Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

High-handed Sarkozy stirs doubt in his own camp

We saw a few months ago that Nicolas Sarkozy was having a good crisis. Like Britain's Gordon Brown at the time he appeared to be on top of the financial turmoil. His boss-of-everything style suited the moment. Now, Super Sarko is coming a little unstuck.

The "hyper-president" has hit trouble with his mania for running France from his palace and reducing his government and parliament to simple executants and spectators. His leadership is looking arbitrary and even autocratic. Members of his cabinet are talking about their doubts. Comparisons with Napoleon Bonaparte and Vladimir Putin are coming not just from the Socialist opposition, but from within Sarkozy's own rightwing camp.

That is exaggerating, but this week a couple of cases have added to doubts about his judgment. One is his appointment of Francois Pérol, his deputy chief of staff and closest economic adviser, to the post of chief of a big new banking group. Pérol had himself put together the now state-aided group -- a union of the Caisse d'Epargne and Banque Populaire -- from the Elysée palace. This brought howls of conflict of interest. Sarkozy then said that the appointment had been cleared bythe state Ethics Commission. That turned out to be false. The head of the commission had merely given a personal opinion in private. Even Edouard Balladur, the former Prime Minister who was Sarkozy's mentor, said this was too much. The Socialists want criminal charges brought if the appointment goes ahead.   

Balladur was the source of Sarkozy's other trouble. Appointed by the President to suggest administrative reforms, he came up with a new map of France. The historic regions of Picardy and the Auvergne would simply vanish, Brittany would reclaim its lost region around Nantes, Normandy would be united and Paris would be expanded to engulf the surrounding region. In a nice political touch, Poitou-Charentes would also be eradicated. That region happens to be the power base of its president, Ségolène Royal.

You don't need to know much about French attachment to le terroir to guess the reaction. The regions may only have been political entities since the early 1980s, but the attachment to the historic provinces, such as Auvergne and Picardy, runs deep (we saw this with the car license plates last month). The Balladur scheme may fizzlebut Sarko is being accused of trying to recast France with the whim of an  absolute monarch.

Sarkozy's critics, including some in his own Cabinet, say that his system of forcing la rupture by riding rough-shod over tradition and institutions has reached its limit. In a time of unrest and upheaval, he should stop behaving like a monarch and delegate power to his Prime Minister, François Fillon. He should appoint ministers with authority in their own right. His present cabinet is full of indebted courtiers who take orders from the palace advisers who run their sectors. A good example is Christine Lagarde, the Finance Minister, a lawyer with no political background who is struggling out of her depth while Sarkozy and his staff run the economy.

An un-named minister told le Monde: A real government has to be established, with a screen between the President and events. Nicolas Sarkozy must do what he does not know how to do: work in a team and confer value on his ministers. The question is whether he can put into question his two years in power so far.

That remark, albeit anonymous, has caused a stir since it appeared yesterday. Criticism also came on the record from Jean-Francois Copé, the parliamentary leader of Sarkozy's UMP party, who has turned into a dissident. "The challenge is to create a hyper-parliament opposite the hyper-president from which ministers can draw support," he said.

Sarko is a pragmatist, but few see him retreating from the pilot's seat and becoming a lofty chairman like his recent predecessors and especially Jacques Chirac, the last incumbent. French presidents have enjoyed near absolute power most of the time since the job was invented for Charles de Gaulle in 1958. The exception has been nine years of cohabition with opposition governments. Until Sarkozy,  recent presidents have followed de Gaulle's precedent of delegating management of the country to their Prime Minister. Sarkozy is telling people that he is aware of the discontent  -- which is reflected in rock bottom approval ratings -- but he says the mood is the result of the economic slump, not his leadership. In other words, Europe's modern Bonaparte will march on, heedless of the storm around him.  

[Top picture is from the cover of a recent edition of Le Point news magazine. ] 

Airline accidents highlight pilot skills

 

UPDATE Wednesday 3/3: The accident investigation confirmed today that apparent inattention by the pilots led to the Amsterdam crash after one of the two radio altimeters malfunctioned.

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Why do airliners seem to be falling out of the sky these days ? The question is worth looking at after the Turkish Airlines crash in Amsterdam this week added to what looks like a series.

Part of the answer in some cases could be that the sophisticated systems on modern airliners are lulling some pilots into a false sense of security. In other words, they might be rusty on the stick-and-rudder skills of basic flying. This is dangerous territory. I am not a professional, just an amateur pilot, but the matter is being discussed by the pros.

I won't speculate about what caused the Turkish Boeing 737 to come down short of the runway at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, but let's look at the recent pattern. In the past 13 months in west Europe and the USA at least five airliners have crashed after suffering stalls or apparent stalls and two have safely crash-landed after losing all power.

First, to clear up a common misunderstanding, an aerodynamic stall -- to use it's full namel -- happens when the wings suddenly stop producing lift [see picture below]. They do not stall because engines stop. It happens because the plane is flying too slowly or performs an abrupt manoeuvre. If the engines fail -- or "stall" in media parlance -- a plane becomes a glider. It remains controllable -- as Captain Sullenberger showed masterfully when he ditched his Airbus in the Hudson river last month.  The pilot's first action must be to push the nose down, turning height into speed. That obviously has limits if the plane is already very near the ground, as with the Boeing 737 at Amsterdam .

There are common patterns in the recent incidents:

In August, 154 were killed when a Spanair MD 80 stalled after take-off. The pilots failed to set the take-off flaps so the plane was unable to climb out of ground effect, the air cushion near the surface. That accident arose from apparent negligence.

In November, an Air New Zealand Airbus with two pilots from a German airline hit the Mediterranean, killing all seven aboard as it approached the French city of Perpignan. The accident investigators reported this week that the plane stalled after the crew took the risky decision to test its slow flying performance while they were at a dangerously low altutude. Technical factors may have contributed, but the pilots' unwise action led to the crash.

On February 12, a Continental airlines Dash 8 turboprop crashed on the approach to Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 on board and one on the ground. Though the inquiry is far from over, the investigators have found that the plane stalled and the crew apparently failed to take the right emergency action -- according to media leaks. Rather than gliding, it fell like a stone.

The latest was the Amsterdam crash on Wednesday. What is known so far is that the engines appear to have lost power a couple of miles from the runway and the plane flopped into a field. Passengers and witnesses described what the investigators have said was an apparent stall, from which the pilots may have been unable to recover. The sudden gyrations of the plane could have been caused by a number of events, including possibly the turbulence left in the air by a heavy airliner that preceded it.

The two successful powerless landings involved airliners that suddenly lost engine thrust but were under  control until they made contact with the earth. A British Airways Boeing came down short of a runway at Heathrow on a flight from China in January last year. And Captain Sullenberger glided his Airbus A320 onto the Hudson last month after birds stopped the engines just after take-off. In both cases no lives were lost, thanks to good airmanship.

All pilots practise stalls in order to avoid them. You learn on the first day that no matter what, you fly the aeroplane right down to the ground. Airline pilots practice in simulators handling potential emergencies on approach. Airliners are equipped with systems that shake the control columns or sticks and provide aural warnings if their flying speed decays and they are approaching the danger zone. Some, such as the Airbus, have computers that do not let the plane stall -- unless they are over-ridden by the crew as they were in the case of the Air New Zealand plane in November.

The theory that is doing the rounds is far from new. Ever since the Wright brothers took off in 1903, complacency has been the biggest killer and pilots are trained to fight it. But, some are wondering whether the advanced electronics of the modern plane lead pilots to lose the edge? Landing a modern jet is usually a matter of monitoring the system until the pilot hand-flies the touch-down. With the autothrottle on and the electronics guiding the plane down the glide-slope, it is conceivable that pilots might not realise that they are approaching a stall. 

Here for example is a pilot's remark on PPRUNE.org (Professional Pilots Rumour Network) after the Amsterdam crash this week.  "We've not seen the end of this type of accident. Forget birdstrikes - in this instance. Inattention may be the real enemy". PPRUNE, by the way, has a lot of uninformed people contributing, but you can tell the difference.

