Sarkozy pinches from Mitterrand

 

Nicolas Sarkozy did rather well at his coronation by the Union for a Popular Majority. Some 80,000 party faithful turned out to cheer the centre-right candidate at the show at the Porte de Versailles yesterday but Sarko avoided the excess of his previous party rallies. He even managed a tone that was more humble than triumphant as he sets out to beat Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, in the Spring elections. Today's Libération is even worrying that Sarko has now got the edge on Ségo.

Here is the Sarko report, but first, take a look at the new campaign poster. Sarko stands against a blue sky and the reassuring rural background that one assumes is la France profonde. "Together, everything becomes possible," says the new slogan of the man previously known for his promises of a "rupture" with the past. Something leaps out for anyone who remembers the campaign of 1981 that took François Mitterrand to the presidency. Sarkozy's people have copied the legendary poster that helped the late Socialist win that year. [below]

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Mitterrand's aim was to reassure France, after three decades of conservative rule, that it had no reason to fear the advent of the left, including his Communist allies. Jacques Séguéla, his image-maker, cast Mitterrand as a solid provincial standing in a winter  dawn with eternal France behind him. The slogan was La Force Tranquille or "The Calm Force". Sarkozy has erased the village -- along with its church -- and inserted evergreen trees. The season may not be clear but the message is. Sarko is the guarantor of eternal France, not the hot-headed, would-be Napoleon of his opponents' caricature. Sarkozy has even lifted Mitterrand's celebrated slogan with his campaign promise to usher in "une rupture tranquille" -- a calm break.

Le Parisien newspaper had fun today spotting differences between the two posters, 26 years apart. The removal of the village suggested the rural flight that has emptied villages for the past few decades -- at least those not bought up by the English. The absence of the church is a nod to the "dechristianisation" or France, suggested le Parisien.

Then there is the bird that Sarkozy has added. It looks like a dove or possibly a seagull. One assumes that it is supposed to symbolise the soaring hope that Sarko wants to inspire. I am sure that I am not the only person to notice another resemblance in Sarkozy's poster: to the green hill and blue sky of the popular wall-paper on MS-Windows.

Comments

[Frank Schnittger]

Aha! Sarkozy wants to reinforce US hegemony by using MS Windows like wallpaper for his posters!

If he were Chirac he would have funded a French alternative to Windows like the French alternatives to Google and the CNN/FOX news channels. If he were Sego he would have used a more Apple Mac or iPod look and feel - a more chic look signifying you are a member of the cognoscenti and the "right on" younger generation. If he were Le Pen he would have gotten rid of all this computerised nonsense - a symbol of globalisation - and used an old Napoleonic image to symbolise the hegemony of France.

But seriously – getting 80,000 people to attend your inaugural rally is a very impressive achievement. How many people would attend a candidate’s inauguration in any other western country? The figure is more likely to be in the hundreds rather than in the tens of thousands.

France has a lot to be proud of in its political culture and rates of participation in political debate. Sadly a lot of that energy seems to be devoted to trying to stem the influence of a globalising economy on French society. That is like King Canute trying to hold back the tide.

If Sarko can inspire the French to start working with the Globalising economy, France could yet achieve a very influential role in Europe and in the wider world again. The problem is he is going to have to inspire a very risk averse culture to accept that change is the only constant in modern life.

[rocket]

Looks like there is nothing left in Sarko's campaign poster background except a few birds and some trees. I guess he had to sell it all to pay off the debt.

[michael robertson]

I wonder if the choice of a Windows Xp themed backdrop to M.Sarkozy's campaign might prove to be a distinct liability in the period leading up to the election.

After all, within a couple of weeks, Microsoft will strongly urge us all to replace XP with their latest offering, namely Vista. The problem is that all but the very latest PCs, (mine included) would buckle under the strain of running this much more demanding and powerful software.

