Law in inaction

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You are sitting in a cell at the gendarmerie barracks. You are in garde a vue....detention.

You are sitting there because when the gendarme leapt out of his unmarked car to give you a speeding ticket you called him something uncomplimentary......and while this was something that the average British policeman would regard as mere vulgar abuse, the gendarme called it 'outrage'. An offence.
Given the sensitive nature of the forces of law and order in France they could probably interpret
'It's a fair cop, gov'
 as some involved insult to their probity so whatever you said you were on a hiding to nothing from the minute you opened your mouth.

You also bit the officer's bare arm when he countered your reluctance to accompany him to the station by placing your neck in a stranglehold so tight that you could not breath.
This attempt at survival was qualified as 'rebellion' - another offence - and while you cool your heels the gendarme is busy booking a couple of weeks off sick to recover from your attentions.

At last...the door opens and you are escorted to the adjutant's office.
He proposes to take your statement.
Not being familiar with French police and legal practice and given the misunderstandings that have already arisen, you ask for a lawyer.
The adjutant smiles.
'They're on strike.'

Witnessing you foaming at the mouth at this news, the arresting officer mentally adds rabies to the list of tests he will require.

Lawyers being on strike is a strange phenomenon, but, as you will have guessed, it involves money.
Most things about lawyers do.

In this case, the duty lawyers who are supposed to attend gendarmerie barracks and Hotels de Police at two hours notice in order to assist the involuntary guests of these establishments are on strike because they have not been paid  for the last two and a half months.
Not as in 'not paid by their clients' but as in 'not paid by the government' who are responsible for coughing up.

Mark you, as long as you keep your mouth shut until you get to court you might be better off without some of the lawyers you might encounter.

Recently one bright spark saw fit to defend two youths caught in possession of a miniscule amount of pot by advancing the argument that they were unable to remember anything about the circumstances in which the packet came into their possession as long use of pot had affected their memories.

I think even
'It's a fair cop, gov'
might have had more favourable results.

I had not long been in France when I read that lawyers were on strike and coming from a U.K. background it seemed incredible...after all, as a lawyer in independent practice, if you don't work you don't drink.

This was before I had grasped the astronomic sums required even by lawyers at the bottom of the food chain in France. They can afford to strike without reducing their intake of Romanee-Conti.
What one of the local hacks will want for a simple matter would enable you to hire a QC and two juniors with unlimited refreshers....and you're by no means sure he will do a good job.
They're not all Maitre Eolas.

Quite apart from his or her level of interest and competence there is always the local factor to take into account.....is anyone important involved?
If so, you will find that your lawyer's attention is more firmly fixed on not giving offence in that quarter than on any aspect of the case for his client.....the one that's paying him an arm and a leg.
A client is a client, but a local bigwig is forever.

They claim that their fees are so high because seventy per cent of it goes on keeping their business running...
Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.
In the provinces at least they all seem to inhabit seedy premises at the top of ancient buildings which don't have lifts.

One accident compensation specialist of my acquaintance regularly has clients with parts of their anatomy encased in plaster bumping up three flights of stairs on their backsides to reach his office. Both he and they take this for granted.

When my leg was in plaster my lawyer was most startled to be summoned downstairs to have our discussion in the cafe on the ground floor of the building...this had never happened to him before.
Given his unsatisfactory performance it's unlikely to happen to him again.

At the successful conclusion of another case, I was startled to receive telephone call from the lawyer who had handled it.
Bearing in mind that he had demanded money upfront before even starting the case I was even more startled to learn that he was reminding me of what a good job he had done and suggesting a further backhander.
My counter suggestion that he write to me with the details met with an aggrieved silence.
After all, in the conduct of his own affairs he follows the advice he gives his clients.
Sign nothing.

In East Anglia years ago there was an alternative version of the traditional crop rotation.
No longer 'wheat, barley, turnips and clover', but, given the wealth of the farmers concerned
'Barley, barley and a Mediterranean cruise.'
I can only imagine that something similar applies to French lawyers.......
'Boundary dispute, tax dispute and off to Thailand for a month on the proceeds.'

Still, when the lawyers are on strike, the cases reported have more savour and the one that sticks in my memory is the one I read about all that time ago when just arrived in France, in an unreconsctructed rural area.

It was a traffic offence. Drunken driving. A gentleman of a certain age.

Without benefit of representation the defendant rose to present his case to the President of the tribunal.
He utterly denied the offence.
What had happened was this.