[Image of wing stalling]

[Footnote: the confusion by the media over engines "stalling" and aeroplanes stalling is avoided entirely in French, and I assume many other languages, because the words are different for each. An aerodynamic stall is un décrochage. A plane stalls = un avion décroche. If the engine stops, as in a road vehicle, the verb is caler. The engine stalled = Le moteur a calé.  Décrocher is also much better than stall because it literally means unhooking, which is what the wing does from the air when it stalls.  CB]        

Ségolène Royal sees red over new amour

What is it about Moroccan-born French businessmen in their fifties? First Cécilia Sarkozy ran off with one and today we learn that Ségolène Royal has fallen for another.

Royal, the slightly flaky Socialist who lost to Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential election, has been shoving herself into the headlines for months in a campaign to eclipse Martine Aubry, the stolid party leader. This week, in full Joan of Arc mode, she rushed off with a media posse to Guadeloupe to side with strikers who have paralysed the Caribbean island for a month.  But today Royal, 55, is furious because Paris Match magazine had the effrontery to report on her new companion. 

Match splashed Royal on its front and inside pages walking arm-in-arm in the Spanish resort of Marbella with André Hadjez, who, we were told, is a property manager and board-game entrepreneur. In its usual fawning celebrity style, Match talked of  the "romantic Andalusian escapade" and the "amorous gestures" of Royal, the "free woman", and her consort.

In time-honoured French fashion, Royal is crying foul and has set her lawyers on Match for violating her privacy -- a criminal offence  though the law is increasingly breached. "These are stolen pictures. Why can't they leave me in peace," she said. Their publication was part of a dark plot to discredit her by treating her as un people -- a celebrity -- said her entourage.

"This is obviously an attempt to undermine her. It's the method of vultures," said Jean-Louis Bianco, a senior Socialist ally. "It's politics via the keyhole. They are trying to mix the private woman and her public acts as a politician."

Rather than taking cover and waiting for the law-suits, Match has for once hit back. "Why were the photographers welcome to cover her presence in Guadeloupe but not in the streets of a Spanish seaside resort? Let us stop the hypocrisy," it said.

Whatever you think about Match, the argument is surely right. Royal has devoted great energy in recent months to projecting the image she has of herself: courageous, charismatic, stylish champion of the people's cause. She is hell-bent on taking another crack at the presidency in 2012 after being robbed last November, as she sees it, of the chance to lead the party. She is financially backed by Pierre Bergé, the fashion magnate who has just become a lot richer  (see last post).

Royal's private life has been the subject of books and media cover since she split in 2007 from François Hollande, the father of her four children and the party leader while she was running for the presidency. She has talked in print about her vie de femme. So why should a magazine not show pictures of her walking down the street with her friend ?

Mr Hadjez is unknown to the public.He once made a Trivial Pursuit-style game based on Paris Match. The first thing that people have noticed is the resemblance to Richard Attias, the events organiser who married the former Cécilia Sarkozy last year. The men have similar backgrounds. The last editor of Match  was fired for publishing a cover picture [above] of Cécilia with Attias -- but she was married to Sarkozy at the time. And it should be mentioned that Match's owner is Arnaud Lagardère, a good friend of the President.  

 

Paris sale thrills art market and upsets China

 

 France often quotes a 1995 pop song by Alain Bashung called Ma petite entreprise ne connais pas la crise -- The crisis isn't touching my little business.

The title could be sung by the art market today after the spectacular sale of theYves Saint Laurent-Pierre Bergé collection. The three-day auction at the Grand Palais has defied the economic gloom and brought in 373 million euros, breaking several world records.

The song does not apply to the petite entreprise of Franco-Chinese relations. Beijing is using the sale of those two little Chinese animal heads to further its punishment of President Sarkozy for his antics last year around Tibet and the Beijing Olympics. The hare and the rat, stolen when the British and French sacked Beijing in 1860, went for 14 million euros each to anonymous bidders despite China's attempts to block the sale. Jackie Chan, the Kung Fu actor, jumped in on Beijing's side today. Here is my story. 

Back to the rest of the art. The sight of all those bidders flush with their millions has not cheered France much as the bleak times hit home but it is being greeted as as a triumph by Sarkozy's government. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister, called the auction in the Grand Palais a  "a world success which shows that Paris is one of the major centres for the international art market."

In a market that is apparently withstanding the slump, you would expect works by Matisse, de Chirico and Degas to notch up records. For example, Matisse's 1911 oil "Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose" [right], fetched 32 million euros, the sale's highest price and a record for the painter whose collages inspired Saint Laurent's designs.

But how about this elephant-like arm-chair from the early 20th century Art Deco era? The squat, very worn, brown leather seat by the Irish designer Eileen Gray sold for 21.9 million euros. Souren Melikian, the veteran expert at the International Herald Tribune, said today that this was  "a price that was until now utterly unimaginable for any piece of Art Deco furniture."

Crisis or no crisis, the Paris auction had shown that there had been no change since the days of bubbling optimism, he said. "The prodigious vitality of the art market across the board cannot be doubted for a second. If the goods are there, the prices rise higher than ever before."

To close, we can admire this piece by Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian sculptor. It was made from stacked wood blocks between 1914-1917 and entitled "Madame L.R.". It sold for 26 million euros -- 33 million US dollars.

 

Eu, the little French town that wants a longer name

Last week the English city of Birmingham caused a furore when it dropped apostrophes from street names. The reason was confusion over spelling for satellite navigation. An elegant Norman town near the English Channel has come up with a similar high-tech problem. It wants to change its name because internet searches are unable to find it -- and because the lady mayor may be a little embarrassed. 

The town of 8,000 on the border of Normandy and Picardy is called Eu. It is an honorable, ancient name that has featured in literature and is appreciated by cross-word enthusiasts. It is pronounced in the same way as "euh", the delaying sound in French speech that corresponds to err or um in English. 

Eu, which is close to the coastal town of Tréport  has been suffering from a drop in holiday visitors and they think they know the reason: the internet. People booking on line are not directed to the town's fine hotels and inns because search engines fail to recognise a two-letter place name which is the same as the past participle of the verb avoir (J'ai eu, pronounced roughly like the letter U in English, means I had). It also does not help that EU stands for European Union in English. Further complicating Eu's problem is the fact that two other French words are pronounced the same way: eux, meaning them and oeufs, meaning eggs.

 

After making only 7,700 euros in hotel visitor tax instead of the expected 24,000, Marie-Françoise Gaouyer, the new Socialist Mayor of Eu (above), has set out to add a few more letters. She has an extra good reason for doing so. Try saying her title in French. La Maire d'Eu (The Mayor[ess] of Eu) is pronounced the same as La merde (sorry for spelling out what will be obvious to most here).

Because of that, the town hall stationery carries the careful heading "Mairie de la Ville d’Eu". (...of the Town of Eu) That is one of the possibilities for a new name, along with Eu-en-Normandie or Eu-le-Château. That's its historic château in the picture.

Of course the change is being resisted by locals who are not keen on bowing to the internet. Eric Pradels, owner of the town's main newspaper shop, told Paris Normandie newspaper that he likes the quirky name: "When people ask my address, I hear them hesitate. They think that I have not finished my sentence. That gives me a chance to talk about the town."   

Jean-Claude Andréoni, another local, said: "If people don't know it, we say near Tréport. Or Dieppe. There is no way it is going to be changed because of the internet."

Madame la Maire says that it will take four years to make the change. This requires a council vote, a referendum, a parliamentary act and approval by the President's cabinet of ministers.

A pilot's footnote: Eu has a nice little aerodrome. It's almost impossible for English weekend flyers to state their destination on the radio as "Eu". So the airfield is called Eu-Mer (pronounced roughly 'Ermer' in English).

French minister says wine is fine after all

As a follow up to last week's post on the evils of wine, the Health Minister has just injected a little common sense in the debate. Roselyne Bachelot says that alcohol should be consumed in a "reasonable, cultural and balanced" way.  That's Bachelot with the pink champagne above, with Xavier Bertrand, the new boss of President Sarkozy's Mouvement Populaire party.