Hopefully, for his sake, the difficulties likely to experienced by the social and financial systems of France with a change to M. Sarkozy as a new PM will not appear all too similar to the problems caused by an upgrade to Vista when election day dawns, or he might find that the voters experience a sudden attack of apathy, or even an inclination to play safe with Segolene Royale's offerings of a more social model!

Well, its just a thought!

[Peter Casie-Chetty]

Sarkozy will be against the troublesome elements like the Muslim extremeist, organised crime, illicit immigaration. He is against racism will have a modernised police force and will make France a safer place to live in.
Royale and the Socialists are vague about everything except allowing the young hooligans to have their own way in the gettos built by Mitterand who was an eternal cameleon... Facist, Gaullist, and then conveniently Socialist. He was forever a hypocrite as is Royale.

[Peter Casie-Chetty]

Royale is as vague as Mitterand about immigration, taxes and social welfare. She is also like him, a hypocrite.
Sarkozy is a go getter, who will not tolerate nonsense from the gettos created by Mitterand's 14 years of "socialism" where illicit immigrants flooded the job market.
Brenner's report is as vague as Royale and Mitterand are.

[Scaree Gee-Oh!]

Tout devient possible, with Photoshop...! Par exemple, un remix of a return to law & order (the dark tie & suit...), with a nod to the ecological vote (the sky, the bird...) – that could be crucial in the first round of Les Présidentielles – in the background! Remixing a Mitterrand election poster strikes me as "tout naturel" in a millennium that began with the success of French Touch electro-outfits like Air, Daft Punk & Cassius, on the music front. The trouble is voters (the general public) dabble with technology on a daily basis, via blogs etc now. So, they see through the "special effects"!

[christopher muir]

The blue sky behind Sarkozy is a curious PR contrivance to turn out nowadays. In a way, it puts the prophesier in charge of the weather. A wise idea?

In Mitterand’s day, such a serene backdrop projected a sense of calm, peace and joy. Well, in these climate change/global warming times, a blue sky can remind many about a lack of rain, une canicule or other extreme climatic events which are possibly pushed along by zealous czars of industry. There’s always the chance that some citizens might point to the perfect sky and interpret it as the calm before the perfect storm. .

[BIRONNEAU Françoise]

I suppose you know France is very bad since 35H for works and so about retreaits for our childrens..e.t.c....
You must believe than M. Sarkorzy is the better to recovery our economy and has got a programm, example : work = wealth= jobs.....certainly he is the only to have a stature of Président and international Président.
Obviously he is still Ministre of interior and perhaps you can still see a tense face because there are many problems in France like november 2005 !!!
On last sunday we were happy to see a delegation 'UMP LONDRES'...
Thanks for reading my post

[Pierre]

Very lax of you Charles to report in your article today that England would have won the world cup "more than once". I don't hear the Scots, the Welsh or the N. Irish claiming that they won in 1966...

[Frank Schnittger]

S'il vous plaît . . . can we be British, too? - Charles Bremner in today’s Times

Tut tut Charles, what imperialistic fantasies you have! Since when is a Political Union an English takeover? Zidane an Englishman?... on second thoughts, perhaps that explains the head butt!

And "Britain would still have a thriving car industry" - really? You've just published a piece implying that the French car industry is on its knees!

Finally, "the French would welcome a common citizenship arrangement on the Irish basis.” Given that Ireland had left the Commonwealth at that stage, this does not imply accepting the Queen as Head of State.

Given that Northern Ireland rugby players have already thrown there lot in with the Irish Rugby team, perhaps we should let English Rugby players play for us as well - so that you have a chance of winning a World Cup again?

At the moment you are already busy poaching Irish players (Shane Geraghty of London Irish) in an attempt to have a chance of beating Ireland in Croke Park next month. Some chance!

Far from France begging to become part of England, Britain eventually had to beg to be allowed join the Common Market. If you’re really good, we might let you have some of our rugby players as well.

Interesting the stuff The Times chooses to publish, and not on the blogging page either. Stirring the sh*t and running for cover? I don’t think so. Come clean and publish your piece in Blog format and take the heat. We might even let England join Ireland again!

