Cast not a clout till May be out...except in Deux Sevres

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Deux Sevres is not, as you might think, a description of two finely decorated porcelain plates.
It is a department of France, one of the four which make up the region of Poitou Charente.


As Michael Caine might say .......Not many people know that.

This used to include the French Tourist Board.

Apart from its geographical position, Deux Sevres can also lay claim to a cultural position....that of being firmly in what is described as 'la France profonde'.
Which means an area where if something has not been done before it certainly won't be starting to be done now.

A further explanation.

I know that the saying about casting clouts refers to not being deceived by the advent of spring into discarding your winter woollies too early and getting frostbite in areas best not to contemplate, but clout has another meaning.....
It is also a blow, as in 'gave him a clout' and just at the moment, people in Deux Sevres have the exciting possibility of giving other people in Deux Sevres - excluding maires, gendarmes and other protected species - a clout and getting away with it.....but only up to the end of May.

Whence this sudden immunity...and why only in Deux Sevres?

Under much external and internal pressure, France has finally decided to conform the to European Convention on  Human Rights in respect of the right to a fair trial.
Legislation has been passed, and is due to come into effect on June 1st, to the effect that persons hauled in by the forces of order in pursuance of their investigations will have the right to have a lawyer present during the whole of the proceedings, instead of just for thirty minutes of it, as at present.

This is going to give problems to the producers of the police serial 'Engrenages'  (or 'Spiral', as it is known on English language television)  where the brutality of interrogations forms an integral part of the action...but that's their worry.

Now, in a sudden rush of blood to the head, the Cour de cassation...one of the four Supreme Courts of the French justice system....has announced that as far as it is concerned, from the date of its judgement on Friday April 15th, any verdict in a case where a lawyer was not present for the whole process of interrogation will be annulled on procedural grounds, as being in breach of the Human Rights Convention, which states that all signatory countries must be in compliance, even if their own laws are in breach.

Panic in the dovecotes.
Fancy announcing that just before a weekend! And with the Easter holidays coming up!

The police and gendarmerie are gearing up....setting up information centres to acquaint themselves with the novel idea of having an observer of their traditional practices....
The Parquet (prosecutors' department) is gearing up....wondering what the hell to do about the cases currently in the sausage machine where the accused certainly did not have a lawyer present throughout his interrogation.....
And the avocats (trial lawyers) are gearing up....arranging for more of them to be on call, while wondering  whether they will be paid for this service since the law providing for their payment is not yet in force.

The reaction of the avocats in Deux Sevres?
Their batonnier (shop steward) is outraged.

The Cour de cassation has no power to make law.
Quite right, Maitre...but it hasn't. It has just said what it will do in cases where there is a breach of the Convention on Human Rights.

And it's Saturday!
Well spotted, Maitre!

And I can't do anything until I consult my colleagues.
Which would have been on Monday except that they will be on strike on Monday.
Tuesday, then, Maitre?

And in any case, we're not ready. We will not be stampeded and will not be implementing these changes until June 1st, when the law comes into force.
La France profonde has spoken. Law south of the Loire.

So this is the unprecedented opportunity for the inhabitants of Deux Sevres to run riot until midnight on May 31st.
Sure in the knowledge that no lawyer will be accompanying them for the entire duration of an interrogation they can do as they please.
Clout whom they like.

They might well be convicted at first instance in Deux Sevres...but not to worry.
All they have to do is to go to the regional Court of Appeal in Poitiers and their conviction will be overturned for non observance of procedure.

So if you're living in Deux Sevres....lock up your daughters and make way for the Lord of Misrule!
Until midnight on May 31st.

Under the Radar, Under the Belt. Monsieur Pechenard takes the Piss.

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It appears that those speeding fines dished out by the police with their mobile radars could be illegal.

With all the intellectual brilliance for which the French claim to be famed, the form on which the details of your offence are laid out doesn't have a section stating how far away the camouflaged police car was when you were flashed.

With all the unthinking obedience to ticking little squares and writing in little boxes to which the French are accustomed from childhood, if there isn't a space, the information cannot be given. So the gendarmerie don't fill in what doesn't exist.

A court has found that the necessary information to make out the offence is incomplete, therefore the fines are illegal.

At least, they are in the Paris area, because in France there is no national jurisprudence until you get to the top of the system, so what might be illegal in Paris might be found to be legal in Provence.....all depends in which region you are verbalised by the guardians of what the French are pleased to call law and order.

Except that the French are growing less and less pleased to call it that.
The French are beginning to think that there is one law for the rich...and orders for the others.

Well, the French I  came to know when I first moved to France knew that...but they weren't the people with access to the media.
They were the 'brave gens'...that is to say, the 'little people', condescended to by their 'betters', the big farmers, the notaires, the guys who worked for the semi nationalised serivces like water, gas and electricity.
And, of course, the British immigrants.

