You can understand why Nicolas Sarkozy may be feeling frustrated. Since the start of the latest round of the credit crisis, France's hyperactive president has thrown himself into the fray with relish.
Crisis management is one of Sarko's talents, as we saw when he brokered the ceasefire in Georgia last August. He has leaped into the breach again with the credit crunch, but his European colleagues are in no rush to cede leadership to Super Sarko.
Visitors to the Elysée palace report that Sarkozy is in confident, Napoleonic form, bursting to get to grips with the enemy and restore peace in the land. "I am not ignorant in the matter of finance," Sarkozy reminded bankers at a meeting on Tuesday after he had overseen the French end of the bail-out of the Dexia banking and insurance corporation. The one-time Finance Minister wagged his forefinger and told the financiers to get back to their traditional trade, according to le Figaro.
The President has seized the occasion of France's turn in the European presidency to try to forge a continent-wide, even global, solution to the upheaval. He believes that Europe must to pull together with a trans-national response, especially since 15 share the same currency.
The trouble is that his fellow leaders do not see Sarko as their saviour. The two other bigs -- Gordon Brown of Britain and Angela Merkel of Germany -- have reluctantly agreed to turn up in Paris for a Sarko-chaired summit tomorrow (Saturday) along with Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, but only after they knocked down talk of a pan-European bail-out.
Sarkozy denied today that he had ever floated the idea, which was aired by Christine Lagarde, his Finance Minister, in an interview with a German newspaper. Lagarde, a business lawyer with no previous experience in finance or politics, has been a liability since she got her job last year, but it seems unlikely that she would have launched the idea all by herself. The Germans mischievously, attached the tag of 300 billion euros (433 billion dollars) to Lagarde's kite and shot it down as unthinkable. "I am not going to give blank cheques to the banks," said Merkel.
The European leaders are turning up for their session on Saturday with no common strategy, even though three of the four are in the euro single currency zone. "The idea is to hammer out an accord on the philosophy and the principles of what a response to the crisis could be," said a Sarkozy aide.
Germany and Britain are sticking to the idea that there can be no pooled bail-out fund and that each country is responsible for handling its own case. But they agree on the need for some kind of coordination, especially after Ireland jumped the gun with a reckless pledge to back all bank deposits there.
Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch Prime Minister, suggested to Sarkozy in Paris yesterday that each country should set aside an agreed sum for capital injections in their own financial institutions. He proposed three percent of each country's Gross Domestic Product, which, he said would amount to 380 billion euros (524 billion dollars) across Europe.
The EU will no doubt come up with some co-ordination, but the experts are far from confident that this will be enough to restore calm. Some of the pessimists are even saying that the crisis could be the undoing of the single currency. Its critics have long predicted that without a European government to balance the supra-national European Central Bank, the nine-year-old currency would be vulnerable at times of trouble. "The Europeans are incapable of agreement on how to save their endangered banking system," said a pessimistic commentary in today's le Monde. Even Jean-Claude Trichet, the French boss of the ECB has been sounding the alarm. The banking crisis is the worst economic upheaval that Europe has faced since World War Two, he said yesterday.
Super Sarko can be very persuasive at times. I hope that he can whip up a bit of team spirit at his summit tomorrow.
This might be an exercise in what the French call "shooting at the ambulance", or kicking someone when they are down. But here's a look at the French reaction to Sarah Palin.
Like the Gallic adoration of Barack Obama, the French view of John McCain's vice-presidential choice has been simplified by the cultural filter. The personnage of Palin and the initial enthusiasm she generated were puzzling for a country that disdains displays of faith and moral certainty. Her convention joke about hockey moms being pitbulls with lipstick took a lot of explanation.
In le Monde, the elegant Dominique Dhombres explained that Palin was an elemental type from l'Amérique profonde. "She is a go-getter, almost an assault tank. A virago ? That's for you to decide... She believes in God, America, the family and firearms. She defines herself as 'une maman hockey'."
On France-Inter, the main state-run radio station, a commentator this morning described Palin as une sacrée bigote -- a really sanctimonious woman (literally 'a holy bigot', though the words are softer in French).
French feminists have had the biggest trouble with Palin. They have come round to the conclusion that she is a dangerous agent of anti-feminism. "The exhibition of this fundamentalist version of femininity and maternity in the American presidential election concerns all of us," wrote Julia Kristeva in Libération. "Whether she represents the banality of evil or tragic caricature, can this strangling of women's emancipation... be reversed?"
Elle, the thinking Parisienne's fashion weekly, denounced Palin on Monday as "the incarnation of a new femininism, as dangerous as the 'Islamic feminism', which has recently been invented by the Muslim fundamentalists." Marie-Françoise Colombani, Elle's editorial columnist, concluded that Palin was proof that the "worst enemy of woman is often a woman."
Palin's self-undoing with her inept interviews has been greeted with relief and a little gloating. Headlines today called her "Sarah la gaffeuse" and McCain's Achilles Heel. Libération had fun filling a page with her confused answers to questions from Katie Couric and others. Her words about Vladimir Putin "raising his head" and flying over Alaska and her incoherent views on the Wall Street bail-out have been prompting widespread mirth.
Below, from today's le Nouvel Observateur, McCain says: "There's only one solution left." Palin replies: "Bomb Wall Street".
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's ambassador in Kabul, has a reputation for holding strong opinions and making them heard. He may not, however, have wanted his views on the state of the allied effort in Afghanistan to be published in a French newspaper.
This nightmare for any diplomat appears to have happened today. Le Canard Enchaîné, a satirical weekly that often publishes embarrassing leaks, has printed extracts from a cable from the French deputy ambassador after a meeting with Sir Sherard.
The French Foreign Ministry tells us that it deplores the publication but does not deny the existence of the cable. According to François Fitou, the French deputy ambassador to Kabul, Cowper-Coles, 53, thinks that the war is lost and the allies should leave the country to a dictator. That is hardly the view of the British government -- or of President Sarkozy.
The French Socialist opposition holds about the same dim view on the Afghan campaign, in which France has some 3,000 troops. French military officers have been arguing the same points privately.