Bachelot noted the conclusion of the cancer institute that a single glass of wine a day more than doubled the risk of certain types of cancer. But she added: "We are a country that produces wine. I enjoy a glass with my meals. Banning wine in our country is impossible and not desirable."

Growers are reassured. They are also pleased that the Government does not, as they feared, intend to forbid wine-tasting at winery cellars and food fairs. This prospect had arisen because a new law will ban open bars at public social events. This is intended to discourage youngsters from getting drunk. These as-much-as you-can-drink venues are said to contribute to the rapid spread of British-style binge-drinking among French teenagers and students. Wine-tasting has nothing to do with this, said Bachelot. "I have never heard of wine growers offering as much as people want. They usually just put a little drop in the glass."

The industry was also pleased to hear from Bachelot that the government will not prevent them from advertising and selling on the internet. A new law will set rules on the net and the alcohol trade. No pop-up advertising will be allowed and none will be tolerated on sites for sports or young people. But vineyards can continue to promote their produce and take electronic orders.

High art and farm life pull the weekend crowds in Paris

People are lining up to see two great shows which opened in Paris this morning. One is the  Salon de l'Agriculture, the big annual farm exhibition. This popular fixture of the late winter, opened by the President, brings a taste of rural life to the capital and reminds city dwellers of their country roots, real or imagined.

Nicolas Sarkozy, born and brought up in Paris and suburban Neuilly, is the first president in modern times to claim no rural background. He is ill at ease among the show cattle and other beasts that he is called on to admire. Jacques Chirac, his predecessor, was in his element slapping cows' rears, knocking back wine and chewing on  saucisson with the farmers at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre. The Salon is a way in which Paris and France in general celebrates its bond with le terroir -- the land and its produce. The media cover in this year of angoisse sounds especially soothing. Financial crises may come and go, but France has its feet on its ancient ground

Sarkozy will be much more at ease during his private tour of the other show, at the Grand Palais in central Paris, but this one seems out of sync with the times. The great iron and glass hall that was built for the 1900 Universal Exposition is being used for the auction of one of the most sumptuous private collections of art of modern times.  

Christie's, the auction house, has spent over a million euros fitting the palais to display and sell the collection of the late Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, his impresario and longtime partner in life [both in last picture below]. Crisis or no crisis, the rich and famous have landed in Paris this weekend for a banquet tonight and the three-day sale, starting on Monday, which is expected to raise up to 300 million euros. A great deal is at stake.

Critics and collectors have run out of superlatives for the trove of Modern, Impressionist, classical, antique and oriental paintings, sculpture, furniture and other works that Bergé, 79, is selling “without regret, without nostalgia”.

[Above: tapestry by Edward Burne-Jones that is being donated to the Musée d'Orsay]

Up to 50,000 people are expected over the weekend to gaze at works by a roll call of masters including Picasso, Mondrian, Cézanne, Lautrec, Manet, Léger and Goya. After a private preview, Béatrice de Rochebouet, the art critic of Le Figaro, wrote yesterday: “It is a total marvel.”

The auction house has worked hard to stir excitement in its “sale. With the art world on the edge of its own slump, adrenalin is pumping before an event that will test the market. A strong sale will show that high art is deemed a refuge in troubled times; a flop could kick the world market into a dive.

The event is part of a lavish build-up that has included private tours of Saint Laurent's apartment [above] in the Rue Babylone on the Left Bank for 300 favoured clients. The home of the reclusive couturier was so stuffed with art that he hung a Matisse on the back of a door.

The five-volume catalogue for the sale has 1,800 pages and weighs 10kg (22lb). The most highly valued item, at €25-30 million, is Picasso's 1914 Cubist still life Instruments de musique sur un guéridon. Controversy has arisen over two items, 18th-century bronze heads of a rat and a hare that once adorned the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. China is demanding the return of the sculptures, which were plundered by British and French armies in the Second Opium War in 1860.

Some experts are sceptical about the prospects of a sale that smacks of the extravagent recent past but Christie's says that the magical aura of Saint Laurent has bestowed a special value on his collection.

Bergé, who began collecting seriously with his partner in the early 1970s when they struck rich with their Opium perfume, is optimistic. “In a time of crisis, people no longer want to buy shares. Art can be a refuge for value,” he said yesterday. “But I never bought for that reason. Yves Saint Laurent and I were absolutely mad about art in general, so we bought, without ever talking about the price.”

A final note: Christie's and other fine art auction houses are laying off staff under the pressure of recession. French farms, on the other hand, are suffering a big labour shortage. Unemployment is painfully high and rising further in France, but people do not want to work on the land.

Give up wine, French government says.

In the midst of the winter gloom, President Sarkozy's administration has chosen this moment to tell its people to stop drinking wine. You are hearing right. The Ministry of Health has issued rules for reducing the risk of cancer and one of the main ones is never drink alcohol. 

"The consumption of alcohol, and especially wine, is discouraged," say guidelines that are drawn from the findings of the National Cancer Institute (INCA). A single glass of wine per day will raise your chance of contracting cancer by up to 168 percent, it says.

Not surprisingly, the wine producers are seeing red. Forget those 1980s findings that anti-oxidants in  wine were good for your health. "Small daily doses of alcohol are the most harmful. There is no amount, however small, which is good for you," said Dominique Maraninchi, INCA's president. 

Of course this is not new. Experts around the world have been telling people to go dry if they want to stay healthy. But it's sobering when the authorities in France, a country where wine is part of life and the national heritage, decide that it's time for everyone to get on the wagon.

The pleasantly-illustrated ministry brochure makes grim reading. In the interests of prevention, the INCA collated hundreds of international studies and summarized the relation between types of cancer with food, drink and life-style. As you can guess, apart from wine, the dangerous stuff is red meat, charcuterie, salt and so on. Sentences like this do not do much for the appetite: "The risk of colon-rectal cancer rises by 29 percent per 100 gramme portion of red meat per day and 21 percent per 50 gramme portion of charcuterie."

Being over-weight greatly increases risks of certain types of cancer. As well as eating a balanced diet, the ministry tells us to undertake 30 minutes of vigorous exercise at least five days a week.

Alcohol facilitates cancers of the mouth, larynx, oesophagus, colon-rectum, and breast, says the guidelines. "The cause is above all the transformation of ethanol in alcohol to acetaldehyde, which damages DNA in healthy cells."

The wine producers are calling foul, accusing the "ayatollahs" of the health lobby of trying to kill one of the glories of the nation. They are noting the suspicious coincidence that France now has its' first tee-total president. Nicolas Sarkozy sips mineral water and orange juice when all around him are knocking back the Champagne and Burgundy (Carla Bruni, his wife, is not so abstemious and both she and Sarko are smokers). "This persecution of wine has to stop," said the General Association of Wine Producers. The growers say that the scientific evidence is contradictory and they point to a World Health Organisation study that found that moderate consumption had a preventive effect against cancer.

Xavier de Volontat, president of the producers' assocation in the southwestern Languedoc region, told us by phone today: "The extremists must not be allowed to take consumers hostage...  Wine consumption has dropped by 50 percent over the last 20 years in France but cancer has increased. You have to admit, that's a paradox."

"We never said that alcohol is not dangerous for health," de Volontat said. "We give advice on our internet sites and at public events. We are for responsible, reasonable and moderate consumption. .. It is not in our interest to see our consumers dying of cancer or in car accidents."

I would like to believe Mr de Volontat and his fellow growers. It's hard to imagine a good meal in France without wine (if you're not working, driving or piloting planes afterwards). But I remember reporting similar defensive arguments from the tobacco industry when they were fighting cancer claims in the 1980s.

Recognising that the French people are not super-human, the ministry says that if you are unable to stop entirely, the main thing is to drink only occasionally. It's wishful thinking, I suppose, to imagine that maybe an extra dose of my daily exercise will cancel the damage from the daily wine.

[Below: Bordeaux vineyard]

Sarkozy soothes with softer words

Since President Sarkozy is making another attempt to reassure France on television tonight, let's look at his language.

