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.

Beauty and History Intertwined at Nogent sur Marne

Renowned in the Middle Ages for its pure air, the Kings of France would escape the noisome atmosphere of Paris to stay at the manor of Beaute sur Marne ......Charles VII giving the manor to his mistress, Agnes Sorel, who thus became styled la Dame de Beaute, although best known for her associations with Loches.

Standards of beauty vary over the centuries, styles change, but the painter  of this image of the Virgin, Jean Fouquet, is popularly supposed to have used as a model the face - at least - of Agnes Sorel.

Where kings lead, the nobility follow and in their turn the bourgeoisie. Nogent sur Marne became a town of stylish seventeenth and eighteenth century houses and remained a mecca of secondary residences for well off Parisiens down to the twentieth century, attested by areas of Art Nouveau and Art Deco houses.

The less well off appreciated Nogent sur Marne as well. The advent of the railways allowed poorer Parisians to take the air of the quiet Marne.....it was the epoque of Sundays spent fishing, boating, dining and dancing

in the riverside guinguettes.....restaurants offering simple food and the local white wine. A wonderful break from the working week. One of these guingettes still exists...Le Verger...but in these days of austerity no dancing is on offer.

For Nogent sur Marne has not been exempt from the economic problems which have befallen France. It has a significant number of people in poverty...not all confined to the descendants of the Italian labourers who came in the days of the railway construction boom.

Such is the level of poverty that the council have issued an edict forbidding people to rummage through the waste bins....whether this is to prevent health problems or to preserve the bourgeois image of the town is a moot point.

However, austerity bows before popular culture and the mayor, although of the right wing UMP, has decided to honour the memory of the women who worked in the feather industry...the 'plumassieres'.

Fashions in dress, as well as in beauty, change. These days the feathered military headdress has been replaced by the utilitarian beret.....the vast hat of the Edwardian lady by the fascinator. 

Ostrich feathers are now thought to look better on the ostrich.

However in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century feathers were big business and formed an important economic activity for the area.

These days there are very few workshops working in feathers...and none in Nogent sur Marne. The remainder are in Paris itself, sub contracting to the couture industry...and making the costumes for 'les girls' of the Moulin Rouge and Crazy Horse.

What shape will this commemoration take?

That of a bronze statue, some two metres high, costing over 80,000 Euros and depicting one of the 'plumassieres' in working costume

The mayor, who took this decision unilaterally, without discussion in the council, does not agree that money is a problem. 

Half has been donated by a big construction firm....out of the goodness of their black hearts....the people reduced to rummaging in waste bins will only have to pay the other half.

He'll have to make up his mind where to place it...the Architects of the Batiments de France - equivalent of English Heritage - are very choosy what can be done in the 500 metres surrounding listed buildings, and Nogent sur Marne has five of them....because he'll need to have the paperwork in place by May which is when he intends to inaugurate the monument.

May...but that's the month of the Presidential elections!

Indeed it is and the mayor will no doubt be hoping that the official UMP candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, will be re elected. 

For the model for the statue, chosen with a nod to the connections with the fashion industry and to the Italian immigrant community is none other than

Carla Bruni Sarkozy.......that well known working girl.

.

Don't forget the diver...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Some time back I discovered that my French internet banking was not working.

Despite having made a list of all and any bodies and persons to which or whom I would ever be likely to want to make payments they had managed to delete from the list the local tax gatherers.....and so my property taxes had not been paid.

Thank goodness for good friends in the tax office.
One of them e mailed me to ask if there was a problem...which is the only reason that I discovered that La Banque Postale had been playing wily beguiled with my arrangements.

Now, in the first place, only the French mind could imagine that you would need to make a list of potential authorised recipients of your financial largesse - I mean, how the blazes am I to anticipate which particular crooked state or commercial body will be after my heart's blood among so many potential candidates?
And then, having come up with such a damn fool idea, it takes the French mind to decide to make deletions from the list without so much as a by your leave or kissing Fanny .

You may imagine that I was somewhat wroth. I had risked a ten per cent penalty on my taxes thanks to their high handed incompetence.

Now, in the days when the Post Office and the bank were one and the same, someone from the local office would have contacted me but now, in the era of separation of powers I'm left to find out the hard way...or would have been, if not for kind friends.

