The President's Addendum.

François Hollande (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

French presidents appear to consider their female helpmeet in the same light as that in which  Aneurin Bevan regarded posession of a British nuclear bomb...without one, they go naked into the conference chamber.

In recent times  it doesn't seem as if it matters that the helpmeet herself has gone naked in any number of chambers....the circulation of photographs of the third Mme. Sarkozy dispensing with garments is here claimed in aid.....just as long as the President of France has something female and preferably human to follow him down the steps of the 'plane when taking his 'mission civilisatrice' abroad.

In the past, Presidents had wives fairly automatically...it was what you did, part of your CV ....and everyone, including the wives, averted their eyes from the presence, the existence even, of mistresses, so the problem of being a President without an addendum did not arise until the election to office of Mr. Sarkozy.

He started out conventionally enough....he had a wife, the second Mrs. Sarkozy, even if she was reluctant to play the addendum role and preferred going shopping to meeting President Bush the second.
Who wouldn't.
Unfortunately, she turned out to be a bolter, and - worse - bolted with an American lover.

Panic in the dovecotes. The President was wearing horns. Something had to be done.

Why?

Because of the macho nature of the French elite where, while women are regarded as nothing more than social currency,  it doesn't do to be bankrupt.

No addendum...and doubt arises as to the rest of your credentials.
Especially if you are the President  - the incarnation of the powerful French male.

The President's friends rallied round and came up with a lady resting between engagements who would resolve the problem.

Carla Bruni.
The self styled man eater, with the scalps to prove it. No man - if he had any money - was safe.

Who better to restore the image of the President!
There could be no doubts as to the credentials of a man with Carla Bruni as his addendum.

And so it proved.
President Sarkozy married Carla Bruni and was able to hold his own, fully clothed,  in the conference chamber.
The lady might have had a somewhat interesting past....but she was Mme. Sarkozy and that was all that mattered.

And now we come to the addendum of the new President of France, Mr. Hollande.
Now you see it, now you don't.

Mr. Hollande is not married. Has never been married.
But he has had two long standing relationships with women.
Which overlapped somewhat.

The current ladyfriend has asserted her right to carry on with her journalistic career.
 She does not wish to be a symbol.
She has a family to feed.
She needs to work.
She can't afford to be just a figurehead for French fashion...indeed, she makes a point of how she buys from (upmarket) high street stores.
A small voice off notes that she is still married to the father of her children, who works for the same gossip rag and that he must surely be paying something toward the maintenance of his offspring, but that might spoil the story.

But what is Mr. Hollande to do?
Clearly not keen on marriage with the first lady of his choice with whom he produced four children he cannot marry the second lady even if he wished to do so...
Presidents of France are immune from prosecution during their term of office, but bigamy is still on the statute books and immunity ends a month after one ceases to be President...as Mr. Sarkozy is discovering.

 Ideas of cake and eating it rise to mind.

But the lady in question is exercising her right to be independent.
She is tweeting against the mother of Mr. Hollande's children who is attempting to  win a seat in the National Assembly.

Wonderful idea ...independence....

But how do you assess it when the independent lady accompanies Mr. Hollande, President of France, to a political pow wow in America  - wearing the French designer clothes she previously scorned?


Is it the journalist or the jealous woman who treats the Sarkozys with scorn and the woman she replaced with hatred?

And how will Mr.Holland  be judged....

Naked or clothed in the conference chamber?

As France goes to the polls....

Bingo Card Sample (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The rate of abstention is predicted to be high in the first round of the Presidential election, and the two candidates to go through are predicted to be Sarkozy and Hollande...representatives of the main stream right and left parties respectively.

With a choice like that you begin to understand the reluctance of people to turn out on Sunday - neither Mr. Bling nor Mr. Blobby will even start to crack the mould that has made France a dispirited, morose country where the radiance of the Siecle des Lumieres has waned to a nightlight in the financial morass that is the Eurozone.

If the France d'en bas'....the little people.....are to recover their enthusiasm, their faith in their society, then things have to change.

An example, involving charitable effort, shows what is wrong.

