New brooms for old

While George Herbert might proclaim that drudgery may be divine if undertaken in the right spirit more worldly souls might  consider that cleaning ranks well down the scale of paid activity.
Not demanding, therefore not commanding a high salary.

How anyone can come to that conclusion faced with the differing care required by items of modern furnishing is beyond me...you need good glasses, a science qualification and the patience of a saint not to speak of a cupboard in which to lock the cleaning stuff away from any curious child.

In earlier times all the child had to do was distinguish between lemonade and bleach when investigating unlabelled bottles...now its mind would be boggled given the choice on offer.

However, one element of local government in France has recognised the value of cleaning and is aware of the burden of responsibility laid on the shoulders of its office cleaners.
After all, one determined assault on the computer keyboard with  a duster and away go the online catalogues from which the President of the Conseil General ( a sort of County Council) is attempting to choose his holiday....
Which will be taken in the company of his charming Director of Communications and will later  feature in the budget as a fact finding mission enquiring into models of local democracy in some warm and sunny French overseas possession.

Serious stuff, so the cleaner must keep her mind on her work.
No outside distractions.
No second job to make ends meet as she is paid only the  SMIC ( the minimum wage) at 9.4 Euros per hour.

So you may imagine the outrage when it was discovered that a local government cleaner had been giving a hand in her son's bakery shop.
She'd given him a hand one August.....though it could not be proved whether this was for the whole or only a part of the month...and she had regularly given him a hand on Sunday mornings....which could be proved.

The council gave her an unpaid period of suspension.
The cleaner asked them to think again.
The council refused.

It ended in the administrative court where the council was told that its refusal to reconsider was not valid because the appropriate beaurocrat did not sign where he should have signed....and the cleaner was told to pay the council 800 Euros.

So, point made.
You can't do two jobs if you are a council cleaner.

Surprisingly enough, though, the President of the Conseil General has three jobs.

He is Maire of his commune.
As his commune numbers less than 500 inhabitants he gets paid 646 Euros a month.

Should his commmune register 501 inhabitants he could trouser 1178 Euros a month which exlains the anxiety of maires of small communes to employ their relatives to take the census and the eagerness of said relatives to include any living person found in the limits of the commune on the day.
Suddenly, the foreigners are welcome.....Oncle Tom Cobbley inclus.

The payment rises with the number of inhabitants...the sum going up to a top whack of 5,512 Euros with, of course, this being France, the chance to round up this sum still further by being maire of a departmental  or cantonal capital (from 15% to 25 %)....not to speak of being in a tourist zone when a whopping 25 % can be added.

Oh, and there's the small addition of the expenses account given him by the commune....

He is, of course, also President of the Conseil General, for which he pockets 5,512 Euros per month and, as he lives outside the departmental capital, can claim free appropriate accommodation.

And, cherry on the cake, he is a Senator, drawing 7,100 Euros a month, plus an expenses allowance of  6,240 Euros and a  sum to enable him to employ staff of 7,548 Euros....which will meet even his wife's level of maintenance of her nails while typing his letters.
Not to forget the unlimited first class rail travel and forty flights to his constituency.
Oh, and the appartment in the heart of Paris.

Added to which he gets a pension package that would make your eyes water.
Especially if you are the taxpayer coughing up for it all.

But clearly, you are saying, he can't pull in some money like that plus expenses and perks...it's indecent.

Well he used to be able to, but no more.
His income from these posts has been capped at  8,272 Euros per month...except not all the income counts towards the cap....certainly not the expenses account and the staff money.

However, you rejoice, at least the state claws back the rest.

No it doesn't.

When capping first came in in 1992 the Senator (or  Deputy) could give the surplus to whomsoever he liked.....and did.
Like the proprietors of property they wished to buy.

Later, it was provided that the Senator could only hand over the surplus to another elected representative.....helping the poor devil to a better place at the trough.

One of Hollande's election promises was that in future elected representatives would not be permitted to fill more than one post.....just like the cleaner.
Now in power, he doesn't seem so keen to enforce it on his troops.

It might hurt their feelings...or their wallets.

It might make them feel that they are being treated like cleaners.....the people whose aspirations they claim to represent.

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?