However, there was no reflection of their lives in the newspapers..neither local nor national, apart from the obituaries and the photographs of the mechoui for the veterans of the wars in Algeria.
One had to get to know them at local events over a glass or six to get their view of life, which could be summed up in the oft heard phrase
'Nous sommes pour rien.'  We don't count.

Well, it seems these days that people other than the 'brave gens' think that they don't count either.

While their retirement age looks set to go up, they see the wealthy given privileged treatment by...not just the taxman, but the Finance Minister in person.
Madame Bettencourt, heiress to the Oreal fortune, even had the minister's wife to do her accounts, while Monsieur Wildenstein, personal friend of Sarkozy and fundraiser for the ruling UMP party in America, not only gets away with a lenient tax view on the value of the art collections he received from his father, but also collects the Legion d'Honneur.

While the government nibble away at peripheral tax advantages, they maintain the privileged status of gifts to organisations. You might, in your innocence, think this is fine...why should not gifts to charity be given recognition in your tax return?
Except that included in this category are the gifts to political parties...both the mainstream ones and all the starry host of little ones...who then contribute to the mainstream ones, thus evading the rules on the limits of donations.

The government is busy attracting international opprobrium for expelling Roms...while the major nuisance, the native travelling people....manouches, bohemiens, gitanes....continue to flout their immunity from tax or indeed any other control as they travel from one wrecked site to another as yet unwrecked in their top of the range 4x4s and caravans.

Send someone President Sarkozy's birth certificate....here.... and you risk ending up in court......but Madame Sarkozy can have access to confidential police reports in order to feed her paranoia about possible rivals for the status of First Lady.

The draconian fines for speeding and the increased risk of losing your driving licence have been greatly resented, so you can imagine the public distaste when a newspaper revealed that a young man had escaped scot free when arrested for driving under the influence and threatening the arresting officers.

Was he Jean Sarkozy?..... here
Was he a 'travelling person'?....here
No, but someone with similar privileges.

The young man who, when called to book for drunken driving, threatened the police concerned with relegation to traffic duties, was the son of the national police chief, Frederic Pechenard.

And Monsieur Pechenard's reaction to the newspaper report?

The report is an attempt to upset him, and he is investigating how the journalists found out about the incident.

I have news for him.
The journalists found out about his son's little problem in the same way that Carla Bruni-Sarkozy found out about her rivals.....a policeman told them.
Only in this case the policeman was not called Frederic Pechenard.

I think it was the IMF warning of the risk of social unrest in France...and Europe generally....in the wake of the financial crisis caused by the lack of will of governments to make bankers bank rather than gamble with money which doesn't belong to them.
They might have a point.

Having to bite the bullet is one thing...having to pay for the bullet you're biting is something else, and it doesn't help matters when those at the top of the heap are seen to butter their bread in public while you eat stale cake.

Revolutions don't come from the 'brave gens' at the bottom of the social heap. They're too busy scraping a living to have time for such extravaganzas.

Revolutions come when those who have always thought of themselves as being a cut above the 'brave gens' find that their rulers lump them all together.....and treat them with equal contempt.

The English don't pay

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A friend has just had a scary experience.

She and her husband are converting their barn into a house for their daughter and grandchildren who are, God help them, moving to France for a better life, and had engaged professionals - les artisans francais - to do the bulk of the work. You are almost obliged to engage what is laughingly called a professional these days if ever you think you might want to sell your project as otherwise you will have to buy insurance to provide a ten year guarantee of work done by your good self, which costs another arm and a leg. You can soon become financially tetraplegic in France. Apart from which, there are the 'norms'...which change with alarming regularity...and then there is French plumbing, which is incredibly primitive in its conception. Tubes and fittings are labelled as 10/12, or 14/16, whatever that might mean....and every piece you want is sold separately, so you spend hours in the DIY store matching it all up and then find they have run out of one of the parts vital to your project. Also, although this did not apply in their case, if you are installing electricity for the first time in a building, you need to have an inspection and you can bet your boots that if the inspector doesn't see the name of an electrician on the request, your installation will be turned down, meaning that you have to pay for a further inspection. If he does see the name of an electrician on the request, it is also a fair bet that there will be no inspection at all, as the body responsible permits itself to pass installations performed by 'reputable' firms without its' inspector ever setting foot on the premises. You still pay.

For reasons which now escape me...I think I dozed off during the original description of the project...a waterpipe had to run across the premises, which meant it would be under the new floor....under the plastic sheet, the wire mesh and the concrete. This had been explained to the plumber, with emphasis on the importance of the pipe not leaking, and he had made no demur, which in itself was unusual as they normally insist on everything being visible for 'when' whatever they have installed springs a leak. That pipe and all the others having been installed, they called the builder to get on with the floor and the other work necessary before the plumber could return to connect up the sinks, baths and showers. The builder took a bit longer than they had anticipated, by which time the plumber was agitating, so they paid him half of the estimated sum, as the bulk of the work was done, and this kept him quiet until they were ready to proceed.