One thing was for sure. They couldn't use the 'in the interests of your financial security' wheeze this time.
They had done that years ago when I was buying a long haul flight ticket.
At that period, booking on line was in its infancy and one had to book on line with an agency. I booked, gave my bank card number and awaited the delivery of my ticket.
No ticket. The bank would not honour my card.
Why not?
For your own security. It's more than you usually spend.
Agreed....even I could not buy enough small logs of goat cheese in Leclerc to match up to an airfare, even if they had been on promotion....but why didn't you call me to check?
We don't do that.

But some time later they did allow someone to buy electrical goods to the value of considerably more than my airfare without raising an eyebrow.
It took me three months to sort out that one, much of which was spent in an exchange of correspondence as to why I had not reported the theft of my card to the gendarmerie despite the card having remained on my person in a different continent at the time in question.
No explanation has ever been offered.

It was opportune that my mother had asked me to come over to England to help her sort out her arrangements before going into hospital...it enabled me to make a descent on La Banque Postale, thanks to the kindness of good friends in France offering me their hospitality.
Always easier to have the bank face to face as they tend to refuse to understand French over the telephone.

My friends live, as did I, out in the wilds of la France Profonde, so it was the usual story of queuing for a ticket at Paris Montparnasse where only three windows were open as the rest of the ticketing staff were on strike, marching round the platforms with banners aloft...then getting the TGV, then a local train and finally a bus which replaced the push me pull you train at all but peak times until finally being met in the car park and being borne to the haven of peace.

I had booked the interview in advance, so at least there was a representative of La Banque Postale present at the branch.
We went through the details.

But the tax office is not on your list, Madame.

Produces paper....always the final word in France.

I agree, it isn't.

She smiles. An easy victory.

But it is on the original list. Here is my carbon copy.

Smile withdrawn and document studied.

I'll need this to process the matter.

I'll give you a copy.

One thing I have learned from experience in France is never to hand over an original document unless it is accompanied by two armed security guards with licence to kill.
Things disappear.

We agree a new list.....with some additions as a precaution....and I go back to relax with my friends.

But all good things come to and end and duty, stern daughter of the voice of God, summons me back from the fleshpots to wrestle with care agencies and suppliers of reading lamps on the other side of the Channel.

I am decanted at the railway station, buy my ticket and join the bus.
There are three of us, all women.
The driver and two passengers.
We talk.
It appears we have acquaintances in common, so the talk becomes more animated and, as the bus sets off and the noise of the engine isolates us from the world outside the windows, we talk more openly...as if in our own little bubble, free from being overheard.

We talk about the state of France, as seen by the ordinary person.
How nothing has changed, despite Sarkozy's promise of reforms...France has remained the country of the ´privileged.
How no ordinary person can affect anything that goes on in the world of business and politics.

The elections for President come up next year....
Snorts.

For all the good that will do....candidates parachuted down by the party leadership, not one of them with a clue about what needs doing out here, what matters to us...it's all Paris, Paris, Paris...

Look at this Strauss-Kahn affair...the man's a menace to women and all his mates know it...but does it matter...not a bit! He's one of the boys....they can get away with murder...and God help the woman who stands up to him!

What about Marine Le Pen? (Front National).

Well, she's a lot better that that old schnock her father.....and she's against these immigrants taking advantage of France...no offence, you're not one of them, I know.

But there's plenty of British who are....it's not just a colour thing.

No, but that apart. at least she's not part of the gang, not one of the boys....

The bus pulls in at the next town.
A gaggle of young people get on and we relapse into silence, no longer alone in our bubble.

I return to England and then, eventually, to Costa Rica.

But now, with the developments in the Strauss-Kahn affair and the pressure from the media and inside the Socialist Party to allow him to stand as the PS candidate, I think back to that conversation.

I remember the Presidential run off between Chirac and Marine Le Pen's father, the PS voters walking into the polling station holding their noses and, in one case, wearing a deep sea diver's suit and helmet to express their disgust at the choice they were forced to make.

I shouldn't discard that diving suit.....because if it comes to a run off between Strauss-Kahn and Le Pen in the second round, some women PS voters might be needing it, unless they have the courage of their convictions and overturn the gang of phallocrats and timeservers running their party......and the country.