In his cable to President Sarkozy's office and Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, Fitou summarised Sir Sherard's thinking thus, according to le Canard.
The British ambassador and his deputy have in turn contacted me to pass on their analysis of the situation before the Franco-British meeting on Afghanistan. These were their main points:
-- The current situation is bad. The security situation is getting worse. So is corruption and the government has lost all trust. Our public statements should not delude us over the fact that the insurrection, while incapable of winning a military victory, nevertheless has the capacity to make life increasingly difficult, including in the capital.
-- The presence -- especially the military presence -- of the coalition is part of the problem, not the solution. The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them. In doing so, they are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis (which, moreover, will probably be dramatic.
Ambassador Cowper was also quoted as telling the French the following:
The reinforcement of the military presence would have a perverse effect: it would identify us even more clearly as an occupying force and it would multiply the number of targets (for the insurgents).
We have no alternative to supporting the United States in Afghanistan... but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one.
"Within five or ten years from now... (it would be positive) if Afghanistan were governed by an acceptable dictator... This outlook is the only realistic one and we should prepare our public opinion to accept it... In the short term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan.... The American strategy is destined to fail.
Since posting this, we have heard from British sources that the meeting with Fitou took place but that the ambassador's quoted remarks represented a "parody" of what he said. Our sources take particular exception to the line about installing a dictator, which the ambassador never uttered, they say.
 When no blog topic leaps to mind, at least there is usually a new French tax to report.
This year, we have had the fish tax, a two percent levy which is supposed to help fishermen but has put up the price for consumers. New taxes also apply to junk mail and stock options (almost the same thing nowadays). A couple of weeks ago ministers proposed a "picnic tax", to be levied on throw-away cutlery and paper plates. President Sarkozy scotched that after a week of mockery.
Today, the government has quickly squashed the latest wheeze: a junk food tax. Roselyne Bachelot, the Health Minister, has rejected, for the time being at least, a parliamentary call for value-added (sales) tax to be almost quadrupled on "les produits de grignotage et de snacking" (grignotage means snacking, or nibbling).
The taxe sur la malbouffe (junk food) would be applied to high-fat and high-sugar, processed foods such as potato crisps (chips), chocolate bars and sodas. "Is it right that a kilogramme of potatoes should be taxed at the same rate as a sweet spread?" asked Valérie Boyer, the member of parliament who led the group behind the proposal. To incite healthy eating, they also want the tax to be cut to almost nothing on fresh fruit and vegetables.
Boyer's mission was to devise a plan for stemming the obesity that is increasingly afflicting France. The fat problem is nowhere near as bad as in many other parts of Europe and North America, but France is catching up. One in two adults is overweight and 17 percent are obese -- measured as body mass index of 30 and over. The most worrying thing is the accelerating mass of French children. One in five is overweight.
The fight against obesity should be declared "the great national cause of 2009," said Boyer. Children should be the primary target since a fat child stands an 80 percent chance of staying that way for life, she said. One of her big suggestions is a campaign to persuade mothers to breast feed their children -- still a minority exercise in France.
Needless to say, the food industry is fiercely opposed to Boyer's proposal. "No product is bad for health or it would be withdrawn from the market," said the main industry association. Anyway, it would be impossible to decide what qualified for the tax, it said. Would a French fry be deemed a vegetable or
junk? Would chocolate éclairs and the rest of the favourites from the patisserie be super-taxed ? Surely not.
The tax idea was batted aside because President Sarkozy has given orders to his government to stop frightening people with new taxes when times are hard. Bachelot, the least slim of his female cabinet ministers, said that the tax would penalise poorer people, those most prone to unhealthy diets. Education was the answer, she said.
But there's not much sign that this is working. Health advisories have been required on processed food advertising for the past couple of years, but the incitement to exercise and avoid sugar and fat have made little impact.
You remember Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate who was defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy in the run-off for the French presidency last year. Last night, Ségo relaunched her faltering run for the Socialist leadership with a bizarre show at a Paris venue normally used for pop concerts.
Her performance at the Zénith was distinctly odd, a flaky mix of rock and religious gathering.
In a way it was a response to the other bizarre spectacle of the past week -- Sarkozy recasting himself as Emile Zola, defender of the downtrodden workers and scourge of the capitalist classes.
Royal, 55, who is down in the polls and increasingly a figure of mockery, has transformed her act. Instead of her Joan-of-Arc white, she was wearing cool jeans and a long shirt as she harangued 3,500 of her faithful and presented a string of musical acts. He hair had been curled. She had been heavily coached to loosen up her body language. She strutted and gesticulated, more rock queen than politician and she looked pretty good.
But her message was the same one that lost her the election: She has been anointed by some mystical power to lead the French people to salvation; she is the victim of betrayal and persection by rivals in the bedraggled Socialist party. She did not even mention the word Socialist although she wants to be chosen party leader in November and run again for the presidency.
"I am here today. I will be there tomorrow. Nothing will make me retreat from the path that I have chosen. Never have I knelt in submission. Never have I thought of giving up."
The crowd loved it, but for non-believers, it seemed that Saint Ségo has truly lost the plot Henri Emmanuelli, one of party barons, said the show was more like a cult communion. Laurent Fabius called it "show-biz, not politics". An IFOP poll in today's Journal du Dimanche confirmed how much stardom Royal has lost since the presidential race. She is running well behind Bertrand Delanoe, the Paris Mayor and Martine Aubry, the uncharismatic Mayor of Lille, in the affections of both the public and Socialist supporters. Forty three percent of Socialists want Delanoe to run the party but only 24 percent want Royal. Among the public at large, the figure is 18 percent for Royal.
I mentioned the other day how the Socialists have failed to score any advantage with the economic crisis and the discrediting of the liberal financial system. There was proof in another poll, by CSA for le Parisien today. Asked whom they trusted to limit the damage to France, only 26 percent chose the Socialist opposition, compared with 47 percent who still have faith in Sarkozy's administration. Sixty-seven percent said that they did not trust the Socialists.
