Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

Fixing French universities

 

One of the mistaken beliefs that foreigners hold about France is that its education is excellent. The legend does apply in certain areas such as the grandes écoles, the specialised colleges which train the elite five percent of higher education students. But France does a relatively mediocre job teaching its children and a poor one when they reach the higher level.

That's why parents of future college students -- including me --  are cheering this week. President Sarkozy has just brokered a deal which appears to have cleared the way to reforming the mess of the French university system. Yes super-Sarko has pulled off yet another coup but he has also benefited from timing.

France says Au revoir Monsieur Blair

France is giving Tony Blair a rather warmer send-off than his fellow Britons. That is tout à fait normal since France, unlike Britain, long ago accorded him the honour of an eponymous doctrine. Le blairisme is an inspiring touchstone for the French political world and its founder is generally more admired -- albeit grudgingly -- on this side of the Channel than in his homeland.

France awoke to blanket media cover of the British prime minister's exit. First there was an explanation because no French president or prime minister has voluntarily left office since General de Gaulle in 1969.

The French assessment of Blair can be summed up as: brilliant communicator who did a great job enriching Britain and bringing peace to Northern Ireland but pity about Iraq and the British poor who missed his revolution.

France-Inter devoted most of its two-hour breakfast show to Blair's exit, hauling in the great and good for commentary from both sides of the Channel. The radio station opened its morning news with an acid account of the Blair decade from Stephen Frears, France's favourite British film director. But it failed to explain that Frears is an anti-Blair lefty.

Only Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French President, really spoiled the party by suggesting that Britain should now be kicked out of the European Union.  Britain's latest opt-outs from the EU, negotiated by Blair in Brussels last weekend, confirmed that Europe should now accompany its un-cooperative club member to the exit, said Giscard.   

Streisand: The Way We Pay

   In her 40 years at the top, Barbra Streisand has never sung in France. That changes tonight with her show at the Paris Bercy stadium. She is a huge star here and thousands of fans are turning up at the 13,000 seat indoor venue for the only French concert on her brief European come-back tour.

But hundreds, perhaps thousands, of seats will stay empty because the French, like many European music lovers, are balking at the astronomic ticket prices being charged these days for top US and British -- and some native -- acts.

Streisand's prices are the steepest, but plenty of other artists have suffered from over-charging for their continental appearances. They include The Rolling Stones, Elton John, The Who and George Michael.   

Sarkozy will fix everything

How long can super-Sarko keep it up, the French are wondering?

Fresh back from saving Europe  -- at least in the eyes of his admiring subjects -- President Sarkozy laid down a new industrial doctrine for France and the Union on Saturday at the Paris air show. 

Today he has lectured Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, on US responsibility for climate change; he has opened an international conference on Darfour and tonight Arnold Schwarzenegger is dropping into the Elysée Palace to consult him on the environment.  In between, Sarko has been telling recalcitrant student leaders about his plans for repairing France's decrepit univerities.

By tradition, French leaders are not supposed to be so dynamic.

Gas guzzling at the Paris air show

Jet fighters make a din, cost hundreds of millions, they pollute like crazy and they are made to kill people. But there are few things more heart-stopping than seeing one showing off low in the summer sky over Paris.

All right, you have to love aeroplanes. For those who do so and those who make their living from them (not necessarily the same thing), the Le Bourget air show is a feast. Even if you don't fancy seeing a 20-tonne Dassault Rafale fighter pulling turns with the agility of a dancer, Le Bourget's biennial Mecca of the aviation business is great spectacle. I have just dropped in there with my 16-year-old son, soaking up sights that ranged from glider aerobatics to  the new A380 Airbus performing steep turns over the field. The amazing thing is that the giant airliner, which can carry 850 people, makes little noise.

The same could not be said for the John Travolta's Boeing 707. The actor, who is Hollywood's biggest pilot, flew his old private airliner into le Bourget on Wednesday. He was full of praise for the Airbus and French aviation when he chatted with us reporters.

Sarko savours a cigar, says he wasn't drunk

Meet France's new Minister for International Human Rights. Rama Yade, 30, the daughter of a Senegalese diplomat, is one of the latest batch of recruits to President Sarkozy's feminised, ethnically diverse and politically mixed administration. She is a secretary of state,  a deputy or junior Foreign Office minister in British parlance. 

Sarko is feeling pretty pleased with his expansion of the government to a total of 33 and losing Alain Juppé, the Deputy Prime Minister who was the last of Jacques Chirac's inner circle on his team.