Hush, hush, whisper who dares...

Image via Wikipedia

A New York Grand Jury has decided that Dominique Strauss-Kahn will stand trial....but the jury of French opinion has already decided on his overall innocence.

Let us ignore for the moment the fact that that the jury is composed of...as '1066 and All That' would have it, 'other barons who would understand'...... journalists, self proclaimed philosophers, politicians and financiers....as nobody else in France can get their views heard, but just listen to what it is saying.

Yes, he is strongly attracted to women...this is part of the French culture after all...but what goes on in his private life has no bearing on his capacity in public employment.

He has been accused by a number of women of seriously aggressive 'attraction'? How come they have stayed quiet so long? They must be seeking to boost their failing careers.

He was the 'white knight' who was going to beat Sarkozy and put the Socialist Party in power....so his problems in New York must be down to a plot.

His actions at the IMF which kept the Euro from risk of collapse displeased the Americans....it must all be a plot.

Photographs of him in handcuffs are humiliating and degrading for a person of his importance. Doesn't the American justice system see the difference between him and some ordinary person?

And what's all the fuss about anyway? All he did - if he did anything - was to roll an employee in the hay.

And who is this woman? Who is a cleaner, an immigrant moreover, to complain about a man as important as Monsieur Strauss-Kahn?

I think that about sums up the position of the self appointed French jury.

I think the real problem is that revelations as to the nature of Monsieur Strauss-Kahn's attraction to women have given rise to the risk of an 'Emperor's clothes' situation.....where the hoi polloi begin to question the basis of authority of their masters.

And questioning authority in France is the ultimate crime.

As anyone who has done it is aware.

It's not just on the national scale, either.

A few years ago a drunken gendarme ran over and killed two kids who were riding their scooters back from a local fete.
Had it not been for the fact that he had damaged someone's car as he left the car park, and that that someone had pursued him, it is likely that the deaths of those two boys would have remained a mystery as the gendarme's colleagues did all in their power to help him...not even breathalysing him until mid morning on the day after the crime when he was still stratospherically over the limit.

Once again, the jury spoke...the local notables.

It was the fault of the organisers of the fete......but the bar served only pink wine, beer and water; the gendarme had brought his own bottle of whisky which he had downed in the course of the evening.

It was the fault of the parents of the two boys....both sets of parents were divorced...there was no stability in the home. Both boys were doing well at school and had a settled social life.

The gendarme wasn't on duty at the time. I should hope not!

He would lose not only his job but his pension. I didn't feel that factor weighed for much in the balance with the loss of two children to their parents.

But all these factors weighed with the court, which gave him the lightest possible sentence.....

In both examples it is clear that the authority figure cannot be seen to be at fault and I think a factor in the general supine acceptance of this by the French generally is the philosophy of the state, in which the state - and thus its representatives - embodies the will of the people.

So it's quite important that the people don't decide that their will doesn't coincide with that of the elite and their enforcers.

So the elite and their enforcers discourage questions.

As the women who have come forward with revelations about Dominique Strauss-Kahn relate, they did not proceed with complaints because there would be no future in so doing...no future for them, that is.

The whistleblower on the local council who revealed the maire's juggling with tenders for public works was sacked...six years later, the maire was given a token fine.

That's how it is.

The French elite gets away with a great deal by its self confidence...its elan.
They feel themselves to be unbeatable.....but so did the young French officers of 1914 running forward, sabres held in their white gloved hands, only to be mown down...and their men with them...by the steady, organised and resourceful Germans.

Its attitude might be expressed in the words of another Dominique...Dominique de Villepin, Prime Minister at the time, I believe.

France is like a woman...she wants to be taken (by implication) by force....

Well, that's all right then.

You, a French politician, embodying the will of the people, decide what they want and give it to them.

You, a French man, decide what women want...and give it to them.

They don't like it?

Tough. What can they do about it?

The real tragedy of this unfortunate affair is that while the elite deploy their white gloved hands in defence of one of their own, an increasing number of people...the non-elite, the ones traditionally led to the slaughter...might decide that they can do something about it by reposing the embodiment of their will elsewhere.

With Marine Le Pen and her Front National.

