Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

French teachers strike again

We're enduring another day of the old French civil war today. About 45 percent of the country's 800,000 state school teachers have gone on strike, along with a smaller proportion of the five million civil service. Tens of thousands of high-school pupils are out marching with them [picture is from Nantes this afternoon].

This means that millions of parents have once again been forced to find someone to take care of their kids so they can go to work. Town councils allied to the government are offering basic supervision at schools but the majority with leftwing mayors -- including Paris -- are refusing to do so. Providing this minimum service amounts to strike-breaking, they say.

The cause of the "mobilisation", as the strikers and media call the stoppage, is the noble one of defending public service. President Sarkozy is accused of dismantling France's cherished services with cuts to teaching staff and civil service posts. Schools are to lose 11,000 teaching posts in the autumn. One in three civil servants is not being replaced on retirement from this year.

The classic battle lines have been drawn up. From the moral high ground, the left applauds resistance to the destruction of the national heritage and depicts its opponents as stooges of a brutal rightwing Government. Those on the other side, branded "rightwing" by the left, lament the obstructive, conservative reflexes of the state functionaries.

France elected Super Sarko to perform a radical cure a year ago, but on days like this you get the impression that nothing has changed.

France enjoys the lazy, hazy days of May.

It feels like an August weekend in Paris today. The sun is blazing, as it has for the past week. The streets are largely empty except for tourists. Much of France is enjoying a fifth successive day off work.

President Sarkozy may preach the doctrine of "working more to earn more", but his country has seized the chance to enjoy what the headline in le Parisien newspaper called "Five days of happiness".  The long spring break has been made possible by the lucky timing of two public holidays for the nation that already enjoys more vacation days than any other. Last Thursday, May 8, was the holiday marking victory in World War Two and today is Pentecost (Whitsun in Britain). Friday was supposed to be a working day but schools in the Paris area and many other regions stayed shut  -- so people took the day off, enjoying what is known as le pont, or bridge.

Many even managed nearly 10 days because there was another unofficial pont on Friday May 2, after the May Day holiday fell on a Thursday. Half of France either took that Friday or last Friday or both, according to a poll.

France revels in nostalgia for magic May '68

It is a little sad, but inevitable, that France's last revolt in the name of liberty should be reduced to a tin of expensive tea. Here it is, "May 68 -- a tea with the flavour of revolution" from Fauchon, the most luxurious food store in Paris

Forty years ago this weekend, the students of the Sorbonne university staged their joyous insurrection on the Paris Left Bank. Their carnival of slogans and barricades helped trigger the country's biggest general strike and briefly rattled the government of President Charles de Gaulle. The confused rebellion soon fizzled but "the events of May '68" marked a middle-class generation. Since they were the baby-boomers, no-one is allowed to forget it.

Now passing on power to their juniors, la génération de soixante-huit are enjoying a last hurrah, an orgy of nostalgia for the glorious upheaval in which, for a moment, it seemed they could remake the world. They may have given up Fidel Castro for Fauchon, but they are proud of their youthful ideals.

Adieu to the revolution, says French left.

They took their time. Two decades since the collapse of Soviet communism, the French Socialist party has finally decided that it no longer wants a revolution. 

The main opposition party has put aside its feuding to agree on a new charter that for the first time commits it firmly to the market economy. It abandons the "hopes of revolution" that the Socialists proclaimed in their  last version -- drafted in 1990 after the Berlin wall had already disappeared.

Of course there are conditions, but they are shared by the centre-left across continental Europe. "Socialists support a market economy that is socially and environmentally responsible, a market economy that is regulated by public authority and through labour and management groups," it says.

Unusually, almost all the Socialists agree with the charter, which is the fifth since 1905, when the fledgling party committed itself to class struggle and the overthrow of capitalism. It should be passed with no trouble at a June convention, ahead of blood-letting over a new leader next autumn.

The new mission statement is important because the party has clung, at least emotionally, to its old Marxist dogma.

Unpopular Sarkozy seeks relaunch one year on

We have almost had 12 months of President Sarkozy. A year ago today, the Sarko magic was in full swing as France gave him the lead in the first round of the election.

Now, the former Super Sarko is wallowing in unpopularity. Some surveys suggest that that he has begun to recover after the winter crash when he came off the rails with his divorce and giddy courtship of Carla Bruni. He has stopped being showmaster-in-chief and adopted a more sober, presidential, style, letting the government get on with running the country.

But an IFOP poll today shows that he has lost another point in the past month, putting him at only 36 percent approval. This makes him more unpopular than any president one year into office since the revamped republic opened in 1958. His 64 percent negative towers above the 47 percent registered after one year by Jacques Chirac, the other flame-out president.

