Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

Best wishes from Chirac

For the 12th and certainly last time, Jacques Chirac offers his New Year wishes to France tonight. We know what he will not say: that he is retiring next May. Aged 74 and rounding off an astonishing 37-year run in high office, the President will give an upbeat talk on the future and barely mention the spring elections. He will also avoid any review of his very rocky 12 years in power.

François Mitterrand used his final television voeux in December 1994 to confirm that he was making way for others, but the Gaulllist President is determined to prolong the non-suspense about his intentions. He is expected to wait until February or even March to announce that he will not run for a third term in the April vote. No-one believes that he will run again. His aim is to muddy the pitch for Nicolas Sarkozy. Chirac's bête noire and centre-right candidate is to be officially endorsed by his party, the Union for a Popular Majority, on January 14.

In the meantime, here is a brief balance sheet of les années Chirac. The failures since 1995 far outweigh the successes.

Captain flies without aircraft

You settle into a Swiss airliner and hear the welcome "this is your captain speaking". You picture a reassuring guy with four rings on his sleeve, greying temples and the steady hand of command. Now try imagining your captain leaping into the sky dressed only in a flying suit and a pair of wings and answering to the the name Jet Man.

Implausible as it may sound, this is the double life of Captain Yves Rossy, 47, a devoted  -- some would say mad -- aviator who has come closer than anyone so far to achieving the ancient dream of flying like a bird.  If you think the festive week has got the better of me, watch Jet Man's video . It's not quite Superman or Icarus. He straps a pair of wings to his back and swoops around the sky with the help of four tiny jet engines. Few might want to try, but no-one else has done it.   

French suntans beat Hollywood

  The year has been good for French cinema. Six, and possibly seven, out of the top ten hits of 2006 were French productions (list below). The titles will disabuse anyone who sees this as a case of Gallic art beating the Hollywood bulldozer.  Both the number one, Les Bronzés-3 and Camping, the next homegrown hit at number four,  are feel-good, unsubtle, comedies about the French on summer holidays.

                                                                                    

Over 10 million people paid to watch Les Bronzés-3 (The suntanned ones -3), a laborious sequel to two 1970s cult hits, starring the same actors. Over 5.5 million went to Camping, a knock-about effort on the working-class beach tradition that could be compared to Britain's old Carry On comedies. Between the two came Disney's latest Pirates of the Caribbean and Ice Age 2.

Also coming up fast is a new French Christmas hit, Luc Besson's Arthur et les Minimoys (Arthur and the Invisibles), a big budget animated/live action epic about elves that is packing in viewers in 1,000 French cinemas this week. Through a French seasonal sell-out, the film, which stars Mia Farrow and Freddie Highmore and the voices of Madonna and David Bowie, has not impressed critics as it sets out on its world release.

French premier in Christmas grilling

It has not been a festive week for Dominique de Villepin, the aristocratic Prime Minister of France. President Chirac's protégé could be forgiven a little fatigue when he entertained 20 of his ministers to a Christmas breakfast this morning.

Only five hours earlier, Monsieur le premier ministre was released by two investigating judges who had spent 17 solid hours grilling him on his role in the Clearstream affair, a scandal that has helped demolish his political career this year.

French winter woes

You wouldn't know it from the Christmas crowds packing the big Paris department stores near our office, but France is feeling poor this winter. The shortage of spending power has become a top theme in the presidential campaign. In a sign of the prevailing worry over rising living costs and sagging salaries, a BVA poll has shown that a surprising 48 percent of the French think that they might one day have to  live on the street.[Paris homeless picture]

So Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, has declared war on what she calls la vie chère -- the high cost of living -- and Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right champion, has started talking like a Socialist.

What do they propose doing to give the French more money to spend if they are elected next May ? They are going to cut the huge burden of taxes and welfare charges that soak up spending power and stifle the economy.

No. I'm just joking. They are really promising good old French remedies: more taxes, more welfare spending and more restrictions on the private sector. They are also both blaming Europe for France's woes. In Sarkozy's case, there are qualifications, but this is hardly the bold new leadership that the pair claim to be offering.