Sarko is the least literary of modern French presidents. He likes to talk like a regular guy, uses slang and is partial to unpresidential outbursts.  His best-known effort in the genre was exactly a year ago, when he told an unfriendly by-stander: "Casse-toi pauv'con" (Get lost, jerk, or one of the other variations that were debated on this blog).

Like any good politician, the President has a way with words. His plain rhetoric with simple ideas (Work more to earn more and La Rupture) won him election in 2007. At one stage, before the financial crisis, he unwisely boasted that linguistic talent alone could raise economic growth. "I think that in re-establishing confidence through words, we can gain 0.5 percent growth," he said. ["Je pense qu'en réactivant la confiance par la parole, on peut gagner 0,5 % de croissance.]

Sarkozy used to pride himself on his langage de vérité. He talked straight and avoided the lame langue de bois -- wooden language -- that has lately been favoured by French leaders (like calling a tax a "social contribution" and a strike a "social movement").

But now that the slump has hit, the President is falling back on Tony Blair-style happy language to soften the blow. The other day, when he suspended a school reform to head off riots by students, he denied that he had backed down. "I understood the need of French Society to express itself," he said.

To help quell unrest over the contracting economy (sorry, social concern), he has coined a new set of phrases.  He aired some of them in his last TV appearance last month.La Tribune newspaper has just produced a useful list. Here they are:

Les classes moyennes. Sarkozy uses this not in its literal sense of middle classes but to refer to the working class and lower middle class. It is deliberately vague so that many people identify with it.

Victimes de la crise. This replaces licenciés économiques, or people who have been laid off. This way, Sarkozy casts himself as saviour and protector.

Activité partielle.  Replaces chômage partiel, or workers whose hours have been cut.

Politique active de l'emploi (active employment policy). Replaces "Traitement social du chômage" (Social treatment of unemployment)

Pôle emploi (job centre in UK parlance): Replaces ANPE, the state agency for helping job seekeers. Sarkozy has combined it with ASSEDIC, where they receive unemployment benefit. So far, though, only 100 exist, out of 1,500 planned.

There is of course nothing new about recourse to euphemism when it comes to the economy. A reader to the Financial Times suggested this week that, in this time of contempt for bankers, the British should copy an old French wheeze from the early 19th century.

Back then, the word bank was so reviled after the turmoil of revolution and Napoleonic war that they invented an array of alternative names that survive to this day: caisse, société, crédit, fonds, comptoir and so on. The trouble is that, like all euphemisms, they eventually acquired their own harsh sound. Ask Société Générale or le Crédit Lyonnais, two great banks that were hit by scandal before the present upheaval. To get rid of the unpleasant image, they have renamed themselves plain SG and LCL.

France to put home or heart on new car plates

Breton patriots are cheering a small victory in their long fight to establish a separate identity in France's highly-centralised state. The government is letting Brittany put the local Breton flag and "Breizh", the Breton for Brittany, on new car licence plates.

That may not sound much, but it would long have been unthinkable. For centuries the  state suppressed regional languages and differences in the interest of a united kingdom or republic. The administrative system of départements was created by the revolutionary regime in 1790 to eradicate loyalty to provincial rulers. The idea of regions with old historic names like Burgundy and Aquitaine emerged in the 20th century but it was not until 1982, under President Mitterrand, that they were given limited powers. Only last year was the constitution changed to describe the regional languages as part of the national heritage. 

Number plates entered the picture a couple of years ago when the state decided to centralise all vehicle registration. This caused an outcry because it meant doing away with the two digits that identify the département where the owner lives (there are several départements in each region of mainland France). Many people are attached to their 13, for the Marseille area, or 59 for le Nord and so on.

Under pressure from parliamentarians, the government came up with a compromise that does not make much sense. A département number will appear on the plates, along with the regional emblem, when they enter circulation this April. But the exercise has been neutered because owners can choose any département they feel like.    

In other words, the regional emblem does not necessarily have anything to do with where the owner lives. It will just show where he or she would like you to think he lives or comes from. That is like, say, someone living in Philadelphia being able to register their car with Arizona plates. The only rule is that the département number that you pick has to be matched by its regional emblem. 

As the Interior Ministry explains on its website: "You can choose the département with to which you feel attached or have the deepest personal affinity...This way, an Alsatian, a Caribbean, an Auvergnat, a Breton, a Ch'ti (northerner), a Corsican... will be able to display their roots if they live in another region."

The Antillais, or Caribbean, can do this because the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are French  départements and regions. 

[Below: new plates for PACA (Provence) and Poitou-Charentes] 

The scheme has yet to start but it's a safe bet that people from regions with strong identities like Corsica, Brittany or Alsace will be happy to show off their origins. Those from say, l'Ile de France -- Paris and surrounding region -- will not be in such a rush to  advertise their heritage. Many living in the undistinguished suburban départements beginning with 9 may wish to recall their provincial ancestry or location of their Mediterranean holiday home.

Most of the regional emblems on the plates will be the boring corporate-style logos of the local councils.  Only two make national statements: Brittany and Corsica. The moor's head on the Corsican flag is already the regional emblem. The Breton flag, known as Gwenn Ha Du, is more politically loaded. Invented by a nationalist in 1923 it has been adopted as a symbol of local separateness. Paris did not want it on the plates, preferring the innocuous official Breton region logo [below], but relented under pressure from the regional counci. 

Now the Breton militants are on the warpath again. They are aiming to use the new plates to advance their struggle for the "reunification" of Brittany. This means restoring the Loire Atlantique, centred on the city of Nantes, to Brittany. The département was severed from historic Brittany and put under what is now the Pays de la Loire region in 1941 by the wartime Vichy state. Breton nationalists living in Nantes aim to stick a Breton flag on their "44" (Pays de Loire) plates.

Not surprisingly, the new licence plate wheeze is drawing ridicule. Hervé Mariton, a southern MP from President Sarkozy's party, said the whole thing was a sop to sentimentalism and a "bizarre mixture of publicity and state administration".    

Below: The regional emblems that will appear on new French number plates, including the four overseas departements, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guiana and La Réunion.   

French spelling ain't what it used to be

We have been given more evidence that France, despite its reputation for rigorous schooling, is no exception to the decline of literacy.

A teachers' campaign group gave a 1976 spelling and grammar test to a sample of 1,348 kids who began lycée --  high-school -- last autumn. Only 14 percent of the 15-year-olds could scrape beyond the 50 percent mark. Fifty-eight percent scored zero. When they set the identical 1976 test in 2000, 30 percent passed.

As a father of two teenagers who have done all their schooling in the French system, my first reaction was to blame the harsh marking methods. My daughter, who starts lycée next autumn, has often come home with copies of the dreaded dictée (dictation) in which she has 0/20. A few forgotten accents quickly pull down the marks. The children are also held to high standards on the rules of grammar. But I took a closer look and found that the dictation text and the related questions were not really very tough in the 1976 test, which was from the brevet -- the certificate needed to qualify for the lycée. [See dictation text below]

Commenting on the findings, the Sauvez-les-lettres group said the results showed a disastrous collapse in comprehension and grasp of the language. It is not just a case of the notoriously tricky spelling of French, with all those accents and unpronounced letters. After eight years of school, half the 15-year-olds could not recognize a simple adverb or the direct object of a verb. That might sound complicated in countries where grammar is not taught, but these things are dinned into French children from from the start.

President Sarkozy's government is trying, like its predecessors, to stem the slide in basic skills. Its reforms to the huge centrally-controlled education system are largely opposed by teachers' unions, a group that have fought just about every change for the past 30 years. School hours have recently been cut for primary schools, with most pupils doing a four-day week and special remedial classes for the poorest performers.

The Sauvez-les-lettres group says that this will not help. The answer is to go back to teaching French in the old fashioned way and for as many hours as it was taught in 1976, they say. That seems unlikely to happen.

The decline in language skills is worrying France as much as anywhere else. Employers say that job applications from university graduates are often riddled with basic language mistakes. Another depressing account of the problem has just been produced by Danièle Sallenave, a novelist. She spent time in two collèges -- junior secondary schools -- and wrote up her experience in Nous, on n'aime pas lire  (We don't like reading).

