Diners in Paris may soon have the chance to taste a new local delicacy: le pavé de saumon Notre Dame.
The prospect of eating Parisian salmon has come closer with scientific findings that the fish that packed the Seine until the Middle Ages has made a healthy return to the capital after the clean-up of its water.
"There are more and more fish swimming up the Seine. This year the numbers have exceeded anything we could have imagined," Bernard Breton, Secretary-General the National Federation for Fishing, told Agence France-Presse. "I would not be surprised if we had passed the 1,000 mark."
Mayor Bertrand Delanoe's office claimed a triumph for the Seine clean-up after the INRA, the state agricultural research institute, issued its new study on the Atlantic salmon which began appearing a few years ago. "Without any project to reintroduce fish, we see that several species of migratory fish, including salmon, have come back up the Seine," it said. "This is a sign of a very clear improvement in the quality of water in the river."
But Delanoe is not yet convinced that his stretch of Seine is ready for human consumption. Back in the 1980s, Jacques Chirac, the Mayor at the time, promised to take a plunge himself but there are there are still no plans for lifting the ban on human bathing. The levels of pesticide, lead and bacteria remain too high.
While the salmon frolic, patrons of Paris Plage, the summer "beach" on the Right Bank, are warned to stay clear of the waters in which King Louis XIV used to take his mistress for moonlight dips. The lawbreakers who jump into the dangerous currents of the Seine on hot nights are taken to hospital when fished out by police.
The return of up to 30 species of fish in the past three decades has encouraged a fishing boom in mid-Paris. The world angling championship was staged in central Paris in 2001. At weekends on the Ile Saint Louis, opposite Notre Dame [top picture: in 1935], and the Left Bank by the Eiffel tower, crowds of anglers cast for bream, carp, pikeperch, catfish, sea-trout and other types. Common sense rather than any legal ban discourages any thought of cooking the cacth. "They do not eat them," Stephanie Hofer of the fishing federation told me. "They throw them back, but that's what 80 percent of the anglers in France do."
Very few salmon have been hooked by the registered 7,000 Paris area fishermen and uncounted free-lance "street anglers". The return of salmon was spectacularly illustrated last October by the catch of a seven kilogramme (15.4 pounds) salmon at Suresnes on the western, downstream, edge of the capital [picture below]. But that was a shrimp beside the two-metre, 63 kilogramme silurus, or giant catfish, that was recently caught near the Eiffel Tower. 
The INRA reported the biographies of seven salmon which it sampled from the river that was not long ago connected to the sewers that Victor Hugo called in les Miserables "a world of slime without human form".
From genetic samples and age measurements, all the Atlantic salmon were found to have swum up, or back up, the Seine via the Channel estuary at le Havre after months or years in the sea. Some were born in French rivers and others farther afield. The researchers said the return of salmon was significant because the fish are "bio-indicators" -- creatures whose choice of habitat indicated a healthy environment.
Big efforts have been made since the 1970s to end the fouling of the Seine with organic pollution and chemical run-off from industry and agriculture that had evicted most fish species by the 1920s. Fish have been given routes around dams and canal locks, the surface is routinely cleaned and there is a system that pumps oxygen into fish-friendly stretches when flood waters run off into the river.
But the modern Seine remains a far cry from the Mediaeval days when witnesses described dolphins and even whales making their way up to Paris from Rouen. As late as the Victorian era, a standard joke to Seine anglers was: "Have you seen the whale?"
That line was quoted in a New York Times article from November 1875 that I found while looking at this story today. Its correspondent described thousands of amateur and professional fishermen "from all classes of society" thronging the banks, bridges and boats using rods and nets to hoist their catch. Parisians in those days ate the fish in the belief that the sewers, brand new at the time, did a good job at keeping them clean.
France is deep in recession and national debt stands at 21,000 euros per citizen, so it was good to hear that President Sarkozy has cut his spending on flowers by 17 percent. Before you cheer, his palace (where he does not live) still managed to spend 706 euros every day last year freshening up his floral arrangements.