The hardest for Sarko may be the finding that 79 percent believe that his presidency has done nothing to "improve the situation of France and the French".  Sarkozy bears much of the blame for failing to live up to expectations, yet it's not all his fault. Here's why:

Paris was not so bad under the Nazis, photos show

They thrust a piece of paper with a warning into your hand when you enter the latest photo exhibition at the Paris Historical Library. It tells you not to be fooled by the 270 images on display.

They are issuing the notice on the mayor's orders because the show has upset some visitors and media. No sex, violence or religion is involved. Its offence is showing Paris in world war two as a sunny place, where people got on happily with life along with their sympathique Nazi occupiers.

In the collective memory, Paris from 1940-44 was a grim, black-and-white place of hunger, roundups, humiliation and resistance. Films and books have in recent decades modified that cliché, which was promoted in the aftermath of the war. The picture series by André Zucca, a well-regarded French photographer, is breathtaking because it offers, as never before, a panorama of a Paris that was not suffering great hardship. The quantity and quality of the pictures has stirred old ghosts. The warning says that Zucca, a collaborator who worked for Signal, the Germany military magazine, avoided the "reality of occupation and its tragic aspects."

Paris looks eerily familiar in Zucca's chronicle of life under the Germans, which he shot for his own interest, not for publication.

Frenchman to sing in English against Irish turkey

Nothing tickles les Anglo-Saxons more than stories about the French surrendering to the English language. The latest version springs from France Television's decision to enter a song with English lyrics in the Eurovision contest for the first time.

Skip this paragraph if you are European: The Eurovision contest started in 1956 to promote fraternity among the recently warring nations. It turned long ago into an orgy of kitsch. Along the way it launched ABBA, a bunch of unknown Swedes who won in 1974 with Waterloo. The annual final, broadcast live to an audience well over 100 million, gives little nations a patriotic moment; the big ones treat the whole thing as a joke. Over half now sing in English and the next contest takes place in Belgrade on May 24. The Serbians won last time. The Irish, who speak a sort of English, have won most (see Ireland's Turkey at end). The French have not won since 1977.

This year, the state tv network decided to go with the flow, sending Sébastien Tellier, an eccentric singer-composer with a big beard, to Belgrade to perform a catchy track from his new all English album Sexuality [video below]. "Big deal" has been the general reaction. English  has been successfully embraced by many French artists in the past few years and the choice of Tellier was so uncontroversial that it went unnoticed at first.   

The lack of protest has been the real sign of the times. France3 television  anointed Tellier on March 7 and it took five weeks for anyone to complain. A few years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

The original Concours Eurovision de la Chanson was begun when French was the common language of the continent. The state still spends hundreds of millions of euros a year on the rearguard language campaign and President Sarkozy is one of the chief defenders, so objections were inevitable. They have now appeared, led by a junior parliamentarian from President Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement. 

François-Michel Gonnot, 59, demanded that Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister given an account to Parliament. "This shocks a lot of citizens who do not understand why France is giving up the defence of its language before hundreds of millions of television viewers around the world," he said.

Albanel, who was apparently unaware of the shocking choice, has responded by calling it a pity and saying that she would tell France television to make a more linguistically correct decision next time.

French justice on trial over murder

France is about to be shaken by another gross miscarriage of justice. The so-called Neuilly Bridge murder is the latest in a series of cases that highlight flaws in the inquisitorial French justice system.  .

I have sat through many trials conducted under the modified Roman law system which prevails in much of Europe and the adversarial system of the English-speaking world. Both have merits and I am no expert, but this is a chance to look at the problems of the French version.

The case involves Marc Machin, who is serving an 18-year sentence for killing a woman in 2001 at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the western side of Paris. Machin, now 25, was convicted in two trials five years ago on the basis of a confession which he quickly retracted, and shaky testimony from a witness. The murder made news because Marie-Agnès Bedot, the 45-year-old victim, was stabbed to death by the busy bridge in the morning rush hour as she was on her way to her gym (the same one that I frequent, as it happens).

A month ago, another man walked into a police station and said that he killed Bedot and also another woman at the same spot five months later. David Sagno, 35, a drifter with multiple convictions for violence, gave precise details. Police have now found his DNA on the clothes of the first victim. So by all account the wrong man has been has been jailed for the past seven years.

Rachida Dati, the Justice Minister, has ordered a review but police and prosecutors are still reluctant to accept that they got it wrong. With hindsight it seems obvious that Machin should never have been convicted. Here's why.

France makes law to fight eating disorder

France's fondness for inventing odd laws to change human behaviour entered new territory today. A criminal offence is to be created to punish the act of promoting excessive thinness. Those found guilty will face up to three years in jail and 45,000 euros fine.   

This is not a laughing matter. The offence is defined in a government-backed bill that has just been tabled as part of the campaign to combat anorexia nervosa. The first use of prosecutors to tackle eating disorders is broadly aimed at the media and fashion world, but especially at the websites and blogs of the so-called pro-ana movement.

