Salut!

Memo to Judge Timothy Pontius: strong mitigation for Anthony France, fall guy

From the Facebook page of Anthony France

One of the more fatuous tenets of the judicial process is the rigid assertion that ignorance of the law is no defence.

We are not talking here about the human mind being unsure of the rights and wrongs of killing, stealing or jumping red traffic lights.

Anjem Choudary: a danger to civilisation or a convenient reason for divisive law?

When it comes to apologists for terrorism, my own passionate belief in the freedom of expression - even the expression of views I find abhorrent - finds itself challenged. But I stick to my abiding principle that the line to be drawn is when what is written or spoken breaches some obvious, broadly acceptable legal limit by advocating or inciting violence, for example, or promoting racism. Of course, those apologists propose no such prospect of unpunished dissent in the society they yearn for... I decline on this occasion to add a YouTube clip or other image

Monochrome Côte d'Azur from Nice, Antibes and Cannes to Le Lavandou

I had no professional reason to be at the 2015 Cannes film festival, unless dropping off daughter, who did have a raison d'être, counts.

It was good to see the place again and we might have stopped for lunch had the car parks not all been so full.

Ed Miliband's neighbours: all for the freedom of the press, of course. But ...

The full line, as I recall it on Diana Rigg's lips (others remember and probably even heard it slightly differently) ran: “I’m completely with you on the free press. It's the bloody newspapers I can't stand.”

So, with thanks to Tom Stoppard and his excellent play Night and Day, in which the words are spoken, I turn once again to The People vs The Press.

From metallic lullabies of Broadway to Midnight Cowboy on 42nd Street

Driving east from Marseille and, next day, west from Nice, my companions of the road included hundreds of bikers on their way to Saint-Tropez for a Harley-Davidson convention, or out and about on the highways of the Côte d' Azur having already arrived. This is the sort of machine that fires Bill Taylor's soul. Here are his latest reminiscences from the New York of his early adulthood, with passing references to Harleys and more prosaic ways of getting around the city. I'll leave Bill to explain the photo I chose ...

Britain's general election: that cruel moment my daughter said 'I'm voting Tory'

In case the headline threatens to give you nightmares, there's a happy ending which I shall get to in due course.

But I'll start a long way before the beginning of that little story.

The older tale has been told before, possibly here. It once drew laughter at one of what we used to call the YouGov lunches at The Daily Telegraph, where I worked - happily, but without ever inhaling - for 29 years.

J'accuse: the French who vote Le Pen

The suspension from the Front National of its co-creator and président d'honneur, Jean-Marie Le Pen, removes one rotten old apple. The barrel is still pretty full after this bizarre but highly entertaining family feud ...

Off the beaten track in France: (2) Le Lavandou to Saint-Clair

Apologies first about this walk along the bottom of the cliffs that separate the resort of Le Lavandou, halfway between rugby-mad Toulon and rip-off Saint-Tropez, and neighbouring Saint-Clair, occasional home of Tracey Emin, Jerry Hall and others you may have heard of.

French Connexion: so who in France is doing all that drinking?

For my latest column for The Connexion, the monthly newspaper for speakers of English in France, I contrasted recent reports of French binge-drinking with the lack of interest many in France show towards arguably their country's greatest product ...

Minding our language: Nepalese earthquake and Le Pen in right words and wrong

No one can seriously quarrel with the graphic terms in which the media has reported the calamity that has befallen Nepal. Every decent person would quarrel with the thugs who showed the Front National's true, snarling face with their violent manhandling of bare-chested Femen demonstrator at a May Day rally in Paris (not to mention the FN crowd who naturally applauded this Nazi-style intervention) ...