Light was shed on the high-spending ways of the Elysée Palace a few days ago when Philippe Séguin, the chief state auditor, returned the first ever public account of the spending of a French ruler. Sarkozy asked for the inspection as part of the "transparency" that he advocates in public life. That was quite a shift from the tradition until 2007 under which money was no object for the monarch and his entourage.
Séguin gave Sarkozy credit for the effort. The President has even repaid 14,000 euros of personal expenses that were mistakenly paid by the tax-payer. There is no chance that we will learn what was bought because that remains secret. Séguin said that Sarkozy, whose presidential establishment costs more than 112 million euros a year, could nevertheless do better. The palace still wastes tons of tax-payer's money.
The flowers are among many items that should be trimmed, said Séguin, who heads the Court of Accounts. The palace pays a fortune on food and drink, buying from faithful suppliers rather than seeking competitive bids. The palace, which employs 950 staff, even paid 3,000 euros last year in penalties for failing to pay electricity bills on time. Then there are the million or two spent annually on keeping up presidential chateaux like Rambouillet, Marly-le-Roi and Souzy-le-Briche -- that the Sarkozys never use.
The auditors also put their finger on another oddity -- the hidden cost of Sarkozy's much-reported cost-cutting gesture of taking scheduled airlines on private trips. He took Air France to New York last weekend, for example, for Carla Bruni's appearance at the Mandela concert. When Sarkozy does this, the state pays for his entourage of about 10 to travel with him in first or business class. Then on top of that a presidential jet flies empty to the destination to stand by in case the President needs to return in emergency.
The auditors say Sarkozy should save public money by taking his holidays on the state planes. He has just spend millions expanding the fleet to include two of the latest three-engined Dassault Falcon business jets and -- his new pride and joy -- an A330 Airbus. 
As soon as he saw George W. Bush's big blue Air Force One, a Boeing 747 jumbo, Sarkozy decided that his elderly A-319 Airbus airliner did not match his standing. Air Sarko, as it's called, is actually an 11-year-old former airliner [pictured left in its earlier life], but it is now being fitted out in total secrecy in Toulouse. There are rumours of onboard swimming pools, gyms, a studio for Carla, cinemas and so on, but I gather that the flying Elysée will just be equipped with ordinary conference rooms, presidential apartments, bathrooms, a hospital and so on. At 20,000 euros per flying hour, the cost will be double that of the plane that it is replacing (at least it will have new pitot tubes). There is an additional snag with Air Sarko. The plane, which in normal form can carry 250 passengers, is too heavy for the runway at Villacoublay, the Air Force base which is home to the government fleet. It will have to live at Orly or Roissy (CDG) airports.
Lavish transport is by no means a presidential preserve. As we've mentioned here before, a chauffeured limousine is a standard perk right across the ruling class, from ministers and high functionaries to provincial mayors and county bosses. There is a nice little exposé out today on the waste that goes into keeping up the fleet of big Peugeots, Citroens and Renaults.
Auto Plus, a motoring weekly, did a bit of spying. It found, for example, that the National Assembly -- or rather the tax payer -- keeps a fleet of 65 big top-of-the-line cars with drivers at the disposal of its members 24 hours a day. They sit idle for much of the time. It also found that ministry drivers wash their masters' cars daily at commercial sites -- even if they are not dirty -- because they earn free gifts with loyalty points.
Earlier this month when Sarkozy appointed his friend Brice Hortefeux Interior Minister, the new man ordered two new luxury Citroen C6s for himself at a cost of 100,000 euros. He did not care to be driven around in the existing pair of identical Citroen C6s that were used by his predecessor, Michèle Alliot-Marie. It's only too easy to go on citing examples. As we've often noted, such tales of excess cause few waves in France. A certain train de vie -- style of life -- is deemed normal for those in power.
France has a rich tradition of dictionaries and encyclopedias and the publishers are not giving up in the face of the competition from the internet. Tomorrow sees the publication of the latest Petit Larousse, a dictionary-reference book which has been part of French family life since Pierre Larousse invented it in 1905.
