Riviera Reporter Your Say for Mike Meade

Up to the Gills in fishy business

Mike Meade — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0100

Expat communities attract con-men. Spain's "Costa del Crime" was once a fraudster's preferred European hunting grounds but the noose is tightening there as Costa expats become more and more wary of shifty deals by foreigners. These days, Spanish authorities are less inclined to look the other way when one expat swindles another.

You don't have to be dim and gullible to be conned and it's needlessly glib to say that a victim's own naiveté is what [...]

French health care system. Cheaper and better than most? Yup!

Mike Meade — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100

In a comment to another post (EHIC/CEAM Play the right card!), MikeP voices scepticism about my suggestion in the title of this post.

I maintain that French health cover is cheap for the price. I have no doubts whatever about this -- which is a total ideological about turn for me and the conclusion of many years observation which have proved my initial opinion very misguided. As a self-employed person, I calculate the pros and cons every time I seethe while writing that costly che [...]

Jolly Dodgy

Mike Meade — Fri, 29 May 2009 23:00:00 +0100

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. So said Oscar Wilde. But we’d say it all depends on who’s doing the talking and where.

We’ve just seen a recent issue of The Independent on Sunday in which a Dom Joly writes that on a visit to the South of France he picked up “a curious little magazine called The Riviera Reporter”. He then takes a look at the Damian Elwes column and with a couple of selective quotes tries to imply [...]

Big Brother coming soon to a street near you.

Mike Meade — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:00:00 +0100

It's March 2009 and 25 British cities have been added to the list of places visible on Google Street View. This prompted me to have a closer look at the benefits -- and potential dangers -- of GSV.

If Google Street View doesn't mean anything to you, here's how it works. Using your internet browser at www.maps.google.com key in a city then drag the little orange man icon in the upper left corner over the map. Any streets that can be viewed show up in blue. What you then see i [...]

The Age of the Chameleon

Mike Meade — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:00:00 +0100

We call pessimists "bears" and we call optimists "bulls" but why do we not have an animal name for realists? Maybe it's because reality is something no one ever wants to think about. But if we don't want to repeat the economic errors of the past two decades we had better start facing up to the fact that realists are always (and I mean ALWAYS) right in the long run. That's as metaphysically as certain as gravity. It has always been that way and it always (and I [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Why Mark is still with us

Mike Meade — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Rural England is my escape pod, my bolthole, my favourite time-off destination. But I couldn't live there permanently.

I've been chatting over a pint with Mark for many years at my local in rural Buckinghamshire. He disappeared for a while and as no one brought it up, I just assumed he'd moved away.

The truth was more dismaying. Mark was in the hospital being treated for cancer of the esophagus.

Now he's back at the pub, looking a bit thinner but otherwise a [...]

Thinking their way.

Mike Meade — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

As expats there are things that rile us about France and the French. We've been brought up in different environments where different social and practical rules apply and so we naturally think differently. It's not realistic to assume that a people whose backgound is so different from our own anglo-saxon model is going to align themselves to our preferences. Don't even think about it because it just won't happen. Adapt or be miserable.

On the whole, if we want to [...]

Unreasonable Terror

Mike Meade — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

If you're claustrophobic don't read this. Or maybe you should because it might make you feel less alone in your phobia and less of a cowardly fool or it might even give you an excuse to have a sarcastic giggle at my expense. Be my guest.

Recently, I've been having some upper back pain which extends down into my right arm, causes some mobility problems and deadens sensation in my thumb and forefinger. At times it's quite painful but at others it's reduced to a mere unpleasant ting [...]

A Better Day for Soldiers

Mike Meade — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

My father was a war hero in a necessary war against Germany and Hitler. A real hero, not one of those gong seekers with fruit salad on their chest, scrambled egg on their caps and letters after their name but who never saw a day of battle. He was decorated by "Monty" himself for extreme bravery in action.

He is also a committed pacifist with a hatred of war that I have always known and in some cases had to reluctantly tolerate. One Christmas, when other kids had a Santa on [...]

Dungeons and Dogs

Mike Meade — Sat, 31 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 the ends of their own noses.

I follow the news daily on French and UK satellite television, read the local national and [...]

Driving Question

Mike Meade — Sat, 17 May 2008 12:19:25 +0100

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 [...]

Tokens, Symbols and other Soupy Rubbish

Mike Meade — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 are killing the planet."

Rubbish.

It's not a few thousand private jets and yachts that are fouling our planetary soup. [...]

An email from Laura Bush

Mike Meade — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I got a personal email from Laura Bush the other day. The return URL was FirstLady@thewhitehouse.com 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 loud and clear, telling me how much Viagra would improve my sex life. She was even kind enough to include a link to a Can [...]

A Short One

Mike Meade — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 his own reasons.

Many pieces are self indulgent but journalism isn't about writing about what you lik [...]

Give the poor kid a real name!

Mike Meade — Sun, 11 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 that JM's parents (French mother, English father) are anything other than decent people. His mother, now in h [...]

PC and Pigeon Holes

Mike Meade — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 like "public servant" is. They don't change much from country to country. On the whole they're self-serving halfwits. Wit [...]

God's Blog

Mike Meade — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 we’re being disingenuous in print. We also get an undeserved reputation for knowing everything there is to know about anything. I can’t co [...]