That is quite remarkable, given Sarko's continuing unpopularity and France's traditional hostility to business and the Socialists' creed of state intervention and welfare protection.
Sarkozy, the pro-American friend of France's business world, has as usual manouevered fast to grab the advantage. He has donned the left's own clothes, posing as protector of the citizen against the ravages of the financial market place.
"The idea of an all-powerful market without any rules and any political intervention is mad. Self-regulation is finished. Laissez faire is finished. The all-powerful market that is always right is finished."
Sarko also won plaudits in Europe when he called in the United Nations last week for the punishment -- presumably imprisonment -- of those responsible for the market melt-down. Of course he made no suggestion on how to achieve this.
To be fair, Sarko did argue that the credit collapse was not a crisis of capitalism. The market just needs to be policed in the way that French governments have been doing since the middle ages. That's part of why the French Left is not profiting more from the mess. The French right, including Sarkozy and the Gaullist family from which he emerged, have never given up the tradition of dirigisme and state management of the economy. The French approach no longer looks so old-fashioned and 20th century as it did only a few weeks ago.
One leading French Socialist is enjoying saying 'I told you so'. In his first comment on the past week's upheaval, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, claimed victory for his creed of regulation.
"The dominant ideology was for the regulation of the markets by the market itself. I think it's finished. The ideology of self-regulation has been smashed by events. The state and its authority are back," he told JDD newspaper.
He may be in Washington, but DSK, as he is known, has his eye on the French presidency next time round, in 2012. An opinion poll in le Parisien today puts him at the top of the list as France's favourite potential Socialist candidate -- far ahead of Ségolène Royal.
 
A small black shape dropped into sight in my aeroplane's windscreen as we circled high over Calais in a brilliant blue haze after lunch today. Yves Rossy had just leaped from the safety of his jump plane. Following behind, we watched in awe as "Fusionman" extended the eight foot wings strapped to his back, ending his free-fall and swooped into level flight.
Like a black hawk, Rossy throttled up his four little but noisy jets, accelerating in level flight to over 100 knots and headed out towards the thin white line that shimmered through the haze on the other side of the Channel. The distant Dover Cliffs were the only thing we could make out in the intense blue goldfish bowl in which sky meets the sea with no horizon.
The Times' Cessna 182 was part of the little squadron of two helicopters and two planes that escorted Rossy as he made history, zooming like Buzz Lightyear, the spaceman of Toy Story, out into the wide blue yonder. Protected by a special air corridor, we tucked in behind the Pilatus Porter drop plane which was guiding Rossy, following him just above like a body guard, with the two yellow helicopters in tow. Six thousand feet below, Channel ferries zig-zagged through the dense stream of container ships.
The helicopter escort was comfort, should Rossy have been forced to ditch among the shipping in the cold grey-green water. But his path did not waver as we sped along in his wake, a member of a strange flock of birds following their jet-powered human leader in extended V formation.
Unlike Rossy, we were in a warm cockpit behind controls and a reassuring engine, talking to air traffic control and with GPS navigation. Rossy has no instruments except an audio altimeter in his helmet and his wristwatch. And, apart from the throttle, he has no flight controls, just his body. To steer, climb or descend he moves his head and limbs slightly, a skill he first learned as a sky-diver. "I fuse with my machine. It was my dream as a boy to be a bird," he told me before the flight.
Within 10 minutes, the white lighthouse on Saint Margaret's bay hove into slight and the jetman descended, wheeling into a left turn as he crossed the coastline. Along with the flock we pulled aside to get out of his way as Rossy performed a spectacular "victory" figure of eight, turning out over the sea again to face the wind. We watched from just above as his blue, steerable parachute unfurled and Rossy lined up with the field where the media crowd waited. No-one said anything on the radio. "Bravo !". The cheer went up from my French companions in the Cessna when we saw Rossy touch down. "Spectaculaire!"
Much the same would have been heard near the same spot 99 years ago this year when Louis Blériot swooped down in his monoplane, becoming the first powered aeroplane pilot to fly the Channel (balloon and dirigible pilots did it before Blériot)
Rossy, cheerful, gangly and boyish was coolness itself before take-off. "There should be no problem today," he said as he tucked into pasta and mineral water in a tent beside the old air terminal that still welcomes arrivals with a sign saying "Gateway to the Continent". "It feels right. The weather is holding", he said.
Red wine was on the table, but Fusionman touched none. On Thursday, Rossy cancelled because of fog which he said gave him butterflies in the stomach, a warning sign that he does not ignore. Minutes after our lunch, he donned his flame-retardant flight suit and his team wheeled out his wings to the Pilatus. Close up, the black Kevlar and foam wings with their four Thermos sized engines look distinctly home made, which they are. Rossy strapped on the contraption and took position in the Pilatus cabin, which has a flame-proof floor. That is because he lights his four engines standing on a platform by the open door with two of the motors still inside. Several fire extinguishers are held at the ready.
"See you the other side, he waved' at his team as we took off ahead of the Pilatus to climb to await him.
The world's latest aviation pioneer has only a weekend to absorb the adrenalin. On Monday, he takes command of his usual "office" -- the captain's seat in a Swiss International Airbus 320 in which he will fly tourists to Luxor and Sharm El Sheikh.
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Regulars here may remember Yves Rossy, the Swiss airline pilot who has turned himself into the world's first human jet. I spent the day with him today at Calais as he prepared to strap on his wings and become the first jetman cross the English Channel.
At the last minute, with TV networks broadcasting live, fog rolled in over the landing area at Dover so he had to call off the flight, which starts with a free-fall from a plane. (That's him in the picture getting the bad news from Dover.) He is going to try again tomorrow (Friday) lunchtime.
Rossy, a lanky, boyish 49-year-old was disappointed after preparing himself mentally all morning for what remains a dangerous mission. His flight of about 23 miles will take only about 13 minutes at 115 MPH, but if he runs out of fuel too soon or his four little jet engines cut, he must splash down under parachute in the cold grey water of the Channel.