The Petit Larousse is serious and known for its fine illustrations but it is not set in stone like the dictionary of the august Académie Française, the official guardian of the language. It keeps pace with trends and mirrors the prevailing culture. So it's always interesting to note the new expressions and the people whom it adds to its new editions. The arrivals this year include Audrey Tautou, Barack Obama and George Clooney.
The inclusion of show-biz personalities is part of "la pipolisation" of French life. That word, which means celebrity culture and originated in the 1990s from the US People magazine, is one of 150 new terms in the Larousse dictionary section. There are a few from Belgium, Quebec and other parts, and some, like barré (crazy, eccentric) are current French slang but many, inevitably, have been adopted from American
They include buzz, burn-out, geek, fantasy (in the sense of Tolkien-style, nordic mythology entertainment), peer-to-peer, caster (meaning to cast in the theatre sense), blacklister (to blacklist), clubbeur/clubbeuse and toxique, in the sense of waste or loans. The new toxique is one of many examples of English usage being overlaid on old French words. A typical classic example is réaliser, which took on the English sense of to realize as well as its French meaning of to carry out. (The shift took place in the 1920s, according learned commentators below)
This may drop out of the language as fashion passes. Larousse is not sanctifying language like the Académie, whose dictionary is a safe half century or so behind the times. It just tries to reflect current use.
You can understand why French embraces American jargon when it encapsulates a sense for which nothing native has been invented. English has done that with dozens of French words (chic, chagrin, nuance, frisson...) over the past couple of centuries. Le buzz sounds ugly in French but it is a single syllable which French takes a mouthful to render as "rumeur, retentissement médiatique, notamment autour de ce qui est perçu comme étant à la pointe de la mode" as Larousse puts it.
But a lot of the English borrowing is superfluous or silly. Gilles Vigneault, a venerable Quebec singer-poet, was making the point on Europe1 radio this morning. Why say burn-out when there is a perfectly good French word for it, épuisement (exhaustion), he said. My list of recent silly franglais would include relooker (to make over), le fooding (a restaurant fashion involving modern cuisine and trendy décor) and sur-booké (booked out). All have been registered by Larousse.
To get back to less topical matters, this edition marks the 120th anniversary of La Semeuse (the sower), the illustration of a woman blowing dandelion seeds in the wind, which Larousse adopted for his publishing house in 1890 [Dandelion, an English borrowing from the French dent-de-lion, or lion's tooth]. And here is one of the famous nature illustrations: from le Petit Larousse.
Here's a little good news for Britons, Americans and other nouveau pauvre visitors to France. Restaurant owners are going to promise the government today that they will trim their prices -- by up to 10 percent on some menus.
The deal, made in return for a hefty cut in value-added (sales) tax, should soften the blow in time for summer visitors who are not blessed with the strong euro currency. But don't expect too much. Many restaurateurs say that they need the two billion euro gift from the state just to survive the recession. Restaurants and bistros lost between 20 and 50 per cent of their income from January to March and many have already introduced more modest "crisis menus" to lure back patrons.
At Taillevent, a high temple of Parisien gastronomy, they are refusing any drop in the charge for their langoustine royales, golden frogs' legs and other items on their Michelin-starred menu. "I'm not dropping my prices because that would imply that they were not right to begin with, which is not the case and because the cost of the ingredients has risen steeply," Valérie Vrinat, the owner, told us.
President Sarkozy ordered the country's 200,000 eating establishments to pass on part of a drop from 19.6 percent to 5.5 percent in VAT which he won from the European Union last month. He secured the cut, expected to take effect from July 1, after Germany lifted a seven-year veto against a pledge originally made to the restaurant industry by President Chirac.
The tax bonus does not cover wine -- which accounts for 20 percent of restaurant income -- and the universal 15 percent service charge will continue to be applied -- along with the usual expectation of a tip beyond that.
