The first phrase, with memories fresh from the fate of Ealing as shown in my photograph, was mine, in a piece here about my return to France from a week in greedy, riot-torn, chavvish Britain.
I've used the second phrase often enough and I suppose the next image, from down here in the Var, illustrates it ...
But let's see.
"Kirsty", who made bleakly approving reference to my mention of ugly Britain in this Salut! posting, was right several times over.
For those who missed it, she wrote:
"We left 30 years ago, to work in France and then the US, and are now living in France again. Every time we've visited the UK it seems to have got worse, so much so that we now can't face going at all.Everything from infrastructure to binge drinkers in city centres at the weekends, to The Times becoming a tabloid. It's instructive to compare the websites of The Times, The New York Times, and Le Monde; the former has a huge bias towards lifestyle/celebrity/TV stories, while both the latter focus on news. Of course there's Radio 4, and there's still beautiful countryside, but things have really changed."
The image that follows is also from Britain, The Inn in the lovely village of Greatworth, near Banbury, where they have not only managed to preserve a pub but also the post office (more about that pub will appear soon enough, though possibly at another Salut! site). England still has its moments, as Kirsty was quick to point out.
And it was not in the UK but in France that a woman of 65 was stopped the other day with 11 times the legal limit of alcohol in her blood. Three glasses of wine is normally enough to send a normal male over the (lower) French limit, says the website terrafemina.com, which also notes that the woman's reading - 5.76gm - would be enough to kill many people.
Nor is it in the UK that I see regular instances of rudeness, lack of consideration for others and rank bad service in restaurants and shops.
But the fact remains that France remains or seems, for the most part, greatly more civilised that Britain.
And civilisation comes in many forms, some of which would not appeal to traditionalists.
I watched last night's France 2 documentary, in the Faites Entrer l'Accusé (Bring in the Accused) series, about Véronique Courjault, the mother in the infamous babies-in-the-freezer case.
She killed three of her own newborn infants.
But the astonishingly methodical nature of the French judicial system - eight expert witnesses on the state of her mind - ensured that instead of risking the death penalty, as would have been the case in many parts of the US or in South Korea, where her acts were first uncovered, or life-crushingly long imprisonment as she might have expected in Britain, she was treated as a culpable victim of her own psychiatric and psychological problems.
A sentence of eight years, rather than one measured in decades, was imposed and she is already free on parole having served less than half.
Others will disagree, but that is justice working at its noblest as far as I am concerned.
In Britain, people who took part in the appalling riots - and who deserve some punishment - are being treated quite disproportionately with respect to their crimes.
If someone kills another person in a riot, he or she is a murderer. If they burn down a furniture store, they are arsonists. And if they rampage through town centres, attacking anyone who gets in their way and maybe even posing later with their spoils, severe sentences are justified. And it should not matter whether such perpetrators are black kids from high-rise blocks or grade A* students from middle class white homes.
But minor theft, committed as a first offence by a teenager, should be treated differently.
I disagree with exemplary custodial sentences unless the facts of the case, and the track records of the defendants, warrant them; if a mother shops a child photographed stealing chewing gum from a looted shop, but not otherwise involved in rioting, the appropriate sentence is a conditional discharge and no criminal record, not a referral order (albeit also non-custodial).
The courts are entitled, and have a duty, to be tough on those who act in disgracefully or violently anti-social ways during public disorder. Once they "throw away the rule book" (as I have seen they are being encouraged to do) - that is to say ignore guidelines on sentencing limits - they lose my support.
We see far too many cases of more serious criminal behaviour punished without imprisonment for it to be right to be locking up 16, 17 and 18-year-olds for what, taken out of the context of rioting, would be relatively minor offences.
Kirsty's conclusion was: "And yes, probably the main thing that's changed is that I've got older and more curmudgeonly!"
I am happy that I can just about claim that I still get curmudgeonly in an even-handed manner ...
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