Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

Chirac's murky stream

France is gripped, as we media people say, by yet another political scandal but it is one that no-one really wants. There are two versions to the so-called Clearstream affair. The dramatic one, pushed by Le Monde and Libération, holds that the Government of Dominique de Villepin is about to collapse after the Prime Minister was rumbled over a dirty tricks operation against Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister and his arch rival.

Then there is the light variant, promoted by the Government-friendly television networks which provide most of the French with their news. In this version, a routine political row has been sparked by a murky tale of a smear campaign involving bank accounts.  The secret services are somehow part of the story, which springs from the war between Villepin and Sarkozy for the succession to President Chirac.

Which version is a citizen supposed to believe ? It does not really matter because this very French affaire, involving secret agents and high state officials, is unlikely to reach any conclusion and will just rumble on into next spring's presidential elections.

Do you own budget

The words 'fun' and 'tax' do not usually occur in proximity but the French Government has managed to combine them. The Finance Ministry is going on line next month with a game in which citizens can try their hand at managing the public purse -- and the gazillion euro debt that goes with it.

Jean-Francois Copé, the young Budget Minister who is behind the Cyberbudget game, hopes that a little hands-on juggling with the 300 billion euro (375 bn dollars) annual balance sheet will teach the country's demanding citizens a lesson in reality. "Each French person can pretend they are the budget minister and make decisions to understand how much each ministry's budget costs - education spending, military spending, how it's all organised - and see what kind of decision we can make when we want to cut taxes," said Copé.  "The French want reform but gnash their teeth as soon as it means making savings. The idea is that when we cut taxes, we can't do it without creating deficits,"

La bonne vieille télé de France

Another posting about France looking backwards thanks to loads of state money, but the cause is a good one. 

Starting today, if you want to see what May 1968 was really like or watch what France was doing the day you were born, just click on www.ina.fr  (or read this from The Times)

The Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, the state archive of French broadcasting since the 1950s, has opened its vast library to the internet and it's mainly free. With its excellent search engine you can delve back to find chats with Edith Piaf, watch the young Brigitte Bardot in action, de Gaulle's press conferences, the original Magic Roundabout, young Johnny Hallyday or that 1983 moment when Serge Gainsbourg burnt a 500-franc note on prime time. Or you can enter your date of birth and just watch the news for that day.

Les cavalières de Paris

Parisians were taken aback at the weekend by the sight of 14 young women in black t-shirts riding grey horses down the Champs Elysées and through the Tuileries garden to the Louvre. The horsewomen were staging a demonstration to make a point: Paris is the only major world city where horses are banned.

The women, including writers, film directors and a fashion designer, had no permission for their stunt through the heavily policed heart of the capital. They were intercepted by the law but allowed to continue their ride from the Porte Dauphine on the west to the Place de la Bastille.

French in the air

Flying along the Normandy coast at the weekend, I witnessed a little episode of Anglo-French misunderstanding that could have had dire consequences.

The air around the delightful airfield at Saint-Valéry-en-Caux, a port south of Dieppe, was busy with aviators enjoying a spring Saturday. The radio frequency was filled with the position-reporting that goes on at fields without traffic control. You try to ensure safety and some order by telling other pilots where you are and what you will do next. In France this is done in French.

As I was joining the circuit to land, a woman's voice announced in English that her plane was landing on runway 25. Everyone else, however, was using runway 07, which is the same one in the opposite direction. The British crew did not understand the chatter and bowled into the circuit in the wrong direction while the French pilots scrambled to get out of their way.

State art and the show that got away

       Lovers of contemporary art are about to enjoy a feast with the opening of "Where are we going?",  a selection from one of the world's greatest private collections at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. The spectacular show is French owned and organised. It belongs to François Pinault, the billionaire luxury goods man. It was supposed to have been the heart of a great new museum in Paris but Gallic bureaucracy and politics forced it abroad.  (Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog is one of its 200 exhibits)         

A week after the April 30 opening in Venice,  another huge 200-piece exhibition of contemporary art is opening in the splendour of the the Grand Palais in Paris. Cherchez l'erreur, as the say -- spot the mistake.   This tale of two shows is yet another episode in the saga of France-versus-the-modern-world.      

(a work by Gérard Fromanger, who is boycotting the Paris show)

Fumbling a French audience

Peugeot's British shut-down (last post) landed me in a frustrating debate on Europe 1 radio last night. Their idea was to ask if there really was a modèle anglo-saxon in the light of the angry British reaction to the loss of the Ryton factory.

I tried to avoid the caricatures while running through the song about the different approach to working life on the other side of the Channel. Making the case against me was Catherine Mathieu, a gifted young economist from the OFCE, an influential forecasting institute. An expert in Britain, she came armed with a stack of figures to argue that France had created more jobs than Britain since the late 1990s, that the British state subsidised work to about the same degree as France and that laying off workers in Britain was actually harder than in France. In short, figures "proved" that all the talk about France's rigid economy and chronic high unemployment was wrong. It was no use asserting that her statistics were misleading to put it mildly. She was sure of herself.