Dies Irae...or 'casse-toi, pauvre con'....

Image via Wikipedia

We've seen a day of wrath, of anger, in Tunisia and now in Egypt...others in Bahrein, Yemen, Algeria and Libya....days when the people of these countries, denied opportunity, denied expression, denied hope, have risen against their corrupt masters despite the fears of imprisonment, torture and death at the hands of the security forces.

Dies Irae, the day of wrath,which I suppose most of us associate with the traditional requiem mass, comes from a reference in Zephaniah chapter one, verse fifteen....and earlier in the chapter the prophet treats of what will happen to those who have turned from the right path...

'.....I will punish the princes, and the king's children. and al such as are clothed with strange apparell.
In the same day also wil I punish all those that leape upon the threshold, which fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit.
...And....there shall be the noise of a cry from the fish gate, and an howling from the second, and a great crashing from the hils.
Howl...for all the merchant people are cut downe; all they that bear silver are cut off.'

You have to hand it to the King James' version for colour and interest....and have to hand it to the prophet for a neat description of what happens when the unrighteous finally get their comeuppance, although it has to be said that the Tunisian and Egyptian protesters were remarkably peaceable.

In France, the days of wrath in North Africa have had a special relevance.....it appears that the Prime Minister, M. Fillon, spent his Christmas hols in Egypt, at Aswan...paid for by the Egyptian government of President Mubarak, the tyrant overthrown a couple of months later by the efforts of the protestors who just refused to go home.

Before revealing his little escapade on the Nile, M. Fillon had given his full support to his Foreign Minister, Mme. Alliot-Marie - who had offered the Tunisian president, Ben Ali, the benefit of French security advice as dissent in Tunisia became apparent - when it was revealed that as the uprising started she had accepted a trip in the private jet of a Tunisian businessman closely linked to the Ben Ali family.
Unfortunately it later became evident that she was accompanied on this surprise jaunt by her parents, on the point of becoming majority shareholders in her Tunisian friend's company.
These revelations she brushes off as being an intrusion on the private life of her family.

Any number of French politicians and 'movers and shakers' are beginning to wonder whether...in the interests of transparency, you understand....they should declare their presence at the pseudo conferences and open jollies held at the swisher coastal resorts of Tunisia, all paid for by the benevolent Ben Ali, friend of France if not of his own people.
That is, in the interests of transparency, whether they should own up before the new Tunisian regime drops them in it from a great height.

A number of those in politics who criticised Frederic Mitterand, the Culture Minister,  for what he denied ever doing with young men in Thailand are now keeping their heads below the parapet...just in case the kicking over of the beehives in Tunisia reveals what they will, in the interests of transparency of course, deny ever doing with young men in Tunisia.

The days of wrath have revealed a very unsavoury state of affairs in French foreign policy...but also a very unsavoury state of affairs in French politics generally.

The politicians are elected...they are representatives of the French people whose interests they are supposed to further while in power.
How can anyone imagine that the interests of the French people are served by preserving the regimes of foreign dictators?

Or perhaps I've misunderstood.....should I be asking rather which French people are served by the preservation of corrupt regimes abroad?

Well, French commmercial interests who were outsourcing to their old colonies long before French politicians denounced this anglo-saxon practice....who are in need of political stability to enable them to go on exploiting a cheap source of labour.
That's who, or what.
That's who or what is at the bottom of the offers of help from a French Foreign Minister to a Tunisian despot....all the free flights and holidays....the tawdry rewards of salesmanship.

A French supported dictator's attitude to his people may be summed up in the lapid phrase of the current French president when faced with a dissident at an agricultural show..

'Casse-toi, pauvre con.'

Or, loosely

'Piss off, loser!'

It is also, in practice, the reaction of a French politician to the ordinary French person....the people who can't afford to reduce their tax bill by investing in the Dom Toms....who can't afford to reduce their tax bill by investing in racehorses...the ones who don't have enough to pay the Impot de Solidarite sur la Fortune but who will be paying to fill the hole made when the ISF is abolished.... the ones who don't belong to powerful lobbies like public sector or farming unions...