While many of these are support groups, others promote starvation as a "life-style choice", with girls and young women posting their wasting images as "thinspiration" for others. Take a look at the Wikipedia entry and you get the point. It reads as though it has been written by a pro-ana convert.

France puzzled by new road signs

 

France has just come up with some strange new road signs. What would you say is designated by the faintly erotic half-moons here? The sign informs passing traffic that nearby is “a garden that has been officially certified as a garden of note”. On inquiry, the Ministry of Culture defines this as a garden certified as having “design, plants and care of a remarkable level”.

This one is a bit clearer. It tells thirsty drivers that they can buy wine nearby

If they consume it, they might then want to look for this sign:

 

The 20 new panneaux de signalisation from the superministry of the environment are intended to update obsolete pictograms. Several are mystifying and I'll get back to them. Writing the story for the newspaper, I was musing about the way that road signs reflect the national culture.

Sarkozy fumbles French Afghan force

Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be regaining favour after crashing to  unpopularity over the winter. A BVA poll today shows his approval climbing four points to 40 percent over the past month. This is the first rise since he went off the deep end with his autumn divorce and his speed courtship of Carla Bruni.

Heeding everyone's advice, Sarko has calmed the frenetic side of his nature and started acting presidential. He has pushed François Fillon, his Prime  Minister, onto the front line to catch the flak in the way that French premiers are supposed to.

Yet he has just made a new bungle. He has mishandled the dispatch of new French combat troops to Afghanistan

France and Britain clash over Beijing Olympics

Europe is in a tangle over this summer's Olympic games in Beijing.  Foreign Ministers of the Union are trying to reach a consensus today in Slovenia over the matter of using them to apply pressure on China. They will not manage because opinion is divided. This is a good moment to find out what readers of this blog think.

France and Britain have taken opposite sides, as President Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, made clear in London on Thursday. For Brown there is no question of even thinking about a boycott or staying away from the opening ceremony. The Olympics are purely about sport and London wants the best games possible, not least because it fears trouble when it hosts them in 2012. Sarkozy, however, is threatening to cancel his trip to the opening ceremony unless Beijing mends its ways, towards Tibet in particular.

There are other European approaches. In Poland, Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, has canceled his trip to Beijing and he urged other democratic politicians to do the same. Germany's Angela Merkel said that she is not going to the ceremony but had never intended to.

It's all a bit of a mess. The subject produced lively argument in a French TV show in which I took part today (Canal+ here. Click on 'L'émission de la semaine). In France, a country that prides itself on its sensitivity to human rights, the political world, media and public favour some gesture of disapproval towards Beijing's conduct in Tibet and to register distaste over the nature of the Chinese regime. They do not support a sporting boycott but a CSA opinion poll this week showed that 53 percent want national leaders to stay away from the opening ceremony. Sarkozy's threat was the least he could do after two weeks of public pressure. Despite the posturing, it is obvious that he will turn up in Beijing in August because he is as reluctant to incur Chinese displeasure as other leaders with heavy commercial interests at stake. A campaign for boycotting French goods is already under way at a site on SOHU.com, one of the big Chinese internet portals.

For the moment, though, France will make a little trouble. When French-led protesters flashed a banner at the lighting of the Olympic torch in Athens, the act was largely cheered here. It was seen as a grain of sand in the Chinese propaganda machine and there will be a lot more protests when the torch reaches Paris. Leading politicians from the Socialist opposition will take part. 

The same incident was treated quite differently in the British media. They talked of "anti-China protesters" disrupting the Athens ceremony and they ran headlines on "fears" for the torch's passage through London. 

The Times delivered an unequivocal endorsement of the games in an editorial today: "The newspaper ardently opposes any suggestion of a boycott, which would be unfair to the athletes ... self-defeating for those who want to see greater freedom in China and malicious towards a country and a people who have traveled so far to celebrate their achievements as a nation and their re-engagement with the world." 

Our editorial was a response to an internet campaign in China against Jane Macartney, our Beijing correspondent. She reports today that she has become the most hated person in the country after the Government cited a Times commentator (not her) who had compared the Beijing Olympics to Nazi Germany's 1936 games.

In her report, Macartney, a Mandarin speaker who knows the country well,  makes a strong anti-boycott case: The Chinese see the games as "a moment when they want to celebrate, with the world, their achievements, development and prosperity of the past three decades." 

As no expert on China I bow to those with knowledge, but I recall that similar arguments were used about the Moscow Olympics of 1980. President Jimmy Carter and Margaret Thatcher, the US and British leaders of the time, led a sporting boycott that caused misery for the sportsmen and turned the games into a fiasco. That prompted a less effective retaliation by the Soviet bloc against the 1984 Los Angeles games. The Russians were understandably angry in 1980, but the message of international disapproval struck home. I was in Moscow in the run-up to those games and then for three years in the aftermath. The boycott -- ostensibly over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan --  added to the pressure that eventually unraveled the Soviet Union and ended the cold war.