[Robert Marchenoir]

Migrating to Sarkozy as a metaphor for migrating from Windows XP to Vista? I don't think so.

Going from the obsolete, Gaullist-socialist obese state, to the leaner, more agile and competitive Sarkozy frame of mind would rather be like dropping Microsoft and switching to Linux, if you see what I mean.

More freedom, more openness, less overhead, reduced cost, talent welcome even if you are not an insider, innovation and creativity encouraged from everybody...

If you think about it for a minute, it becomes obvious.

Gone would be the bug-producing logic embedded in the old system, gone the heavy-handed tactics against competitors and outsiders, gone the hideous waste of efficiency due to bloated, hidden processes...

Of course, it is a bit frigthening at the beginning: there will be less hand-holding, more relying on your own work... But you will be able to benefit from a thriving community, cooperating with talented and motivated people all over the world, thriving in a climate of trust.

Choose freedom. Switch to Linux. Vote for Sarkozy.

[Frank Schnittger]

"Choose freedom. Switch to Linux. Vote for Sarkozy."

But why switch at all if all you want to do is read, write, manage budgets, communicate and blog? The operating system is just an enabler - and like any good referee - should be almost invisible to the user.

Only nerds care what the operating system is provided their basic user needs and functions are supported. All change carries risks and costs - current software not supported, no printer drivers for your printer etc. Therefore the benefits have to be greater than the risk premium. The greater the perceived risk, the greater the benefits have to be to justify change and overcome natural inertia.

So how badly do the French really want change, or how much do they really want as little change as possible to their comfortable lives?

And do YOU use Linux, Robert?

[Robert Marchenoir]

Frank: in 2007, I will vote for Sarkozy, upgrade to a better computer, and probably keep on shouting abuse at Windows XP.

However, my comparison is still valid. And even more pleasurable, from an intellectual point of view, since it is usually the leftist types who keep on lecturing people about Microsoft being evil, and trying to convince them they will never be admitted to the socialist paradise if they don't use Linux.

Think of it: the argument in defense of free trade and against statism is strikingly similar to the open source / Microsoft debate.

And I am really giving a hard thought to whether I should switch to Mac OS /X or Linux when I will do a long-overdue hardware upgrade this year.

Three things are sure, though: there will be no Vista for me, Windows is a big heap of crap, and Microsoft is a bloated stalinist bureaucracy, incredibly inefficient, strong-arming customers into buying hugely overpriced, incredibly badly designed and downright dangerous products.

Do you know how many people and how long it takes Microsoft NOT to develop the user interface (that's not even the actual bit of software engine) which is supposed to... just switch down your blasted PC under Vista?

The answer is: 23 people, and one year.

That's the size of the development team which was just supposed to design the way the "off switch" of your PC would look on your screen under Vista, and after a whole year of coding, arguing, meeting and supposedly liaising with the rest of the (certainly huge) Vista team, all they had achieved was: nada; zilch; zero.

And do you know who might, just possibly, help me out of the unstable mess that my computer has become because of Windows XP? An obscure website developer in Australia who knows nothing about me, apart from a few lines of comment I left on his blog two days ago, and who was kind enough to give some of his time to look into the matter.

This guy down under is doing, for free, the job that the non-existent Microsoft hotline should have done, in exchange for my forking out around 250 € for an "upgrade" to XP, which was really an extortion racket meant to correct some of the unacceptable bugs of Windows Me -- which also cost me good money, of course.

The sort of fast, efficient, courteous and free hotline you get when you buy a 20 € piece of software from a reputable vendor -- essentially, anyone but Microsoft.

And yes, Linux and Mac OS/X have some drawbacks, which is why I am rather thinking, currently, of sticking to Windows. But I am well aware that if I so decide, I will be fuming for hours on end in front of my PC, losing an incredible amount of time to stupidly, unnecessarily bad software design by Microsoft.

Just as when I pay my taxes in France, I have to grind my teeth, knowing full well that they go straight into a bottomless pit of inefficiency, waste and downright corruption.