Peugeot's English lesson

National trauma would be certain if a French car maker announced the closure of one of its domestic factories and dismissed all its workers. Shutting any factory in France means public outrage, strikes and soul-searching. Such action by one of the flagship Gallic marques would be unthinkable. So it was no surprise that Peugeot-Citroen has chosen a British factory to pay the price for limp sales and its shift towards low-cost production in central Europe.  In the eyes of France -- and British trade unions -- the shut-down of Peugeot's Ryton plant is a cruel lesson in the pain of globalisation. There is a sadistic touch because the evil capitalist this time is French and the victim is the nation that never stops lecturing France on the merits of flexibility and the free market.

Johnny, we never knew you

Most of the human race would have no trouble imagining a world without Johnny Hallyday. Johnny Who? In France, though, the notion of life without the beloved national rock monument is so absurd that it has been turned into the plot for a film. And don't scoff -- it is rather good. 

Lost causes and beaux gestes

France is spending its Easter weekend saluting what it sees as courageous acts in support of noble causes which might be better defined as lost. First there are the rave reviews for the great student revolt of spring 2006. Then there is the coronation of a new hero -- a Pyrenean member of parliament who staged a hunger strike which forced President Chirac and the Government to subsidise a Japanese factory in his constituency. Now France is admiring the suicidal action of the staff of France Soir, a once great newspaper which is on the verge of vanishing.

Reflections in tranquility

The peace of the Cévennes hills in southern France is all the more delicious after the din of daily demonstrations.  My telephone has been cut because someone forgot to pay the bill and the television does not work. To complete the isolation there is no mobile phone cover and the nearest newspapers are in the village 20 minutes across the valley. My only link with the outside is an old transistor radio which yesterday relayed news of General de Villepin's surrender in Paris.

The Prime Minister's collapse was hardly a hard fought Waterloo, to borrow an image from his beloved Bonaparte. On the orders of his commander-in-chief, Jacques Chirac, he simply capitulated to the students, trade unions and leftwing parties who had spent two months rebelling against his youth employment law. The parliament which approved the reform in March must now replace it with yet another scheme for subsidising jobs with tax money. Now over with a whimper, the war of the First Employment Contract (CPE) was an epic example of how not to govern and an illustration of France's unhappy state.

French bashing ou casser du Français

Please forgive an excursion into French to respond to a few points with the Anglo-Saxon volume turned down. I'll be back in English next time.

J'espère que nos amis non francophones me pardonneront une petite escapade dans la langue de Molière, mais je voudrais m'adresser ici aux bloggers français qui ont eu la gentillesse d'apporter leurs idées et de contribuer à ce débat quelquefois un peu trop Anglo-Saxon.

C'est d'abord une occasion pour moi de réfuter toutes ces allégations, plus ou moins gentiment exprimées, selon lesquelles mon opinion à propos du blocage actuel tient à l'aversion innée des Anglo-saxons contre le système français. Je pense notamment aux mots d'Hervé qui croit que les Anglais , de toute évidence, nous détestent ou à la remarque de Marc Millier qui pense que casser du Français est le sport préféré de cette pauvre perfide Albion.

The Might of the French State

It was hard not to feel sorry for Dominique de Villepin this morning as he submitted to the torture of a press conference on the débacle of his youth employment law. Exhausted and gaunt, the Prime Minister wielded his usual martial metaphors in response to the widespread belief that President Chirac may soon soon offer his head to the young protesters. As well as ditching his CPE law, de Villepin's departure may be needed to get them back into their classrooms.

The Prime Minister insisted that he would continue to "fight the battle" against unemployment. "This is the commitment that I made before the French people," he said."It is the spirit of responsibility and the sens de l'état which is mine." This "sense of state" may mean little in translation, but it means a lot in French because de Villepin is a civil servant. He represents no party and holds no elected office. He does hold a mystical belief in what he calls his mission in command of the Government. This was conferred on him by the state, or at least its embodiment, Jacques Chirac.

The street sees off de Villepin

Back from a dip into today's mass march against Dominique de Villepin's now defunct scheme for getting the young French into jobs. The mood was more mardi gras than manifestation as tens of thousands of kids -- teenage lycéens and university students -- gathered with the unions under spring sun in the Place de La République.

They were there not so much to fight the Government as to celebrate the strange surrender performed by President Chirac last weekend.  The fifth "national mobilisation" against de Villepin's law was probably the last and the protesters were determined to ram home their message of defiance. The air was thick with the fumes of merguez sausages, French fries and rock music. Dancers and jugglers mingled with the demo regulars from the public sector. A truck-born band struck up a jazz salsa and the march was off down the Boulevard du Temple towards the Bastille and on to the Place d'Italie on the Left Bank. Stores and cafes on the route were closed, some boarded up for fear of attack, but there was little sign -- so far -- of the violent wreckers from the outer housing estates who have visited recent marches. 

Sarkozy rides to the rescue

Confusion reigns in France after President Chirac finally delivered his solemn verdict on the labour reform that gave the students an excuse for revolt and a lease of life to the unions and fractured left. The brainchild of Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, was an excellent idea, Chirac told the nation in his broadcast from the Elysée Palace. So, he would sign the reform into law immediately. Er..except that it had a few problems so it would be suspended and sent back to parliament to be revised. In effect, this means that the President promulgated the law, as demanded by de Villepin and he killed it at the same time, as sought by the demonstrators, a majority of public opinion and of his own parliamentarians.

Chirac's performance was a study in pathos and an illustration of why France's Fifth Republic, with its monarchical presidency, has run its course. Here was a demonstration of impotence by the holder of the office that enjoys more executive power than that of the leader of any western democracy.