A lot of these ordinary French people voted for Sarkozy to get France moving....his party, the UMP, soon put a stop to any such idea, frightened that more fingers might be getting into a pie previously reserved for the rich and their cronies, so where are the Sarkozy voters of 2007 to go?

The UMP doesn't want him to stand...not that he'll take much notice of that...so there's a risk of a split in their vote between Sarkozy,  the dreaded Juppe and de Villepin...if he is not on a meathook by then - another lapid phrase of the current French president - as his case comes to court shortly.

Then there's the PS, the socialist party, as usual quarreling over the spoils before winning the prize...

The centrist parties...

The FN, the National Front....

But that's all from the politicians' viewpoint...this is what they are putting before people.

They might care to learn a lesson from the days of anger.....you can treat people as 'pauvre cons' for only so long. It might be a long time, but it is finite.
A day of wrath does come....and in countries where democracy is feeble the day of wrath does not take the form of choosing between political parties, it takes the form of overthrowing whole systems of power.
Peacefully, or by violence.

You might judge the health of French democracy by counting the number of republics that have been declared since the big revolution of 1789....they're on their fifth by now, with sundry monarchies in between.....and compare that to the relative solidity of  the U.K. - until Blair got his hands on power.

The difference? The French political caste is just that...many faces but the same interests, imposed from above, whereas until the Blair years the British party system allowed pressure from the bottom to have representation...to have a chance of changing things.

Sarkozy came to power offering change and thats what the 'pauvre cons' want. Change....opportunity, an
end to the stranglehold of the 'haves' on power.....

The friends of the friends of the dictators should keep an ear to the ground as the 2012 elections approach.

If the people don't get change then there may be 'the noise of a cry from the fish gate, and an howling from the second, and a great crashing from the hils' as 'all they that bear silver are cut down'.

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.

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

Image by wonker via Flickr

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.

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.

A burger and a glass of wine...

Image by millhouseloves via Flickr

The National Front - right wing party - is accusing President Sarkozy of helping to bring about the 'islamisation' of France...yet another bit of ugly fall out from the debate about national identity.
What has he done? Forced Carla to wear the burqua? Worn it himself? Circumcised himself? Nothing so spectacular...just something the National Front think is more insidious. Islamisation by hamburger.

It has discovered that the fast food chain 'Quick' is serving only halal meat in eight urban branches, where there is a high incidence of muslim customers, including its' branch in Roubaix. The maire of Roubaix  - not National Front -says he doesn't mind them serving halal products, but to serve only halal products is discriminatory. The National Front say a lot more than the maire of Roubaix.

'Quick' changed hands not that long ago. It used to belong to a friend of Sarkozy, one Monsieur Frere.
The National Front say, however that when  the company was put up for sale, it was valued at five hundred and fifty million euros and a generous buyer paid eight hundred million euros.

Who was this generous buyer?
None other than a subsidiary of the state finance organisation the 'Caisse d'Epargnes et Consignations'.
Thus Sarkozy, as head of state, is leading an 'islamisation' policy. In the view of the National Front.

Not content with this, the party also complain that by nature of  'Quick's policy, the state is levying an 'islamic tax'...the obligatory fees paid for halal certification of meat to the appropriate muslim bodies.

I never thought that fast food could be so interesting.

In any case, no one is accusing 'Quick' of adulteration, whereas in the world of French wine that nasty old habit has reared its' head again.

Gallo, the Californian based wine firm, bought what it thought was wine made from the pinot noir variety from firms in the south of France, It has turned out to be just the local plonk which adopted a higher class name to attract a higher class price. Those concerned, vignerons, brokers, wine merchants and others, trousered between six and seven million euros between them....O.K., small beer beside what was trousered by M. Frere, but then they're not friends of the President of France.

There have been wine scandals for years...Algerian wine propping up wine from dubious years in the Rhone Valley, wine from the south fortifying the proud names of Bordeaux when conditions were unfavourable.
Not just for home consumption...this stuff was exported.
I can remember when proper labelling controls were introduced in the U.K., 'Nuits St. George'  disappeared overnight. I think it was O.K. to sell it as what it actually was, blended plonk, but not as as 'Nuits St. George'.
Mark you, a Loire Valley firm has just been taken to court by New Zealand producers for selling its' sauvignon blanc as 'Kiwi Cuvee' on the U.K.market...thus attempting to cash in on the reputation for quality of New Zealand wines....remember the fuss about trying to sell anything other than wine from Champagne as champagne?

