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 These days the feathered military headdress has been replaced by the utilitarian beret.....the vast hat of the Edwardian lady by the fascinator.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.

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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.

France's Profumo moment...

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In the early 1960s in the U.K., the right wing, the Conservative Party, were in power under the leadership of Harold MacMillan, nicknamed Supermac, famed for informing the British people that they had never had it so good. The left wing, the Labour Party, were torn apart by internal strife and provided no effective opposition. Everything seemed to be going MacMillan's way, and then, in times of growing discontent with the economy, a sex scandal hit the news. A cabinet minister, suspected of extra marital relations with a young woman who was also having the same sort of relations with an official at the Russian Embassy, denied to the House of Commons that this had taken place. As more details became available, he was forced to apologise to the House for lying to it...the one unpardonable crime that a minister could then commit...and was obliged to resign.
The establishment fell over itself in revenge on the minor actors in the drama, two somewhat lively young ladies and a society osteopath who acted as the go between. So virulent was the reaction of the authorities that the latter, Stephen Ward, committed suicide during his trial.
But the incident, almost banal in itself, marked a change of public attitude...the people at large lost any confidence in the establishment. Whatever sort of people were running the country? Supermac was no longer trusted...satirical programmes found a ready audience...Britain was ready for change and the Labour Party managed to pull itself together under Harold Wilson to take advantage of the moment.

Let us move forward to 2009 and to France. Sarkozy is well in the driving seat with no effective opposition. The left wing, the PS, is in disarray, its' leaders quarrelling over the disposition of the carcass of the party. What can go wrong for Sarkozy?
Mitterand. Frederic Mitterand, that's what could go wrong for Sarkozy.

Mitterand finds himself at the centre of controversy about his self proclaimed sexual proclivities and he, with the French establishment solidly behind him, is determined to brazen it out. Those who have attacked him have come under heavy fire for being everything from homophobes to racists via holier than thou...the sanctity of the private lives of politicans has been invoked, the media swinging into line with headlines screaming that 67 per cent of the French don't consider that Mitterand should resign while heavyweight pundits roar into action to attack his detractors. But the public don't appear to be impressed. The poll, taken for Canal+, I think, had only 1005 participants and the comment columns in the press don't accord with its' findings.

However, the interesting point is that Mitterand himself appears almost secondary. The controversy has brought into question everything about the way things are run in France....people are beginning to get indignant. Whatever sort of people are running the country?
Hard times always bring discontent, and times are certainly harder than they have been for years, but normally the French are supine...mostly because they know all too well what putting your head above the parapet brings you...victimisation. However, some things cannot be borne and that such a man can be made a government minister has roused a considerable sight more than discontent - it has roused disgust. Allied to the incredible stupidity of trying to appoint a 24 year old unsuccessful law student as head of a billion euro public enterprise and the massive waste of public money on the Clearstream trial, to settle the scores between rival politicans, the issue has brought people out of their trenches. People have had enough of Paris centred views, divorced from the reality of life in the country as a whole. People want an end to the old cry of
'Nous sommes pour rien' - we count for nothing.

Nothing happens very fast when a nation changes course, but change does happen and France needs change very badly.

Seeing his way clear...stream

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Dominique de Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, former Foreign Minister best known to the world for his speech of opposition to the war in Iraq at the United Nations General Assembly, is to appear in court on Monday, accused of complicity in a plot to blacken the reputation of President Sarkozy, then just a presidential candidate, by making it appear that he had been laundering money from bribes arising from the sale of frigates to Taiwan.

Complicated? You just bet.

President Sarkozy has let it be known that he wants politics cleaned up...no more of these plots and manoevres which have, he says, been typical of the Vth French Republic. He has also let it be known, rather more colourfully, that he wants the perpetrators of this particular plot 'hung from meathooks'. I have always said that he has so sense of historical resonance.
However, history seems to be what all this is about.

Sarkozy was once a protege of Chirac, famous for his Spanish practices while Maire of Paris and then President of France. As any good protege should, Sarkozy made himself agreeable to his patron's daughter but then, somewhat tactlessly, dumped her for something less dumpy. In for a penny, in for a pound, Sarkozy compounded his error by supporting Balladur, Chirac's unsuccessful rival, which left Sarkozy out in the cold for some considerable time, until his growing support in the party forced him back into government.