He duly arrived, connected everything that needed connecting, turned on the water and everything worked. They took a glass of wine together and he left, saying that his wife would send out the bill during the week.

During that week, they did not do much in the barn, but one day the husband went in and discovered a damp patch on the concrete. His first thought was a leak in the roof, as the patch was under the cathedral ceiling section of the conversion and there had been heavy rain. He went up, could see nothing, but put a bowl down to catch the drips, just in case. Well, the next day the bowl was empty and the patch was wetter...you don't need me to tell you that the underfloor pipe was leaking.

They called the plumber. His wife said he would call them back. He didn't. He was incommunicado for days, so they called the builder, who said it wasn't his problem. The plumber's bill arrived. They called again, asking him to come out and see to the problem. The patch was now definitely wet. Their neighbour dropped by with some veg and they showed him the mess.....something had to be done, but no one seemed to want to do it. He called his son, who works for the water company. The son came round in his works van with his colleague and said that if they could take up the portion of floor affected he and his mate would mend the leak - just tell the Dad when they were ready. They tried the plumber again, but the wife replied that he could do nothing until his bill was paid. The builder, who had been paid - his wife being a bit smarter with the billing - reiterated that it was nothing to do with him, so there was nothing for it but to take up the floor. They were lucky in that English friends had family visiting and a couple of young men volunteered to do the work. The picks went at it, the wire cutters were employed, and the leaking pipe was exposed. What was not exposed, however, was the anti-damp plastic sheeting specified in the builder's estimate and paid for. It had not been laid.

The Dad was alerted, his son and colleague came round in the works van and the pipe was repaired. As always in France, it had been brazed, not soldered, and there had been an incomplete seal. The water went on again, and the pipe held. Son and colleague refused payment, as the couple were friends of Dad, and went off again in the works van to continue their legitimate employment, having had a frolic of their own on the company's time. There was still the problem of the plastic sheet and the hole in the floor.

They called the builder. They called several times before he came to the 'phone and blithely announced that it was, as it happened, a good thing that he had not laid the sheet as otherwise they would not have discovered the problem for a long time by which time they would have had an enormous water bill. But they had paid for the plastic sheet to be laid. Well, that was all in the past...they had paid the bill and that was that. End of conversation.

Taking up the whole floor was out of the question...who would do it and how would they pay for it? Their budget was tight enough as it was. The young men filled in the hole with concrete, levelled it off, and that was the floor problem solved. Not ideal, but the best they could do in the circumstances.

That left the plumber. They had paid half the bill in advance, but surely he would make a small allowance for the extra work caused by his incompetence? They called and the wife said he wouldn't. They called again, and said that they would make a deduction for the cost of the repairs. She said that they could not do that. They went round to the neighbour to see what he thought could be done and he suggested that they make the deduction and send a cheque for the rest, accompanied by a registered letter making it clear why a deduction had been made. They discussed what it would be reasonable to deduct and did as he suggested. He helped them write the letter so that there would be no misunderstanding due to language. The letter was sent.

Three days later, my friend had her scary experience.

She was in the garden when the plumber arrived, bursting out of his van like a rocket, shouting and waving their letter. Her French is not bad, but not up to situations like that, though even if it had been perfect, she could not have slipped a word in edgeways. He wanted the rest of his money....she and her husband were cheating foreigners, taking advantage of poor working men....no wonder they could not pay their bills, just look at the luxury in which they lived....coming over, taking advantage of France.....couldn't even be bothered to learn the language.... Suffice it to say that the stream seemed endless, well laced with words she either knew or guessed to be extremely impolite, but the gist of it was that he wanted his money and he wasn't going until he got it. She was frightened but eventually managed to tell him that he wasn't getting a penny more than they had already paid and at that point the solids really hit the fan. He grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her against the wall, aiming a kick at her as she went down, then, perhaps realising that he had gone a little too far in the art of gentle persuasion, he left, still shouting as the van drove away.
Where, you might ask, was the husband during all this? Every woman knows the answer to this. Whenever you need a man, he is in the lavatory. Apart from which, it had all happened so fast that there would have been very little he could have done. Shocked, they made tea and wondered what to do. The neighbour was out. They telephoned the gendarmerie to make a complaint.
'Are you injured?'
'No, not really, just shocked.'
'Well, why don't you pay your bills if you don't want problems?'
That was the limit of official intervention.
When the neighbour came back, they went round to see him. He suggested seeing a lawyer, and made an appointment for them.
The lawyer listened to their tale and then told them to pay the rest of the bill.
'But we explained why we were making a deduction. We sent it by registered letter.'
'What difference does that make? He's just going to lose the enclosure and say that you sent the cheque and bill by registered post. It's more trouble than it's worth. Pay him.'
'What about the floor?'
'Did you get a bailiff to certify the state of the floor?'
'No.'
'Well, how are you going to prove anything? Forget it...put it down to experience.'
They went back to the neighbour. They drank a glass of wine. They put it down to experience.