Since Mme. Pompidou at least, the wives of  French presidents take on a charitable cause and Carla Bruni has been no exception.

She accepted a role as ambassador for a charity - the Swiss based  and U.N. backed Global Fund - aiming to fight killer diseases in developing countries and, in particular, she accepted a role heading the Global Fund's Born HIV Free campaign, set up to help mothers and children whose lives have been devastated by AIDS.

Money from the Global Fund was directed at the request of Carla Bruni to companies owned by a musician friend of hers to provide publicity for the charity.
We are not talking peanuts here...but millions of euros.
Very little has been done to improve the lives of the women and children supposedly targeted by the campaign.
The Global Fund is supported by public monies contributed by the countries belonging to the U.N. - including France.

It's not only the wives of French presidents who undertake charitable work....the network of charitable associations in France is impressive....and particularly the local efforts.
I remember the campaigns to get a proper wheelchair for a paralysed child - where was the famed medical system  when it was needed....to fund medical treatment unobtainable in France...any number of local efforts over the years.
No public money here.

Two grannies in the north of France have organised bingo sessions in aid of charity for years.
Neither they nor their friends have ever touched a penny of the proceeds.
People in their area trust them implicitly.

They have been hauled into court for not observing the regulations on games of chance - effectively, not jumping through hoops at the Prefecture.

In three years, they raised over 450,000 Euros for charity...nowhere near the sums directed to the friend of Carla Bruni......and the court has condemned them to pay just under 50,000 Euros representing the tax due on the money raised, a further 20,000 odd Euros in Customs penalties, not to speak of assorted fines.

Clearly, the grannies cannot pay. All the money they raised, from private purses, went to the charity it was aimed at.

The contrast between the two charitable efforts exemplifies the malaise of French society...and, I suspect, many others...virtue reprimanded, vice rewarded.

In all the clamour of the rival election campaigns I see no mention of the factor vital to the resurrection of France....that the decency of the majority of ordinary people is reflected in those who lead the country.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party...

Image by Ammar Abd Rabbo via Flickr

President Sarkozy's party, that is......and we're not talking a knees up in the Elysee Palace while Carla sings to a small guitar....

In the rush to break your leg on the ice in the supermarket car park on the news that Birds Custard powder has been sighted on the Exotic Produce shelf of super U you might be forgiven for not noticing that next year is 2011.
You'll worry about that next week, when the remains of the turkey have been surreptitiously given to the dog and you're again risking life and limb in the Super U car park for the whisky without which no New Year can be said to have properly arrived and the Jagermeister without which no January 1st can be safely negotiated.

What's so special about 2011?

Because it's the year before 2012.  Presidential election year in France.

So next year, 2011, President Sarkozy will be passing among you, pressing the flesh, in his bid to win a second term in the Elysee Palace as the candidate of the right wing UMP.

It isn't only the individual voter he has to conquer...it is also his own party whose barons now see what a mistake they made in putting a potential reformer of their quaint Spanish practices into power and have spent the last three years stalling any initiative he tried to make, thus bringing themselves and Sarkozy into opinion poll disfavour.
They would love to ditch him...and he knows it, so he's coming out swinging in 2011 to remove any potential challenger from the ring.

Thus flesh pressing.

Not any flesh it must be said.

Sarkozy will not be passing among you at the vin d'honneur for the retirement of the local fire brigade sergeant, for example...too much risk of encountering people like Papy, over ninety - so might not make it to the election anyway - dressed in the traditional male fashion of rural France - battered plaid cap with, depending on the season, one or two layers of cardigan - and smelling strongly of medicinal spirits.

It is felt that a photograph of the President with Papy would attract only a limited section of the potential  electorate....and there is also the risk that Papy might ask the President to do something about replacing the 'cattle crossing' sign down the road from his farm which was removed in mysterious circumstances in 1992.
Sarkozy is known to be testy under such circumstances....and Papy has form as well.

No, the flesh to be pressed will be that of sections of the electorate who normally vote right wing but who have felt aggrieved at the action or inaction of the man they put into power.
This is a risky project.....
Go near a farmer whose spoon has been removed from the gravy and he is likely to throw something that spoils a good suit.....likewise a fisherman whose ability to scrape the very floor of the sea clean of fish has been limited.

