France to continue deporting Roma despite EU pressure. Mr Besson was accompanied by colleague Pierre Lellouche. France will not stop deporting Roma (Gypsy) people, French Immigration Minister Eric Besson has said on a visit to Romania. “We are not going to submit to a political diktat,” he said.

En 2009, 3151 délits ont été imputés à des ressortissants roumains à Paris, soit une hausse de 138 % par rapport à 2008. Deux tiers de ces infractions (2094) étaient des vols. La moitié de ces faits (49%) ont été commis par des mineurs.
Pour les sept premiers mois de 2010, on leur reproche 3 493 atteintes aux biens dans l’agglomération parisienne (soit 13,65 % de l’ensemble des délits de ce type). Dans la capitale, 20 % des vols sont attribués à des Roumains. Un quart de ces faits sont commis par des mineurs.

Absolutely amazing, Baxxter! I offer you my gym membership. Your ‘member’ deserves it. My gym is called ‘Gypsies Galore’.

Let me see if I understood you correctly. Roma camps accidentally – not intentionally – burn down, therefore Roma are a public nuisance, therefore Maroni is correct and the Roma communities should be deported.

What would you do to arsonists of the non-accidental, non-Roma variety?

Oh yes they do, not purposely but accidentally. They live very closely huddled up together, in the heat, and they cook on open fires very close to their tents. This summer at least four children died in this way !

If you would have someone deported for using a dirty sponge or selling roses, what remedy would you recommend for racist bigots?

This calls for a post. The more reactionary among you may wish to avoid reading this.

I’ve always been fond of the place that used to be Browns, in Paceville, ever since my impromptu homecoming party. This was the place that had a neat little brass plaque marking the blessing of the place on its opening night by HE Monsignor The Archbishop. That evening, the crowd was congenial and the music was started out mostly trance and ended up totally trance as the night wore on. Besides, the manager desperately wanted to get into the knickers of The Russian Among us. Now before you run away with any ideas, Purdie, no, I’ve never slept with her, and she’s a decent girl, and a champion chess player to boot. So this fat sleazy chap was bringing out complimentary bottles of cheap Italian spumante, which he called ‘champagne’. Needless to say, she wasn’t impressed. But I had the time of my life, up on the box with a bottle of free bubbly in one hand, and the other raised skywards as Dash Berlin’s “Waiting” reached its breakdown.

But I digress.

After a long period of renovation and decorating at Browns, during which it stayed open, and you’d get plaster-encrusted glasses, the club once called Browns reopened as part of Stiletto.

Bored at Sabor, I decided to hop along to Stiletto to check out the new place, and have a quiet drink. After all, Richard Feynman did most of the work on his brilliant QED inside the local strip joint, writing the equations on paper napkins. I thought that the soothing atmosphere would help me work towards my own Nobel.

Putting on my best gravelly voice and Clark Gable eyebrows, I ordered a G&T at the bar, after a few compliments about the décor to the delicious barmaid, who was better looking than any of the strippers prowling for clients.

I was nursing my drink introspectively when I felt a hand slowly massaging my neck. Years of training in various shitholes kicked in, and I immediately reacted, ready to jab my elbow into the assailant’s solar plexus and finish him with an overhand throw.

It was a lady! She must have been 20 at most, sporting a rather wobbly arse and in danger of growing a gut.

“Relax,” she purred. “Are you Maltese?”

“Bien vu,” I replied, “What about you?”

“Buy me a drink.”

That wasn’t the answer I was expecting. And ever skint, I was awfully short of money. I tried to explain this as tactfully as possible.

“I only want a B52; I’m not buying a cocktail,” came the reply.

Righto, I thought, we’ll buy the tart a drink and that’s it. So I obliged. She promptly ordered a B52 AND a coke, which I thought was rather cheeky seeing as I had put up the funds, but there you go.

“So, then, where do you come from,” I asked.

“Romania.”

“Ah, Romania! Dacia! Great civilisation. Decebalus!”

“Yes, Decebal. I don’t want to talk about Romanian history.”

“All right then, what do you want to talk about?”

“Let’s go to the couch near my cousin.”

Her cousin, it turned out, was roughly the same age and the same shape. And she also wanted a drink. My Physics Nobel was fast disappearing.