De Villepin has always been Chirac's man.... a graduate from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, one of the 'enarques' who appear to think that the government of France should only be confided to one of their number. Sarkozy is not an enarque. Never elected to any office, de Villepin was Chirac's chief of staff before being appointed Foreign Minister and then Prime Minister, and, in the run up to the last Presidential elections, was Chirac's choice of candidate, though Sarkozy, by then Finance Minister, was making all the running.

While the preparations for that election were hotting up, de Villepin happened to meet his old friend Jean-Louis Gergorin, another enarque, and, at the time, vice president of the aerospace company EADS, just before the latter approached an investigating magistrate with a list purportedly showing the names of those involved in the kickbacks from the frigate deal with accounts with a Luxembourg company called Clearstream. Although it quickly became apparent that the documents were forged, de Villepin mounted an enquiry, an enquiry which, according to the then head of intelligence in France, was ordered by Chirac himself. Chirac refuses to answer any questions, claiming the immunity which covers any actions of a President of the French Republic while in office.
Inevitably, news of the enquiry leaked, and Sarkozy confronted de Villepin, accusing him of making it appear as though the allegations had weight by ordering an enquiry after it was clear that the evidence was a forgery. He then brought a civil action to clear his name.


In the meantime, Sarkozy has become President, de Villepin is an isolated figure in his own party, but, more importantly, the investigating magistrates have been busy confiscating all sorts of interesting documents, including the notebook of France's chief spy, cataloguing the little foibles of the country's political elite. Rumours abound of the dirty tricks played against Sarkozy in the run up to the election, including, apparently, alerting his then wife to his infidelities, which might be one explanation of her refusal to be at his side during the campaign.


De Villepin might have trouble wriggling off this particular meathook - I think a lot depends on how much can be put down to Chirac who of course will not testify - but he is mounting an interesting defence. Despite the fact that a court has already ruled that a President can bring actions while in office, de Villepin's lawyers will be arguing that it is impossible for the court to hear Sarkozy's charges as the inequality between the parties is so great....Sarkozy can attack as an individual, while being immune from attack in his turn, as President. It's a bit like being armed with a machine gun while wearing Ned Kelly's protective armour.

Why does this case have any importance for the general public, apart from the wafts of sleaze in the wings? It is important because Sarkozy has announced that he wants no more of these insalubrious plottings and if that is the case it can be nothing but a good thing for the political climate in France. However, as he is also proposing to abolish the role of the investigating magistrate, it is hard to see how we should ever know about any future government shennanigans, since the French press is supine and the future investigators will be the government run prosecution service.

Round up the usual suspects....

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There'll be more than a few uneasy heads wearing caps, kepis and cagoules today. The suspects rounded up with so much acclaim in the case of the envelopes containing ammunition sent to prominent politicians have all been released without charge. The heads wouldn't be quite so uneasy if one of those targeted had not been the President of the French Republic who is renowned for wanting results yesterday in any affair touching his sacred person.
I posted earlier....'Sarkozy's scooter'...about the efforts deployed by the Paris police when his son's scooter was stolen.....and again.....'Sarkozy's septic tank'....about what happened to the local Prefet when mother in law didn't get her sewage sorted, while other officials have been sidelined abruptly for not defusing demonstrations when the President honoured their department with his presence. I wonder which one got brownie points recently for lining up all the short arses behind the President at a recent visit to a factory in Normandy so that he looked as though he were of normal height when his address was televised.