So this is where you come in.

If you are a British immigrant, you will be anxious to assist the man who  has offered to rush to the defence of British interests (here) with his aircraft carrier that can't leave port without the propeller falling off or the crew being short of Alka Seltzer.

You will also be aware, because all the books on living in France have told you so, that there is only one thing in France that goes down better than integration and that is ingratiation.

So here is your chance to show your gratitude and get on the local Prefect's New Year card list.
Don't ring him just yet, though...he will have things on his mind.

The Prefects...and police chiefs....of France will probably be on their knees solidly over the festive season
a) praying that the President doesn't decide to press the flesh in their bailiwick
and
b) practising to get their heads on a level with his if he does.


Why this reluctance to welcome the Head of State?
Because he is somewhat testy....and, like Papy, has form.
Fail to sort out his mother in law's septic tank problem (here) and bang goes the pretty uniform and the grace and favour apartment....you're still a Prefect, because being a public servant you can't be sacked, but your future lies in a cupboard in Limoges, where you will also find the police chief who let demonstrators within shouting distance of the Presidential convoy and the Prefect who provided only tall people to surround Sarkozy at a photo shoot.

It doesn't take much to upset him.
You may remember the matter of the voodoo dolls.
These Sarkozy lookalikes (not far off for size, either) were covered in quotes from his election campaign and were sold with a set of pins to stick into the said quotes.
The President was upset.
He had sole rights to his image...he said...and these dolls were next thing to an incitement to hatred....so he sued.
An appeal court finally decided that a ban on the dolls would be going too far, in the interests of freedom of expression.....but did ordain that the manufacturers must provide the dolls with stickers warning that sticking pins into a presidential image was offensive to the presidential dignity.

Goodness only knows what would be his reaction if someone were to manufacture a squeaky rubber Sarkozy as a dog toy.

Those dog owners who lived under the rule of Mrs. Thatcher must remember that best selling line...the squeaky Thatcher.
The sheer joy of watching a dog rip her head off was worth the price.
On good weekends I'd buy two.

I can't see Thatcher worrying about the dog toys...probably the only reaction would have been to buy a couple to sit in for her for at  Cabinet Meetings so that she could go off to handbag  the European Union...but Sarkozy is sensitive and it is this sensitivity and the consequences of rousing it which will be ruining the digestion of highly placed public officials over Christmas.......for the visits start in January.

Two a week.

Apart from  making sure that there is no snow, there are two main imperatives for the visits.
The President must be surrounded by vertically challenged people and the said v.c.p.s must under no circumstances heckle.

The British, as so often,  have the solution and once the visit schedule is announced, you may ring the Prefect and put him out of his misery.

Garden gnomes.

They're small....imperative one.
They don't heckle...imperative two.

They have many varieties so it will be no problem to find one that is felt to be appropriate......

The ones with fishing rods for meetings with whatever the Chasse, Peche, Nature version of the Front National now calls itself.....

The portly ones for the meetings with the Chamber of Commerce.....

The  ones holding rakes and wheelbarrows for meeting with expenses claiming local councillors....

I strongly advise you, however, not to offer the Prefect the version photographed here as the President might feel that some allusion was being made to his wife's private life.

I have seen gnome moulds for sale on Anglo Info, so this will be a way for all those auto entrepreneurs who thought they had got out of paying the taxe professionelle only to fall foul of the tax on the value of their business premises to start saving for next year's thrilling fiscal innovation.

So, forget the board games by the fire over Christmas......nip into Brico Depot for cement and paint instead and get the family on the production line.

Your local Prefect will be eternally grateful.

It's all Carla Bruni's fault....

Image by blogcpolitic via Flickr

Now, several tax inspectors and prefects would be sleeping more easily in their offices if Carla Bruni had not accepted a bit part in a film directed by Woody Allen - what does she see in vertically challenged men, I wonder? - which seems to consist of buying a loaf of bread and getting it wrong thirty four times.

Why should this affect tax inspectors and prefects?

