Francoise Hollande, the most unpopular French leader since Luis XIV, is not standing for the next presidential election. This is very unusual in a country where the top job is highly sought after, due to its great salary and fringe benefits. Like the Eylsee Palace as your crash pad, all the mistresses you can consort with, and use of the ‘presidential scooter’ to go visit them surreptitiously.

But the toady little Anglophobic misery has decided, magnanimously, not to stand again in next year’s elections. In part because he’s probably had enough, but in the main because he stands as much chance of winning as I do. And I don’t mean that in a Donald Trump kind’a way (someone else who had ‘no chance of winning’). I mean; NO CHANCE. He is so low in opinion polls that he’s lucky they haven’t guillotined him, never mind vote him in again. And no-one deserves to end a hopeless, hapless, clueless presidency by heaping yet more humiliation onto their weak and narrow shoulders. He should slink away back to whichever rock he started underneath. I wonder if Julie Gayet will now find her true happiness with her soon-unencumbered-by-office, but now powerless, love? C’est la vie.

Fivers. New ones. Bit of a problem.

The new five pound note is a thing of wonder. You can bend it, fold it, soak it in water, insert it into any orifice you choose, burn it, attack it with anti-aircraft missiles, it just bounces back to shape. Its only if you spend it that its gone forever. So its plastic, it won’t degenerate and, most importantly, its forgery-proof. Wow; that’s progress. Or not.

The new fiver is made of meat. Pure, unadulterated prime rib. The choicest cuts, from freshly slaughtered (fairly painfully, probably; helps the taste) cattle, allowed then to age gently for 32 days, wrapped in foix gras, then slow cooked until it resembles a 5-pound note. Brilliant.

Unless you’re a vegan. And if a vegetarian is a Muslim, a vegan is ISIS. They’re the far-right, military wing of radical vegetarianism. They take no prisoners, they wear no wool. Nor leather. Their belts have to be made from cardboard, which is useless so most vegans wear boiler suits. And they fucking hate the new fivers, because they contain tallow. Beef fat. Oh no. Its not like you have to eat a fiver, I’ve tried, horrible. But the question, and ensuing petitions, is about ‘why do you ave to use ANIMAL FAT?????

May I suggest that it wasn’t a conscious decision to find the most offensive additive to our currency. Otherwise they’d be made of seal-cub-juice. But like it or not (definitely the latter), radical vegans have to share this world with normal, carnivorous people. Thus tallow is a waste product. Surely better to use it than put it in landfills or pump it into the rivers? Where it would hurt the fishes!!!! Bloody vegans, got no consideration for animal welfare.

Why do people have be so totally, fundamentally, radically LITERAL in everything. Its the cause of all the world’s problems that don’t involve Spurs.

Happy Friday

A xxxx