The Mancunian Candidate

Greetings from Manchester.

After a few good days in London hitting all our favorite spots we've moved on, taking the train up to Manchester for some business meetings. The Lord and Master is attending meetings and I am watching the riots in Paris. Sky News is on the telly and it's been quite interesting to hear the commentary - the news reader claims that "hundreds of thousands" of "disaffected yutes" have taken to the streets and that the country has come to a halt. It's hard to tell based on the camera angles. Emails are coming into the studio from Paris and people are claiming that none of the images are being broadcast on French TV - that may be because the reporters are on strike, too. Dominique DeVillepin is telling the police that the measure of their success will be based on their coolness under fire. Nickolas Sarkozy, on the other hand is saying the measure of their success will be based on the numbers of disaffected yutes arrested. Oops - they've got the tear gas going. (I'm waiting for the water cannons, myself.)

They are claiming that the French Employment Law has sparked the outrage and I wonder if W's Immigration Law will end up doing the same thing in the US. As you can imagine the news was full of this past weekend's immigration protests. The CNN news readers could hardly disguise the glee in their voices as they showed the footage.

Hmm. I am watching one of the longhaired protesters making the universal signal at the po-lice and you KNOW what that is!

They are reporting 100 arrested. Now they have an on-the-scene report. The protester he is not 'appy. More estimates on the crowd size - according to the French Union over 3 million peeps are on the street. Apparently 40% of the disaffected yutes are unemployed.

The UK is not immune to this type of action: 1 million public sector employees went on strike today over pension benefits. They are increasing their retirement age for some workers from 60 to 65. Thousands of schools, libraries and sports centers were closed by the work action.

All right! There go the water cannons! They don't seem to be too effective. Poor disenfranchised, disaffected yute. Now we have a flaming lib, aka diversity expert who is saying poor, widdle yutes. He is disgusted by France. Voila! Now he is blaming the police. 50 years of government inaction on assimilating immigrants. Deepseeded problems, racism - will their be cars burning in the suburbs?

Off to dinner....
Update: Mancunian is what the people from Manchester refer to themselves as. (as opposed to Manchesterite or Manchesterian) The building above is the Imperial War Museum North. Dinner was at Piccholino's and it was good. It also was packed with Mancunian party people and footballer's wives. Tomorrow is an early call for the the flight to Dublin.

Cheers - see you in Ireland!