Sarko regaled French reporters with a glowing review of his first month in the Elysée Palace after announcing the reshuffle that was in part forced on him by Juppé's defeat in Sunday's parliamentary elections.  He lit a cigar, telling them: "I am relaxed. If I'm not, I don't smoke. It gives me a headache."

Sarko finally reacted to the infamous "drunk" video that has now been seen by about 15 million people on the internet.

French BlackBerry fear

A few years ago the Americans panicked about supposed French spying on their business secrets. Executives were advised to be silent in French hotel rooms and avoid sensitive subjects on Air France jets because the seat-backs were bugged. Now the paranoia is on the other side, with a French government ban on BlackBerries.

Le Monde reported yesterday on the unhappiness of staff in President Sarkozy's new administration over the no-BlackBerry rule, which stems from fear of US spying.

The problem arises because all of BlackBerry's push e-mail transits through servers in the United Kingdom and United States.

French election shock: Ségolène throws out François

Talk about timing. Ségolène Royal spoiled the unexpected electoral celebrations of her Socialist comrades overnight with the announcement that she had kicked the party leader out of their family home for cheating on her. Celebrations ? Yes because the Socialists were not massacred, just cleanly beaten by President Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right in the final round of the parliamentary elections.

In case you missed the news, Royal, the defeated Socialist candidate for the presidency this spring, decided in a spectacular and very un-French way to make public her separation from François Hollande, her partner of 25 years.

Please pedal, says Paris mayor

If you have been in Paris lately, you will have noticed men digging up strips of street in hundreds of different places around the city. The spots are docking stations for the bicycles that from next month are supposed to transform the way that Parisians and visitors get around.

Mayor Betrand Delanoe is following Lyon, Amsterdam and other cities around the world in providing convenient bike-rental to get people out of cars, limit pollution and impose a little civility on the traffic. Paris being Paris, the scheme, is on a grand scale and will make news. 

The idea of the Vélib' -- a contraction of 'bike freedom' in French -- is attractive.

[pictures: Marc Verhille, Mairie de Paris]

The President, his wife, their shoes and the Sun King

  We shall get away from the Sarko show next time, I promise, but I can't resist following up the "drunk" video and taking a look at le style Sarkozy a month into his reign.   

BT was right with the good franglais comment on the last posting. L'affaire de la vidéo is certainly a "mediatic blabla" [médiatique is a useful French word]. But it tells us something about France and its sensitivity over the person of the republican monarch.

Over 12 million people have watched the video on the internet. It has made an impact on President Sarkozy's image in European capitals and around the world and everyone has been amused by it in France. Clips have been shown on lesser French tv channels but it has still not been mentioned on the main network news. Newspapers have reported the apology from Eric Boever, the Belgian television presenter who said the president had "clearly not just been drinking water".

Ségolène Royal, the Socialist runner-up for the presidency, joked about the censorship of anything embarrassing to Sarko by the big media. "If it was me and I was behaving like that, rest assured, they would show it," she told a rally for the parliamentary elections.

There is now a consensus over why Sarko appeared the way he did at the G8 press briefing.

Sarko sloshed shock

Just about everyone here with an interest in France must have seen this video by now. It features President Sarkozy's hilarious, apparently drunken, performance after a session with Vladimir Putin at the G8 summit in Germany last week. The first clip, broadcast by Belgian television, hit the internet on Sunday, creating a global phenomenon. It has become number one topic of gossip in France, but the main French television channels have yet to mention it and the press has barely touched it.

Is this French censorship and fear of offending the hyper-touchy head of state ? Or is it good sense in the face of internet-madness?

Here are the facts:

The Sarko tsunami

They were clearing out the champagne bottles when I walked past the headquarters of the UMP, Nicolas Sarkozy's party, on the rue de la Boétie early this morning.  The overnight party had been modest because Sarko's invincible machine does not want to gloat over its clean sweep in yesterday's first round of the parliamentary election.

On the facade outside, the posters with Sarkozy's election slogan still talk of the future: "Tomorrow everything becomes possible". Tomorrow arrives next Monday when voters have confirmed the rightward landslide that began rolling with yesterday's vote. From that moment, Sarkozy must begin delivering the renaissance that he promised France over the past two years.

Sarkozy is being given the freest hand to govern enjoyed by any president at least since François Mitterrand, the Socialist won the Elysee Palace in 1981.

[ELECTION FALL-OUT -- ROYAL-HOLLANDE FEUD HERE]

[Prime Minister François Fillon votes for himself in the Sarthe. He won]

Ségo aims for victory -- next time.