In this case, a number of letters have been addressed to prominent politicians over the last year, some with death threats, some containing ammunition, some making political demands like halting the deportation of illegal immigrants, all supposedly emanating from something called 'cellule 34', all supposedly fairly illiterate and all posted from the south of France. Three have been addressed to Sarkozy and, as far as he is concerned, that is three too many. He wants the matter cleared up...now.
The Sdat (sous direction antiterroriste) have been interviewing 'revolutionaries'....like a tobacconist who publishes a newsheet classed as being 'proletarian' in content - whatever that might mean - and, according to reports in the 'Depeche du Midi' the police have been amusing themselves by harassing anyone who has raised their head against established authority in the area round Lamalou les Bains in the Herault department. Notably those who oppose the massive windfarm that has been installed causing problems of noise pollution. And those who opposed the installation of a waste disposal site in 2003.
None of this activity has produced results. An ex member of the Foreign Legion was interviewed having been denounced by his ex girlfriend - how French - but with no positive results, and there the matter rested until the last letter to Sarkozy was discovered in the sorting office in Montpellier.
At this point, the August holidays being over, the solids hit the fan. Results were required. Action this day. Sarkozy expects that every man will do.....whatever it takes.
They did. In a sudden closing of the dragnet, the police arrested eleven suspects and took them into custody under anti terrorist legislation which allows them to be interviewed without lawyers being present for a period of forty eight hours, the which period being renewable. One thing struck me...usually you see suspects with their heads under blankets and the police clearly visible. In this case, the photographs show the 'suspects' clearly while the police are wearing balaclavas! I know who looks more like a terrorist to me!
Who were these suspects? Well, the tobacconist, of course. Among the others, a plumber, a butcher, several old age pensioners, an architect, a dentist and, wonder of wonders......a notaire! A revolutionary notaire? I don't think so....there hasn't been one since Robespierre, and look what happened to him, dragged to the guillotine with a broken jaw. Enough to discourage any future notaire from revolutionary practices.
Twelve more people were interviewed in their homes, handwriting samples taken, copies of their computers hard drives removed and DNA samples required.

Alas for the careers of the caps, kepis and cagoules, all this was in vain. Gradually, one by one, the suspects were released without charge until the last, Pierre Blondeau, emerged after more than thirty hours of interrogation, directed, according to him, from Sarkozy's HQ, the Elysee Palace, by its' Secretary General, Claude Gueant. Nothing has been proved against him nor against the others and he and they want answers as to why they have been harassed.
The problem is, everyone knows why. It is the secret of Polichinelle...the one everyone knows but no one reveals....the Head of State wants results and his employees strain every sinew to get them, justified or not. Local militants are viewed as dangerous revolutionaries, judges sign permits to arrest them and the police interrogate them. It is not healthy for the state of justice in France...and it hasn't done anything to find the real culprits.

Sarkozy should get a grip.....he is more likely to die from the effects of the diet imposed on him by his wife than at the hands of a few malcontents from the Midi.

Sarkozy's justice.

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Reforms of the French legal system are taking place.....our local court is to be closed, but not, alas, before I can be sued there by a local politician. The decision is inevitable...I will lose because he is who he is and I am but dust beneath the chariot wheels, so I am already resigned to the cost of going to appeal where whatever vast sum he has been awarded will be reduced to something less draconian. However, the local court is not being closed on grounds of bias, corruption and incompetence, but on grounds of cost - the vast sums it takes to keep bias, corruption and incompetence running.
Mine is a civil matter, but were it to be a criminal affair, then the facts would be investigated by a 'juge d'instruction', once the appropriate 'procureur' has decided that a case might be worth investigating. The former is a magistrate, independent of government, whose activities are controlled by a national commission composed of other magistrates who will understand. The procureur, a magistrate of the Parquet, is the public prosecutor, who answers to the Ministry of Justice - thus to the government.

