Out and about. The oddity of the modern world.

Today I’ve been out to lunch in Manchester with a couple of old friends. There should have been four of us but the fourth had to cancel because of a family celebration for a grandchild’s birthday. Fair enough! So three of us met and reminisced over a stack of old photos before going off the eat pizza. Oddly the pizzas did not have names, only numbers, despite the restaurant supposedly being Italian. They were good pizzas! 

Manchester is still festooned with red lanterns celebrating the lunar New Year.  Bit of brightness in the city centre. Not that it needed brightening today, which has been been crisp and sunny, with ehatvthe weatherman called ‘blustery winds’ but which seemed like a standard very cold, fairly strong atvimes wind to me.

Well, they’ve not yet put President Trump in jail but Former President of France Nicholas Sarkozy has been fitted with an electronic tag after losing his appeal against his conviction for corruption and influence peddling. He was sentenced to three years in jail, two years suspended, and told he would be allowed to serve the third under electronic monitoring to avoid prison. His appeal against this judgment was rejected by France’s highest court in December, leading to the fitting of the electronic tag at his home on Friday.

He’s not the first French President to be put on trial

Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, a fellow conservative, is the only other president in modern French history to be convicted by a court. Chirac was found guilty of corruption in 2011, four years after he left office. He was given a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for having overseen a fake jobs scam at Paris city hall when he was mayor.

So French presidents get sentenced but have them suspended or are tagged. I wonder what would happen to them if they had to go to prison like ordinary folk. 

I’ve been reading about fly-tipping. It’s a while since I’ve seen any around here. Rubbish dropped on the ground, possibly because of a complete lack of litter bins in some places, yes, but large items such as mattresses, kitchen sinks and so on dumped at the side of the road, no. And yet In some parts of the country scenes like this

are being seen too often, leading to huge clean-up bills. Ours is a selfish society in some ways. But it takes some organisation to dump such a load. That’s not from the back of a family car! 

The friend I had lunch with today commented on having seen a kind of tent city close to Manchester Central Library. We also noticed it a couple of weeks ago as we waited for a tram in St Peter’s Square late on a Saturday evening. From the uniformity of the tents, they have clearly been donated by an organisation, providing shelter for the homeless. Some people are clearly not so selfish after all. But what a dreadful inditement of our society that we need such a thing in the 21st century. 

That’s all. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!