Ok, I've gone all silent on you for a while. Honestly, there's just too much out there that enrages me. Too much hypocrisy, too much irrationality, too many lies. Too much to know what to go on about. Everywhere.

And also too many people with preconceived opinions about subjects they don't know anything about and haven't looked into further than

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Sent by David Lloyd, by email

I have just read the comments made by Mike Walsh in your April/May edition and found them offensive, especially about women drivers (but also tank drivers as well).

I have driven in a lot of places around the world and I think that the driving here is the worst in Europe. A few years ago the annual death rate on French roads was 8000 (twice as much as in Britain). Now they have got it down but it’s still high. I ride a bike every day here and know from experience that the car that gets dangerously close to me is usually a 06 number plate driven by a man. Women are far more considerate (and cautious – not a bad thing here).

I find that you cannot second-guess the drivers and you have to drive very defensively. My brother is a taxi driver in London. When he was down he asked if we have the same classification here as in Britain, where you know from the number plate the age of the vehicle. I replied that we do have a way: if it the car hasn’t a scratch on it, it’s a week old and if it hasn’t a bump on it, it’s a month old.

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Sent by J.K. Mayes, Monaco

I sent you a very intelligent and pertinent letter which explained in detail why everyone here should be instructed to vote Conservative in the next general election. You didn’t print it and I want to be told why.

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A few days ago I was chatting with a lady in Mougins about the queue of private jets that were bringing the rich and famous to the Cannes Film Festival. "Look at that jet. No wonder the air is polluted. Soon the festival will begin and the bay will be full of yachts too and our Mediterranean will be contaminated as well. The rich and privileged

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I got a personal email from Laura Bush the other day. The return URL was This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and the subject was "Here is the Truth". Hmmm, seems that first ladies aren't what they used to be.

I found the promise of truth rather enticing, especially coming from the wife of a notorious liar, so I opened it and there was Laura's message

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Everyone thinks he's a writer.

All sorts of wannabe hacks send their texts to me at the Reporter. There's the odd gem but most are excruciatingly boring. That's usually because the writer thinks his own interests must forcibly be shared by others. They're usually not. Or it's because the writer is pushing a particular product, service or idea for

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I have a friend named Jean-Marie. It's a normal enough boy's name in France but the man is half British and he went to school in England. Imagine how many times he was incidentally enrolled in the girl's gym class. It's a wonder he turned into a perfectly normal adult who doesn't wish eternal damnation upon his parents.

There's no reason to think

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I'm not PC (in both senses of the term, but more about that another time) and I don't give a toss whether anyone approves of that or not. Shunning political correctness makes me free to say and do things that the verbally constipated can't. In print there are limits, but only legal ones imposed on all of us by politicians. Politician is a race

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Being a working journalist imposes a perspective on things that is unlike any other. First of all, we become walking encyclopaedias of fragmented information as we delve into a great many issues, however superficially, on a daily basis. This prevents us from getting caught out in our own preconceptions or at least it means we know for sure when

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