Those were other times. China is a whole different story and I am not naive. But there is a similarity. Moscow's ruling communist party regarded the 1980 games primarily as a vehicle for political propaganda. They invested in them massively as a showcase for the Soviet state. Beijing's communist government is doing the same for its system.

I read in the US media today that Coca Cola and the other big Beijing games sponsors are now worried about possible damage to their image from their association with China's great event. It's odd that they did not see this coming a long time ago. 

Italian Carla opens French British affair

                                                                                                                            

France is a little bemused today by the collective swoon of the British over Carla Bruni and her husband since they arrived on their shores. All those superlatives from overheated broadcasters and the the comparisons with Grace Kelly and Princess Diana suggest that les anglais have lost their sang froid. "The English conquered by Carla," said a headline in le Parisien, under its story on "L'Opération séduction du couple Sarkozy à Londres". The British only had eyes for the Italian Madame Sarkozy, noted France2 television. 

There is an interesting precedent.  When JFK landed in France in 1961, he joked: "I'm the man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy to Paris."

That is of course exactly what Sarko was aiming for when they decided to dress Madame Bruni-Sarkozy in the 60s-retro Dior outfit with pillbox hat -- even if she looked a little like an airline stewardess. Since the night of his election last May President Sarkozy has been trying to remake Kennedy's Camelot. He boasted then: "If you liked Jackie Kennedy, you're going to love Cécilia (His wife at the time)." The idyll started well with JFK style-photoshoots of young Louis Sarkozy playing in the Elysée Palace like the late John-John Kennedy. Their summer holiday in New Hampshire was a nod at the Kennedy clan's New England compound. "Sarkalot" vanished when Cécilia walked out last October taking Louis with her, but she was swiftly replaced by an even more Jackie-looking consort.

Sarkozy, as we predicted, is revelling in all the adulation, not just for his wife and the style of his travelling court but also for the "new honeymoon" that he has opened with Britain, as le Figaro put it today. His speech to Parliament, a love letter to the British unlike anything heard from a French leader, is deemed typical Sarko -- over the top. It's all very well embracing the Brits, but they have to give something in return, I heard from French politician friends. His line about the faltering Franco-German motor was clearly meant to needle Chancellor Angela Merkel. "He stuck the knife in the decades-old contract between Paris and Berlin," France Soir said. "The Franco-German couple might find it hard to get over this infidelity."

Read here for an opinion piece on psyching out Sarko that I wrote in today's newspaper.

And back to the froth: Jackie Kennedy-Onassis did not feature naked in French papers on the morning of her arrival in Paris. Carla's appearance, reproduced in certain British media (last post), was deemed un peu shocking on this side of the Channel. Once again, the British are managing to puzzle the French with their oddness -- that mixture of  formality, irreverence and eccentricity. The royal outfits are an example of the eccentric side. The Queen's hats were described on France Inter radio this morning as inverted saucepots. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, seemed to have perched a partridge's nest on her head, said another radio station.

The British Royal family, for all its centuries of refinement, does bling-bling much better than Sarko, especially with his new demure style, others noted. Reporting from Windsor, Libération had a go, describing the scene at the castle as "l'Angleterre eternelle et kitsch". Its flag-draped streets had a feel of Mickey Mouse, Libé added.

There will be general relief in government circles here late tonight when Mr and Mrs Sarko fly home after another protocol-packed dinner, with the Lord Mayor of the City of London. This was the trickiest foreign trip so far for the French president. So far, at least, it seems that he has not put a foot wrong.    

[Today's Figaro : Franco-British Honeymoon]



Sarkozy's royal visit to the Queen

France and Britain are engaging in an ancient exercise this week: dazzling one-another. The occasion is Nicolas Sarkozy's first state visit to Britain. The current monarch of the Fifth Republic arrives on Wednesday with Carla Bruni and a glittering retinue to stay with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, west of London.

For nearly 800 years, the English and French took out their rivalry on battlefields in Europe and then around the world. But admiration was always part of the old enmity, with each side envying the other's superior qualities. The frogs had more style, refinement and dash. Seen from the other side, the perfidious rosbifs were a  stodgy bunch with an infuriating habit of getting their way.

The feuding cousins last fought at Waterloo in 1815 and they officially became friends with the Entente Cordiale accord in 1904, but the rivalry and admiration never faded. State visits -- meaning the full pomp with military salutes and palace banquets -- are an excellent occasion for staging the old contest and both sides are again out to impress the other, in a friendly way of course.

Just like French kings before him, Sarko wants to dazzle the down-to-earth Anglais.

