attacks on Slipper and Thomson, and I didn’t think the media would be quite as supine as they turned out to be. And I had too much faith in Rudd to do the right thing. Like Abbott, he seems to have spent all his time since mid-2010 devising ways to wrest the PM-ship back and no time on wondering what he might do once that was achieved.

    But these are just political tactics, the sorts of things you can spend your time on when you’re not responsible for running an economy and delivering services. Things are a lot different when you have to actually drive the vehicle. The LNP found themselves occupying the front benches with only two things on their agenda – abolishing carbon pricing and ‘stopping the boats’. The first is an easy matter of putting the repeal legislation up and harassing the Senate. There’s no finesse required, so they were up to that task. They’ve made a monumental mess of border protection, but they got by because most Australians don’t give a shit about asylum seekers and will believe any old crap on the topic. We could probably have public executions of refugees televised in prime time and Australians would still support ‘protecting our borders’.

    Everything else has gone to seed. And that’s because the LNP don’t know how to frame or deliver policy, and mostly don’t care. They think politics is just about attacking the opposition and telling people what they want to hear. They’ve spent more time and energy on royal commissions and finding ways to denigrate Shorten than they have on Budget issues. That economic stuff has been farmed out to the IPA and business interests. A perfect example of their stupidity and callousness on economic issues was the way they assembled some mates into a Commission of Audit, told them the outcomes they wanted and let the charade play out. This is their idea of accountability. And their idea of playing to the sympathies of the electorate is a futile search for a lost plane – which they first attempted to capitalise on by trying to lay blame, and then just put out regular pressers on why they haven’t found it yet, which was supposed to draw attention away from all the other domestic atrocities happening in their name. Quite pathetic.

    There’s no switch to flick. We know that because Abbott’s supposed to have flicked the switch a number of times now and there’s been no change at all. I personally think the entire Coalition front bench is monumentally stupid but politically savvy. Numbers baffle them. They’re all PR and dirt units. They’re great at staying on message, but they’re discovering the hard way that you can’t just bully an economy into doing what you want it to do.

    With no switch to flick, what the LNP are doing now has to work for them, or they’re gone. Has anybody ever seen it work for them since the last election? They’ve attempted every angle on it, and they can’t be accused of not giving it their all. Political strategising is all they do, every day of every week of every month. Demonising ALP figures, hectoring the population about the need to tighten belts, triumphalism over killing off our commitment to combat climate change, slashing services, goading the car industry into folding, attacking pensioners and those on welfare, invoking terrorism at the drop of a hat – they’ve done pretty much everything they can to force us to submit to them, and the polls haven’t shifted, not one iota.

    So don’t expect a shift in philosophy, don’t expect to be showered with goodies in an attempt at bribery, don’t expect a change of leader, don’t expect anything in the way of constructive policy, don’t expect Hockey to take a more measured approach to the economy, don’t expect Abbott to be in any way statesmanlike. But do expect the MSM to claim that all these things have happened. It’s a death march to the election, with maybe a bit more hysteria as it nears.

  42. Jaeger – feeding the chooks is sooo easy!

    We are poorly served by our IGNORANT reporters,

  43. Aguirre,

    All you have written is absolutely spot on. What I do not understand however, is the msm is still stubbornly backing this bunch of incompetents even though there must be more a couple of journalists who have not only seen the writing on the wall, but know in their hearts that they backed an out and out dud, a liar and a thug.

  44. FFS!

    Abbott is just flailing around now, he has so obviously lost all sanity. Are we really supposed to believe this garbage?

    Abbott said Australia would take a strong and credible target to the United Nations-led climate talks in Paris at the end of this year, unlike other countries that made “all these airy-fairy promises that never come to anything.”

    Australia’s post-2020 climate target will not be revealed until August
    Target had been expected this month, but Tony Abbott says policy must clear Coalition party room before it is unveiled
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/13/tony-abbott-says-post-2020-climate-target-secret-until-cleared-by-party-room?CMP=ema_632

    So, heading into the Paris climate talks we already have these promises, ones that Abbott says are ‘airy-fairy –
    USA – greenhouse emissions to be reduced by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels in 2025 and aim for an 80% reduction by 2050.
    China – carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP to be reduced by 60% to 65% from the 2005 level, with emissions peaking by 2030.
    EU – will reduce emissions by 40% by 2030 relative to 1990 levels.
    Canada – will reduce its emissions by 30% on 2005 levels,
    New Zealand – same as Canada

    And Australia?
    More than the current 5% cut on 2000 levels by 2020. I’m thinking Abbott will go with 10%, maximum and then once the talks are over it will all be ignored as he showers money on big polluters and encourages them to ignore emissions reductions completely.

    Prepare to be seriously embarrassed, once again, by the shenanigans of whatever third-rate lackeys Abbott sends to Paris. You can bet he won’t go and neither will Grunt. Remember what happened in Warsaw in 2013 – we are in for a repeat performance.
    https://theconversation.com/australia-makes-a-bad-start-at-warsaw-climate-change-meeting-20190

  46. Janice – The media are always very slow on the uptake. They seem to be about two months behind social media in figuring out trends, so they’ll notice that Shorten is somewhat formidable about September. Which is about the time they’ll twig that the Abbott government is terminal. And then there’ll be a spate of articles about what Abbott has to do to keep power.

    They – along with the betting markets it seems – are relying heavily on the assumption that people don’t throw out first term governments. Well, they did in Queensland, and in Victoria. They went within a hair’s breadth of doing it federally in 2010. And this Abbott government got in under unusual circumstances, based heavily on denigration of the ALP at the expense of making a case for themselves. There’s no particular goodwill toward the Abbott government, and neither should there be.

    But shifts in media commentary are glacial. They hold fast to their assumptions, often against the evidence staring them in the face. That, rather than overt bias, is the big issue they face; they’re just not as agile as alternative media and social media when it comes to picking up trends. A lot of that is due to their unhealthy ties to political parties and figures. They get gamed all the time by spin. Their privileged access comes at the price of a loss of perspective. You only have to see Barrie Cassidy in action to see how that plays out. He brings a pile of false assumptions to every issue he tackles.

  47. Aguirre

    Your remarks about the asylum seeker issue is, sadly, spot on. The time to stand up for that issue was the Tampa debacle. I have overheard many sensible and intelligent people ranting against ‘boat people’.

  49. Ctar1
    That is an old Australian Story episode. I saw it a couple of years ago. It is dated, with no new information.

    There is barely a mention that death from asbestos was well known and documented before 1900, or of the aboriginals who did the mining of it in Old B’tard Hancock’s mines. The fate of the local tribes is not mentioned either. Let just sayIMO the old boy probably fell on the fauna side of the categorisation of Aboriginals. I could be wrong but this AS gives me no new info on this, and Gina has eff-all of a quarter of zilch to say about the local inhabitants and their treatment, or if anything that has been done for the poor sods who worked in those mines (long dead by now I suppose).

    Her sole claim to achievement seems to be living out an extension of her father’s life. I find that so sad, so pathetic. An 19th Century man who got lucky in the 20th century, with a daughter still trying to live his 19th century life in the 21st century.

    Any wonder she is alone, with only sycophants and sucker-uppers for friends, the kind of people who are working out how to benefit from your downfall as they compliment you on the canapes.

    Usually one could turn to the kids for that close family support. Least said about THAT, is best.

    Even the death of her beloved Father turned into a national farce.

    If ever there was a modern day parable of the super-rich person being unable to shove a camel through the eye of a needle to reach the state of grace, this is it.

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