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05-10-2018, 12:15 PM
1

Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

Morning everyone, just been reading a really interesting article by Dominic Sandbrook in the Daily Mail this morning giving his thoughts as to why the French apparently loathe the British so much. Thought I would share it with you. It is rather a long article but I assure you it is well worth the read as it does justify my personal loathing of this man by explaining to me and everyone else just why out of all the countries in the world, it is a public matter of fact that there is no love lost between us and our nearest neighbour across the channel.

QUOTE

Many years ago, when I was working as a classroom assistant in a French high school, one of the teachers invited me home for dinner. After the inevitable few glasses of wine, the thorny issue of Anglo-French relations popped up.
“We’ll never forgive you, you know,” he said abruptly, gazing moodily into his glass. “For what?” I asked. “For the Second World War”, he said. “Winning it, I mean.”
I often think back to that conversation these days. Because although France’s political and cultural elite are always the first to boast about how they have buried the grudges of history and banished the hatreds of the world wars, their recent actions tell a different story.

There have been two prize examples in the past few days. One came from France’s Minister for European Affairs, Nathalie Loiseau, who told a French radio station that she would rather see Britain crash out of the EU without a deal than accept a compromise that might undermine her beloved single market.

The other came from the organ grinder himself, Emmanuel Macron, who recently told the United Nations that the EU would gladly welcome Britain back if we corrected our historic mistake in a second referendum.
Indeed, according to yesterday’s Times, Theresa May has warned the Cabinet that Mr Macron believes Brexit can be reversed - and is hoping that, by blocking a deal, he can blackmail her into approving a second referendum.
This is, of course, a familiar Macron theme. Barely a month passes without him delivering another lecture about the shameful insolence of our vote to leave the EU.

The Leave victory, he said recently, was won by “liars” who “left the next day, so they didn’t have to manage it”. Actually the only person who left the next day was David Cameron, who had campaigned for Remain. So Mr Macron was not quite as clever as he thought.
Even so, in its haughtiness, condescension, ignorance and arrogance, Mr Macron’s rebuke shows why he has become a shining example of everything ordinary Britons loathe in the European political elite.

Any sensible person would tell him that his threats were bound to put British people’s backs up. Indeed, if there were a second referendum I would be tempted to vote Leave purely to express my fury at being lectured by this Parisian pygmy - even though I voted Remain the first time.

But… Mr Macron’s real audience was not here in Britain. Like so many of his predecessors in the Elysee Palace, he was pandering to the jealousy, resentment and fear with which so many French men and women peer anxiously across the Channel.

Perhaps that sounds a bit strong. But as the Cambridge historian Robert Tombs wrote a few years ago in his superb history of Anglo-French relations, That Sweet Enemy, many of our Gallic neighbours have never really forgiven us for Agincourt and Waterloo, let alone for our effrontery in standing up to Hitler in 1940 while they ignominiously crumbled and collaborated.
That most pompous of all French presidents, Charles de Gaulle, never forgave us for saving his country during World War II. Painfully conscious of the cowardice and incompetence that had disfigured his own country’s war effort, he tried to get his revenge by vetoing our first application to join the Common Market in 1963 and 1967.

De Gaulle’s successors have invariably tried to copy his example. When Margaret Thatcher tried to win a rebate on Britain’s scandalously excessive contributions to the EU budget in the early 1980’s, for example, Valery Giscard d’Estaing tried to block her at every turn.
At one summit, Giscard d’Estaing even started to read a newspaper while she was talking. At least Mr Macron has not yet done that to Mrs May, although given the turgid pretentiousness of his country’s newspapers, perhaps that is not surprising.

Other recent presidents have continued the same pattern. When the financial crisis broke in 2008, the first reaction of Nicolas Sarkozy, a moral and political dwarf, now facing charges of bribery and corruption, was to blame it on “Anglo-Saxon” capitalism, and demand action against the City of London.

Similarly, no sooner had Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016 than the risibly flaccid Francois Hollande insisted that “there must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price”, and that Britain must face serious “economic and human consequences”.

As for Mr Macron, when he was elected in May 2017, he pretended to be an entirely new kind of president. But if you got a computer to design a classic over-privileged Gallic politician, the result would look just like him.
From his unusual marital history to his pretensions of grandeur, he conforms absolutely to type.
He went to the elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration, which educated three other French presidents, seven prime ministers and about half of all recent Cabinet ministers.

He became Minister of Finance without standing in a single election. Then he set up his own political party, En Marche, its initials borrowed from his own name. Can you imagine a British politician doing that?.

Like his unlamented predecessors, Mr Macron came to power promising tough reforms but has utterly failed to deliver. He parades around like a conquering hero and harangued a teenager who failed to call him “Mr President”. Yet he looks more and more like a teenager himself, struggling to cope with a grown man’s job.

His administration is in chaos, with his experienced interior minister walking out on Wednesday in protest at his hubris. His approval rating stands at a pathetic 23 per cent, lower than
Theresa May’s. And so Mr Macron has fallen back on the oldest French trick of all: bashing the British.

As for his recent attempts to blackmail us into a second referendum, I think we should see them for what they are: a reflection of his underlying weakness.

To Mr Macron, as to so many of his compatriots, Brexit poses a huge existential challenge. It would be humiliating for France, for so long our greatest rival, if we made a success of our independence outside the EU while they ploughed joylessly on towards ever-closer union with the titans of Luxembourg, Cyprus, Malta and Romania.