Because as his wife is filming in Paris, President Sarkozy has not yet been able to go on holiday, which means that the normal somnolence of July...those not already on holiday preparing to go on holiday...has been disturbed  by the Scourge of God's reaction to attacks on the police, following police attacks on the population, and to the perceived lawlessness of 'travelling people'.

Carla's consort has announced a crackdown....on foreigners.

Having tried and failed to knock out the right wing Front National with his ill fated debate on the nature of French identity, it seems he is having a second shot at the coconut following the violent reaction in Grenoble and in the Cher to the shooting of supposed malefactors by the forces of lawless order.

Let it not be supposed that the President is prejudiced against foreigners....no, indeed not. He started by sacking the prefect responsible for the Grenoble area, who was certainly not a foreigner, but, having thrown that sop to the idea of equality, he has turned his attention to scapegoats likely to be popular with the population whose votes he will be seeking in 2012.

French citizens of non-French origin will lose their French citizenship if found guilty of life threatening attacks on the police.
 That'll learn 'em.

Except that as the Conseil Constitutionnel  has just declared the current 'garde a vue' - explained here - process contrary to France's engagements under the European Convention on Human Rights the police will have quite a job  'persuading' foreign-born 'suspects' to 'help them with their enquiries' under whatever new regime is cobbled together, so it will be a race between getting the loss of citizenship legislation through and the introduction of something more compliant with human rights legislation which has to be done within twelve months.

Oh, and encampments of 'travelling people' already declared to be illegal will be closed down, while Roumanian and Bulgarian 'travelling people' will be expelled if found guilty of public order offences.

And while he's at it, a close eye will be applied to the situation of illegal immigrants in receipt of benefits. France is not obliged to welcome the misery of the whole world....to quote a previous Socialist minister...

Well, that should sort it all out, shouldn't it?
The descendants of the French who sold Joan of Arc to the British should be able to go off on their holidays secure in the knowledge that the Mighty Mekon has things under control.

So why are prefects and taxmen shivering in their shoes?

Because the President has announced that he expects to see prefects - Paris's men in the provinces who see what local government is up to and tell it to stop it - to show more energy.
Prefects should be out and about with the police, patrolling dubious areas in the hours of darkness, and if they don't they'll get the sack.

Now it is not unknown for a prefect to be sacked...or put into a cupboard in Limoges...but until Sarkozy came to power it was for understandable things, like enforcing irrigation bans against the wishes of local farmers.
SS - since Sarkozy - prefects have found that they can be sacked for other things...like not sorting out a septic tank problem for his mother in law, or letting demonstrators get within spitting distance of their master...but getting sacked for not putting themselves in danger is something else.

Because any attempt to visit an encampment of 'travelling people' is pretty guaranteed to be dangerous, which is why encampments declared to be illegal are still there, a blight on the areas surrounding them.
'Travelling people' whether French or foreign, have a certain view of life....and it doesn't include being disturbed by policemen looking for other peoples' property.

Thus the encampments are regarded - by policemen - as being no place for a policeman, although people living in their immediate area tend to think that they should be surrounded by policemen, twenty four hours a day, every day, to give people some relief from theft and intimidation and it seems that government has finally come down on the side of widely held opinion....that these 'no-go' areas have to be sorted out.

Well, that explains the unhappiness of prefects, but what has worried  the tax inspectors?

Sarkozy's sidekick, Brice Hortefeux, the Minister of the Interior who boasts the remarkable distinction of having been fined 750 Euros for making racist remarks without copping a criminal record, has finally noticed something which has been apparent to anyone travelling the roads of France.

'Travelling people' do their travelling in spanking new, enormous caravans drawn by spanking new enormous four wheel drive vehicles.

Non travelling people, watching these convoys pass unchallenged by the gendarmerie who are busy checking the papers of a couple of local pensioners, have a pretty good idea  how much these cars and caravans cost and suspect that the purchasing power which enables 'travelling people' to buy these toys is not reflected in what is declared on their tax returns.

