So Monsieur Macron is going to be Monsieur le Président for another term. Phew! That’s a relief! As a lot of leaders of other countries seem to be saying. France has been saved! Europe has been saved! Some see it as a blow against Putin. It’s been a close thing! Not quite as close as we came to staying in the European Union but still not really an overwhelming victory of Macron. Some polls are apparently saying that an awful lot of those who voted for Macron did so more to keep Marine Le Pen out than to keep him in. They voted for him faute de mieux, as they say. It must be a bit galling to win because you are the lesser of two evils, but in the end a win is a win!
They might not be so lucky next time. Marine Le Pen garnered rather a lot of votes. Next time there will be more younger voters who don’t remember her father Jean-Marie Le Pen. Anything can happen. They need to work on finding a credible alternative. There are people here in the same kind of voting quandary as the French: Conservatives who can’t think who could realistically replace Johnson and non-Conservatives of various colours wondering who could put up a credible fight against him!
Those who claim to know about such things say that the coming local elections in the UK will be a bellwether for the state of politics in the country.
Bellwether is an interesting word. According to the encyclopaedia in the cloud it means:
One that serves as a leader or as a leading indicator of future trends.
A wether or sheep which leads the flock, usually carrying a bell on its neck.
A wether, or sheep, which leads the flock, with a bell on his neck.
Some sources say “wether” just means sheep but most are more specific and say it means a castrated ram. This led me to wonder exactly what a “wetherspoon” is apart from an annoying chain of pubs. Was it a strange implement used by sheep-farmers? Wikipedia just sends me to lots of information about the annoying pub chain. So I tried an alternative spelling: “wither” and “witherspoon”. Of course, I got information about the actress Reese Witherspoon, that I wasn’t interested in. But I also found this:
“Witherspoon was a name for someone who lived in various places throughout Scotland. It may have been a habitation name from a now lost place name, thought to come from the Old English terms wether, which means "sheep," and "spong," or from spang, which means "a narrow strip of land." Habitation names form a broad category of surnames that were derived from pre-existing names for towns, villages, parishes, or farmsteads.”
So “wetherspoon” basically means “sheep land”. Maybe the annoying pubs could be demolished and the land given over the sheep-farming!
Today is Liberation Day in Italy - Festa della liberazione - commemorating the victory of the Italian resistance movement agains Nazi Germany and the Italian Social Republic, puppet state of the Nazis. It is distinct from Republic Day - Festa della Repubblica - which takes place on 2 June.
Wikipedia tells me:
“The date was chosen by convention, as it was the day of the year 1945 when the National Liberation Committee of of Upper Italy (CLNAI) officially proclaimed the insurgency in a radio announcement, propounding the seizure of power by the CLNAI and proclaiming the death sentence for all fascist leaders (including Benito Mussolini, who was shot three days later).
By 1 May, all of northern Italy was liberated, including Bologna (21 April), Genoa (23 April), Milan (25 April), Turin and Venice (28 April). The liberation put an end to twenty-three years of fascist dictatorship and five years of war. It symbolically represents the beginning of the historical journey which led to the referendum of 2 June 1946, when Italians opted for the end of the monarchy and the creation of the Italian Republic, which was followed by the adoption of the Constitution of the Republic in 1948.”
There we go! A bit of history!
Still in Italy, they seem to be having a little problem with tourists and drones. The big thing used to be taking selfies in front of great monuments, the person being more important than the monument, or taking silly photos where the tourist appears to be preventing the Leaning Tower of Pisa from falling any further, or seems to be holding some other monument on their head. Now the thing to do is to have a drone to take aerial photos of your visit to famous places. There are, as you would expect, rules and regulations, no-fly zones and the like, but some tourists either are unaware of such things or opt to ignore them - if you have the money to buy and fly a drone then you feel entitled to fly it where you like.
Today’s news reports an Argentinian tourist in Rome flying his drone in Piazza Venezia when he lost control of the device and sent it crashing into the roof of Palazzo Venezia, a 15th-century building from where the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini delivered some of his most famous speeches.
Piloting a drone in central Rome and the Vatican is completely out-of-bounds because of all the precious monuments.
And last week, two Mexican tourists crashed their drone into the Leaning Tower of Pisa, also breaking no fly rules. Oops! They might have made it lean even further! In 2020, a 40-year-old tourist from Poland crashed his drone inside the Colosseum despite having been warned that piloting the device inside the ancient amphitheatre was banned. And in July last year, a 61-year-old man was charged with an “attack against transport security” after flying his drone above Rome at an altitude of 2,000 metres. The man, who was a member of a Facebook page for drone fanatics, was reported after his device was seen by a professional pilot.
So, a Facebook page for drone fanatics, eh! Who knew? It takes all sorts, I suppose.
Fortunately there have been no reports of damage to monuments due to the impact of crashing drones. Penalties imposed have not been reported either, but fines for violating drone rules range from €516 to €64,000. I reckon I’ll stick to my mobile phone.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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