Even parents with good education read few books, so it is not surprising that their children do not, she says. "There are even people from the elite classes who boast that they don't read," she told le Monde. "If you don't read regularly, you forget how to...The word  'culture' nowadays, has come to mean the national heritage and its use for commercial and tourist ends. That is not what people need."

After spending time in the schools, one private and affluent and the other poor, she concludes that "our schools exist in a society which no longer believes in the power of art or words."

-----------

Here's the dictée of 1976. Note: there are no subjunctives or pesky participles with avoir. For the subsequent questions go here. 

L’atelier 76.


Gilles ouvrit le battant d’une lourde porte et me laissa le passage. Je m’arrêtai et le regardai. Il dit quelque chose, mais je ne pouvais plus l’entendre, j’étais dans l’atelier 76.
    Les machines, les marteaux, les outils, les moteurs de la chaîne, les scies mêlaient leurs bruits infernaux et ce vacarme insupportable, fait de grondements, de sifflements, de sons aigus, déchirants pour l’oreille, me sembla tellement inhumain que je crus qu’il s’agissait d’un accident, que ces bruits ne s’accordant pas ensemble, certains allaient cesser. Gilles vit mon étonnement.
- C’est le bruit, cria-t-il dans mon oreille.
Il n’en paraissait pas gêné. L’atelier 76 était immense. Nous avançâmes, enjambant des chariots et des caisses, et quand nous arrivâmes devant les rangées des machines où travaillaient un grand nombre d’hommes, un hurlement s’éleva, se prolongea, repris, me sembla-t-il, par tous les ouvriers de l’atelier.
Gilles sourit et se pencha vers moi.
- N’ayez pas peur. C’est pour vous. Chaque fois qu’une femme rentre ici, c’est comme ça.
Je baissai la tête et marchai, accompagnée par cette espèce de “ Ah ! ” rugissant qui s’élevait maintenant de partout.
    A ma droite, un serpent de voitures avançait lentement, mais je n’osais regarder.

Claire Etcherelli, Elise ou la vraie vie.

Valentine memories from French state archive

 

Nostalgists and fans of French music should have a look at a feature just offered by the INA, the excellent national radio and television archives, in honour of St Valentine's day.

February 14 was not a commercial festival in France until it arrived from the United States and Britain in the late 1940s. It took off after being promoted by florists in 1947. Observed with outings, messages and presents, le Saint Valentin is now almost as much an obligation as in the Anglo-Saxon world though the exchange of cards is still not so common and people do not call one-another their Valentines.

The INA have put up a batch of hit love songs by stars of recent decades, as well as old interviews in which they talk on the subject. The singers include the young Francis Cabrel, still at the top over three decades later, France Gall and the late popster Claude François. I wonder why there is no Serge Gainsbourg, one of the all-time best singer-composers of love songs  

It's fun to watch Françoise Hardy, the melancholic young hearthrob of the sixties, insisting  in her 1991 interview that love is une saloperie -- roughly crap -- and by definition always ends badly. "It's synonymous with suffering,"she says.  She is talking about her relationship with Jacques Dutronc, the singer with whom she has had a long and bumpy existence. They were married in 1981 and are still more or less together [that's them in the 1990s in the picture]. Dutronc talks in another interview about their difficult courtship.  "At the start I couldn't listen to her records because they were so down, they gave me the blues," he says. Their son Thomas, born in 1973, is a very successful jazz-inflected pop singer and musician [post last month].

   

Then watch the great Edith Piaf,  a tragic figure, talk of her devotion to the state of being in love. "To write a love song the composer has to be in love. ...I am always in love," she says. "Love is the greatest joy.." Or look at Sacha Distel, the late elegant crooner, warbling "Love is four letters written by two." 

The INA has an excellent site that now contains on-line half of the last 60 years of French television and radio. To watch the whole Valentine's material you have to pay a little, but clips of the songs, interviews and old TV films, and are free.

And all that without mentioning France's most famous lovebirds (last post). 

And for those who would like to get away from soft themes, here's a commentary on the French model that I did for today's paper:  

When Nicolas met Carla

 

Do we really need to know all about the rather cheesy chat-up that Nicolas Sarkozy performed on the night that he met Carla Bruni? The French media apparently think that we, or at least the French people, do not.

A lurid and fascinating account of the famous dinner party of November 2007 has just been published by its host, Jacques Séguéla. If we are to believe Séguéla, the doyen of the French advertising world, Sarko went for Bruni like a boastful teenager on speed. He proposed marriage that night, mocked Mick Jagger, one of her former lovers, and bragged that he would make her Marilyn Monroe to his Jack Kennedy.

Click here for the full account from today's Times. My point here is the near silence so far in the French media. Séguéla, 77, has been interviewed on the radio about his book, called Autobiographie Non Autorisée, a series of portraits of people he knows. But very little has so far surfaced on the extraordinary mating dance performed by Sarko and the woman who became France's first lady seven weeks later. Almost the only French-speaking media to report the tale until now are the Swiss and Belgian. In her excellent press review on RTL radio -- the top-rated station -- Pascale Clark advised listeners to go to a Swiss newspaper site if they wanted to know about Séguéla's yarn. 

The silence reflects the usual reluctance by the media -- reinforced by the law -- to touch matters of private life and especially of those in power. But Séguéla has published his account and presumably did so with some consent from the two friends whom he invited on a blind date in his home.

You can argue that conversations between the President and the woman for whom he fell are of no public concern. Perhaps Séguéla is betraying confidences -- or reporting inaccurately. But once he published his transcript of the less than witty badinage between the pair, it's impossible to deny the interest.

Séguéla calls the encounter a meeting of two mighty Shakespearian characters. The Great Dinner Romance does not quite sound like that but it gives intriguing insight into the psychology of Europe's most powerful leader (in the sense that no other is head of state and absolute chief executive). Sarkozy comes over as impetuous and thrilled with himself -- qualities with which France is well acquainted. The dinner party was originally planned as an attempt to reconcile Sarko with Cécilia, his restive wife. Bruni was invited to meet Sarko after Cécilia walked out and divorced him. Without venturing into amateur psychology, Sarkozy's behaviour looks like a classic case of rebound.

There was no room in the news article for an angle that emerges from Séguéla's account of the evening: the confirmation of Sarkozy's obsession with the United States. His desire to see himself as JFK is a constant. When he was elected, he saw the Elysée Palace as a new Kennedy Camelot, telling journalists that Cécilia looked like Jackie Kennedy.

Sarkozy has lately turned against the Americans, blaming them, or at least their bankers, for corrupting capitalism and bringing down the world economy.  But in November 2007, Sarkozy had just come back from a visit to the White House and the love affair was in full bloom.

Here is what Sarkozy told the dinner guests about his state banquet at President Bush's place, according to Seguela.

It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. My entrance up the steps of the White House, surrounded by three women who are symbols of a France that America was not expecting: what pride! I took care of every detail. I told Rama Yade (young, black Minister for Human Rights) that she was too beautiful to put on one of those dresses with fussy frills that she goes in for.  I told Rachida (Dati, Justice Minister, of Arab origin) to stick with her usual Dior elegance. I told Christine (Lagarde, Finance Minister) to leave her jewels in the safe. A Minister of Finance does not greet the American President in a pearl necklace.

A final point: The failure of the French media to pick up this tale is part of the same taboo that was applied last month to my interview with Julie Imperiali, Sarkozy and Bruni's fitness coach. Her account of working out with Sarko was replayed -- and usually distorted -- everywhere else, but not in France. There are some things that the people do not need to know about the President of the Republic.  

Sarkozy in Iraq as his woes pile up in France

A day out in Iraq must be relaxing for Nicolas Sarkozy, given the troubles that are stacking up for him at home. It's time for a run through his formidable list of headaches and I will respond to a false allegation from his office today that we British media misreported him.