Thus the terror of the tax inspectors.
Unless they are saved by the intervention of the their boss, the Finance Minister, they are going to be sent into encampments to enquire into the sources of the revenues of the occupants...and while I might be at a loss to know which line of a tax return covers 'proceeds of sale of stolen property', a tax inspector should fnd it child's play.
If he survives the reaction of the unhappy 'travelling person' that is.
Given that the warden of an official local site was chased through the camp by a 'travelling person' with a chainsaw, the tax inspectors have some reason to be worried and I doubt that these worries will be assuaged by the idea that the prefect will be running for his life alongside them.

What can save them?
Only an immediate improvement in the standard of acting of Carla Bruni, which will allow Woody Allen to wrap his film so that her husband can take her away to the sanctuary of the septic tankless family home in the south of France while all this hot air blows away.

Sarkozy's sinking ship.......

President Sarkozy has been in London to commemorate Charles de Gaulle's wartime broadcast to France, in which he urged the French to resist German hegemony.
Considering his recent meeting with capitulation to the German Chancellor it would seem that that particular message has passed Sarkozy by.

I imagine he is glad to be out of France at the moment, given the mood of the nation after the masterful display of incompetence by the national football team in the World Cup in South Africa.
Not only could they not play, it seems they couldn't sing either - well, not the   'Marseillaise' anyway. Perhaps 'Money, Money, Money' might have been better choice.
More fodder for the debate on national identity that Sarkozy was mad enough to start.
Personally, seeing that they only qualified by the hand of Thierry Henri against Ireland, I suspect that the Irish have put the Curse of Cromwell on them.

Whatever the circumstances, however optimistic the political mood, the football would have not been good news, but given all the rest......well, it's a good moment to leave the country.

Still,  politics is a funny thing....it is amazing what can be overcome with a bit of spin doctoring and a judicious bribe to the electorate administered at the right time - just look at Blair's survival.
So why should Sarkozy be worried?

He came to power offering reform of economic life in France and it is true that he has managed to make some changes...tinkering round the edges.

His problem is that his party, the UMP, have woken up to the fact that he is not one of the 'good old boys' who have run the country for their own profit for generations....they rightly suspect that he is trying to shift access to the goody bag to his type of people...the new 'kings of bling' generation.

He hasn't helped his cause by the antics of his 'court'...the blatant nepotism (here),  the vast amounts of public money spent on publicity for government initiatives, and the appointment of people more suited to public opprobrium than public office (here).
His rancorous and less than decorous pursuit of his rival Philippe de Villepin (here) cannot be said to have added lustre to the prestige of the French Presidency either...remarks about  hanging people on butchers' hooks bring up unwelcome associations.
He has even managed to make right wing voters regret President Chirac, that renowned toucher up of bovine bottoms and despair of the Academie Francaise.

The combination of these  factors lost his party a lot of votes in the recent regional elections for which his party will not forgive him.
His misjudgement in opening the debate on national identity, aimed at neutralising the Front National, has done the opposite and he has done the seemingly impossible by raising the PS - Socialist Party - from the dead.
Still, he shouldn't worry about that too much...the P.S. are past masters at arguing about the rules of a fiddling competition while Rome burns around them.

He had the misfortune to hit the buffers running when the catastrophic international banking fraud came to light, and has been forced to preside over 'austerity' measures to combat its' consequences...of which the proposals on pensions are the most unpopular.

His attacks on the press, particularly his attempt to completely take over French public television and to arrange for a group favourable to his aims to pick up the carcass of 'Le Monde' give rise to comparisons with Berlusconi..

He makes me think rather of of Napoleon trying to do a 13th Vendemiaire while Murat steals away with the guns.

But politics is a funny thing, it can turn in a moment, just as, with the funny rules of football competitions, France might yet qualify to go further, so why do I think Sarkozy's ship is beyond the reach of the salvage tugs?

Just take a look at the photographs of Sarkozy and wife in London.
Gone are the days of the demure little hat and the sinking decoratively into the background.
Look at the body language...she is always detached from the event itself, always knowing where the cameras are and performing for them as if she were once again on the catwalk - such an appropriate name for it, I always think.
He's looking to the Presidential elections in 2012.  She's looking to...a change of role.

Mrs. Sarkozy is a survivor. She's checking out the lifeboats already.

A Baudelairian capharnaum.