Help save the French language

Now you can do your bit to save the French language. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister [above] has just opened a site on la toile (better known as le web) which seeks French equivalents for the American-English jargon that has invaded the language. Featured words today are coach, gender and podcasting.

Franceterme.culture.fr is a new weapon in an ancient battle. Les Anglo-Saxons, whose own vocabulary has been part Gallic since the 12th century, are always amused by the attempts of the French state and its language police to defend the purity of the tongue.  Why, wonder smug foreigners, don't the French just laissez faire like the Anglophone nations and allow people to use foreign terms if they think they sounds more chic.

After living for some time on the front line in this war, let me defend France's rear-guard campaign. Yes, I share "Anglo-saxon" antipathy to the idea of policing language. It's silly, smacks of oppressive regimes and it costs a fortune -- hundreds of millions of euros a year are spent on the language bureaucracy and promoting the French language abroad.

Yet... why shouldn't a country seek ways to resist pressure from more powerful cultures -- in this case the USA? Sometimes it works.  In honour of tomorrow's International Day of the French-speaking World, I shall explain:

Sarkozy season II: back to basics

Le Sarko nouveau has arrived. Nicolas Sarkozy is out being presidential today, officiating at the grand funeral of France's last world war one veteran. This is the kind of statesmanlike image that he wants to project now that the French have slapped down his administration in nationwide local elections.

French voters are as fickle as those anywhere so it was no surprise that they swung against Super Sarko in the voting that ended yesterday. Here briefly is the fallout and a few lessons as we wonder how long the impulsive, slightly manic, president can stick to a new script in which he does dignified and distant.

The expected vague rose -- pink wave -- enabled the Socialist opposition to take 15 big cities from centre-right control, including Toulouse and Strasbourg, but not Marseille as they had hoped. One of the left's more impressive victories was the capture of the eastern city of Metz, which had been under rightwing control since 1848. The left now run a handsome majority of large towns. They comfortably held on to Paris and Lyon, the two biggest.

François Bayrou, the centrist who made such a strong run for the presidency last year, is consigned to history after failing to take the Pyrenean city of Pau for himself and letting his MoDem party self-destruct.

Of historical note was the fall of three Communist bastions -- the channel port of Calais and Montreuil and Aubvervilliers, on the eastern edge of Paris. Montreuil was won by Dominique Voynet, a veteran Green party figure who becomes the first écologiste to run a big city. On the other fringe, Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National got nowhere. With the old bogeyman nearing 80, it is unlikely that his movement will survive.

So what conclusions are to be drawn from the battering of Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement ?

"I shot down Saint Exupéry" says German ex-pilot

I 

Some news scoops are too good to be true. I hope that this one is not false because it will solve one of the great mysteries of aviation -- and wartime history. A former German fighter pilot has claimed to French researchers that he shot down Antoine de Saint Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince and legendary French pilot-author.

Horst Rippert, 88, who lives in Wiesbaden, said that he had suffered remorse all his life after discovering that Saint Exupéry was the pilot of a P-38 Lightning of the Free French Air Force that he blew from the Mediterranean sky on July 31 1944. "If I had known that it was him, I would never have fired," Rippert told the authors who traced him and have produced a book.

[Saint-Ex at the controls of his Lightning, 1944]

France prefers women politicians but votes for men

As expected, France has vented its  unhappiness with the Sarkozy administration in the first round of nationwide local elections. The Socialist party, still in a coma at the national level, looks as if it will be controlling most big cities after next Sunday's runoff. They have strengthened their hold on Paris and Lyon. They are on the verge of taking Strasbourg and possibly Marseille and Toulouse from Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement.

But the "red tide" towards the left was not as strong as the Socialists hoped.  François Fillon, the Prime Minister, is out campaigning to limit the damage in next Sunday's run-off  while the unpopular Sarkozy is lying low, with only one outing planned. 

In the meantime, here's a fascinating paradox. The French believe by a strong margin that women make better political leaders than men, according to a CSA poll for le Parisien newspaper. Yet France has one of Europe's lowest levels of female representation in politics.

CSA listed qualities desired in a politician and women won hands down. The French believe that women are more sociable, more in touch with reality, better listeners, more honest, more modern, more brave, more dynamic and more competent, according to the poll. French men rate women politicians as superior, ranking them almost as highly as women do themselves. The only quality in which men give their own kind a slight edge is the "more competent" category. [The poll will be online later today]

France has imposed gender parity rules on candidates in local elections since 2000, yet only 11 percent of mayors are women and only three out of 97 presidents of département councils are female (these county councils are not yet subject to gender parity).  The picture for parliament is not much better. Nineteen percent of members are women. This compares with 33 percent for Germany, 36 percent in Spain and 45 percent in Sweden. But it is still slightly better than Britain's 18 percent.

The CSA poll also asked why women did not make it more in politics. The two main reasons given were the difficulty of combining public and private life (51 percent) and the misogyny of male politicians (47 percent).