Desperate to change subject, I remarked that she too, then, must be Romanian. By that time, Stripper No. 1 had finished her drink and was asking for another one.

“You’re depleting my funds,” I said. “At least you’re not a gypsy, or you’d have stolen my wallet outright.”

“But I am a gypsy,” she replied.

Now usually my sense of honour would have driven me to pathetic apologies, but this was a strip joint, the girls were annoying, and it wasn’t the time or the place for gentlemanly honour.

“Interesting. A gypsy. Then you can speak Romani, right?”

“Yes.” And off she goes chatting with her cousin in their native language.

The cousin had sensed a business opportunity, for she offered to read my palm in Romani, while Stripper No. 1 would translate. “Brilliant”, I thought, “I’m having my future told AND I’m learning a foreign language. I might get that Nobel after all.”

First I learned that I have the hand of a chicken. Not a very useful phrase. And I was about to rebut that chickens don’t have hands. Then I learned the phrase for “You have a very long penis,” which rather pleased me. She foretold my love life, how I would have a child with a black woman (me?), who would then leave me, and how I would find a blonde girl who would be the love of my life. Suits me, I thought.

Then she said I would die at 65, which had me worried since I’d always planned to live until 30 and then blow my brains out, seeing as my life was still a miserable, painful mess.

By now, we’d been joined by a third stripper.

“Cousin of yours?” I asked.

“No, but she’s also a gypsy. There’s my sister downstairs. You want to meet her?”

At this point one had to wonder.

“Are there any girls working here who are not Romanian gypsies?”

“There is one Polish and one Bulgarian.”

“So the rest are all gypsies?”

“Yes.”

Blimey. I’d stumbled upon the largest Roma convention this side of Bucharest.

Meanwhile, the fortune teller was demanding ten euro for her services. Of course I pointed out that there was no such agreement, and refused.

“Then buy me a drink.”

The third gypsy, inspired by her colleagues, also asked for a drink. And of course there was still Gypsy No. 1, who was now asking for a drink while doing the old “index finger along inner thigh” routine.

Gently disengaging her hand, I pointed out that they probably made more in a day than I did in a month.

Quick as a flash came the reply: “Yes, we can make 800 to 1000 euro a day.”

She must have seen my jaw dropping, for she continued, “Then we have one male stripper. He is the only man so he makes more, up to 2000 per day.”

“Oh my Baxxter what have you done,” screamed the inner voice. I made a quick mental calculation. I had learned through my mate Spud that they charge 25 euro per lap dance, which lasts about 15 minutes max.

So they’d need to do 40 lap dance sessions to earn 1000 euro. Through my other mate Spadger I had learned that they charge 100 euro for a full service. Mostly lap dances, few full services, 1000 euro….yeah, it figures.

1000 euro. A grand a day. To get on a box and take off your knickers. And I wasted my youth and the best years of my life deluding myself that education would give me the best chance for success.

At this point, I thought I’d do what I’d been doing for the past eight months and ask whether they had any job openings.

“You can be our male stripper,” replied Gypsy No. 1 helpfully. Then she felt my biceps. “But you need to spend five years in the gym.”

Hell, what were five years if I could make 2000 euro per day? It was as good an investment as I’d ever seen. And a far better career plan than the one I’d fatefully dreamed of in Form 2, all those years back. A lifetime away.

Now I was sitting in a seedy strip club on a goddamn godforsaken rock, unable even to scrape together enough cash to buy a girl a drink.

Which they were still asking for – nay, insisting upon, their demands getting more animated, punctuated by exchanges in Romani.

“You buy us a drink,” they all said.

“Sorry, ladies,” I replied. “It’s been nice knowing you but I’m off to the gym.”

And I got up and left.

Pole dancing didn’t work out! Pity.

simply because when people are in France, they usually prefer to take advantage of the french gastronomy rather than arabic…. (and yes I am aware that couscous is present in other dishes too…naturally…)

[Daphne – Couscous is a dish, not something that is present in other dishes. It is one of the regional dishes of Palermo because Palermo was the capital of Arabic Sicily and remains proud of the fact. It has retained much of its Arabic heritage, including couscous. Brie is not French gastronomy. It is a cheese.]