[Frank Schnittger]

You don't have to lecture me on the complexities of dealing with Microsoft, Robert! I was responsible for championing the introduction of their software into a major multi-national company when much of their software was still in its infancy.

If you think Windows is bad now, try going back to Windows 3.1 or beta versions of their Office products! The remarkable thing is that (corporate machinations notwithstanding) they got to their current dominant position largely by being the cheapest and the best in many instances.

(Of course there will always be arguments about who copied what ideas from who, and that the Apple Mac was technically better etc. - but for most businesses the choices came down to functionality, costs, interoperability, staff training, availability of trained staff, and a punters guess as to which company was likely to survive the cut throat competition of the time.)

Now, of course, Microsoft has become bloated, old, and fat - a licence to print money, and to leverage market share to squeeze out the smaller more innovative and customer responsive players in the market place. It was always inevitable that the accountants would take over some day, but it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Microsoft's early success was based on a technical vision of user centric interoperability and selling software as good as the competition for a lot less money.

What was brilliantly innovative at the time is now old hat and capable of being re-engineered by all sorts of open source and shareware products for little or no cost to the user. Microsoft has already lost the battle to dominate the internet content provision and search spaces, and isn't a player in any of the e-commerce opportunities that have thrived on the net.

So it’s “yesterday’s company” now, and won't be able to squeeze a lot of money from customers for basic operating systems and office productivity tools for much longer. There is only so much functionality most users need and many only use 10% of the functionality already provide by , say, Excel or Word. Web based productivity tools are increasingly common and Microsoft won’t be able to dominate that space or charge a lot of money for their own offerings for much longer.

They’re biggest resource now is the natural conservatism, inertia, and risk aversion of the marketplace – also perhaps the barriers for any politician promising radical change for France!

[Robert Marchenoir]

I am not lecturing anybody, Frank. I am just speaking out for my rights, my time and my money, which I think I'm perfectly entitled to do.

And also having some fun playing with some concepts, building some new bridges between politics and technology, triggered into that by Michael Robertson's amusing and unexpected comment.

And teasing left-wingers, of course, which they always deserve, since they never stop lecturing everybody from their supposed higher moral ground.

Just blogging, really.

Microsoft-wise, I think what is stunning is precisely what little progress has been accomplished, and how slowly, since Windows 3.1. That version was the first barely workable one, and God, how long it took to only get there!

I notice that your diagnosis of the company is not different from mine, in fact.

To elaborate on the politics/technology analogy, one word sums up the fundamental vice: monopoly.

Once a monopoly is established, be it in government, economics or technology, it is very difficult to eschew the ensuing loss of efficiency and abuse of power.

[Frank Schnittger]

And if there is one thing worse than a public monopoly, it's a private monopoly! Because whilst the public, through, the government, may exercise some restraining influences on a state monopoly, there is almost nothing to stop a private monopoly maximising its profits and minimising its investment and service levels.

Comparing British and French train services may illustrate the point. Microsoft’s practice of developing “upgraded” software with little new actual functionality and discontinuing support for the old versions requires users to pay regularly to upgrade their software and hardware for little benefit is another case in point.

The latest wheeze by the printer manufacturers is to discontinue the sale of customised ink cartridges forcing users to throw out perfectly good printers and buy new ones. That is the logic of capitalism, and nobody hates competition more than capitalists, because competition has an awful habit of reducing margins, forcing innovation, and requiring expensive marketing and customer service functions to sustain.

That is also why American Healthcare, though largely private, is relatively poor and hideously expensive compared to European “social medicine” models. Doctors spend a huge amount of time negotiating with a patients medical insurers as to which procedures they can and cannot carry out, and coverage often runs out in cases of serious illness – leaving a patient without any appropriate treatment for their condition.

It isn’t as simple as being left wing or right wing. Different models work better in different contexts. Replacing one ideological (leftwing) model with another (right wing) model doesn’t always work or have the consequences intended. Britain is still paying for the damage wrought by Thatcherism to the quality of public services. Ireland has its horror stories as well.