Under pressure from the Government, the catering trade is to come up with a list of a dozen everyday items which will benefit from the full VAT cut. This should include the plat du jour, basic entrées (appetizers for Americans) and desserts plus coffee. "A customer should be able to order a meal which is entirely subject to the full VAT reduction," said Hervé Novelli, the Trade Minister. An ordinary Parisian dish of the day such as a steak-frites or pavé de saumon should drop from about 15 euros to 13.20.
Restaurant owners are also expected to use the tax benefit to recruit more staff and invest in their establishments. They will in return lose some earlier tax breaks. I'll certainly welcome more staff. One of the drawbacks eating out in France -- other than in grand establishments -- is the slow service that stems from over-worked personnel. That, of course, springs from the employers' burden of huge payroll charges and strict labour contracts (but let's not divert into the usual argument here).
At the small Bistrot d'Henri in the Saint-Germain-des-Près quarter, David Poulat, the owner, told us that he welcomed the scheme though he thought many in the trade would need the benefit simply to keep their heads above water in the recession. He expects to cut his plats du jour such as blanquette de veau and gigot et gratin de courgette from 14 to 12 euros. "But at the same time I might reduce the portions a little," he said. Lowering the price of à la carte items would be difficult. "I am not sure that it would attract customers anyway. People will not be swayed much by a difference of one or two euros."
He may not be right. plenty of people, not just sterling-earners like us, think twice before dining out modestly in Paris these days because l'addition will come in at about 80 euros for two with a bottle of basic wine. Between 60 and 70 euros changes the picture. And in case anyone is wondering, expense accounts are a fading memory in our business.
[Below, the other end of the scale: 564 euros for lunch for two at the three-star restaurant of the hotel Bristol, President Sarkozy's favourite eating place, opposite the Elysée palace. From chrisoscope.com, a Paris food critic's site.]
Spring has arrived in Paris. Daffodils are out in the gardens, overcoats are disappearing and the sun is showing up the winter grime on the windows and on the ugly Porsche Cayenne that is parked in my street. Non-smokers are taking seats on the café terraces (les fumeurs frequented them all winter because of the new indoor smoking ban). The trout fishing season opened today. It's even possible to scent a hint of hope in the air despite the gloom and grumbling all around.
As the winter lifts, the French are not at all as depressed as they make out, according to a poll by le Parisien. Two out of three say they are optimistic about the future. There were other surprises from the mood survey which I'll get back to below.
One of the reasons for optimism may be the overdose of crisis. The news continued to be bleak this week, with factory closures every day, including a Sony plant where the desperate workers took the company's French boss hostage. But some of the media think that it's time to change the tune and have started putting out stories on making the most of the down-turn -- lower house prices and rediscovering simple pleasures such as home cooking, the cinema, holidays in France and so on.
And some of the news is reassuringly familiar. The Paris book fair has opened -- with a Mexican theme this year -- the fashion week was a hit as usual and Nicolas Sarkozy was caught out once again indulging his love of luxury.
The President disappeared with Carla Bruni three days before a one-day official visit to Mexico City last Monday. No-one was supposed to know where he was, but the Mexican press tracked the French royal couple to El Tamarindo Beach and Golf Resort, a very expensive enclave in Jalisco state on the Pacific Coast [picture]. This did not look good for Sarko's efforts to rid himself of the bling-bling that tainted his early months in the presidency. All that turquoise and palm trees hardly helped his new image as close to his suffering people.
Things got worse when it emerged that the presidential pair occupied their 3,500 dollars-a-day suite as guests of Roberto Hernandez, one of Mexico's richest bankers and owner of the resort.
It didn't take long for the media to recycle 1990s allegations from the United States that Hernandez was involved in the cocaine industry. The Elysée Palace kept an embarrassed silence, directing queries to the Mexican presidency who, it claims, organised Sarko's long weekend on the beach. Today the Mexicans have said that "a group of businessmen" paid for the beach weekend.
Talk of the Jalisco jaunt has eclipsed Sarkozy's two very substantial acts in foreign policy this week -- his announcement of France's return to full Nato membership (last post) and a realignment with Germany at a session with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday. Like all his predecessors, Sarkozy seems to have accepted that French power works best in Europe as part of the axis with Berlin.
