This is Shayan Moradisohi. He walked past the commemorative site in London where tributes had been laid in honour of Mr & Mrs Stocker who had died in the Tunisia beach massacre, and helped himself to a couple of bunches of flowers. Well they were just kind’a lying around on the floor. Hundreds of them.

Its not the gravest of crimes. Maybe he simply didn’t appreciate what the flowers symbolised. So he received a small fine, which he won’t pay as he’s homeless. And the fine is symbolic really, just to say that its not right to act in a manner of questionable morality, of total insensitivity and very bad taste.

He’s promised not to wear his Arsenal hat in public again.

But it could be worse. It could be a Chelsea hat.

Four of ‘Chelsea’s finest’ fans were yesterday banned from football for a few years each for their part in the horrendous Paris Metro racist attack, when they pushed a black man out of their carriage repeatedly whilst singing racial abuse at him. Nice.

You can put it down to tribalism, you can attribute it to ‘gang mentality’ or whatever but the wonderful irony is that their apparent ‘leader’ was a retired policeman now working in ‘human rights’. I wonder if they missed the word ‘abuse’ from the end of that.

And further south in France, on the coast between Cannes and Antibes, the billionaires playground, a man applied for planning permission. To build a lift from his house down to the beach.

The word ‘bureaucracy’ is French. They invented it, they’re by miles the world leaders in that if nothing else. And fortunately they do lead in nothing else. If you apply to the council in France to mow your lawn it can take 3 years and countless representations and appearances to get permission. Its famously awful. Apply for a garden shed and perhaps your grandchildren will eventually benefit from its erection.

Yet our man in Cannes applied and received permission to build an ugly, concrete-based lift in the some of the most beautiful and expensive real estate in the world, within hours. President Hollande approved it himself. No red tape, no hassle, just a quick ‘ok’. Or ‘oui’ as we call it out there.

And I’m sure it had nothing to do with the man being the King of Saudi Arabia.

Money talks. I wish I was fluent.

Happy thursday

A xxxx