Now to someone brought up in a Common Law environment...England, the Commonwealth, the U.S....the idea of an investigating magistrate is strange. All the state has to do is prepare its' case and let the defendent prepare his, then let the court decide, but in France the court is held to need guidance, so the investigating magistrate gets to work, sending out police and gendarmes to collect evidence which is assembled into a report which generally decides that the prosecutor was right to prosecute and that the court will be right to proceed to judgement. You get the same idea with the European Court of Justice - modelled on France as is so much of EU administrative practice - where the Avocat General's report is generally followed by the court. So often that lawyers start to consult his reports without even waiting for the actual rubber stamp decision to emerge.
Down here, where not much troubles the still waters, the investigating magistrates are usually young things sent down to 'la France profonde' to learn about incest, or total no hopers and weirdos that have to be parked somewhere unobtrusive as there is no chance of the national commission allowing them to be sacked. They're independent, after all. Nomatter into which category they fall, they are generally hopeless at investigation as one would understand it coming from a Common Law system and there is no incentive in the system to make them improve. They have absolutely no idea of proportionality - in a case of alleged defamation a journalist found himself being repeatedly searched. It didn't go down too well in his newspaper, but I tend to think he was not an isolated case, just that most people don't have a newspaper to publicise their woes.
A few years' ago there was public outrage at the conduct of the investigating magistrate in the Outreau case, where allegations of child abuse led to a whole community being dragged through the courts and into prison because an inexperienced investigative magistrate lost his head and started believing in his own omnipotence. He had thirteen people jugged in preventive detention, all of whom were found to be innocent. What action did the national commission which oversees investigating magistrates take? They reprimanded him. The case highlighted the weaknesses of the sytem, where, although relatively inexperienced, he had no back up or effective supervision and there were calls for urgent reform. Well, urgent in the legal sense....the committee appointed to investigate is reporting to Sarkozy next week and it looks as though they will propose to abolish the investigating magistrate, independant of all effective control, and leave all decisions as to whether or not to prosecute with the procureur, the Ministry of Justice's man.
I did a double take when I saw that they also proposed to reinforce the neutrality of the President, the presiding judge in the group of three who hear criminal cases. What did they mean..reinforce the neutrality....they were admitting he wasn't, or what? Then it occurred to me that we are in France...we are thinking French. All it means is that it is proposed that in future, rather than participating in the decisions of his colleagues, he will only have a casting vote. So that's all right then.
Needless to say, investigating magistrates are not wonderfully happy, even if it is proposed to give them a new role overseeing the investigations to see that they are properly carried out - pause for boggling mind to return to equilibrium - and to supervise requests for 'phone tapping, etc. Considering what they are capable of doing currently, it doesn't seem much of a guarantee of public liberty to me.

However, I don't think Sarkozy is too worried about unjust accusations and incompetent casework. I think he is worried about the role of the investigating magistrate in high profile affairs involving politics and high level business. An independent magistrate can undertake investigations into the financing of political parties, can enquire into the strange Spanish practices of the mairie of Paris when Chirac was in charge and can handcuff the head of Elf, the petroleum company, when investigating international corruption. He can make public any amount of dirty work behind the screens, as in the case of the submarines sold to Pakistan and the bombing of the workers' coach. He is independent, and, once launched, there is little the government can do to deflect him.
The procureur, however, is not independent, by the very nature of his appointment, and the European Court of Human Rights has declared that the Parquet, wherein he lives, works and has his being, can not be regarded as an independent judicial authority. While currently Sarkozy's old rival, the ex Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, is suffering the attentions of the investigative magistrate in the Clearstream affair - a blatant attempt to smear Sarkozy with allegations of improper financial dealings - at least Sarkozy is suffering - at a distance - the attentions of another judge in the Karachi coach bombing case.
In future, with decisions in the hands of people anxious not to blot their copybooks, there's more than a slight risk that the French state will have its carpets in full use, harbouring the muck that will be swept under them.

Sarkozy's swine 'flu

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While Sarkozy was holding his last cabinet meeting before the holidays and the second wave of holidaymakers prepare to assault the beaches, the Ministry of Labour issued a little circular, DGT 2009/16, giving guidance on measures to keep the economy functioning if the swine 'flu 'pandemic' worsens. Not the first thing on a holidaymaker's mind, you might think, just the ministry covering its' back when things go to pot later and fingers are being pointed.
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
A little holiday reading would be in order, I think.

The circular envisages measures to be put in place should the outbreak be classified as 5B or 6......which it is expected to be by September when the people responsible for so doing get back from the beaches. It supposes that, given the widespread absenteeism due to illness, industry and commerce will be severely affected and that as it is not in the national interest to let the economy suffer, extraordinary measures might need to be taken. All very reasonable, you might think, but what is the conclusion drawn by the Ministry of Labour?