Sarko has also been lecturing his government on the need for what's known in French as la positive attitude. He has given them orders to talk up his and their achievements.
Which brings us back to the spring survey, carried out by the CSA polling firm. It found that the French draw their greatest satisfaction and pleasure from leisure time with their friends and family. The best moment of the day is "meeting up with the family in the evening". Second after that came "waking up alongside the person you love".
Asked what contributes most to make their lives positive, 61 percent answered their children, 33 percent said friends, 23 percent said leisure activities and only 20 percent said that it was their work or studies.
Asked what activity gave them most pleasure, 40 percent said an evening with their partner or with friends. Thirty-nine percent said sports, listening to music or cooking. Only 13 percent cited love-making as their most pleasurable activity. That statistic is not great for France's reputation as le pays de l'amour.
At least sex got a mention. Religion appeared nowhere in the poll, not even under the question of the most important values that society should observe. First came respect for others, then "solidarity", followed by the family. The value of work came next, followed by money.
And a final question: What moments are you most looking forward to in 2009? The answers were pretty modest, in keeping with diminished times.
1) The first sunshine of springtime
2) The summer holidays
3) The birthday of your children or parents
4) A party, wedding or other social event with friends [A spring day at a café in Lille]
 Michelin published the 100th edition of its Red Guide today. That prompted the annual ritual of bashing the celebrated bible of French gastronomy. The guide, first published in 1900 but halted during world wars, has lost touch with modern taste and rewards "museum-cuisine" in the stuffy old French tradition, say the critics.
The only addition to the élite three-star category, Eric Fréchon of the Hotel Bristol in Paris [below], is coming in for his own share of sniping. The Bristol, across the street from the Elysée Palace, is President Sarkozy's favourite "cantine", so Fréchon's promotion is being called a marketing stunt. In an amusing video, the ferocious François Simon of le Figaro visits the Bristol and calls his cooking overdone, too expensive and not very original. Simon's bill for a meal for two came to 531 euros.
For the British, the other noteworthy promotion was the two-star rating awarded to Gordon Ramsay, the British celebrity chef, for the restaurant which he took over at the Trianon Palace hotel in Versailles a year ago. Simon of course had a put-down for the upstart Britannique. Ramsay's cooking is not bad though déjà vu and unoriginal, said Simon.
But for an institution that is so often proclaimed passé, Michelin is not doing badly. The 2,000-page Red Guide sells 1.3 million copies a year worldwide. In France it sold 370,000 in 2008 -- ten times more than its nearest competitor, the Gault et Millau guide. That's impressive for a publication that sticks to its tradition of packing a single volume with tiny print, minimalist description and no pictures.
A series of great chefs have withdrawn in recent years from the struggle of meeting Michelin's exacting standards in order to keep their stars. The latest of these was Marc Veyrat, one of the super-stars of the culinary world, who said last week that he is giving up his restaurant at Annecy, in the Alps.
But for thousands of aspiring chefs, Michelin and its feared but small team of anonymous inspectors, remains the ultimate arbiter. In a sign of the times, the French guide is now under the command of Juliane Caspar, 38, a German from Cologne. Jean-Luc Naret, director of all the guides, has been making his case for the superiority of the Guide Rouge. "We have no competitor in France or internationally," he said. Michelin went intercontinental in 2005 with a New York edition and has since opened in Tokyo and Hong Kong.
The tyre-making Michelin brothers put out their first guide free to help travellers and their chauffeurs in the new-fangled automobiles to find mechanics and places to sleep and eat [1920 version in picture was first paid edition]. With its maps, guides and recently GPS brand, the firm has remained a reliable source of information for travellers in France. The Red Guide is now available on the internet and as an iPhone application. The next step is a GPS service that will list nearby Michelin recommendations automatically on your sat-nav mobile phone.
The in-tray of Barack Obama may be piled high, but he might like to put aside the banks, the Middle East and health care to focus on a truly urgent matter: the French cheese emergency.