First the news: Sarko dropped into Iraq this morning, becoming the first French president  to visit the country. His arrival turns the page on the Franco-American spat over the 2003 invasion. It is a step towards restoring the diplomatic and commercial interests that France used to have in Iraq. Before the first Gulf war, Paris was one of the chief arms suppliers to the late President Saddam Hussein. And before the 2003 war, France's Total company had obtained Iraqi oil rights in anticipation of the end of the embargo applied to Saddam at the time. 

Meeting President Talabani and Noori al Maliki, the Prime Minister, Sarkozy said: "France believes in the unity of Iraq. The world needs a united, democratic, sovereign and strong Iraq. France wishes your complete integration in the Middle East and in the world."  France is ready to give Iraq unlimited cooperation, he said, adding: "We say to French companies that the time has come to return to Iraq.”  

And here is what is not going right for the French President:

His TV talk last week failed to quell unrest over the crisis. The unions have called for another day of national strikes, on March 19 although that is in part a lever ahead of negotiations with the Government next week.

Sarkozy's ratings have slumped again after months of recovery. Approval for the President has sunk between five and 10 points over the past month to the mid-30s, according to several polls in the past week.

His bail-out for the car industry has started a fight with Brussels and Prague over protectionism. He obliged the two big car-makers to promise to stop off shoring production in return for the state's six billion euros. He singled out French car production in the Czech Republic in his TV talk. The Czech government, which now holds the EU presidency, has called an urgent summit to deal with this.

 In a reversal of roles, the formerly free-market Sarko was attacked this morning by François Chérèque, leader of the big CFDT labour union, for indulging in protectionism. "Blocking the market economy in order to make the French buy French means going back to the level of debate of the 1970s," Chérèque said on France-Inter radio. Of course the same alarm is being sounded in Britain, the US and elsewhere.

A strike is spreading in the universities. Valery Pécresse, the Higher Education Minister, is trying to defuse a revolt by teacher-researchers. Sarkozy seems to fear a wild-fire uprising by teachers and students more than anything else.

Resistance is growing from both the opposition and Sarkozy's own camp against his plan to take France fully back into the Nato alliance in April, 43 years after President de Gaulle withdrew in the name of national independence. Sarkozy is being accused of selling out French sovereignty. He is worried that Parliament, in which his party holds a strong majority, may not support the Nato move.

Guadeloupe, the French-owned Caribbean island, is in insurrection [right] over high living costs and Sarkozy is worried that the unrest will spread back to France.

He is in a quandary. If he appeases the three-week revolt by giving in to demands for subsidising higher incomes, he will further disrupt the local economy and contradict his strategy for handling the crisis in France. So today, Sarkozy refused the wage rise demanded by the group leading the mutiny. It goes by the colourful Creole name  Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon" (In French, Collectif contre l'exploitation outrancière or Collective Against Extreme Exploitation). 

The Caribbean strike, which has now spread to neighbouring Martinique, underlines the impossible costs of subsidising poor colonies on the other side of oceans while treating them as almost ordinary French départements (counties) with welfare protection and seats in the national parliament.

Perhaps the most minor of Sarkozy's problems has been the fall-out from his swipe at Britain in his TV appearance. It seemed gratuitous and it has lost him the goodwill of Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister.

I don't like wasting time on cross-Channel rivalry, but will make an exception because the Elysée Palace blamed us for the row today. Sarkozy's office tried to weasel out of the affair by accusing us of mis-representing what he said. "President Sarkozy deplores the way in which his comments on the British economy were reported in the United Kingdom," their statement said.

That is shameless. There was no misreporting. As we saw here already, Sarkozy chose to bring up Britain as the counter-example of what he wants for France. Gordon Brown had cut taxes to re-start the economy and it had not worked, he said. Britain was suffering because it was so tied into the US financial sector, he said. "England no longer has industry, unlike France. That is because England, 25 years ago, made the choice of services and notably, financial services," he said.

This was accurately reported, though we did fail to point out that Sarkozy got his facts wrong. Le Monde made amends today, explaining that Britain still has more industry than France.

--------------------

Footnote: My use of the term Anglo-Saxon last week has stirred some argument. I don't think there's anything wrong with the French using it as short hand for the developed English-speaking nations that originated with immigration from the UK. For France and the rest of the continent this has a clear sense. Simply saying "English-speaking countries" does not cover the same thing. I'm hybrid Scottish-Australian but am not offended when Britons are collectively known as les anglais, los ingleses, англичане (Anglichanye - in Russian) or whatever. It's just custom that's all. And I also fail to see what's patronising in using Gallic as a variant for French in the broad sense, even if it offends Bretons, Basques, Ch'tis and residents of le neuf-trois -- the Seine Saint Denis département on the poor northeastern edge of Paris. I don't call the French Gauls  -- although Variety, the Hollywood trade paper, has always done so  [example here].

Vintage green cars on show in Paris

As we suspected, the new version of the Citroen DS is a dud -- just the name for a car with nothing that evokes the original [picture at end of this post]. But this really is the season for motoring nostalgia. I have just spent an intriguing morning at Retromobile, Europe's main exhibition of classic and vintage cars.

This most elegant of annual shows is a feast if you enjoy looking at the beautiful cars of the last century, especially the roadsters, cabriolets and limousines of the pre-war era. The place is full of sumptuous Delages, Bugattis, Hispano-Suizas, Jaguars and other magic machines from what was the golden age of motoring -- for those who had the money.

This year's Retromobile (open till February 15),  has come up with a modern angle -- alternative energy. They are displaying vehicles that ran comfortably on electricity, steam and even compressed air -- over a century ago.

These ancient green vehicles show that the present rush to dump internal combustion is truly a trip back to the future. The most impressive is an electric hot-rod that in 1899 became the first automobile to break the 100 kilometres-per-hour (62.5 mph) barrier.

Camille Jenatzy, a Belgian racing driver known as the Red Devil, set the record when he took the car, called the Jamais Contente (Never Satisfied), down a three-kilometre straight just south of Paris. The version on show is an exact replica of the original, which is at a museum in Compiègne. Thierry Farges, the Retromobile media man unplugged it and put it through its paces,  silently zipping around the car-park. With its heavy batteries and almost no brakes, the thing is a beast to handle, but its concept is no different from the high-tech electromobiles that are being rushed to market now. 

"All this technology existed already a hundred years ago," Farges told me. "Electricity was reliable, quiet and clean and thriving in Paris at the start of the 20th century. Internal combustion was in its infancy and none of those things."

[Click to read on and find out how the Belgian racer met his end]

Trust me, Sarkozy tells France and zaps the Anglo-Saxons

President Sarkozy pulled off a smooth performance in his long television audience with his restive nation last night. It was a strange show -- a regal lecture from the Elysée Palace in answer to soft questions from four journalists, one of whom he romanced a couple of years ago.

More on the behaviour of the journalists below, but first the summmary. Over 15 million people tuned in to one of the three main television channels whose prime time Sarko had commandeered for his pep talk. For 90 minutes, he held the stage, exuding his usual self-confidence as he explained that he understood people's anguish -- which was due not to his policies but to a world crisis caused by the Anglo-Saxons.

Sarkozy gave a little ground, promising corporate tax cuts, some welfare benefits and talks with the trade unions. Otherwise, he refused to follow demands that he cut taxes and raise the minimum wage to boost consumer spending.  The British have tried that and it did not work, he said. France would stick with his 26 billion euro plan for investing in infrastructure and industry. 

"The English have chosen to follow the strategy of stimulus through consumption, notably by lowering VAT (sales tax) by two points. It has done absolutely nothing," he said. 

The British and the Americans came in for harsh treatment. The USA and the UK had been hit far harder than France in this "worst crisis for a century", said Sarkozy. "When you see the situation in the United States and the United Kingdom, we don't want to look like them."

Sarkozy also said he would refuse to "pay America's debt" and he demanded US agreement to radical reforms of the world financial system. "They're not going to get away with explaining that everything is going to go on as before."

You hear the same points about the US and Britain all over Europe, but not usually from heads of state. Sarkozy's relations with Gordon Brown and Barack Obama are clearly not as rosy as we thought. On the other hand, he went out of his way to praise Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, with whom he has really does not get on. Downing Street seethed as the British media and opposition had fun with Sarkozy's words today.