That employers should be able to decide unilaterally whether to ask their workers to work longer or different hours or vary the work they perform to meet the needs of the company and that a refusal by the workers to meet these demands could qualify as an act involving instant dismissal.
Now, a circular does not have the force of law...it is an aid to interpretation...but it will be interpreted by the agencies who dish out the permits to employers to vary their employee's working hours and conditions. The circular asks these agencies to show flexibility appropriate to the circumstances.
Let us look at a scenario....Madame X has arranged her family and working life so that she can take her child to the nursery at 8.00 a.m. and be at the office by 8.30 a.m. If, however, the needs of the business dictate, while the pandemic is rated at 5B or 6, her boss can demand that she comes in earlier, and if she cannot arrange things, well, she is running the risk of dismissal.
Not very likely, you might say? It depends. If Madame X is the member of one of the unions who run the French labour scene in an unseemly alliance with the employers' organisations, then no, it is not very likely. The unions are as yet untouchable.
As recent events have shown, a unionised workforce can kidnap and imprison the bosses, burn machinery and sequester equipment without a hand being raised to prevent them. The unions can still provide big turn outs on demonstrations, cripple public transport and menace the nation's food supplies. If in a unionised plant, Madame X will not be troubled.
If, however, Madame X is not so protected, then her risk will be much greater, and if with the economic downturn there are more Madame Xs employed than her employer thinks necessary, well, the 'flu pandemic is a heaven sent opportunity to get rid of some at minimum cost to the business.
The expats working in the jobs the French don't want might like to keep a wary eye open....with the unemployment levels the way they are, and Monsieur Darcos, the Minister of Labour, pessimistic about the future, the French might start wanting them again, so just be flexible.
Already, French businesses are trying to get round the rigid labour laws by hiring people on short term contracts, which may or may not be renewed, but this proposal opens the door to a new way of contracting the workforce......in the name of supporting the economy in difficult times.
The French labour system is rotten to the core. Government workers until recently had guarenteed jobs for life...and about one in four workers work for the government. Sarkozy promised job reductions, but I don't see much action...government workers are unionised.
Once hired, the employer can kiss goodbye to firing a worker except in very special circumstances, nomatter how how things go in the business. Bribery is the only way.
Unions are not interested in jobs for all, just jobs for their boys....and girls...and in preserving their position of power. It all sounds so reminiscent of the pre Thatcher era in the U.K. with its stagnant economy and endless strikes.
The status quo is preserved by the high barriers to entry to business start-up. The assessment for social security charges before you have earned a sou is a deterrent to most, so people stay on benefit rather than try something for themselves. It is a waste of talent and energy.

Sarkozy offered reform of a sclerotic system. He is well into his presidency and so far the best he can do is to bring in a hole and corner measure like this under the cloak of the threat of swine 'flu. I think if he were to trust the people he would find many more on the side of reform than he seems to think, but, like all politicians, it seems, he trusts the people about as far as they trust him.

Sarkozy's slip

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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 handbag moment

Image via Wikipedia

President Sarkozy has come out in support of a ban on the fishing of blue fin tuna. Pass me a glass of something fortifying.
The European Union has presided over a fishing policy that has resulted in its waters being fished out by trawlers scraping the seabed with fine meshed nets while its attempts to buy out fishing vessels by offering bribes for scrapping the boats has been nullified by its policy of issuing quotas which can be bought and sold...why scrap the boat when by keeping it you can sell its quota?
When I was young...O.K., pass yourself a glass of something fortifying as off she goes again about the good old days....we had proper fish shops with proper fish. Finnan haddies, smoked haddock, whopping fillets of cod, huge herrings to be fried in oatmeal - a cornucopia of nature's bounty brought ashore by men whose trawlers always seemed to be battling killer ice in Icelandic waters protected by what was left of the Royal Navy. Nowadays when I head for the fish stalls all I see is the traditional fish species that appear pathetically small, or fish from far flung seas that I can't even pronounce, let alone identify. Why should this be? It is because our masters have taken no thought for tomorrow...yet again...and allowed our seas to be denuded of fish to the extent that even if all fishing were to be stopped immediately the breeding stocks are so depleted that it is doubtful whether some species could ever recover.