Politics is still seen very much as a boy's club, say women politicians. Catherine Achin, a Paris university professor who has written a book on women in politics, says that everyone agrees that women have strong qualities for the work. "But when they start getting near senior posts, they are accused of incompetence." That happened with Ségolène Royal, the Socialist who ran against Sarkozy for the presidency, she noted.

Royal [below] has been making a comeback, using her public popularity to promote her campaign for the party leadership next autumn.  Hostility towards her remains strong in the party's upper ranks, especially among the other plausible successors to François Hollande, the outgoing leader. They are all male of course.

Sarkozy's dubious glory in American Airbus deal

Nicolas Sarkozy has been taking credit for the extraordinary decision by the US Defense Department to buy a fleet of Air Force refuelling tankers worth at least 35 billion dollars from EADS, parent of the the European Airbus company, rather than from Boeing.

The French president said that the deal, which has sparked a political storm in the USA, would have been unimaginable if he had not repaired the damage to relations with Washington that had been inflicted by President Chirac's opposition to the Iraq invasion.

"Could one think for a minute that the contract which EADS has magnificently won... would have been signed in the climate of tension that existed between the Americans and French?" Sarko asked in le Figaro.

Sarkozy is right that his warmth towards the US has eased the chill that prevailed under Chirac. This undoubtedly helped the deal with the European Aeronautic, Defense and Space company. But he could be a little more modest. EADS' American contract was the fruit of years of effort, most of it before he won office last May. On top of that, the US order conflicts with his own doctrine of "economic patriotism".   

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Sarkozy's stars go local

A couple of days ago, I spent the morning following Rachida Dati around the Left Bank district where she hopes to become a town councillor. Dati is Justice Minister and one of the stars of Nicolas Sarkozy's executive, so what is she doing handing out leaflets and chatting with shop-keepers in the chic VIIth arrondissement  -- and bothering to spend time over a drink with me ? Here's the story from today's paper. 

Beyond Dati and Sarko's other debutant politicians, it's worth a look at the way that France clings to a tradition that allows -- even encourages -- politicians to hold two or more elected jobs at a time. This promotes baronies, especially when city bosses hold parliamentary seats. Jean-Claude Gaudin, the conservative Mayor of Marseille, for example, is also a Senator (He might be out of the city job in a couple of weeks though). Defenders of the system say that it ensures that national politicians keep close to le terrain, or life on the ground. France likes its mayors so much that it has 36,000 of them. That's not a typo. There are 36,000 town and village councils and they are all up for election over the next two Sundays.   

The great majority of députés, or members of parliament, sit on county, regional or municipal councils and many of them are mayors of cities. It is not surprising that the National Assembly has one of the lowest attendance rates of any parliament. Its members are busy in their other jobs.

French judges ban internet teacher ratings

A Paris court has just added a new ban to the long list of prohibitions in France. School pupils and university students are now forbidden to comment on their teachers on the internet.

The Tribunal de Grande Instance issued the order after teachers' unions sought the closure of note2be.com, a site that allows pupils to rate their teachers. Opened in January by Stéphane Cola, an entrepreneur, the site has been a big success, receiving up to 150,000 visits a day, with 50,000 teachers so far rated. It was modelled on the American ratemyteachers.com and similar sites which have sprung up around Europe.      

Teachers have been upset by ratings sites around the world but none had been banned. Last year a German court rejected an attempt to have a local site  spickmich.de closed. Provided that they were not defamatory, ratings were acceptable under the principle of freedom of expression, the German court ruled (more on that here).

No-one imagined that the French court would take that line. The whole French education world plus the government had piled in to denounce note2be.com as a gross breach of privacy and an "incitement to public disorder".

Son of Sarko makes his first kill

Jean Sarkozy is tallish and blond while his father is short and dark, but a minute with him is enough to see that the President's son is a chip off the old block. The shrugs, charm and verbal tics of the 21-year-old student are pure Sarko.  France has just discovered that shy Jean is just as fast as Dad with the dagger.

Sarko junior, the second son by the President's first marriage, with Marie Culioli, a Corsican chemist, has done his father's dirty work and performed the political execution of David Martinon, the Presidential spokesman.

Six months ago Sarkozy senior anointed Martinon, a 36-year-old technocrat, as the next boss of Neuilly, the opulent town on the western edge of Paris which he ran as Mayor for 19 years. Sarko came in person one evening to Neuilly to launch Martinon on his campaign for next month's municipal election. The president was in effect handing his dauphin a golden throne for his political debut.

But the rich and very Sarkoziste people of Neuilly rebelled at this parachutage and Martinon blew his chances with an inept campaign. His handshake was limp on his outings on the market square. He made a fool of himself at rallies, where hecklers chanted "Martinon-non-non". He blew it by calling for the vote of "les vieux" (the old people) -- a gaffe in a borough full of senior citizens. By last week, the unthinkable happened. An anti-Martinon -- but still pro-Sarkozy  -- dissident overtook the president's candidate in an opinion poll.