Image via Wikipedia

I was reading an article castigating the Sarkozy government - well, it's him really, isn't it, the rest are just there for show, like Napoleon's brothers - for nominating another of Carla Bruni's mates for a job at the Culture Ministry.

Not content with nudging the insalubrious Mitterand into office, she is now credited with asking for a job for another somewhat dubious personality...an elderly wastrel of an interior decorator called Francois Baudot, who could do with about 5,000 Euros a month and so is being nominated for the grand sounding post of

Inspecteur General de l'Administration des Affaires Culturelles.

His name was put up to the appointments committee and turned down unanimously, it appears, on the strength of a book he wrote about the dissipated days of his youth - not in the Mitterand league, let it be said, but then, what could be outside the pages of Genet?

However, the committee can whistle. The job is in the gift of the President, and like any sensible man faced with the prospect of sharing a cage with a shark, he will do as his wife tells him.
Now, M. Baudot has diplomas, etc...but absolutely no relevent experience to assist him in carrying out the functions of his proposed post. Further, although at lower levels of the greasy pole, M. Mitterand has been culling his functionaries in order to comply with the Presidential policy of not replacing one in two beaurocrats as they come up to retirement, it appears that at the level of IGAC - to give the post its' French initials - two IGACs have been turned into four IGACs.

Still, as an interior designer, perhaps he can advise Mitterand on how to decorate his office and private dining room...perhaps design a new bell for summoning the servants...
Oh, but I was forgetting...M. Baudot has one great qualification. He is godfather to Bruni's son. So that's it, then.


What was interesting to me is why there is so much fuss. He isn't an untouchable, like Mitterand, just dubious and there are plenty more like him around - though why the French have to write books about things that most people would take good care to keep under their hats is something that I have never understood.
All Presidents appoint their friends, the friends of their friends, and particularly the friends of their grandes horizontales. So just why the fuss?


I think it is because the old order is changing, and the old order doesn't like it.
In the past, the enarques - graduates of the Ecole Nationale de l'Administration - ran the show. Privileged enough to gain entrance to the ENA via the specialist crammers, they ran France's intertwined network of state and business, moving from one sphere to another and leaving their mess for the taxpayer to pick up.


Sarkozy is not an enarque.
His friends are from the world of finance and business.
His sons were not even asked to try for the ENA.
He presents a different, unpredictable model.
His candidates are being put into jobs once reserved for enarques.


Now, there is nothing so vicious as a Frenchman thwarted of what he regards as his privileges and I think that there is a trial of strength going on between the new and old order...thus the uncharacteristic daring of the French press in mentioning these little governmental hiccups, geed on by the old warhorses of the right who aren't getting the jobs for their boys.


It was while I was reading the comments in Le Point that I came across a phrase which struck me. The writer, dealing with the Ministry of Culture, was of the view that with Mitterand and Baudot in place, the whole thing could be characterised as a Baudelairian capharnaum. It isn't often that I find a phrase in French striking, but this was a delight.

Baudelaire...the poet for whom aesthetics owed no responsibility to morals or ethics...and a capharnaum....somewhat of a junk pile, a mess, where everything is in wild disorder.
The Ministry of Culture...a mess run by the morally irresponsible.

Then something else occured to me. The Ministry of Culture is supposed to have an eye to the state of French national identity - the great subject of debate at the moment.

Could the the debate about French national identity also be described as a Baudelairian capharnaum?

Tempting.

Sarkozy's slip

Image via Wikipedia

Jogging at his official residence at Versailles on the weekend, President Sarkozy slipped to the ground, suffering from a malfunction of the nerves controlling his heart. Or just from over exertion in the heat of the afternoon. Or whatever the next spokesperson tells us. He was shipped to hospital and found to be in good general working order, but in need of a rest. So that's all right then, isn't it?

The photographs of him emerging from hospital with his wife, Carla Bruni, made him look like a small boy being dragged along by his mother, reluctant and apprehensive, which as he is supposed to be an intelligent man, he might well have reason to be. As the Cautionary Tales would have it

'Always keep a-hold of nurse

For fear of finding something worse.'