We flew up from Paris in a Cessna to tag along behind the little escort fleet of two helicopters and two planes. The visibility on the French side of the Channel was already so poor that I found it hard to make out the Calais airport in the murk below us. That's when we small-time pilots bless GPS, the satellite positioning system. I cannot imagine what it would be like to fly in the same conditions with no instruments and no flight controls apart from your body. That's what Rossy does when he is being Fusionman, the name he uses for his human flying machine. Rossy, who is constantly cheerful, said the descending fog was just one variable too much.
"There are so many unknown factors. We don't want to add another layer," he said after being told by phone of the closing cloud. His senses told him not to push it, despite the pressure of heavy media attention and commitments to sponsors. "I have butterflies in my stomach and that's a bad sign," he said as he rolled his wings back from the Pilatus jump plane. "I only have one life and I would rather keep it."
I hope that he makes it tomorrow. He has to be back in the captain's seat of his A320 Airbus flying out of Zurich early next week. The forecast is better but we're expecting a headwind wind that could force another cancellation. With only just enough jet fuel to get across the Straits, Fusionman has no margin for error.
The pressure to perform on schedule is a strain that the early aviators did not suffer so much. Only a few reporters were in attendance at Calais and Dover in July 1909 when Louis Blériot, a French pioneer, became the first man to fly the Channel in an aircraft.
We'll make another attempt to watch Yves from the air tomorrow. You can watch him live on natgeotv.com
[Calais pictures by Alastair Miller]
Perhaps it's the onset of autumn, but sometimes it seems that France almost enjoys bringing itself down. But the gloom should be taken with a pinch of salt. The French enjoy life more than they let on; being negative is just a national trait.
The struggle to survive in hard economic times is daily news. Rubbing it in today was word of a 25 percent jump in bankruptcies among cafes and restaurants. And we heard from a state outfit today that 5.5 million people -- nearly nine percent of the population -- have suffered a Major Depressive Episode over the past year. [Report with English translation here]. It's difficult to find comparisons but about 12 percent of Americans are said to experience an MDE in their lifetimes (ok, according to Wikipedia).
To help understand, radio stations hauled out depresssed people this morning to explain what it was like to have le blues permanent. And then there was an item on two young women in eastern France who killed themselves under a train after an internet suicide pact.
We have also been reminded that the French rank themselves among the least happy people of the developed world. Libération yesterday hauled out British research to wonder why the Danes, Swiss and Austrians rate themselves the happiest people in the world, while the French brood in 64th place, behind such jolly nations as Guyana, Argentina, Mongolia and El Salvador. You get an idea from the world map of global happiness from Leicester University below.
Eva Joly, a Norwegian (19th place) who became a famous investigating judge in Paris, said on the radio that Nordic states were happy because their societies did not exclude categories of the population like France -- the unemployed, immigrants and so on.
The closest correlation to well-being is national wealth, the Leicester researchers note. With the exception of a few countries such as Mongolia, the richer countries are the happiest. But it's also clear though that people rate their "underlying state of happiness" against differing scales. It's perhaps surprising that the supposedly gloomy Scandiwegians, with their cold, dark winters, are so cheery while the Americans, with their official pursuit of happiness since 1776, are only 23rd (Britons are 41st and Australians 26th).
So why do the French rate themselves so low in the bonheur league ? The stock answer includes the malaise bred by two decades of high unemployment and relative economic decline. This has generated a tide of nostalgia for the good old days. The latest case is Faubourg 36, an atmospheric feel-good film, which opened today to good reviews (poster above).
Yet France knows that it is the envy of the world for the quality of its life. It has space, beauty and a good climate. For centuries it cultivated wit, lightness and the art of living. In the 18th century the Germans, Dutch and Swedes coined the expression "to live like God in France" and they still say it. Despite the unemployment, France has done a lot right in recent decades -- spending on public services and infrastructure that has been allowed to decay in the UK, the USA and elsewhere. As Time magazine has just noted in an hilarious column, the collapse of the financial markets have converted the United States into a wannabe France.
France just does not like to admit its relative good fortune, I suspect out of old fears of tempting the devil, the neighbours or tax inspectors. And I wouldn't believe those figures on depression. Franck Chaumont, a Paris hospital psychiatrist, says that the malady has become the latest health fixation. "Do I see many more depressed people in my practice than before? I would say no," he told Libération. "But I see a lot more people who say that they are depressed."
Footnote: There is some argument about the origin of the German "living like God in France" saying. Some claim that it was a reference to the rejection of religion by French enlightenment philosophers. Nobody bothered God in France. It's interesting that France deems itself the unhappiest nation in western Europe by far. It also ranks as one of the least religious. No connection, I suppose.
How do you run a military campaign in the age of cell phones, the internet and media emotion ? The difficulty of doing so is being illustrated in France as the Parliament votes today on the continuing deployment of French forces in Afghanistan.
There is little doubt that President Sarkozy will win the endorsement but the government is embarrassed by the anger that has followed the deaths of 10 soldiers in a Taleban ambush
France heard immediately that the August 18 battle at Sarobi, 30 miles east of Kabul was a disaster. Survivors phoned home to their families the night afterwards and they also talked to reporters about the failures that allowed the Taleban to overpower them. As well as the dead, 21 were wounded in the all-night fighting. Reinforcements arrived late, no reconnaissance had been carried out in a dangerous zone, air cover did not work and ammunition ran out.
Bereaved parents and partners of the young paratroopers then went on television and radio attacking the army for getting them into the mess and Sarkozy for keeping France in Afghanistan. The President flew to Kabul to comfort the troops and the families were flown out to visit to the site of the ambush "to help them in their mourning".
Wives of soldiers in the French contingent were on the radio this morning complaining that they could not stand the strain of knowing their men were in possible combat. "If he doesn't phone by 8 pm I start worrying myself sick," said one. Others called for Sarkozy to bring the boys home from a mistaken war. Wives also reported that their husbands were poorly equipped to fight. One soldier has to take off his body armour to shoot because it is too big, his wife said. Another wife reported that morale in the Kabul detachment was very low.