So yesterday, young Jean, a lifelong Neuilly resident, joined a couple of local councillors in public rebellion against le Sarko-boy from the Elysée Palace. Everyone assumes that the President gave the order for Martinon's humiliation.

[picture: Jean Sarkozy looks down on David Martinon.] 

Trader Jérôme was doing his best for the bank

It's five days since Société Générale announced that its humble trader had nearly broken the bank and the reputation of French finance. Yet Daniel Bouton, the executive chairman, was back on the radio this morning insisting that he was not personally responsible for anything and had no plans to leave the job.

Bouton, 57, [below] even played the line, which I mentioned last time: "responsable mais pas coupable". Jean-Pierre Elkabach of Europe 1 asked him if he felt guilty for letting Jérôme Kerviel [picture above at recent party] expose the bank by 50 billion euros without anyone knowing. "I feel responsible...not personally responsible," said Bouton, who called the final five bilion euro loss a "terrible accident".

It was just like a company that suffers the misfortune of a factory fire, he said. "The director is not blamed for that." The sound from Bouton and his bank colleagues is an aural version of the Gallic shrug. They are saying that it is regrettable but these things happen.

Kerviel has lost his job and is in custody. He is to face charges of fraud and breach of trust, we have just heard from Jean-Claude Marin, the Paris prosecutor. He could be sentenced to up to seven years but Marin said that it seemed that he was not seeking personal gain, merely the credit that he would win with his employers and the ensuing bonuses.  As I write, a couple of hundred police are surrounding the offices of the investigating judges near our bureau. Kerviel is about to be brought in for his first round with the magistrates and they are treating him like some big-time criminal.

It is unlikely that Bouton will keep his job for long. President Sarkozy is spitting blood over the affair and what he sees as the botched handling by Bouton and Christian Noyer, Governor of the Banque de France.  Sarko, the ultimate micro-manager when things go wrong, is aghast that he was not informed until three days into a crisis that would shake the state. 

Bad time for French market lessons

The anguish in the financial world has made this week a poor moment for convincing France of the joys of the free market. In a piece of unlucky timing, President Sarkozy will be expected to do that tomorrow when he is presented with a radical remedy for France's economic ills.

The cure is a batch of ideas devised over the past eight months at Sarkozy's request by Jacques Attali, the famous Paris economic strategist, and 40 lesser eminences. They could be entitled "300 ways to save France".

Sarko asked Attali, who remains best-known as economics guru to François Mitterrand, the late Socialist president,  to suggest ways of helping the French economy break free of the bonds that stifle growth. Even Sarko, with his fondness for la rupture, was not bargaining on how far Attali would go down the "Anglo-Saxon road".

We visited this last autumn when Attali's ideas for shop-keepers were emerging. In the final version, which is circulating in draft, he proposes removing or loosening most of the restrictions on trades and professions, from hair dressers and supermarkets to lawyers and taxi drivers. He also proposes opening the frontiers to worker immigrants, letting people work beyond retirement age and even the assessment of school teachers performance by their pupils. Read on in today's newspaper.

The Sarko magic fails

Regulars here will not be surprised to hear that France has gone sour on Nicolas Sarkozy. Many people have been turned off by the president's excesses over the Christmas holidays with Carla Bruni. He also blundered with his indifference towards the country's feeling of impoverishment when he staged a grand news conference on January 8. The final straw was media speculation last week about whether he had married Bruni already.

Twice in the past five days polls have shown that Sarko's ratings have gone negative for the first time since his election last May. More unexpected, a poll today found that François Fillon, his discreet Prime Minister, has overtaken him in popularity. After months of near invisibility while Super Sarko has run everything himself, the unassuming Fillon [pictured above] must be savouring his revenge against the Elysée Palace advisers who nicknamed him "Monsieur Nobody". Six months ago, riding high, Sarkozy dismissed the Prime Minister as a mere "assistant" in his administration.

It's love, says Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy was clearly enjoying himself when he held forth to us this morning in the regal surroundings of the Salle des Fêtes in the Elysée Palace. The occasion was his first grand news conference, a ritual invented by Charles de Gaulle in the early 1960s. If the shade of the austere old General was around the palace today, he would not have believed his ears.

Monsieur le Président was there under the chandeliers and gilded columns --   with his government and staff arrayed before him -- to review the state of the nation. He did that for most of the two-hour session, but he stopped the show with a review of his love life.  As expected, he could not resist confirming his romance with Carla Bruni, the supermodel who has swept him off his feet since late November. Marriage is in the air.

