Sacré bleu! Parking machine labels French mayor ‘thieving bastard' Police are investigating complaints from a Gallic politician after he was branded a “thieving bastard” on hundreds of parking tickets emanating from a machine in the town where he's mayor. Jean-François Copé, a former bigwig of the French (conservative) opposition party Les Republicans, stood down last summer following a …
I'd so much like to be able to add a bit of cunning words (linqua?) to our tax forms, etc. I'm sure the clever chaps in the Kremlin or Beijing can give me the mot-de-passe for the IRS admin account.
Reminds me of a time in my youth when I caused several thousand invoices to be printed out with a riff on the current manager's name - something about how many insect parts were allowed by the FDA in a package of hotdogs (brand.) Fortunately my cerebral parts kicked in before the actual mailing was done.
"Fortunately my cerebral parts kicked in before the actual mailing was done"
Pity. I was responsible once for officially issuing a drawing into the Marconi Comms system "Copyright the Macaroni Company" Sadly nobody noticed. Yes, I was that bored at the time.
Bleedin' enfer! C'est un liberté diabolique! Mon auto rester ici depuis un minute seulment! Ne donnez mois un ticket, cher demmoselle de les metres! Je suis innocent de violations parking!
(Et Merci beaucoup au Miles Kington pour demonstrater le ease avec which on can user le Francais Schoolboy pour les communications chaque jours. Je pense que Lecon treize: Avec La Traffic Warden est tres apposite, n'est pas?)
Town twinning is a cultural thing involving exchange visits and the like, a way of sharing and celebrating the culture, art and people of each town.
It would be fair to say that both Reading and Basildon are cultural deserts or as we prefer to call them "shit holes" and are not exactly renowned for culture, art or much else.
"It would be fair to say that both Reading and Basildon are cultural deserts or as we prefer to call them "shit holes" and are not exactly renowned for culture, art or much else."
En effet, Basildon est vraiment un désert culturel, mais Reading?
Russell Group university?
Reading festival?
On pense que peut-être vous avez surouefé le boudin.
@nsld.
Thankfully, I can't speak for Reading - never had the displeasure of being there. However, judging by your flattering description, I suggest you've never been to Basildon.
I thought that twinning was simply a device to waste scarce resources and provide junkets for...
The sadly twinned line stood out to me a joke I am clearly missing, would anyone care to enlighten an international reader who does not get the reference?
'Twinning' is a cozy little scam that local government councillors across Europe have run for a number of years - pick a town elsewhere in the world, establish diplomatic relations with your civic government counterparts over there, and your communities will be Best Friends Forever. In theory it allows communities of similar size/challenges to learn from each other and establish entente cordiale; in practice it just means taxpayer-subsidized holidays^H^Hjunkets^H^Hfact-finding "friendship" visits for the aforementioned bigwigs for ever more.
Generally the towns with which UK places are twinned tend to be rather pleasant, so the Mayor and his/her cronies have to force themselves to suffer a visit to, say, Nice or Geneva - but the trendier municipal authorities have a compulsion to twin with benighted hell-holes that bear no relation to their own community (e.g. "Marlborough, twinned with Gunjur in the Gambia".)
As the article points out, sometimes that cuts the other way, and the foreign town draws the short straw out of misguided sympathy or just bad luck. I'm sure the French town hoped to be twinned with somewhere nice - but had to settle for Basildon and Reading. Perhaps next year they'll get an upgraded twinning arrangement with Mogadishu or maybe even Detroit.
They are just medium size towns of no particular distinction - imagine 'The Office' being set there and you'll get the general idea. Probably quite similar to the French town in the story (which is why they are twinned) but the grass is always greener, no?
I strongly suspect Rise-Of-The-Machines spreading via the Internet-Of-Things. Only a few days ago I purchased a ticket from a London parking meter, and was puzzled as to why it was 10 inches long. Then I saw the message at the bottom. I think they're getting angry:-
Boris Johnson Mayor bastard, thieving adulterous bastard, floppy-haired bumbling bastard, elitist misogynist homophobic bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard....
@ TitterYeNot
Machine must have become deranged by the pain from all the diodes down its right side or something.
Poor thing - Nothing in its right mind could be so flattering about Boris the Cockroach?
Lets face it - the only reason he got elected was we'd had more than enough of the reptile - it was a case of least damaging option.
I think it's called democracy or something.
Was done to a large high street chain jeweller (ratners type) a good while back now, by the support desk they didn't change it to something that offensive but they did hide some comment amongst the text on the reciept. Can't remember what it was years back and not the helldesk I was on, they left it like that for a couple of days though.
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