He had come in from milking the cows and had had a glass of gnole (home distilled eau de vie at several times the proof of the commercial stuff).
As usual.
He had done a few other outside jobs and come in for breakfast, with a litre of (vin) rouge.
As usual.
He had done another few jobs and then met a friend in the bar to talk about selling some ducks. He had had a few beers.
As usual.
He's gone home for lunch, with another litre of rouge.
As usual.

Then something unusual happened. His son in law telephoned him to announce that his wife had given birth to their first child.
The defendant's first grandchild.
He had split a bottle of champagne with his wife to celebrate.
He had dropped in at the bar to celebrate with the boys. A few beers.
He had then driven to the hospital in the local town and split another bottle of champagne with the proud mother....how the baby was excluded from this remains a mystery...before driving home.

It was while driving the wrong way down a one way street that he had met the municipal police car coming up. It was all beginning to sound like Gerard Hoffnung's address to the Oxford Union in 1958.

The officers took it upon themselves to breathalyse him. He was multiple times over the limit.

How, asked the President, did he explain this?

Simple. As M. le President might imagine he was somewhat emotional at the birth of his first grandchild and when the police presented him with the tube he had taken breath several times while blowing into it.
Five times in fact and as M. le President would observe, if he divided the results presented by the police by five he, M. le President ,would note that the answer arrived at was just under the limit.

Therefore he was not guilty.

He was awarded points off his licence and a recommendation to let his wife drive him to the hospital for the birth of the next grandchild, and, knowing that particular court, I expect he just nipped round to the back office and handed over the folding stuff to have the judgement expunged from the computer records..

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.

Heartfelt Thanks

These go to the great people at BlogCatalog who managed to solve the problem that had been excluding me from my blog and, in some cases, from being able to comment on other blogs.

If you don't know BlogCatalog, take a look...it will open horizons.

It won't go away....

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I've tried all sorts....
Had a massive baking session .
Made a batch of banana wine.
Cleared the freezer....UFOs on the menu......unidentified frozen objects.
Read several books.
Watched the Chelsea Flower Show.
Waxed indignant about Morgan being chosen rather than Bopara.
Went shopping.

But it won't go away.
The thought of it rises oft like a malignant version of Parson Woodeforde's mince pie.
And this is what it is.

The French elite were very upset about the arrest in New York of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on suspicion of sexual assault.
They were very vocal.
They had a great deal to say in support of their friend.....but nothing to say in respect of the woman concerned except that, in the words of one of one of them, the whole thing was a fuss about nothing...it was only a matter of a bit of fun with the maid.

'Trousser la domestique'

I was outraged when I first heard it and it has rankled ever since.

Quite apart from the startling revelation that the man concerned thinks that there are different standards according to one's status in life, it is the atmosphere of the men's smoking room that offends....

The willful blindness to the context of the remark.

Forget about fancies of the 'droit de seigneur' and the plot of  the Marriage of Fiagaro and think about the reality for the generations of girls from poor families sent out to work in the houses of the better off.

Not only were they poorly paid, not only were they fed and lodged at the minimum of decency, not only were they over worked, they were also at risk from the attentions of the men of the household.

That very respectable household, which would sack them should they be unlucky enough to become pregnant.
Not only did they lose their employment...they lost their character...and would inevitably lose their child as well.

Fiction is full of scenes of the 'fallen woman' returning home only to find the stern father barring the door to his house.....but does fiction ask why?
Because the father could not afford to welcome home his daughter in distress, neither in terms of feeding her and the baby nor in terms of the survival of the rest of his family.

The same respectable employers that dismissed a pregnant girl would refuse to employ anyone not of 'good character' - and a father who took in his pregnant daughter would lose his character by that normal, loving, charitable act, thus risking plunging his whole family into utter poverty.

It was thought - by the respectable better off - that the poor were basically irreligious and that they needed to be continually shepherded into the paths of righteousness....church attendance, hard work and social deference.
Is it any wonder, if that was the example of religion offered, that the poor were, indeed, irreligious.
They could see past the humbug, the smoke and mirrors, and see the reality....enforced drudgery all the days of their lives.

So where does she go, this pregnant girl?
To the bosom of the church, to expiate her sins by scrubbing floors and sweating in the laundry, giving birth in pain and squalor and losing the child as soon as it could be taken from her so that she could continue her destiny...as a servant.
But a servant even less well fed and lodged, more overworked than before and continually confronted, humiliated, by treatment which was supposed to be the consequence of her 'sin'.

Does he think of all this, this man who speaks so lightly of a bit of fun with the maid?