It's not just on the grand scale, either.
About three years ago, a local firm was fined for getting the desired 'oak barrel' flavour into its' red wine by dumping oak chips in the steel vat.
Andre, retired worker in a local winery, was not impressed. This had been going on for years, once local vignerons made contact with foreign buyers who didn't want to pay top dollar for a wine from Bordeaux when one from the Loire at half the price would do as well, with a little tweaking.
He remembered that his firm had a contract with a well known U.K. wine merchant for red wine in which blackcurrant twigs had to be steeped, to acquire the 'berry' scent desired by the customer as a sign of quality.
I told him that Australian wine had to have a label listing everything that went into it. He shook his head, pityingly.
Never happen here,' he said.  'And you really don't want to know.'

The old business of shipping tankers of wine round the country still goes on, despite all the checks that are said to be in place.

There was a vogue a few years ago for celebrities to buy vineyards, where they could pose in open necked shirts among the barrels, and, let us not forget, cash in a bit by selling their produce to admiring fans.
A friend is a great fan of one such celebrity, and nagged her husband to take her to see his vineyard, a pretty-pretty operation deep in the countryside.
They returned with a box of six bottles - the smallest unit of sale, it appeared - which, given the apellation concerned, had cost an arm and a leg.
The bottles were left to settle, and before they left again for the U.K., they invited friends round for a meal to sample the nectar.

You must have been in that situation. The wine was dreadful. What do you say?
Luckily, the husband is a man of quick decision. He rose from the table and cleared the open bottles.
'Rinse out your glasses....I'll get something decent.'

Intrigued, I asked Andre, the man with the answers in the local wine world.
'Well, just look at the amount he sells. No way can all that be produced here. The guy running it for him is good...his proper wine can win medals...but for selling to mugs like your mates, any old thing will do. He buys in from all over.'

Not that medals are all they are cracked up to be, according to Andre.
In his view, you could trust anything winning at Brussels or at Macon, but nowhere else. You get medals for being better than the others, not for being outstanding, at most of the fairs.
Further, vignerons out to make a name for themselves make special vats for going round the shows and you won't necessarily find the same stuff when you go to buy.

Listen to Andre and the whole edifice of French wine and its' mystique crumbles before you.
I should take him for a burger in Roubaix.

Lawless lawyers

Image via Wikipedia

Rachida Dati, once Minister of Justice in the Sarkozy cabinet and now exiled to Brussels as a Euro M.P., doesn't have a good press. Brought into power as a symbol of the inclusion of ethnic minorities in government, it wasn't enough to protect her from the spite of the legal establishment or, come to that, the spite of Carla Bruni, thus...Brussels..... where she has been documented as being fed up with the whole thing and, recently and fatally giving vent to her frustration by rudeness to one of the established French journalists covering European affairs.

For me, she has one thing going for her. In the shake up of the French justice system, my local court has been abolished, thus ridding the area of a nest of corruption. Oddly enough, it was supposed to have gone in December but has had a year's grace - I wonder why -and the staff who were working there in the heyday of its' misrule have been reassembled from their current posts to return to the scene of their crimes. I bet the paper shredder is working overtime.

Still, what drew her to my attention again was her attempt to be called to the bar as a lawyer. I don't know why I am surprised, this being France, but it seems that if you are important enough, you can be called to the bar without having undertaken any legal studies or obtaining any legal qualifications.

It explains a good deal about some of the lawyers I have come across - except that I had had no idea that they had come from the ranks of high French society. Especially the one who, my case having been won, telephoned me repeatedly to argue that he deserved a sweetener over and above his fee for having done such a good job. For some reason he was reluctant to put his request in writing.

I suppose that, France being a logical nation, allowing the well placed and ignorant to practise law is quite reasonable.
After all, the results appear to be based on who you know and by whom you are known rather than any sense of justice, so why not just be open about the whole thing?

And Rachida Dati? Her request for admission was put off. She had forgotten to close down a consultancy she runs which is incompatible with being a practising lawyer.

There are some things which you just cannot do in France. Especially if you are out of favour at court.