Riviera Reporter Your Say - November 2008

Snap and be damned.

Mike Meade — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Photography isn't without its perils. I'm an enthusiastic photographer and I like to photograph people but sometimes they don't like me doing it so I get hassle. I hate hassle.

The worst case was when I happened by a country school in the UK and saw a couple of cute little girls making faces at each other in the playground. It was such a great shot of a schoolyard scene that I couldn't resist. I snapped off a couple of telephoto shots but before I knew it there was [...]

Fight for UK Benefits Right

Tina and John Hamilton — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:00:00 +0100

We are writing to ask if you can assist in highlighting a petition, which has been set up in order to demand the reinstatement of certain disability benefits currently being illegally withheld from UK expatriates by the British government.

On 18 October 2007 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the UK had illegally stopped paying benefits, including Carer's Allowance (CA), Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and Attendance Allowance by over-riding existing exportability rules. [...]

Reality shows, harmless drivel or evil exploitation?

MikeP — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:00:00 +0100

I believe it was in Victorian times that some people's idea of a fun day out was to visit a lunatic asylum and ridicule the inmates, taunting and mocking them. We are supposed to have moved on since then. �Lunatic asylums' as such no longer exist, and more politically correct terminology is used for the institutions that replaced them.

I would question whether we have moved on. When I first heard about reality television shows like Big Brother appealing to huge audiences, [...]

The Obama Hope: What it means for us

Mike Meade — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Over 40 years ago Robert F. Kennedy predicted that within his children’s lifetime a black man would become president of the United States. He was the brother of another unlikely choice, John F Kennedy — the first Catholic to hold the highest office and an unlikely pick at the time. Only a few years before the election no one could have imagined that an Irish Catholic would be living in the White House. Religious prejudice in America wasn’t as visible as colour racism but it [...]

Not so disabled friendly shopping

Liz Lovell — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I live in both the UK and here and am disabled (or, as the French call it, "handicapped"), I mainly walk with a stick but sometimes have need for a wheelchair or scooter. I have a Blue Badge, known as a "carte de stationnement pour personnes handicapées" in France, which allows for parking in disabled bays. On the whole, the Riviera doesn't seem very accessible to the disabled compared to the UK. I see far fewer wheelchairs and scooters than in the UK, I can only i [...]

My way back to America

Todd Marlar — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Like many of your American readers I sometimes felt the tug of the motherland but then I looked at what had happened to my country. The spirit of the American Dream had given way to egoistical greed and arrogance.
We could find $700 billion for a war that should never have been waged and that, incredibly, half of us still believe in. We found another $700 billion to bail out corporate banking incompetence and corruption. We found the money to handsomely reward those already [...]