Read my report here and I'll add some thoughts. Sarko went public with his private life years ago, back when he showed off Cécilia and his family when he was Interior Minister. But for an old hand at Elysée conferences, it was extraordinary to hear the president chat about his girl friend on such a traditionally grand occasion. As Sarko said himself, it would have been unthinkable until now.

You may find him hard to take, but you have to admire Super-Sarko for his showmanship and powers of persuasion. Sometimes menacing, sometimes boyish and friendly, he has a way of boiling down argument to leave no room for disagreement.

France says adieu to sleeping-car trains

A great railway era ended when France's legendary Train Bleu pulled into the station at the end of its final journey from Paris to the Riviera yesterday. After 135 years, the French railways have taken their last wagons-lits --  sleeping-cars -- out of service.

With high speed trains and air travel, there were no longer enough customers willing to pay between 251 and 395 euros for a night in bed aboard the elegant blue carriages of the Wagons-Lits. The Train Bleu, which ran between Paris, the Côte d'Azur and the Italian frontier was one of the last three surviving sleeping-car services, along with Luxembourg-Nice and Paris-Briançon. Operating at under one quarter capacity, the 40-year-old old sleeping cars have reached the end of the line, said the SNCF, the state railways.

The SNCF is still operating night trains to the Mediterranean and across the frontiers but their beds are  bare couchettes in four or six-berth compartments. These austere fold-down surfaces are better suited to the young and impoverished customers who still favour the trains de nuit. The couchette night trains have become notorious for the thieves who lift passengers' belongings as they sleep.

For my generation and those before, the Wagons-Lits, with their dark blue and gold livery, stood for the romance of travel in Europe. As a student who could only afford couchettes, I used to admire the wagons lits in London Victoria, the Paris Gare de Lyon and other stations, watching their well-dressed passengers boarding them. Grace of Monaco or Cary Grant was certainly among them, or so we imagined. The last remnant of those Orient Express days is the Train Bleu restaurant, the gloriously opulent brasserie on the first floor of the Gare de Lyon in Paris.

A seven-coach train of wagons-lits will still continue to run across Europe. This is the luxuriously renovated Pullmann Orient Express, which takes customers on very expensive nostalgia trips on the old routes from London and Paris to Venice, Budapest and other points east, including occasionally Istanbul.

To end with a personal note, I met my first wife on a night train, in eastern Turkey, when I was a  student.   

[Catherine Deneuve plays French rail nostalgia] 

 

How Sarko did in America

Above is a video summary of the French fall-out from President Sarkozy's trip to Washington. It comes from a chat today with Daniel Finkelstein, our Comment Editor.  [I apologise for my webcam and sound] As I mentioned, French reaction has followed  fairly predictable political lines, but with the advantage on his side. Le Monde, voice of the thinking establishment, gave him good marks this afternoon. It said that he had managed to "avoid casting himself in the mould of Tony Blair, caricatured as George Bush's Poodle."

"Without saying so overtly, he announced the end of a French diplomacy which has too often in the past defined itself through opposition to American foreign policy."   

Sarkozy in Washington as France rates his six month score

Barely back from a rescue mission to Africa, Super Sarko has dashed off to Washington to save the Bush administration. That may sound a stretch, but not if you have watched the whirlwind of chutzpah that Nicolas Sarkozy has displayed in the six months to the day since he won the French presidency.

Yes, six months already, so France is pausing for breath in his absence to take stock of the Sarko-revolution and wonder how long the hyper-president can keep up his manic act.

It's hard to remember that only last May, Jacques Chirac still presided as a near invisible monarch while a Prime Minister governed a disgruntled country with a cabinet of ministers. Since then, Sarko has blown up the old system. He runs everything himself, calling the players into the Elysée Palace or leaping aboard his Airbus to solve every crisis. Government has been relegated to supporting cast.

Don't kill us, say French shop-keepers

  Imagine a country where stores could cut prices year-round, trade on Sundays and hold sales whenever they want to. Imagine if just about anyone could offer taxi services, open a pharmacy or a hair salon where they choose.

Americans and others may have no trouble doing this, but not the French. These ideas have caused such anger that some of them have already been dropped by an expert panel that is advising President Sarkozy on how to "liberate growth".

Sarko gave the job of running the commission to Jacques Attali, the banker-guru who started out in the 1980s as ideas-man to François Mitterrand, the Socialist president.  After three months, he handed in their interim proposals last night. Grabbing the headlines are suggestions that France should drop or loosen its strict regulations over retailing. These were designed in recent decades to protect small and medium stores from discounting by large chains. Stores may, for example, only hold sales for two six-week periods every year, on dates set by the state.

France holds conflicting views on all of this. Everyone wants to preserve the town and village bakers, grocers and bookshops that give the country its charm -- and attract all the home-buying foreigners. At the same time, everyone flocks to the out-of-town centres commerciaux to load up at weekends and they do not like paying more for goods and services there than their European neighbours.