The latest fuss is over the leaking of an American report on the French bungling of the hillside battle. According to the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper, which published extracts, the French paratroopers ran out of bullets and did not have proper communication equipment, forcing them to stop fighting after 90 minutes. The Taleban were better equipped and trained and used incendiary bullets to punch holes in the French armoured vehicles, and so on. The army denied that this was a Nato analysis, saying that it was just an ill-informed e-mail from an officer with American special forces who had taken part in the French patrol. But the damage has been done.
Not surprisingly, a poll after the ambush showed that 55 percent want Sarkozy to pull France's 2,700 troops out of the Nato operation in Afghanistan. With few exceptions today, the media are calling for a rethink and some for a French withdrawal. A serving soldier's mother wrote a plea in L'Humanité, the communist daily, calling Sarkozy and the generals liars at the service of Uncle Sam and ending: "Give us back our children".
Sarkozy and his government are committed to staying in Afghanistan, where France has been part of the Nato force since 2001. But they are hard on the defensive with a public opinion and military and political experts in a defeatist consensus that the war can never be won.
Of course democracies need public support to send troops into danger and the media are there to expose failures. But discussion of the merits of French engagement in Afghanistan is being drowned out by emotion over what in earlier ages would have been deemed a skirmish. This is by no means typically French. It happens everywhere now that we all expect instant information and video to go with it.
Take a good look. Henri Matisse's painting and many like it could soon be banned from the internet, at least in France. That might sound like a joke, but if the health lobby has its way, images of wine or any promotion of alcohol consumption on the web will be deemed to infringe France's strict laws on drink advertising.
[Matisse: la Désserte/ The Dinner Table]
This has arisen from a court decision which forced the Heineken company to block French access to its corporate web site. The case was brought last February by the National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction (ANPAA) on the grounds that France's 1991 law on alcohol promotion does not permit it on the internet. The worldwide web was in embryo when the so-called Evin law was passed, but, say the campaigners, that is no excuse for breaking the law.
Since the Heineken ruling, some of the biggest brands have shut out French visitors for fear of prosecution over what is a legal grey area. A click from France on the Courvoisier site down in Cognac country, for example, elicits the message: "Sorry, the regulations of your country do not authorise us to give you access to our site."
Internet visitors who identify themselves as French are even banned from dropping in on Orlando wines in South Australia -- because they are owned by France's Pernod Ricard drinks giant. The site will let you in if you say you are from almost anywhere else, including Kuweit and the United Arab Emirates.
"We are not inciting people to crime. We are sensitive to the risks of alcohol," said Frédéric Delesque, Marketing Director of Camus Cognac, which also bowed to the law and blocks French visitors. "There are three countries in the world which ban the discussion of alcohol: Iran, Afghanistan and France. It is a pity for the image of our products," he told us.
The government is preparing to draft a law to bring the internet into the Evin law, which defines the way that alcoholic drinks may be advertised and limits this only to the press, the radio and on posters. The health lobby want a complete purge of alcohol images and promotion from the internet, though the government is unlikely to go as far as that. Vineyards will no doubt be allowed to keep the sites that are one of their strongest marketing tools but there may be restrictions such as limiting advertising to certain hours of the French night.
In the meantime, the winemakers, merchants and drinks companies are fighting back, pointing out the absurdity of restricting alcohol on a medium which tolerates everything. "Today in France, the sight of a bottle of wine has become as offensive as a picture of war or pornography," said Daniel Lorson, a spokesman for CIVC , the industry body of champagne producers.
Nicolas Sarkozy promised to help the wine industry over the internet during his election campaign in early 2007, but his government has been taking a tough line, introducing measures to combat binge-drinking and under-age consumption and alcohol-related diseases.
The industry complains that it is being demonised and that an internet ban would hugely penalise one of the glories of the French economy and the national heritage. Among the recent successes of the anti-alcohol lobby has been the conviction last winter of le Parisien newspaper for breaching with Evin law with an editorial supplement on champagne. The newspaper argued in vain that its articles were not promoting alcohol.
Even the alcohol-fuelled world of sport has not been left unscathed. When Liverpool played Marseille in this week's Champions League football match, the logo of Carlsberg, the team's main sponsor, was absent from their shirts. Rugby union's Heineken Cup is simply called the European Rugby trophy in France.
The campaign to hide drink in the world's biggest wine-consuming country is inevitably producing jokes. According to one, the state is to ban dozens of place-names because they illicitly promote alcohol consumption. First to go will be Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne and Cognac.
Here is an update on Edvige and the picnic tax -- subjects of posts here in the past two weeks. Both have just been dumped by President Sarkozy after they stirred a public fuss.
Data on sexual orientation, health and other private matters will not be collected on the police data base, which will no longer be called Edvige.
Jean-Louis Borloo, the Environment Minister (above) was told to stop alarming the citizenry with new green taxes.
Sarkozy is said to be angry with his ministers for mishandling their communication, not with the schemes themselves. It was a mistake to personify a snooping system with a woman's name and to allow something to be called une taxe pique-nique. The police intelligence service will continue to compile profiles of more or less anyone they want with a rebaptised system and in a few weeks, Borloo will still produce a carrot-and-stick scheme to promote greener consumer habits. It will focus on electronic and other consumer appliances and not include the picnic items.
Sarkozy has allowed Michèle Alliot-Marie, his Interior Minister, to be pilloried over Edvige, although he had been behind the data base and saw nothing wrong with it until it caused a stir. The President is off to New York for a relaxing weekend with Carla Bruni before addressing the United Nations next week. He has yet to say a word in public on the financial turmoil that has beset the world this week. He is to give his view on the crisis next Thursday in Toulon.
You would think that this Black September for the capitalist world would have been a godsend for the French Left. The Socialist opposition should be having a field day saying 'we told you so' about the liberalism and deregulation which has reigned for the past quarter century and been embraced up to a point by France. But the party is too busy tearing itself to pieces over its vacant leadership to spare time for ideas. I'll come back later to the war among Ségolène Royal, Bertrand Delanoe, Martine Aubry and the rest of the would-be bosses. They are to decide the leadership in Rheims in November. In the meantime, Sarkozy does not have much explaining to do.