The blue fin tuna is in this category, so why am I astonished that Sarkozy is taking action in its defence? He doesn't strike me as someone concerned about the environment, but yet, in his own way, he is. He is concerned about his environment...the political one.
I think he senses a new feeling in the air in France which has surfaced with the economic crisis. Politicians can no longer rely on their traditional lobbies, and the parties are hunting around to find new identities... or in the case of the Socialist Party starting the traditional witch hunt to pin the blame for their most recent electoral disasters. As Minister for the Interior, Sarkozy projected a tough 'law and order' image which did wonders for his campaign to become President, but since coming to power, his mouth has been mightier than his hand and he needs to reinforce his image.
France has long had a reputation for public disorder...demonstrators in the streets, farmers driving cows down the Champs Elysees, vignerons overturning tankers of Spanish wine...and up to now, this has been handled with kid gloves by french governments. The riot police will take on groups of young immigrants protesting about discrimination...well, small groups...but you don't see them sent out to break up road blocks of taxi drivers protesting at plans to remove their monopoly, or farmers blockading petrol pumps at threats to make a mild reduction in the largesse handed out by the Common Agricultural Policy. I think this is about to change, and the fishermen are going to be the symbolic target, as were the miners for Margaret Thatcher.
As has been apparent in the disgraceful background to the Karachi massacre of French and Pakistani workers, French politicians like to pay off old scores, and Sarkozy has one to pay off with the fishing industry in the Mediterranean, which provided a bastion of support for Chirac...who did his best to bury Sarkozy's political ambitions. This meshes with what he senses to be the mood of the moment in France.... a concern for the environment, unease with the European Union and a questioning of the traditional protectionism of agriculture. No politician in their right mind will attack the farmers..they vote right, after all...but fishermen are a handy target - relatively small in number and viewed as exploiters of the natural world. All those Jacques Cousteau films and snorkelling holidays mount up over the years.
British trying to return across the Channel from their holidays will have experience of French fishermen, blockading the ports and attacking yachts trying to leave....they learned something from the Royal Navy, after all...so there will not be much pity expressed from the other side of the water if the riot police turn their tactic of bash first and ask questions later on the fishermen, but, remarkably, I don't think that there will be much pity expressed in France either as long as the French navy manages to find an undamaged warship to push the scavenging Spanish trawlers out of fishing exclusion zones as well.

Sarkozy, like a lot of European politicians, admires Margaret Thatcher and her relentless drive to change the nature of a whole society - the society which she denied existed. She swung her handbag with vigour in her day, and while British men recoil from carrying such an unmasculine object, Sarkozy, being French, has no such inhibitions.

We are about to see who blinks first.

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 burqa

Image via Wikipedia

President Sarkozy has announced that the burqa - the head to toe covering worn by some muslim women - is not welcome on French territory....it is not a question of religion, he says, but a question of the dignity of women.


A deputy from Lyons, noticing that more and more burqa clad figures were to be seen on the streets of his multiracial constituency, has suggested a parliamentary enquiry into the matter, concerned as he was that women were being coerced into wearing the garment. When asked whether legislation might be a possibility he replied

'Why not?'

I can't say I've seen any burqas out here in the sticks, though Mme. Chose comes pretty close to it in her wet weather gear for feeding the rabbits....between the brim of the hat and the turned up collar of the raincoat you see only the eyes behind their thick spectacles, while her lower extremities are covered by the sack she winds round her waist. I don't think M. Chose coerces her, either....he prefers to live rather than cross his formidable helpmeet.

I don't see it either in the ethnic area markets I go to for coriander and other exotic items not recognised by the French palate. The only sign of fusion cuisine out here is when you leave a plastic bowl on the hot plate while you answer the telephone. However, the immigrant population here is mostly Turkish, and, thanks to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish nation, women don't wear garments that impede their daily life. Headscarfs and trousers, yes, burqas no. I haven't caught up with what happened to the attempts of the somewhat Islamist Turkish government to allow women to wear headscarfs if working for the state, which had beeen a practice firmly banned before, but I'm all in favour of encouraging women to regard themselves as people rather than objects of cultural tradition and giving an example in public employment sectors.

I suppose wearing the burqa is more a sign of peer pressure than anything else. As so often, women who are oppressed oppress other women in their turn, all in the name of doing their best for them. Thus the continuation of female circumcision, and, disgracefully, the blind eye the responsible authorites turn to this practice with the pretence of not upsetting ethnic cultural sensibilities. I should like to see the 'responsible authorities' have their sensibilities upset by an onslaught on their genitalia. In what we regard as our advanced society, the pressure on women to be thin comes from other women, as does the pressure to produce children, have a creative job, etc...the reality is a guilt ridden, harried creature working on low pay who doesn't know whether she is coming or going.