Predictably the unions and the Socialist opposition gave Sarkozy a low grade. "He is fobbing us off with talks and negotiations," said Martine Aubry, the Socialist leader. "He has no problem ramming decisions through when he wants to cut taxes for the super rich, or to make people work on Sundays," she said.
The unions are not satisfied and are talking of another day of strikes and protests. I have a feeling that they will happen.

The Sarko-show has generated another story today -- the meek behaviour of the star TV journalists who were invited by the palace to question the President.

There is not much new in this because France's political boss is also the head of state, unlike most other European countries. That makes an interview more ceremonial than with a Prime Minister.  Since General de Gaulle in the 1950s, journalists have always deferred heavily to French Presidents. One exception was Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, who became an ex star presenter last year after telling Sarkozy in an interview that he had been acting like a little boy.

But Sarkozy does more than his predecessors to bully and influence the media and he can be intimidating in an interview, as I have found out first hand. As president, he loads his evening broadcasts in his favour by summoning the TV to his turf -- a studio set up in the palace ballroom. Last night there was a visible studio audience of palace staff. 

He was given an exceptionally easy time by Laurence Ferrari of TF1, David Pujadas of France 2, Alain Duhamel of RTL and Guy Lagache of M6. Mediapart, a serious leftwing news site, poured scorn on them today. "Nicolas Sarkozy offered the pitiful spectacle of an idle king... revelling in vague but gilded questions."

The SNJ, the main -- and leftwing -- journalists' union, condemned the interviewers in a statement. "They perfectly played their role as court jesters... In no other so-called democratic country do politicians choose their interlocutors like that," it said.

No-one has publicly mentioned what many people knew as they watched Ferrari lobbing her questions to Monsieur le Président, that she went out with with him in the short period after his divorce in October 2007.  He is said in the business to have played a role in her promotion Poivre d'Arvor's job.   

When he was elected, Sarkozy promised to hold open US-style presidential news conferences. The only time he tried, in January last year, the result was so disastrous for him that he forgot about the idea.

[below: Ferrari and Pujadas not grilling Sarkozy]

 

Shabby book spells trouble for French cabinet star

President Sarkozy is going on television tonight to try to convince a sceptical country that he is doing enough to handle the economic crisis. He is not expected to shift course or announce anything. But for some in the political world, the main point may be what he says about Bernard Kouchner.

Sarkozy's Foreign Minister, who made his name decades ago as a crusading activist for human rights, is at the centre of a storm over allegations of sleazy behaviour. The fuss has been created by a book that takes an axe to Dr Kouchner's reputation as a dashing apostle of noble causes. It depicts him as an agent of US interests and a France-hater. The allegation of sleaze stems from details of work that Kouchner performed as a consultant for Omar Bongo, the President of Gabon for the last 40 years [picture below] and other less-than-savoury African leaders. That was before Sarkozy recruited him to his new government in 2007 as his prize catch from the left. [My Kouchner profile here]

Kouchner, 69, says that the "The World According to K"by Pierre Péan, is a a pile of nauseating nonsense. He denies any conflicts of interest or impropriety and depicts himself as the victim of a malicious attempt to destroy his name. He says that his consulting work was legitimate and led to a big improvement in health services for poor Africans. François Fillon, the Prime Minister, has rallied to his side, but so far Sarkozy has said nothing. The President does not get along well with his ageing rock star of a Foreign Minister and there are suggestions that his staff may even have had a hand in the book.

Here's the story from today's Times, but it's worth expanding on its seamy side. So far we have only seen extracts from the book, but they are enough to raise questions about the intent of Pierre Péan. His attack on Kouchner carries a whiff of anti-semitism and a poisonous tone that reminds one of the xenophobia of the old French far right. 

Péan has made a career as a hard-hitting investigative journalist. He has delivered some scoops, such as the revelation in 1994 that the then President Mitterrand had held a senior job in the wartime Vichy régime.Le Monde newspaper has not yet recovered from a damaging investigation of its methods that he co-wrote five years ago.

Péan's pedigree explains why his Kouchner book carries weight. But Pean writes in an opinionated, often brutal way. He has hobby horses, one of which is the Rwanda. His last book turned history on its head, arguing that Tutsi leaders and not the French-backed Hutu were behind the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis.

Péan discredits his indictment of Kouchner by painting him as a money-mad outsider whose primary motivation springs from his Jewish origins.   Kouchner is driven, he says, by "hatred for the values of the French Revolution, of the wartime Resistance, of a national independence that is loathed in the name of an Anglo-Saxon cosmopolitanism...". The Foreign Minister is guilty of "selling out French interests" to the United States and of hating himself as well as France.

That is odious stuff, the kind of language that was used against Jews and other supposed enemies of France in the Dreyfus affair of the late 1890s and by the hard right in the years up to 1945. Even Jean-Marie Le Pen, the sulphurous boss of the far-right National Front, would think twice before using the old anti-semitic codeword "cosmopolitan".

Kouchner was right to call this sickening and I'm pleased to see that a few commentators have come round to the same view.Le Monde has just denounced Péan's language as a loathsome "cocktail of qualifiers used by a certain French right wing". Jean-Michel Aphatie, one of the sharpest political commentators, has written a blog post pointing out Péan's apparent anti-semitism.

The minister may be helped by the sinister tone of Péan's book because it distracts attention from his consulting work for regimes with records far removed from the moral causes that he has always promoted. Everyone knows that Kouchner is a bit of a showman with a prima donna side. Péan's book does not seem to reveal any facts that were not already known about the minister. He will no doubt survive in his job, for a while at least. 

Citroen tries to revive sixties goddess

     

No apologies for another French nostalgia post so soon after the last one. It would be impossible to ignore this item. The Citroen car company has just set pulses racing with news that they are to take a leap back to the future by relaunching their legendary DS model.

Word of the rebirth of the symbol of post-war driving dash prompted a burst of day-dreaming. Could we be in for a revival of the swooping-nosed flying-saucer of a car that came out in 1955 and defined the style of the de Gaulle era?  "Please don't change a thing," pleaded one Citroen die-hard on a Californian web site.   A radio commentator wondered: "What will be back next? Young Brigitte Bardot and the Caravelle (airliner) ?"

[Read The Times original 1955 review of the DS from our archives, here]

 [Below:Bardot in her DS. Top picture: fanciful advertisement of the era] 

Well, it seems that Citroen may be pulling a bit of a hoax. The company has rushed to calm the excitement, pointing out that its new DS series will not be a replica but a modern homage to the "spirit" of the car whose initials are pronounced déesse -- goddess. The new models which are due to be unveiled tomorrow and sold from next year, are apparently not an exercise in retro design like the Volkswagen's New Beetle, BMW's Mini and the new Fiat 500.  Citroen, whose cars long ago lost their magic, may be taking a risk if they are just using the revered badge for a marketing exercise at a time of slumping sales.

Citroen fan sites the and media have seized on the DS news to revisit a car that qualified for the much-abused word icon. Libération,which one would expect to be ideologically opposed to the symbol of the 60s bourgeoisie, produced a two-page tribute with an A-Z of DS lore. B was of course for Roland Barthes, the semiologist who elevated the DS to cultural object in his 1956 book Mythologies. The DS was "one of those objects that have descended from another universe...from science fiction. La Dé-esse is firstly a new Nautilus," wrote Barthes. 

 
Unlike the humble originals of the Beetle and the other modern retro-mobiles, the DS was a luxurious big car with a revolutionary design for its time. Adored by film stars, President de Gaulle and the well-off, the DS was as sophisticated as its proletarian sister, the Deux Chevaux (2CV) was primitive [my 2CV post]. Its aerodynamic looks came from jet designers and its hydraulic suspension, steering, brakes and transmission were beyond the abilities of many a rural mechanic. It scored only modest sales in Britain and the USA, although many are kept running in both countries by loyal admirers.

The DS bowed out in 1975 but a decade later its quirky looks were still so futuristic that Hollywood used one in Back to the Future II as a taxi set in the year 2015.