The new President could blow the great goodwill that he enjoys in France if he fails to reverse a parting shot by George W. Bush against that symbol of Gallic gastronomy -- roquefort cheese. We could even face a new round in the war against Yankee junk food, with Coca Cola and MacDonald's in the firing line.
The story began last Thursday when Washington suddenly tripled an already heavy duty on the pungent blue cheese from the southern Massif Central. The idea was to punish Europe for maintaining a longstanding ban on beef from US cattle that had been administered with growth hormones.[background here] Roquefort had been under a 100 percent retaliatory duty since 1999.
Some in France have been quick to see the new Washington measure as petty, belated revenge against the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" for their opposition to the 2003 Iraq invasion. The Americans slapped new duty on an array of other EU food imports, including fruit, chocolate and chewing gum, but none was subject to the 300 percent reserved for roquefort.
Michel Barnier, the Agriculture Minister, has urged Obama to reverse the roquefort decision and head off another French campaign against the symbols of US fast food. "I hope that he will avoid mediocre little measures like the one just taken against roquefort," Barnier said. France is to protest to the World Trade Organisation.
Philippe Folliot, a centrist MP for the Tarn, near Roquefort village, called for a super-tax against Coca Cola. "I find it especially shocking that the Bush administration, at the end of its term, should take roquefort hostage again," he said.
Jose Bové [left], France's most famous campaigning sheep farmer, threatened a follow-up to his 1999 destruction of a McDonald's outlet in the name of roquefort. His bulldozer assault that year on a restaurant under construction at Millau turned the mustachioed Bové into a celebrity and anti-capitalist hero. "If Obama maintains the supertax, then we will find a new symbolic target," said Bové, who was a roquefort milk producer at the time of his 1999 stunt.
The producers of the ancient cheese -- a favourite of the ancient Romans -- have kept their foothold in the US market despite the 100 percent tax over the past decade. Only 400 tonnes a year -- two percent of their production -- goes to the US, where it is treated as a luxury food. Their hopes of expanding will be scuttled if the new administration confirms the duty, which is to take effect in March.
Some say that they have few illusions since a Democratic administration -- under Bill Clinton -- imposed the first roquefort tax. Speaking of Obama, Béatrice Weinrich of the regional Union of Ewe Farmers said: "The boy must have a lot of other priorities."
Paris is insisting, however, that the prohibition on US hormone-fed beef will remain in force for health reasons, as will another EU measure contested by Washington: the use of chlorine to disinfect chicken carcasses.
Nicolas Sarkozy's recent energy is not just a result of his marriage to Carla Bruni. The French President's extra zoom comes from getting in touch with his pelvic floor, under the orders of a coach.
I learnt about the secret of Sarko's new zoom from the woman responsible: Julie Imperiali, 26, the personal trainer who had honed his supermodel wife for four years and who has been remodelling the President since their marriage last winter. [Here's the feature on her from today's Times]
Imperiali has the kind of looks, charm and energy that make non-French women weep. She is also persuasive. Chatting for an hour in her flat near the Eiffel Tower, she convinced me that she could make everyone as slim as Bruni and speedy as Sarko. Her clients pay her over 100 euros an hour for the privilege.
Since last April, Imperiali, a former aerobics champion and dancer, has applied to Sarkozy a method which she calls Tectonic Wellbeing (nothing to do with a French techno dance style of that name). Visiting the Elysée Palace three or four times a week, Imperiali has helped the pint-sized President break his evening chocolate habit and lose over three kilogrammes (seven pounds) and two trouser sizes. "His body has radically changed," she said. "He is a dream pupil. He is always ready and motivated."
Sarkozy, the first jogger to sit on France's the presidential throne, stopped running in public last winter as part of his attempt to look more dignified. His spreading waistline was ascribed by some to his hobby of collecting old manuscripts and pstage stamps. He has since been pounding the paths of the walled Elysée garden under Imperiali's guidance.
"He was a sporting type, but he did not have the right methods," she said. "He used just to run and run and run without being aware of his body. Now he runs faster and more solidly. He is doing about 10 kph around the garden."