People do strange things behind the front of religion. The Church of England probably still has provision for 'churching' women after childbirth, to purify them, but, just like wearing hats, it has gone by the board, as, with the acceptance of female priests, has the notion of women being silent in church. St. Paul thought that if they didn't understand anything, they should shut up and ask their husbands when they got home, which probably explains the origin of most of the early heresies.

I have been reading 'The Map of Love' by Ahdaf Soueif, which is a hymn to the delinquency of colonialism and the discovery of being a female in turn of the century Egyptian society. Once again, as in all these 'joys of islam' works, we hear of the delights of the veil, of seclusion, of the limited sphere of action open to a woman. You would have to be off your trolley to agree, but it is a measure of the lack of confidence our society has in its own values that such a novel was a Booker Prize finalist.

This, I think, rather than the burqa itself, is the problem. We lack the confidence to say that it is a disgrace that women should be wearing their winding sheets before they are dead and we lack the confidence to do anything about it. We have a history of intervention...just think of the slum missions in the U.K. in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, bringing some measure of civilisation to people abandoned to filth, poverty and drink....and it is not one to be ashamed of. I worry about legislation..it is always such a cack handed way to go about things...but as our modern society has sapped the will and the energy of its people to take any initiative for fear of the consequences of not being PC, I suppose it might be the only solution.

Sarkozy's septic tank

Image via Wikipedia

French sewage disposal is a subject which only rarely surfaces....I think this may be an inappropriate word but no other comes to mind.....in polite conversation, but M. le President has done it again. Sewage is uppermost...oh dear.....in our minds after recent revelations of Presidential intervention in the disposal of his in-laws' waste on the French Riviera.
It appears that his in-laws live in an area where no collective waste disposal system...sewage works to the vulgar among us...exists. They appear to be thus on a par with most of rural France.
They would, it seems, like to have a sewage works but the neighbours won't agree to cough up the necessary contribution. Enter Sarkozy. At a meeting in the presence of the local Prefet -Paris' man in the local departments - and the man himself it was promised that the State would pay for the works. In-laws happy. Neighbours, on looking into the details of the scheme, not happy. Further meeting with the Prefet, but not with Sarkozy, who is out making the most of his old jet before the new one is delivered. Result, no sewage works and neighbours happy.
Return of Sarkozy. One wonders if his in-laws were able to call him up on the plane's communication system with which he is so unhappy or whether they had to wait in line with government ministers and suchlike canaille, but no matter. He is informed of the about face.
The Prefet has just been removed from his post without being appointed to another. Such is the importance of waste disposal to President Sarkozy.

We could do with his intervention out here in the sticks. While there are some individualists like the guy up the road whose waste runs straight into the ditch beside the road, most people have septic tanks of varying vintage and efficiency which occasionally need emptying if something goes drastically wrong. Mine backed up spectacularly once, and the night cart operators later presented me with a set of false teeth which, I can only imagine, had been deposited in the loo by an over enthusiastic reveller and had then worked their way in a fashion I would rather not contemplate into the outlet pipe. Try though I might I cannot fit those teeth to a face.....

However, in an attempt to conform to European Union water standards, local authorities are trying to clean up the system, so that only clean water percolates into the soil. To this end, they have usually delegated their powers to the regional water boards who are sending out inspectors to see what is happening and telling people to stop it. Gives a whole new light on water boarding.

A man will appear and will pour blue and red phials down your sink and loo. He will then go outside and try to trace red and blue colours where you tell him that the outlet pipe is...or at least, that is what those who have suffered this visitation tell me. I am still waiting as our water board has two men trying to examine all the septic tanks in over fifty communes. He will ask you how many bedrooms you have, how often they are occupied - what happens in rural brothels, I ask myself - and tells you whether your system is in the norms, if not, what you have to do to it and how long you have to do it and if it is, how often you should empty it. For this visit you are charged eighty euros.

This charge has raised hackles. Out here in the sticks, we pay water rates with a contribution to collective sewage disposal which does not benefit us as we have no access to it. Now the water boards are charging us to inspect our systems while being unable to offer us the services for which we are already paying. Several communes have started to protest and they are beginning to gather together to refuse payment.

Sewage wars. You read it here first.