My Tailor is Rich

There can't be many English phrases familiar to large swathes of foreigners while remaining completely unknown to the English themselves. "My tailor is rich" is one such phrase.

When I first started teaching English in France, I was taken aback when my otherwise tongue-tied students introduced, with great confidence and utter conviction, "My tailor is rich" into the silence of the classroom. I eventually discovered that this is the first sentence of the classic Anglais sans peine (English Without Tears) published many years ago by the original teach-yourself publishing company, Assimil.

Many things have changed in the years since then, and few would assert with the same degree of confidence nowadays that tailors are rich. Mine isn't anyway, and with good reason. The funny thing is that, over the those intervening years, I had completely forgotten the origin of the phrase and had come to assume that the English themselves were familiar with it. Not so! The other day, I turned to the English woman sitting in the café next to me, and said with great emphasis "my tailor is rich". She didn't understand what I was talking about.

BHL in Action

In the world of the hackneyed expression, Bernard-Henri Lévy reigns supreme. Here he is sounding off in the august columns of the Huffington Post:

Whatever happens from this point on, nothing will ever be the same in Tehran.

There then follow 14 paragraphs, 13 of which begin with the words “Whatever happens, …”

Whatever happens from this point on, Bernard-Henri Lévy will always be the same!

Of Veils and Burqas

I thought I knew where I stood on the question of the wearing of full-body veils or burqas in France, that is to say, I thought I was against it. But having read fellow blogger Jerry Hawthorne's thought-provoking article on the subject, I am no longer quite so sure. This is what Jerry wrote:

http://maytreesmusings.blogspot.com/

On balance, I still think the burqa (or should that be the niqab?) should be banned in public, but how can I justify this point of view? Partly because, leaving aside issues such as freedom of worship, freedom of expression and so on, the fact is that with the burqa you haven't the faintest idea who you're talking to. That may seem a trivial point, but it seems to me that there's a difference between various other outwards signs of religious affinity and a veil which effectively cuts you off from all meaningful contact with the outside world, and vice versa. Think of all those bank robberies going unpunished ...

On top of that, there is the fact that France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe (an estimated 5 million), enough to turn the question into one of some political importance. There is also some evidence to suggest that numbers are on the increase and that the women concerned are, increasingly, young girls who may have been indoctrinated by out-and-out Islamists. Here is what Nicolas Sarkozy has to say on the matter:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8112821.stm

On the other hand, proud proclamations about the primacy of laicité and valeurs républicains are not much good unless they are reflected and given expression in a fair and non-racist society. And here, it has to be said, there is still a lot of hypocrisy and discrimination in France. The country has brought a lot of the present grief upon itself by dragging its feet, at a purely practical level which is almost impossible to combat, and by not giving Muslims a fair crack of the whip in terms of, among other things, access to employment and housing.

The dangerous thing about the French approach, its insistence of "all equal in the Republic", is that problems tend to get swept under the carpet until they explode violently, as they did in the autumn of 2005.

Where Am I?

As much as an exercise in geekdom as anything else, I thought I’d see what I could generate in the way of “content” on this particular part of France.

First, I need some tag words – Aubigny-en-Plaine, Brazey-en-Plaine, Saint-Jean-de-Losne, Esbarres – and then I go into the magic application called Apture. At this point I have to leave you for a moment to go online.

LATER: Well, that's all very clever. Actually, if you look at the photo of Saint-Jean you see the bridge over the river Saône which more or less marks the boundary between the departments of the Côte d'Or and the Jura, and the regions of Burgundy and Franche-Comté. Historically, it marked the limits of the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire.
If we want to get a better idea of where we stand in the greater scheme of things, look at the map of Aubigny and zoom out a little to see where we are located in relation to Dijon, Dole, etc.

Key to “About Me”

RHB = Right Hand Bat

SLA = Slow Left Arm

HS = Highest Score

N.O. = Not Out

Toffs V Spivs: A reference to the Gentlemen V Players cricket which, it seems barely credible now, was still being played in the early 1960s. There was also a North V South match which probably amounted to much the same thing!

SBWA = Standard Bank of West Africa

Iranian Elections

I can understand the clamour for a re-count in the Presidential elections in Iran. But the opposition must show patience. They must realise that it takes time to cook the books.

Names 2

David Brooks, Roger Cohen, Ross Douthat, Tom Friedman, Nicholas Kristof are just some of the op-ed columnists of the New York Times. And very good they are too, in my opinion. In America, the NYT is seen as a liberal (in the American sense) and “progressive” newspaper, leaning more to the Democrats than the Republicans. In European terms that translates as centre-right. Anyway, there is little that is tendentious in their columns, which strike me as being fair, balanced and above all intelligent.

On the economic front, David Leonhardt succeeds in making complex issues understandable without unduly simplifying or distorting them. And then there is the wonderful Garrison Keillor, the author of Lake Wobegon Days, whom I can never read without thinking of my very dear and much missed friend, Richard Haney.

Names

Do these names mean anything to you?

David Brooks, Roger Cohen, Ross Douthat, Tom Friedman, Nicholas Kristof.