This clip from the Monday night news is an amusing glimpse of the bumpy debut of Laurence Ferrari, the blonde star who was elevated this summer to the news throne of TF1, France's dominant television channel.
Ferrari was trying to interview Al Pacino and Robert de Niro from the studio about Righteous Kill, their new film. The translation fell apart and the two US stars, who were standing outside a cinema on the Champs Elysées, made fun of her in a bored way. The embarrassment turned into farce when a familiar lanky figure strolled into the picture -- Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, or PPDA, the popular presenter who was sacked to make way for her.
Ferrari, 42, was supposed to revive the flagging fortunes of le Journal de 20 Heures, the half-hour weeknight news that is watched more than any other in Europe. You may remember how the 60-year-old PPDA was dumped at the suggestion of President Sarkozy, who disliked him and was romancing Ferrari for a time after his divorce last year.
Ferrari, a respected journalist, made a solid start on August 25 with a 40 percent rating, or over eight million viewers. But her audience has dwindled ever since, hitting 32 percent at the end of last week. She comes over as bland and a little unsure of herself and she has has failed to show the punchy interview style that was supposed to be her hallmark. On Monday she gave a shamefully free ride to Ségolène Royal, the Socialist who wants to take over the party in November. Viewers -- especially older ones -- have been switching over to France 2, TF1's state-owned lesser rival.
TF1, which is owned by Martin Bouygues, a close Sarkozy friend, is standing by Ferrari -- for the moment. I don't want to exaggerate, but the stakes are high with millions of euros riding on her success. The channel's prime time advertising revenue depends on the pull of the news show that long served as nightly communion for France's lower orders. The television landscape may be fragmenting with competition from multiple channels, but TF1 will not let an under-performing Ferrari slow it down for long.
 For once Nicolas Sarkozy had some good news to announce this morning -- the release by French naval commandos of two hostages who had been held aboard their yacht off Somalia for the past two weeks (story here).
Sarko was in his best commander-in-chief mode -- with the Prime Minister and Armed Forces chief at his sides -- when he staged a 10am news conference to take the credit. He had been up all night running the operation, he said. He ordered the assault when it became clear that the pirates were taking le Carré d'As, the yacht, to the Somali mainland. Let this be a lesson to pirates everywhere, he said, that France would not allow crime to pay. "Whenever any French person is in danger in the world, the state will use all means to save them."
Sarko deserves praise. He took the risk of ordering the assault and he would have been immediately blamed if it had gone wrong. This is the kind of action that he does well. His talents as a tough enforcer made his reputation when he was Interior Minister and police chief from most of 2002-2007.
In an earlier existence, in 1993, I watched Sarko's courage close up when he negotiated with a dangerous hostage taker. A man calling himself "Human Bomb" had taken a class of kindergarten children hostage in Neuilly. Younger Sarko, then Mayor of Neuilly and a junior government minister, went in to negotiate with the man and persuaded him to release some children. We were waiting outside behind a police line. Human Bomb was eventually shot dead by officers from the RAID, the police intervention unit, and all the children rescued.
It is fair game to note, however, the brazen way that Sarko goes about maximising the credit. His performance this morning would have been worthy of George W Bush or Vladimir Putin at their most macho. Every citizen could count on Sheriff Sarko, he said. "For me two French hostages on the Carré d'As were the same as 30 on the Ponant." Le Ponant was the big cruising yacht whose crew and passengers were released after the payment of a ransom last spring. French forces seized six of the pirates and some of the ransom immediately afterwards. Today's action brings to a total of 12 the Somali pirates now enjoying the hospitality of French mainland jails.
The past few months have shown that the unpopular President has benefited from his exploits outside France. His aproval ratings have climbed about seven points from their high 30s or low 40s of the late spring, according to polls. The pollsters say this comes from his deft crisis management abroad in recent weeks: notably his brokering of a Russian ceasefire in Georgia on behalf of the European Union. France also reacted well to his handling of the deaths of 10 soldiers in Afghanistan, despite the unpopularity of his decision to send troops there.
Speedy Sarko, the micro-managing "hyper-president", may even be giving way to the classical kind of head of state that France has known since the creation of the Vth Republic 50 years ago next month. In this model, set by Charles de Gaulle, the president runs foreign policy while staying in the background as his Prime Minister takes the domestic political heat. Another sign of this is a sudden slide in the ratings of François Fillon, the Prime Minister, who until recently was much more popular than his boss.
Sarkozy was determined to let nothing spoil his glory today. He refused to say a word about the international financial crisis which is compounding French unhappiness over rising prices.
The French government has just invented another good reason to use china, glasses and cutlery when you eat outdoors. It's going to put a substantial tax on cardboard plates and plastic bags, glasses and eating implements.
The so-called taxe pique-nique is to be modelled on a Belgian law which came into effect a year ago. This applies a 20 percent levy on plastic bags, wrap, disposable dishes and cutlery. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the Ecology Secretary, confirmed the tax this morning after it was disclosed by Le Journal du Dimanche. She did not say how big it would be.
President Sarkozy's government has been seriously smitten by the green bug. The picnic tax is part of an imminent big expansion of its "bonus-malus" scheme, which adds a penalty to the price of high-polluting cars and rewards those who buy green- friendly vehicles.
Starting from next January, the green bonus-malus system will be applied to about 20 products, including refrigerators, television, computers, mobile phones, wooden furniture, lightbulbs, paint, detergent, tyres and perhaps even new apartments and houses. The Ecology Secretary added a new item today: disposable nappies (diapers). "We could arrange it so that all maternity hospitals teach you how to use reuseable nappies," she said.
France already puts up with more taxes of different types than most places but the beauty of the scheme, in the eyes of Jean-Louis Borloo, the superminister for the Environment, is that the money will be given back to people who choose the most environmentally virtuous products. The system has worked well with cars. Buyers of small vehicles get up to 1,000 euros back. Completely electric vehicles will get 5,000 euros. Borloo is working on items and the levies ahead of the 2009 budget later this month. But the Finance Ministry is said to be unhappy over the complexity of a system that will need a whole new buraucracy to operate and which could dent consumption when the economy is already struggling.