Citroen, which is part of the Peugeot-Citroen group, has never since managed to recapture the old excitement. President Sarkozy is driven around in a Citroen C6, as well as in a Peugeot 607 and Renault Vel Satis. Sales of the flagship C6, a big saloon that was launched two years ago as a "Mercedes-beater", have been disappointing.

France's top 10 singers of the year

 

It's encouraging for those of us no longer in the bloom of youth that the average age of the 10 most successful French singers last year was 45 and only two are under 30.

Also worth noting is that seven of the top 10, starting with Francis Cabrel [above], a southern folk-singer who is in first place, are also writer-composers and mainly in the tradition of the witty and wordy chanson française. Only one is a woman. Mylène Farmer [below], 47, who is seventh, is better known for her exotic, baroque stage shows and sexy act than for her musical qualities. About half of the 10 are classy, thinking artists. There are no groups. 

    [Mylène Farmer]

About half are spiritual heirs of the late great Georges Brassens, the sardonic, lefty bard of the post-war years. The younger ones were also  influenced by Alain Souchon, 64, a clever observer of human foibles. Souchon, whose best song is probably his 1993 lament to mass culture, Foule Sentimentale (Sentimental Crowd) [video clip] is holding his own in eighth place.

None of the 10 earn big sums by Anglo-American standards and few are known outside the French-speaking world. Since French CD sales have dropped by 60 percent since 2002 and legal downloading has not yet taken off, they make up their earnings touring and increasingly from  merchandising.

Cabrel made four million euros last year largely from the success of a quite beautiful album, Des Roses et des Orties (Roses and Nettles).[Watch Des Hommes Pareils, the hit single from the album].  Like many successful French guitarist-singers, he can be unfairly dismissed as a wannabe American.  His model was Bob Dylan and he sings a bluesy folk style. But Cabrel's earthy, bitter-sweet songs, delivered in a southwestern twang, are pure French -- sometimes with a hint of Spanish. Cabrel is also a wine-grower. 

In second place is Bénabar (real name Bruno Nicolini), 39. His lyrics are fun social commentary. His current album is called Infréquentable but he is best known for Le Dîner, a song in which a bored young  urbanite cannot be bothered to go to a dinner party.

Here's a sample verse in translation:

We don't care a hoot, we're not going, we can just hide under the sheets, we'll order pizzas, you, the telly and me
We'll ring, we'll make excuses, we'll improvise, we'll find something, we can just tell your friends that we don't like them and too bad.

On s’en fout, on n’y va pas, on n’a qu’à se cacher sous les draps, on commandera des pizzas, toi la télé et moi, on appelle, on s’excuse, on improvise, on trouve quelque chose, on n’a qu’à dire à tes amis qu’on les aime pas et puis tant pis.

Johnny Hallyday, 65, the immortal dinosaur of French rock 'n roll, holds his own in third place. Le Johnny National is a great stage performer but ever since he first imitated Elvis Presley in the late 1950s, his act has been little more than ersatz American.

Here are the 10 highest earners as compiled by le Figaro with notes on those not mentioned above. Carla Bruni, the folk-singing French First Lady, is not among them.

1  Francis Cabrel
2  Bénabar
3  Johnny Hallyday
4  Christophe Maé -- 33, reggae-influenced singer-guitarist
5  Bernard Lavilliers -- 62, muscular anarchist songwriter and world traveller
6  Thomas Dutronc -- 35, gypsy-style jazz singer-guitarist-composer, son of singer-actor Jacques Dutronc and Françoise Hardy, sixties pop queen.
7  Mylène Farmer 
8  Alain Souchon
9  Renan Luce -- 26 Breton singer-songwriter heavily influenced by Brassens
10 Christophe Willem -- 25, willowy former teen hearthrob

[below: Bénabar, Hallyday, Maé, Lavilliers]

   

 

Buying relics from France's stylish past

This imposing 20-foot tall hunk of steel is drawing curious glances on the Champs Elysées. It's not sculpture or a bit of a movie set. It's the original top of the bow of the SS France, the great 1960s ocean liner.

The four-ton slice of maritime history, which inevitably brings to mind the Titanic film, is the biggest item in an auction of relics from the liner that was once the pride of the nation. Most of the collectible items from the France were sold off years ago, but world-wide enthusiasm for old French design has opened a new market for unlikely memorabilia.

Jacques Dvorczak, a nautical enthusiast, went to the Indian shipyard where the former France is in the last stages of being broken up. They cut up the bow and he shipped it along with 445 other pieces for the sale at the Artcurial house on February 8 and 9.  The items, which range from a captain's chair and deck stools to portholes and railings, are being estimated at between 10,000 to 80,000 euros each. Among the odder objects are children's nursery decorations and a control panel from the engine room of the 57,000 tonne vessel that was the rival to the Queen Elizabeth and the USS United States. 

[TUESDAY UPDATE: see item on new DS Citroen at end of this post] 

The SS France was the ultimate in ocean-going elegance but entered service late, when the jet airliner was putting an end to the old New York-Europe liners. It was sold off in the late 1970s and ended its days as a cruise liner called The Norway. It's demise as the flagship of the nation was mourned in a famous lachrimose pop-song by Michel Sardou, "Ne m'appelez plus jamais France" [Never call me France again"]. (watch video here)

"The buyers are people who want to take away a little bit of one of the great works of French industrial history," François Tajan, the auctioneer in charge of the sale, told us. "A sale like this is like a final homage. In these days of economic crisis, these sales are very far from financial speculation. They are tangible, real, human objects from an age of progress... They symbolise both technical success and un art de vivre. Today everything is different, all about zapping."  

[Below: the France]

 

Despite the slump, the sellers hope that they will follow other recent auctions which have scored unexpected millions for remnants of France's stylish industrial past. In October 2007, the auction of 1,000 parts from Concorde supersonic jets -- a Franco-British technical triumph of the 1960s -- brought in a million euros, four times the estimate.

Several slices of a dismantled iron staircase from the Eiffel tower (left, with Gustave Eiffel)  have been sold off for hundreds of thousands of pounds the past two years. Two of them grace restaurants in New York and New Orleans.

Excitement is also building around the imminent sale of the rusting, eight-trumpet siren [below] that graced the historic Renault car factory at Billancourt, on the edge of Paris. Installed in the 1930s and used in the war to warn of British bombing raids, the siren is an emblem of France's heroic industrial age. Described by le Nouvel Observateur magazine as an "icon of the working class", it is expected to raise over 30,000 euros.

 

In similar vein serious sums are being paid for the few surviving black and white Renault 4CV cars of the Paris police in the 1950s. Also being auctioned are the gaily decorated advertising cars [below]  that followed Tour de France cycle race in the 1950s distributing free sweets and product samples.

Another piece of retro nostalgia now on sale is a DS Citroen [below] that was custom made in 1973 for Philippe Bouvard, a star radio journalist who is still going strong. The DS was one of the great design monuments of the age. Roland Barthes, the semiologist and author of Mythologies, famously dubbed it the French cathedral of the 20th century. Bouvard's version, with coachwork by Henri Chapron, was equipped as a mobile office and radio studio, with a double walnut desk in the back.

All these are symbols of a time when France and its design had a much more distinctive flavour. "They are the symbol of a history that has come to an end," said Hubert Delobette, author of "Crazily French", a book on great French objects, such as the Bic ballpoint and the Solex mo-ped (celebrated here last month). "We are afraid of tomorrow," said Delobette. "These familiar objects are reassuring. There is nothing like that today. There is the grandeur of French luxury products, but they do not move people like the SS France and the Eiffel tower."

UPDATE: Citroen cars have just announced that they are about to relaunch the great DS model. The original ended production in 1975 after 20 years. They are to unveil the prototype later in the week. Like the new Mini, Beatle and Fiat 500, it will be an attempt to revive the design in modern form, keeping a flavour of what made it so special. I'll post on it when there is a picture available in a couple of days. The car will be marketed from next year, they say. 

[Bouvard's Citroen DS 1973]