No wonder he never ceases to decry our decision to leave, spent the Salzburg summit trying to intimidate Mrs May into surrender, and even now seems determined to exact such a high penalty that he forces the British people to think again.

But if Mr Macron seriously thinks he can blackmail us into falling into line, he is an even bigger fool than he looks. For if he knew anything about history - and since he is French, I can readily understand why he would prefer to forget it - he would know that nothing infuriates the British people more than a foreigner telling them what to do.

And since Mr Macron clearly models himself on Napoleon, hosting Mrs May this summer at the emperor’s old haunt of Fort de Bregancon, an island retreat off the Mediterranean coast, he should remember what became of his hero.
Napoleon, too, thought he could bully Britain into surrender. He drew up his forces along the coast, struck a medal to commemorate the invasion and even ordered a triumphal arch to be built in readiness.
And what happened to him?
We beat him at Trafalgar, then at Waterloo. He ended up a prisoner on the island of St Helena, his empire shattered, his country humiliated in the eyes of the world.

So Mr Macron should be warned. Let him block a deal if he likes. Though the consequences would surely be disastrous for his own economy, with its woefully undercapitalised banks and crippling youth unemployment rate.
Let him strut and swagger. Let him enjoy his time in the limelight. It won’t last long. Britain can take it. After all, we have taken it before - and worse. And if there is one thing guaranteed to unite us, it is that we will never, ever give in to a foreign bully!.

UNQUOTE

Phew, got writer’s cramp after that. But worth it to let everyone know what a little creep Macron is, and just how much he typifies the political elite running the EUSSR.

What say you?
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05-10-2018, 04:15 PM
2

Re: Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

Good post, SG.

Yes, I read that entire article in the Daily Mail this morning.

After reading that first section, my first thought was to ask why he could not forgive us for winning the war!

Was it because he was so embarrassed that his country had waved the white flag so soon after the German army had entered his land?

Or was it because he was of Vichy persuasion and welcomed the German invasion?

Both are believable, but I suspect that the latter may be the case. Why? Well, the Frogs are certainly big friends with the Germans right now, aren't they? Perhaps a union with their erstwhile conquerers could lead to them dominating the whole of Europe (albeit as an underdog) which, after all, is what their diminutive emperor Napoleon failed to accomplish.

In any event, as your post makes quite clear, the Frogs are no friends of ours and there is the evidence, explained quite clearly.

We should never trust them!

The only times we have been 'allies' is when they have needed our help: desperately needed twice in the twentieth century and more recently when they couldn't manage to achieve objectives without our assistance - Concord(e), for example!

They need us more than we need them!

I'm sure that they also resent us because English is the world's 'lingua franca'(!), despite them having made every effort throughout history to acquire for their own language that accolade.

Pathetic people!
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05-10-2018, 05:03 PM
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Re: Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

My God! I’m stunned. Couldn’t believe I was reading such xenophobic, racist, extreme right wing rants! Do you really feel like this? You should be ashamed of yourselves. Words fail me...
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05-10-2018, 05:33 PM
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Re: Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

Originally Posted by weedeek ->
My God! I’m stunned. Couldn’t believe I was reading such xenophobic, racist, extreme right wing rants! Do you really feel like this? You should be ashamed of yourselves. Words fail me...
Totally with you there weekdeek, makes one feel ashamed to be British.

Maybe they will be calling for the Prussians to pull us out the 'merde' again like they did at Waterloo.
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05-10-2018, 05:40 PM
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Re: Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

Phew, got writer’s cramp after that. But worth it to let everyone know what a little creep Macron is, and just how much he typifies the political elite running the EUSSR.

Cramp in the head more like.

And Shropshire is such a beautiful county as well.
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05-10-2018, 05:49 PM
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Re: Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

Originally Posted by weedeek ->
My God! I’m stunned. Couldn’t believe I was reading such xenophobic, racist, extreme right wing rants! Do you really feel like this? You should be ashamed of yourselves. Words fail me...
Feel better now? You have made great play with the usual pathetic name-calling, but no redress or argument to that which Dominic Sandbrook has written.
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05-10-2018, 05:50 PM
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Re: Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

Thought it was a wind up at first. Still feeling physically sick. Sad really..
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05-10-2018, 05:53 PM
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Re: Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

Originally Posted by weedeek ->
My God! I’m stunned. Couldn’t believe I was reading such xenophobic, racist, extreme right wing rants! Do you really feel like this? You should be ashamed of yourselves. Words fail me...
They are only rants when something is said that isn't true. All of the comments posted are factual apart from the missing claim that De Gaulle liberated Paris in 1944. He didn't. It was liberated the day before he actually dared to enter the city and give his now famous liberation speech.
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05-10-2018, 05:58 PM
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Re: Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

Originally Posted by weedeek ->
My God! I’m stunned. Couldn’t believe I was reading such xenophobic, racist, extreme right wing rants! Do you really feel like this? You should be ashamed of yourselves. Words fail me...
You could have fooled me...
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05-10-2018, 06:02 PM
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Re: Why This Napoleon Should Be Cut Down To Size!

Originally Posted by shropshiregirl ->
Feel better now? You have made great play with the usual pathetic name-calling, but no redress or argument to that which Dominic Sandbrook has written.
Haven’t called anybody names, just reacting to the tone of the posts.
 
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