Maybe they should just ban all produits jetables -- disposable products -- for picnics. French food and drink deserves more than cardboard and plastic. Here's the correct setting for un pique-nique (except for the paper napkins).
Here's a test for French-speakers and sticklers for correct grammar -- and this item is not going to pull in 500 comments from across the Atlantic.
Le Figaro has leaped on what it called une énorme faute d'orthographe -- a spelling howler -- in the poster for the Mamma Mia musical which has just opened in France. Thousands of copies are on display around the country and they are pasted on buses and the Paris Métro.
Spot the mistake. It's in the text enlarged below.
I wouldn't have noticed the error, but it's a nice example of the perennial problem of homophones -- different words that sound the same -- in French. It is grammatically wrong to write prêts d'oublier (a marriage that you not ready to forget). It should be près d'oublier. (... that you are not close to forgetting). Prêts and près are pronounced the same way but if you want to say prêts (ready), you have to make it à oublier and not d'oublier (click here for more)
Only two of the four native speakers I questioned spotted the error and only when pushed. It's no big deal, but given the great weight that French education places on the language's difficult spelling, it's amusing that the mistake got through. I'm sure it's being used in school dictées as I write.
Just to be a nuisance, we asked Universal if they were going to withdraw the posters. Anne Crozat, their spokeswoman gave us a frosty answer. "It's pathetic. Le Figaro alerted us to the error. Haven't they got more important news to deal with?... We are not going to re-do all the posters because of that".
In case you're wondering, France's cinema critics have given the movie generally good reviews, though some say they can't tell if it's a disaster or a brilliant parody. Le Parisien (not high brow) was amazed that Meryl Streep could play so out of character -- and sing, sort of. Le Monde's high brow Thomas Sontinel seemed to apologise to readers for liking it. "Against all logic, most audiences love the film," he wrote. At the press showing in Paris, the usually blasé critics even found themselves clapping along with the Abba oldies, he reported. But he added a health warning: "Mamma Mia should be avoided by people who do not like weepy comedy, bad clothes taste and actors who can't sing."
A priest in full soutane overtook me this morning. He was pedalling furiously on a Vélib, one of the Paris self-service bicycles. It was a sign of the day's big event -- the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI on a mission to stiffen morale in France's fading Catholic church.
[News story here]
The shy pontiff is not exciting the crowds as the late John-Paul II did on his visits to the Church's eldest daughter, as France has been known since the middle ages. But he has an unlikely ally in the person of the twice-divorced, not very devout President Sarkozy.
Sarko and Carla Bruni, the supermodel wife who this year converted to monogamy, went to Orly to pay the Pope the rare honour of an airport welcome. It's the first time that Sarko has made such an airport trip since taking office in May last year.
The President, a lapsed Roman Catholic, will as usual over-do things. He plans to the use the visit to renew his campaign for France to return to religious values and its Christian roots. He caused uproar at home but delighted the Pope when he first made the appeal in Rome last December (That was when he took along his friend Jean-Marie Bigard, the coarse comedian who does not believe that the 9/11 attacks happened).
Sarko was widely reproached for infringing the doctrine of laicité, the 1905 law that keeps religion out of all official aspects of the Republic. As an example of how this works, Charles de Gaulle, a very practising Catholic, did not take communion in public when he was president. Hardline republicains say that Sarko is trying to restore the church to the privileged role that it played in the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte. Interestingly, the Garde Républicaine band played The Emperor's March straight after the two anthems as the Pope reviewed the honour guard at the airport.
Sarkozy's doctrine of "laicité positive", as he calls it, means recognising that religion -- whether Christian, Muslim or any other -- has a valuable role in public life. "It is in the interest of the Republic that there are a lot of men and women who believe," he said in Rome. He compounded his offence in the eyes of France's leftwing, anti-clerical education establishment by saying that "the primary school teacher will never replace the priest" as a moral tutor for children.
Sarkozy persuaded le Saint Père, an impeccable French-speaker and scholar of modern French literature, to come to Paris before visiting Lourdes on Sunday in order to talk in the Elysée Palace and then address artists, intellectuals and scientists. He is unlikely to share with Sarko his very dark view of people who commit the "grave fault" of divorce, as he calls it. Over half a million people are expected to attend an evening service at Notre Dame Cathedral tonight and an open-air mass on the Esplanade des Invalides tomorrow. Nine thousand police are being deployed to guard him.
The trip is difficult because the Vatican sees France as one of the least godly among its senior flock -- certainly compared with the Americas, Poland, Ireland and the southern European nations. Just over half the French still call themselves Catholic but only seven percent of these attend mass regularly. There is a dire shortage of priests; hundreds of churches have closed; a majority of French children are born outside marriage.
The Vatican also faults its French church leaders for failing to market the faith more vigorously in the face of the state-enforced secularism. Monsignor André Vingt-Trois, the Archbishop of Paris, denied this week that the Pope was coming to deliver a pep talk and he insisted that "the church is not a field of ruins. I do not see him coming to tell us to pull up our socks," he said. "The Church in France is not gravely ill; it is even seriously alive."
Church French members conceded that their numbers have dwindled but they point to a new activism among younger believers who are focusing more on celebrating the faith than tradition. The trouble is that these younger Catholics are uneasy about the conservative, German-born Pontiff who was known as the PanzerKardinal when the he was the Vatican's doctrinal policeman.
Cardinal Vingt-Trois conceded yesterday: "For the French, the Pope is still John Paul II. He came to France every two or three years. It has to do with the two men's personalities. Benedict is not a man for the crowds. He is a very private person."
France has just notched up two royal weddings within eight months and you might say that speed was an element of both. Jean Sarkozy, 22, second son of the President, exchanged vows at his local town hall late yesterday with Jessica Sebaoun, 20, his long-time girlfriend.
An ugly episode involving French anti-semitism preceeded the wedding, of which more below.