Imperiali talks breezily about how she resculpts the body through exercise and diet. Her work is 60 percent mental and 40 percent physical, she said. The trick is to focus on the perineal muscles -- those around what the British call the groin. These "core" muscles are also important in Pilates and Yoga, I gather (fans of these disciplines, please forgive my inaccuracies).
For a long time, French women have been taught to work on the perineum, especially after childbirth, but in the English-speaking world it has not been quite such a big thing. "The Anglo-Saxons are a bit prudish about this and say that they don't know what we are talking about," said Imperiali. "The perineum is the floor of our body. If it is not kept in shape it like a house with no floor...By becoming conscious of your perineum you become aware of the interior of your body."
Her method not only improves posture and delivers a healthier body and mind. It also improves the sex-lives of her clients, she says. Although most are women, this applies to men too [more details in the feature].
We have not had confirmation from the Elysée Palace about Imperiali's achievements with the President, but I took her on her word after she made her public debut in Elle magazine last month. She is now expanding, with the help of her Belgian husband, into fitness via internet. For a euro a day, she will coach you electronically, almost like Sarko and Bruni. Her site is www.tectonicworkout.com , where you can watch her routine.
[Pictures by Magali Delporte. Above, Julie leaps on the Place de la Concorde, near the Elysée, for The Times]
Purists here have jumped on my headline "la belle France" over the post on wind farms. The French don't say that, I was told. So let's be pedantic and look at the odd things that happen when one language borrows from the other.
I used la belle France advisedly. The expression is old but it is used internationally and it conveys a whiff of Frenchness, like Zut alors! which no-one says much either. It is one of a long list of French words and expressions that are current in English but not in France. The same happens the other way round, or lycée de Versailles, as the kids here say [footnote*].
A friend was complaining the other day that her job requires her to 'faire du phoning' -- making prospective sales calls. She had just had her brushing and was talking about a new restaurant fad called le fooding. These coinages can be useful. I find myself talking about 'un best of' because it's a good term for selected hits. We'll soon have le best of de Sarko 2008. Le smoking (tuxedo to Americans) has long been more concise than the British dinner jacket or black tie. The French media have become très people lately. The word, meaning celebrity culture, presumably came from People, the doyen of US celeb magazines.
In the other direction, a recent Times editorial was headlined Plus ça change. A Parisian colleague asked me what that meant. The proverb plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, is standard in English but has fallen out of common use here. The same goes for déjà vu and crème de la crème (You say le gratin -- the grilled cheese topping a dish -- for crème de la crème)
Then there are the errors. When I write bon vivant in an article , it is "corrected" in the newspaper to read bon viveur, conforming to the English usage. Educated Brits say "chacun a son goût" (each has his/her taste) although the French expression is "(à) chacun son goût" (to each, his/her taste).
The Eurovision song contest has added a Gallic joke to the English language: nul points. It's not French. Here, when a contestant scores nil, they say "zero pointé".
Many meanings have changed over the years. In France, une entrée is now the starter or appetizer, while Americans use it to mean main dish. The entrée originally came between the two when people ate more courses.
People stopped saying sacré bleu! around world war two, but the exclamation lives on in British newspapers and entertainment, along with zut alors! In similar manner, Englishmen in French cartoons always exclaim Damned! and greet their friends by saying "how do you do".
French gave a lot of food words to the world but doesn't use all of them itself. A Napoleon is an item of pâtisserie in some English-speaking places as well as Russia and parts of Europe. In France it's a mille-feuille (thousand leaves). Unlike the English-speaking world, France has no restauranteurs. It has only restaurateurs, which literally means restorers.
Clothes are an old field for linguistic confusion. Un slip are men's underpants (shorts). A brassière is un soutien-gorge. And there's no space to go into all the dangerous faux-amis like préservatif meaning condom. The New York Times committed a howler not long ago when it quoted Nicolas Sarkozy as saying that he had been deceived by someone. He had talked about his déception -- which means disappointment.