The Tram comes to Paris

Paris opened the first electric tram (streetcar) service to run in the city for seven decades this morning. The line is only five miles long and it skirts the outside edge of the Left Bank. Trams have made a popular come-back in a dozen other French cities over the past few years, including the Paris suburbs. But the inauguration of the T3, Mayor Bertrand Delanoe's pet project, is being treated as an epochal event for the French capital.

Singers, dancers and Socialist dignitaries helped today to baptise the 340 million euro project which Delanoe sees as the symbol of the greener and friendlier Paris that he is trying to create. The city council's conservative opposition also see the tram as a symbol -- of Delanoe's campaign to make driving in the capital so miserable that people will leave their cars at home. So the opposition, including Dominique Perben, the President Chirac's Transport Minister, boycotted today's inauguration. 
   

Johnny rocks off to Switzerland

                                         Johnny Hallyday, the ultimate rock idol  -- if you are French -- has landed with a splash in the French presidential election campaign.

Le rockeur national  (April post), going strong at 63, is the biggest celebrity supporter of Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate for the April elections. So it was hardly good timing for Johnny to make it known that he is moving to Switzerland and taking his money with him. After selling 80 million records since the early 1960s and still touring and topping the charts, Johnny no longer wants to pay the punishing income and wealth tax that is inflicted on rich French residents. [vintage Johnny video]

Paris police savour vindication over Diana

Paris is pleased this morning that the elaborate British inquiry into the death of Princess Diana has come up with the same conclusions as the original French investigation.

Chief Commissioner Martine Monteil [pictured], the officer who led the French police investigation into the 1997 crash, told me this morning that she had never been concerned that Lord Stevens would come up with anything else. "We are quite satisfied but we were never very worried about the conclusions," said Monteil, who is now Director of the National Judicial Police -- equivalent to Britain's CID. "The findings go in the same direction as our own and that's the main thing."

She added: "I absolutely never doubted that it was an accident."

Monteil,  56, a tough cop and pioneering woman in the traditionally very male police force, was the boss of the Paris Brigade Criminelle -- the serious crime squad -- at the time of the crash, on August 31, 1997.

Le Pen goes ethnic

For over four decades, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of France's ultra-right Front National,  has blamed immigrants for France's woes. They take "French" jobs, spunge off French taxes and cause crime, according to his sulphurous creed. So what is the meaning of this new poster for his latest presidential campaign ?

The young woman is apparently from an immigrant family from one of the former French colonies. The media have interpreted her as une beurette  -- of north African Arab origin. According to Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie's daughter and campaign director, her family is possibly from one of the French overseas territories in the Caribbean or Indian or Pacific oceans.

The poster is one of six that show a typical French person. The others are a high-school pupil, a farmer, a young worker, a thirty-something person and a pensioner. For all of them, France's governments whether leftwing or rightwing "have destroyed everything".

Sarko and Sego rally their troops

Recent days have clarified the race for the next French presidency. Both Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre right candidate, have strengthened their hold over their own camps. But some Socialists are worried that Royal's undiplomatic approach to foreign policy may soon land her in trouble.

Contrary to what I suggested in the last post, Sarkozy's Saturday debate with Michèle Alliot-Marie turned out to be a self-congratulatory sleepathon.  MAM made little attempt to tackle Sarko, who walked away with his presidential image reinforced. With Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the former Prime Minister, in the chair, the debate felt like a Rotary Club lunch in a provincial hotel. The media verdict holds that the Defence Minister should now take a seat and let Sarko get on with his campaign for the Union for a Popular Majority (UMP).

More interesting at the moment is the other side of the political fence, chez Ségo and the Socialists. Her campaign has been strengthened by the withdrawal from the race of of Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the leftist whose independent candidacy threatened to drain Socialist votes. Chevènement's five percent score in 2002 helped that year to sink Lionel Jospin, the Socialist candidate.

A woman takes on Sarkozy

Imagine a race for the French presidency that turns into a duel between two women. That is the dream of Michèle Alliot-Marie, Defence Minister and the most powerful woman in the French Government.

MAM as she is known,  believes that she would do a better job than Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, at beating Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, next spring. The match would be interesting: charismatic feminist versus tough female Gaullist.  Today Alliot-Marie, 60, gets her chance to put her case to the 300,000 members of the Union for a Popular Majority (UMP), the ruling centre-right party which is led by Sarko.