You would hardly know that Ségolène Royal lost the French presidency to Nicolas Sarkozy last month. Radiant and confident, the Socialist star pulled the crowds everywhere she stopped when I travelled with her around northwestern France this week.

The Ségo magic is still going strong, at least among her core of young and traditional leftwing supporters. But talking to her, you can detect the wounds from a campaign that was stained by betrayal in her own camp and big trouble at home.

Royal was touring the rust belt towns around Lille to help candidates in the national parliamentary elections which start tomorrow. The June 17 run-off is forecast to produce a landslide for the centre-right camp of Sarkozy, who defeated Royal by 53 to 47 percent in last month's presidential vote.

She holds no party post and has abandoned her parliamentary seat of 19 years. But Royal remains President of the Poitou-Charentes region and the only real star in the beleaguered opposition. She is out to impose herself as leader of the left and exact revenge on Sarkozy when he stands for re-election in 2012.

She made this clear chatting with us in the bar of the high-speed train from Paris to Lille. For the first time, she said that she wanted the leadership of the party which she bounced into accepting her candidacy last year.

There was, however, a problem. François Hollande, the party leader, had just announced that he wanted to keep his job until late next year.

Super-Sarko piles on the power

 

Can it only be three weeks since Nicolas Sarkozy was installed in the Elysée Palace ? Since his glitzy enthronement, SuperSarko has become so much part of the landscape, rushing to solve every problem, comfort the afflicted and disarm his opponents, that it is hard to remember the sleepy presidency of Jacques Chirac. 

Sarkozy's hyper-active style has done wonders for morale, causing a spurt of optimism in households and business, according to tracking indexes. The man who was demonized by the left as the embodiment of a hateful and dangerous new France is enjoying 67 percent approval rating and 77 percent believe that he is capable of reforming the country, according to a Paris Match Ifop poll this week.

The result seems likely to be a massive majority for Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement in parliamentary elections which start on Sunday and end with a run-off on June 17.

[Sarkozy's first palace interview -- accorded to today's Le Figaro, his most reliable media supporter]

Britain's miserable hospitality -- French legend or fact?

It's the time of year when many French families are about to send their children on home stays abroad to pick up some English. That means another chance to look at cross-Channel misunderstanding.   

For decades, French youngsters have spent time with British families -- usually around the south of England -- and come home with mixed memories. Friends of my generation recall poor food and draughty houses but a reasonably decent welcome. Back then, teenaged boys used to leap at the chance of getting to know les petites anglaises, who were more fun than straight-laced French girls -- at least according to legend.

In recent years, though, the reputation of British home stays has taken a dive. French parents are turning to the warmer welcome of Ireland and countries further afield such as the USA and Australia. We took a look at the matter today after France-Inter radio reported on England's reputation for poor hospitality. [Picture: France's idea of Dickensian British welcome for children]   

The France-America honeymoon

   

Talk about a honeymoon. Not only is Nicolas Sarkozy basking in the glow of implausible approval ratings at home, but the charm of France's new president has crossed the Atlantic to dazzle the American chattering classes.

It all sounds too good to be true ahead of this week's G8 summit in Germany and the first encounter between George W. Bush and the man who has earned the nicknames of l'hyper-président and the French Energizer Bunny. 

You might expect a rush of Francophilia from the anti-Bush New York Times, which ran an admiring piece this week on the "bold new style" of France's jogging, I-pod wearing new head of state.

But look at this from yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the most consistently anti-French of serious US media since Jacques Chirac picked a fight with Bush before the Iraq invasion.  At long last the United States has a friend in the Elysée Palace, said the Journal. Mr Sarkozy's arrival is an opportunity not to be squandered or trivialized. It could herald a major shift in U.S.-French relations and reinvigorate the broader trans-Atlantic alliance.   

Even those who made French-bashing an industry have called off hostilities against the cheese-eating surrender monkies.

Asterix is harmful for children

This is for anyone who thinks that political correctness is an English-speaking phenomenon.

The cartoon exploits of Astérix may be enjoyed by millions of children around the world, but the ancient Gaulish hero has just been declared unfit to be official ambassador for children's rights. He is too French, too violent, he perpetuates stereotypes and his outlook conflicts with the spirit of the European Union.

That, at least, is the view of the French branch of Defence for Children International (DCI). Astérix and his fat friend Obélix ran into trouble after Dominique Versini, the state Children's Defender adopted them to promote the United Nations convention on the Rights of Children. Albert Uderzo, the 80-year-old co-creator of Astérix produced an online album and devoted the proceeds of his birthday tribute album this year to the children's cause.