Will he be returning to the regime imposed upon him by his/her personal trainer....exercises to reinforce his pelvic floor...didn't know men had them before...and instructions to lose two dress sizes...or the male equivalent? Will he be forced to continue to jog publicly on all state visits abroad? What will be his fate? Since he is going to spend his hols with the in-laws in the south of France it is to be hoped that their septic tank problem has been solved by now.

You have to congratulate Sarkozy for being relatively open about his health. Previous presidents have carried on in a state which would give grave doubts as to their ability to take important decisions...notably Pompidou and Mitterand. Chirac disappeared into hospital for something that was never properly explained. Mark you, how many important decisions are actually taken by presidents rather than by their advisors is a moot point, so perhaps we worry unduly about their state of health.
Sarkozy has been open about the presidential expenses, too. He like us, is late paying his utility bills and has had to pay the penalty. He, unlike us, has had this paid by the French people, however. He graciously decided to settle some of the items presented as expenses himself when the auditor raised an eyebrow, which makes you wonder what was involved as the staggering bill for flowers was passed nem con.

What did disturb me was the tone of the comments online in some sections of the press....one may not like the man or what he represents, but cheers of delight at his ill health, wishes for his speedy demise and sheer vulgar abuse reveal a side of the French national character that is not at all attractive. The sheer hatred that these comments reveal, the lack of common decency, is something so alien that it took me aback.
It shouldn't have done...there is a streak of spite in the French makeup that comes out in various ways...the rejoicing at someone else's misfortune.
Guy was telling me about a colleague who had put all his retirement bonus into shares in the chunnel company...Eurotunnel...when it was first launched. It had been a disaster, the individual shareholders, investing under the impression that the company would not be allowed to go down by the two governments, had been wiped out. Mark you, only a French investor would assume that a government would back up a failing company as a matter of national pride...this was the Thatcher era, and her governments had a distinctly different view of things! The point is that Guy, a charming, helpful and friendly man, who had worked with this colleague for years, who had bought a house near his in order to continue their friendship in retirement, was delighted by the contrast between his friend's misfortune and his own good luck and frequently referred to it in his friend's presence.
In the dear past days of maiden ladies cycling to matins and cricket on the green, before the Euro emerged, blushing, into the limelight, the U.K. slipped ignominiously from the European Money Snake, causing expat incomes in sterling to crash from eleven French francs to the pound sterling to seven. It's not just Brown and Darling who have these disasters...at least Darling doesn't tell the House of Commons that
'Non, je ne regrette rien.'
Living quietly in rural France, far from the self satisfied Lawson, I was astounded at the number of people I had thought of as friends or pleasant aquaintances who came round to gloat over an aperitif and other expats told the same story.

Still, Sarkozy is French enough to take all this in his stride and, to return to his working life as President of France. If there is an emergency his staff will always be able to find him. Unlike Chirac, prowling Paris in the evenings, his whereabouts unknown to his wife or to anyone apart from his chauffeur, Sarkozy is always to be found within leading rein distance of his wife. No chance of being found bathing in a pond in the early hours of the morning, falling from a train, running into a milk float in the wee small hours and certainly not dying after an encounter with a mistress. This President is respectable....even if starved.

Sarkozy's second 'plane

Image by caribb via Flickr

The world economy is on the turn, and the French bit of it is riding high.

The proof? Unemployment figures, purchasing managers' returns, house prices?

No, nothing so boring.

Sarkozy, having bought a second hand aircraft for his official longhaul travel with the recession at its height, has just bought two brand new Dassault Falcons for short hops....fifty million euros apiece.

Further, he has named one of them 'Carla One' in honour of his wife - he'll probably use this one for nipping down to the Cote d'Azur to see how work on his mother in law's septic tank is progressing.


Sarkozy is currently being accused of having a Napoleon complex, which is a bit below the belt, given his short stature, and of regarding himself as more of a monarch than an elected president. The French should know....Napoleon started out as one of three consuls in the post Revolution Directory period, then became the first consul and then proclaimed himself Emperor. Napoleon I. His nephew started out as France's first President...in the Second Republic...and then turned himself into its' second Emperor as Napoleon III.