Sarko senior was at the Neuilly mairie for the simple civil ceremony along with Carla Bruni, his third wife, whom he married last February. There were 100 guests, many from the money, politics and show-biz set that Jean and his dad frequent. Among them was Doc Gynéco, the louche rap singer and Sarkozy supporter who starred in a post here the other day.
Sarko senior married Bruni in haste, three months after meeting her. In contrast, his glamorous son has known his bride, heiress to the Darty retail fortune, since schooldays in Neuilly, his dad's political fiefdom. "I promised you at 16 that I would marry you before I was 26," Jean told Jessica at the ceremony. "Well, I have done it sooner." To quash rumours, Paris Match magazine was authorised to tell readers today that the new Madame Sarkozy is not expecting a baby.
In Jean's case, the speed applies to his meteoric leap to stardom in his own right over the past year. Pierre Sarkozy, 23, his brother, leads a quiet life as a rap music producer (I'm not making this up) but Jean is in a big rush, just like his father was.
Jean is known sometimes as Monsieur Fils -- a play on the title held by the king's brother (the previous king's second son) in royal days. But the prince insists that he is working his way up the ladder as a humble commoner.
Continue reading "Sarkozy's golden boy gets married " »
If anyone needed proof of France's love for Barack Obama, le Figaro offered it today with an opinion poll. This finds that 80 percent of the French want the Democrat candidate to win the US presidency while only eight percent favour John McCain.
The poll was carried out by TNS Sofres on September 2 and 3, before McCain benefited from the Sarah Palin bounce but it gives an idea of the overwhelming wish in France to see a President Obama take office. Eighty-six percent have a good opinion of him compared with only 35 percent for McCain. The strong support cuts across social class and the political spectrum. The most senior French politicians at the Democratic convention came from President Sarkozy's rightwing UMP party, not the leftwing opposition.
The BBC found pro-Obama feeling to be strong worldwide in a poll this week, but the passion seems to run higher in France than anywhere. There are reasons for this.
France has an idealised and schizophrenic view of the United States that dates back to 1776 when King Louis XVI helped the colonial insurgents fight Britain's peace-keeping force. France feels that it has a founding share in the nation which bestowed jazz, GIs, cocktails, JFK and Clint Eastwood on Europe. It dislikes what it sees as the more primary, messianic and intolerant America that is represented by Republicans and personified by George W Bush.
Continue reading "Barack Obama, the French American idol " »
 We are losing track of all the deceased French celebrities whose lives are being turned into cinematic nostalgia trips. French film-makers have discovered a taste for the American-style "bio-pic", and it's doing it rather well.
The fad was opened by La Môme (called La Vie en Rose abroad), a souped-up version of the melodramatic life of Edith Piaf. Even before that film became an international hit and Marion Cotillard won her Best Actress Oscar for the part last spring, a string of other bio-pics were in the works. After Piaf came Sagan, Diane Kurys' biography of Françoise Sagan, the self-destructive author of the teenage novel Bonjour Tristesse.
That movie, starring Sylvie Testud, was the last film that Nicolas Sarkozy went to the cinema to see, according to Carla Bruni, his wife. The latest in the genre is to be a version of the sad life of Romy Schneider, the Franco-Austrian actress who died in 1982 at the age of 42.
No fewer than three biopics are about to recount the meteoric rise of an orphaned Parisian hatmaker called Coco Chanel. The biggest of them is likely to be Coco Avant Chanel, directed by Anne Fontaine and starring Audrey Tautou (above), which is due out next year.
Out next month is a life of Michel Colucci, the subversive comic known as Coluche who was killed on his motor cycle in 1986 at the age of 42. Then comes is Ennemi Public Numéro Un, starring Vincent Cassel, the tale of Jacques Mesrine, a gangster who was shot dead in an ambush by Paris police in 1979.
Continue reading "Celebrity lives, the French new wave" »
This is a small gripe about how lightly our leaders spend money -- and other people's time. I have just spent a pointless nine hours on trains plus an unnecessary night in a hotel because Nicolas Sarkozy decided at the last minute that he preferred to have a decent sleep in his own bed in Paris (see Sarko's apology in update at end).
Sarko spent Monday doing his shuttle diplomacy between Moscow and Tbilisi, Georgia. He was due to fly back late at night for the long-planned summit between the European Union (represented by Sarkozy and the brass from Brussels) and Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian President. The session was due to take place at Evian, the spa town on lake Geneva. The meeting is quite important given that Ukraine, a country of 46 million people, is seen as Russia's next target after its de facto partition of Georgia.
(Here's the outcome of the summit)
Sarko's people knew that the day would be very long and that the President would not land back in France until the small hours today. But by the evening, Sarkozy was tired. His session with President Medvedev in Moscow had been especially trying. The president told people on his plane that he had picked up his jacket and threatened to walk out at one stage. Sarkozy prefers always to sleep at home, so he decreed late in the day that he would not make the trip to Evian. President Yushchenko would have to come to Paris instead.
We were just arriving in Evian after a long train journey. The grand Ermitage hotel was all set up for the summit, with French, Ukrainian and EU delegations in place and media pouring in. So it was about turn and a late-night free-for-all for transport back to Paris for the Ukraine talks.
The switch was just a nuisance to us humble reporters. But it cost the French and European tax-payer money and it annoyed the Ukrainians who are now being rushed through a shortened meeting at the Elysée Palace at the behest of France's impatient president. Speedy Sarko's indifference to protocol often ruffles feathers. He has annoyed India, Bulgaria, Britain and other parties over the past 15 months by cutting official and state visits to the strict minimum. That's his prerogative of course. But it would have been nice to have the dinner that they promised us at the Ermitage (below) last night instead of sitting on another train.
PS, I don't expect any sympathy. And I realise that this is the second post in a week about Evian.
Final note: Sarkozy has just apologised to Evian and those who made the pointless trip. "We got back to Paris at 5.30 am. You can understand that it was a bit complicated to leave again immediately [to Evian]".
Continue reading "The frustrations of keeping up with Sarkozy" »
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times and has previously reported from New York and Brussels.
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