And do we think all this is behind us in our enlightened age?

Perhaps we had better look at the plight of the poor women brought into Europe by, notably, rich Arab families, prisoners in the house, their passports held by their employers.
Their conditions are no better...perhaps worse....and I don't see society in general and governments in particular doing much about it.

There was a period when there was a concensus that the treatment of female servants had been unacceptable, that these conditions should never return, but with the growing division in society between those with money and influence and those without, it seems we are returning to the notion that you can place different values on people according to their status.

I cannot eat a thing that I have baked.
It sticks in the craw.

Oui, Oui, Monsieur

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In a week which has revealed the French elite pissing all over the French people, I began to wonder what had happened to the great invention of Paris municipal architect, Etienne Vanderpooten, who in 2005 unveiled the French capital's answer to those (men) who urinate in public places.

It was a wall that peed back.

His theory was that a jet of pee is launched at an angle....so if it meets an sloping surface it is fired back at the launch pad, dampening the trousers.

So the Paris municipality tried it out in the 10th arrondissement, where there were supposedly the highest number of offenders. 

How they came to make this rating I have no idea. 

Arrests? 

Municipal agents noting incidents in pocket books? 

Justine Putet peering from behind her curtains?

A coefficient?

Did it work?

Well, in 2009 Monsieur Vanderpooten noted that people (men) who used to use the area where the wall had been installed were now pointing Percy elsewhere.

Somewhere where the wall did not fight back.

Paris has built no more such walls, and, as far as I am aware, no other town council tried them out either.

But French walls need protection.

Here in San Jose, in the areas where homeless men sleep in cardboard boxes on the pavements, there is a reek of stale urine that has impregnated the walls and pavements despite the best efforts of shopkeepers and street cleaners to hose things down, and the smell always reminds me of my early trips to France, when you could smell Calais before the ferry docked and park walls stank. 

If you wanted to eat your picnic without losing your appetite you sat well into the centre.

I could understand if women were driven to use outdoor facilities....considering the indoor ones on offer where you have to cope with a light which goes out half way through the performance leaving you balanced above a hole in the ground clutching your handbag in case the violent flush carries it away under the door.

No wonder there is so much emphasis on gymnastics in French schools - and on the availability of laxatives in French pharmacies.....you do not need to add constipation to the list of hazards above.

However, French men seem to regard urinating in a public place not to be the resort of the terminally sozzled, unable to distinguish between a street sign and somebody's letterbox, but as a sort of inalienable male right, despite the growing availability of free loos.
There's even a dog loo round the back of the cathedral at Chartres.

And they're quite bold, these men.

I remember years ago in Caen seeing a butcher's shop with a sign on the wall under the display window which proclaimed

'Defense d'uriner'.  No peeing.

Who would take a risk of peeing there, in close proximity to an outraged butcher with handy access to meat cleavers?
Clearly enough to make the purchase of the sign worthwhile.

And it's not only in towns.
Holidaying in France, years ago, I had decided to eat my picnic in one of those vast laybys formed when a new road cut off a vast swathe of the old, winding one.
I was alone.
I perched on the bonnet and was happily eating my sandwiches when another car appeared.
A car with a French numberplate.

I cursed, knowing that the French, always wary in case another unexpected German invasion should burst through the Maginot line and be upon them before they could leg it for safety, like to laager up in car parks, and this was no exception.

With unlimited space available, it pulled up just in front of me, manoevring fussily so that I would have to reverse in order to drive on when I'd finished my picnic.

The driver got out, said
'Bonjour, Madame'
and proceeded to open his flies and have a pee.

It certainly did nothing for my cheese sandwich.

However with the 'phlegm' for which we Britanniques are famous in France I finished eating and reached for the thermos flask of coffee.

It would take more than a flash of something 'shocking' to disturb me.....

And, what's more, I'd seen more impressive specimens  in saucers of vinegar on shellfish stalls.  

Eat your way round the world

Image by mnadi via Flickr

When you travel, the guide books tell you about transport, hotels and restaurants, but if you want a real sense of a place, it's the food that matters.

I've found this on so many holidays....the recommended restaurants dull, or over priced, or just plain rip offs.
So much better to follow the locals at lunchtime...see where they eat, and, more importantly, what they eat.

Now there's a site to help you.


MyCityCuisine.org.

Click on a city...and you'll find a local dish.

Why not contribute suggestions from your own region? Just click on the site and take a look.

I've put this on my Costa Rica blog....but with a good thing like this, it's impossible to over egg the pudding.

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.