France shouldn’t be afraid to try to articulate a new way forward learning from the experiences of both leftwing and rightwing policy initiatives in other countries. Even “a nation of shop keepers” had to learn that the mentality of a small businessman or women doesn’t always translate into effective or efficient governance at the level of large scale complex and infrastructural service processes.

[Maggie G]

By the way, Frank and Robert, since you two seem to be computer experts, I wonder if you can tell me what to do about the "JavaScript Application" thing that pops onto my screen every time I tune into the Charles Bremner blog.

This has been happening for about a month now. Is it happening to other people too?

When you close it, it says "Application not found", and you have to click twice for that to go away, and then the Charles Bremner blog reappears. But every time you go from one topic to another, it pops up again, and you have to go through the whole process again.

Is this problem with me, or with the Times, and what can I do about it?

[Frank Schnittger]

I'm not a software expert, Maggie G, but java scripts are an integral part of most webpages. You may need to update/re-install Java. This software is freely available at http://java.sun.com/

[Robert Marchenoir]

"Nobody hates competition more than capitalists, because competition has an awful habit of reducing margins, forcing innovation, and requiring expensive marketing and customer service functions to sustain." '(Frank)

This is an interesting argument. It is true, of course. It is also an argument for free trade, not against it.

Bernard Maris, the French buffoon who pretends to be a left-wing economist, loves it.

However, pretending that just because any sane-thinking capitalist will try to shun competition, capitalism is evil, is like saying that soldiers are not fit to wage wars, because they are trained to minimize risks, stay alive, and protect friendly troops.

They certainly are. But that is just the other side of the coin, which says they are prepared to die to defend their country.

And so is the entrepreneur, who is prepared to risk his capital on the battleground of competition.

The aim of the soldier is not to die, but to preserve life. The aim of the capitalist is not to lose his capital, but to make it thrive.

In order to reach that bigger goal, the soldier is prepared to die, if the worst comes to the worst. The capitalist is prepared to lose his capital, if he fails. Because both recognize the rules of the game.

This is slightly different.

[Frank Schnittger]

Nobody is saying that Capitalism is evil, but equally comparing most businesses with a heroic soldier prepared to die for his country is a little extreme.

Most business decisions involve an element of risk, and usually have project evaluation procedures in place to ensure that risks are minimised and that the prospective reward justifies the risk. It is a very rational, self-interested process, and there is nothing wrong with that.

However there is also a logic inherent in capitalism that the more you can achieve dominance in a particular market, the more you can increase your margins. It is therefore in interests of most businesses to take over or otherwise shut out potential competitors, and we have seen how successful that strategy has been for Microsoft.

Maintaining a level playing field where many businesses can compete is therefore an essential function of the state (or the EU) and many and complex anti-trust and pro-competition laws have evolved to aid this process. This has nothing to do with state socialism, and everything to do with maintaining a relatively free marketplace where competition is maximised.

The problem arises where the state itself evolves functions which are granted a privileged position relative to potential free market operators. Typically this is in the Health, Education, Public transport, communications and energy infrastructural sectors. Often this is because the sector is considered to involve an absolutely essential service and thus a key national interest. Sometimes it is because a free market would lead to very unequal services to those who can afford them – and thus impinging on the essential human and social rights of those who can’t.

Always there is an argument about the most efficient way of providing those services, whether though direct state provision or through the state sub-contracting the provision to private operators on the basis of competitive tender. Sometimes the effectiveness of the subcontracting option depends on how clearly a service can be demarcated, defined, delivered, monitored and audited.

Usually – when the state gets involved, the perceived rights and interests of the service providers gets confused and intermingled with the perceived rights and interests of those who are supposed to be the beneficiaries. This is not an argument about Capitalism versus Socialism, but an argument about good process design, delivery, and the management and accountability structures around those processes.

The wholly thinking surrounding Segos campaign indicates either that she is stupid, or the French electorate is stupid! You tell me!