The pair are holding the first of three primary debates -- of a sort -- this afternoon and you can put your own questions to them. Loic Le Meur, France's star blogger and Sarkozy supporter, is moderating questions from the internet at the debate at La Défense, just outside Paris, from 4.30 pm (1530GMT). on Forum-ump.org. Watch the debate live on the internet.

I would put "debate" in quote marks because the exercise is a bit of a sham. Sarkozy has had the nomination sewn up for himself for the past two years but he has been forced by Alliot-Marie's obstinacy and Royal's success to go through the motions of a primary. The winner is to be decided on January 14 and there is little chance that Sarkozy will be unseated.

Now watch the world a la francaise

Jacques Chirac must be pleased that the Baker report on Iraq was released just as France 24, the new global news network, went live last night. The President's grand projet for giving the world "a French view" (November post ) used the Baker report as the opening item in its parallel English and French language news bulletins.

Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, savoured the "we told you so" moment over Iraq when he attended the opening gala for France 24. The service is broadcasting over the internet today and also on satellite and cable from tonight. Giant plasma screens relayed France's answer to CNN all the way up the Champs Elysées. [France 24 unofficial blog]

Villepin said: "I think that it is a first step that the Americans at last see this war in Iraq for what it is. " The world would now be better informed about Iraq and all other issues because France 24 (pronounced France Vingt-Quatre in English) is uniquely placed to give a "fresh perspective" to international news, said the Prime Minister. 

The glory of the older chanteuse

   

Old men have always done well in French pop music. This week the prevailing mood of nostalgia has helped re-launch two female stars with a combined age of 141 years.

New albums by Juliette Gréco, 79, the muse of the post-war Left Bank and original beatnik gamine, and Françoise Hardy, 62,  schoolboy's hearthrob of the Beatles era, have been released amid a media din worthy of teen idols.

To be fair, the pair had never really left the scene in a musical world that worships its pop ancestors. However, the men, such as Charles Aznavour, 82, and Johnny Hallyday, 63 have done a better job at keeping near the top of the charts and selling out regular tours.

[above, Gréco left, Hardy, right]

Sea, sun and civil servants

 

When it comes to retirement, French civil servants are among the luckiest in the world. Les fonctionnaires stop work younger and enjoy much more generous pensions than the private sector. That is not all. The tax-payers also pay them a fat permanent bonus if they retire to an island in the South Pacific or the Indian ocean.

President Chirac's government has just chickened out of an attempt to put an end to this astonishing scandal, which is known as the "jackpot pension". For the fourth time since 2003, it has blocked an attempt by parliamentarians to quash an arrangement which raises by 35-75 percent the pensions of ex-fonctionnaires who live in French overseas territories.

The scheme, introduced in 1950, covers such places as Tahiti and New Caledonia in the Pacific and La Réunion, in the Indian Ocean. [picture shows Tahitiennes welcoming a new fonctionnaire] You do not have to have worked outside France to qualify. You can labour all your life in rainy Paris and jet off to the sun to enjoy the huge pension boost. Since French state servants retire on average at 57, this leaves plenty of time for the beach. 

Cabaret at the Opera

  This sounds like an unlikely mix for a show -- Hurricane Katrina, tap-dancing,  a drag act and l'Opéra Comique of Paris. These have come together in the hands of Jérome Savary, the showman-actor who has directed the old opera house for the past six years (see February post). His new spectacle, A la Recherche de Joséphine, is about Josephine Baker, the much-loved American singer-dancer of mid-century Paris. It is great fun -- a blend of blues, jazz and dance with history and politics thrown in. The show, which stars Nicolle Rochelle, a New Yorker, is also Savary's swansong. (Rochelle's blog)

The director, a large-then-life fixture of Paris show-biz for decades, is being forced into retirement since he is turning 65 and the Opera is a state post. For a farewell, he has returned to his roots as jazzman and founder of le Grand Magic Circus, a company which staged anarchical musical happenings in the 1970s. I have to admit having been a big fan of Circus, with its animals and acrobats