The first Napoleon was renowned for advancing the interests of his family. Sarkozy cannot reach the heights attained in that period, when Napoleon's brothers and sisters were installed on the thrones of Europe, but he is certainly advancing his family in domestic political circles - he needs to hire Neil Kinnock as an advisor on how to do this in the European Union - and is taking on a certain monarchical air, as witness his address to the National Assembly at Versailles.



The Kings of France would cow their parliaments by descending upon them in full state for what was called a 'lit de justice', that is, the King would be present in state, seated under a canopy and surrounded by the nobility and clergy. Enough to cow any assembly of the middle class...well, in France, anyway. The King would make the opening statement and would then hand over the rest of the business to his chancellor, but Sarkozy is made of sterner stuff. Having altered the constitution to allow him to address the National Assembly, and having advanced upon them between the ranks of the Republican Guard, he had no intention of handing over the stage to anyone. Certainly not to any member of what is laughingly known as his government, to whom his attitude reflects that reported of Mrs. Thatcher at dinner with the members of her cabinet. She had chosen her main course, and the waiter then prompted her...
'The vegetables, madam?'
'They can order for themselves.'

One would hesitate, if only for legal reasons, to suggest that there are similarities in the wives of the great men under discussion. Napoleon's wife, the Empress Josephine, had had a somewhat colourful reputation before her marriage, after all, but I suppose some link might be made with the plane Sarkozy has named after his wife, in that access to the future empress, like access to the future Carla One, was reserved for the wealthy and the privileged.




















But does it have a bath?

Sarkozy's aeroplane

The President of the French Republic is buying a 'plane. He would like to have bought a new one, but, given the current atmosphere in France, even he does not dare to make such a gesture of conspicuous consumption, so he's getting a second hand one from Air Carraibes. It will, of course, be getting a makeover including a bath for Carla Bruni.

Aparently he feels humiliated by the size, age and performance of his existing equipment when compared with that of other world leaders, who may be more stupid than him...step forward the Prime Minister of Spain.....or who need more guidance than him....step forward the German Chancellor...but who manage to arrive at gatherings well briefed and relaxed thanks to having modern planes in which to travel.

Personally, I don't think the President should make the old plane in which he is forced to bum around the world the excuse for his infelicities of language.

Did he fly from the Elysee Palace to the Paris Agricultural Show on the other side of town where he met the man who refused to shake his hand, resulting in the lapid pronouncement

'Sauve -toi, pauvre con!' ?

A reasonable translation of which might be

'Go away, oh illegitimate one.'

Perhaps his car needs a makeover as well. And a bath for Carla Bruni.

Which brings me to another point. The President can address his fellow citizens in this fashion, but woe betide them if they attempt to use the same liberty of address with him. Presidents are protected from insult.....like prefects and gendarmes and goodness only knows how many other state apparatchiks.

Recently, a French citizen hoisted a placard as Sarkozy's motorcade passed him. It read

'Sauve-toi, pauvre con'.

The said citizen has just been awarded a fine of 1,000 Euros for 'outrage'.

The President has been under attack for his general sloppiness of language and for his scornful disdain for a classic of french literature, 'La Princesse de Cleves', a seventeenth century romance written in the high style, which seemed to be necessary reading for those studying to become apparatchiks. His predecessor, Jaques Chirac, was never held in his time to be a master of the language...a touch bucolic, ideal for patting cows' bottoms at the Agricultural Show or elsewhere, and certainly not up to the standards of the Academie Francaise, whose ex president, the novelist Maurice Druon, has just died, more noted for his attempts to prevent lady ministers from being called Madame la Ministre than for his lurid accounts of the lives of the medieval French kings. President Mitterand, nomatter how unlovely his history and activities, could express himself perfectly in classic French, but things have gone decidely downhill since his time.

Still, citizens can take heart. The President's wife is not protected by the idea of 'outrage', so I can say that Carla Bruni needs a bath without fear of the gendarmes beating down my door at three o'clock in the morning. That is not to say that I don't have to fear a bailiff arriving at 10 o'clock with a civil writ for defamation, but that's another matter.