The two languages have been borrowing from one-another for a thousand years. Sometimes the same word gets imported twice. Vanguard, meaning the front of an army, came from avant-garde long ago. In the late 19th century it was re-imported as avant-garde, with an arty sense. English tends to mangle French words when it absorbs them. Une discothèque is still called that in its homeland while it became a disco in English.
And then, for enthusiasts who are still with me, there is the way that imported words change the sense of the original language. To the anger of the Académie Française this has been pretty much one-way lately, with French-rooted English words re-crossing the Channel and devouring their ancestors.
The verb supporter in French (to bear or put up with) has acquired the additional English meaning of backing a team or a cause. Réaliser (to fulfill or carry out) is being used instead of se rendre compte, as in "je n'ai pas réalise que j'étais un loser (I didn't realise I was a loser).
There is an embarras du choix for scoring points in the language business. Or should that be embarras de choix? Please add the words that I've missed from this résumé.
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* Lycée de Versailles is an old rhyming substitute for vice-versa (pronounced veesay-versa) .
Update: In response to comments below, this is une clef anglaise -- an English key -- which is monkey wrench in American and adjustable spanner in Britain.
Autumn is always lovely in the Cévennes. The chestnut forests turn a spectacular orange, mushroom pickers turn up from the towns and gunfire echoes around the hills much of the week.
It's la saison de la chasse -- the hunting season -- and many of our neighbours are out on the trail of the wild boar and deer that throng the forests. The word trail is poetic. What they actually do is stand at their positions on the roadside waiting for the hounds to beat the animals out of the woods towards them.
André, a farm worker and friend, was briefing me on the new season last night. He is very safety-conscious but was lamenting the foolishness of "civilians", as he calls them, who put themselves in danger. He recalled a recent incident. He was waiting for the sanglier -- boar -- to break cover when he heard rustling in the undergrowth and raised his high-powered rifle. "Then I saw it was a woman in a T-shirt on all fours. Une belle blonde. She was trying to crawl under the brambles. I told her she was lucky that I'm careful. Some others don't wait to identify the game and just shoot." Correctly identifying the game is rule number one, according to the hunting federation.
The local association at Saint Germain-de-Calberte is doing its best to improve the poor image of les chasseurs. One of the latest ideas is for the shooters to take up their positions a few yards away from the road rather than right on it. "It sometimes frightens people when they come round the corner and see a guy with a big gun," said André.
One of the frightened civilians this year has been Angelina Jolie. The actress complained about the boar hunters who were exercising their right of access to the land around the Pitt-Jolie's base down in the Var, south of here
There are fewer accidents these days thanks to safety campaigns and stricter enforcement of the law, but a handful of chasseurs and by-standers are shot dead every year. Last Sunday, about 40 miles from here in the Ardèche, a 25-year-old mountain biker was hit in the back and killed by a stray bullet from a boar shooter. [Try your hand at identifying shootable targets in internet test for French hunting permit]
I have mixed feelings about shooting animals for pleasure, especially large ones. France does too. There is an active anti-hunting movement as well as a powerful pro-shooting lobby. A handsome cerf -- stag -- entertained us at night in the summer, grazing in our field with up to five or six females. I wonder if they are still alive. They probably are because, unlike the low-cost boar, the hunters have to pay over a hundred for the "bracelet" that entitles them to shoot each deer.
Continue reading "The French art of boar hunting" »
Various barometers can be used to track the world's economic mood, from hamburger consumption (up when times are hard) to women's hemlines (down). Champagne sales must be one of the more reliable indicators, so it's no surprise that the producers of France's most famous fizzy wine have just reported their first downturn this century.
The big story is the United States, where sales are expected to slump by over 30 percent in volume this year. The slide began in March 2007, several months before the sub-primes crisis erupted. Britain, which went champaigne crazy in the boom years, is buying four percent less. Cognac is also suffering in the Americas, where it became fashionable in recent years. Sales in North America dropped seven percent over the past year.
The global champagne boom has been a constant story from Paris for eight years as demand exploded in Britain, the USA and more recently Russia and China. Sales had risen steadily since 1999. Up in the Champagne region, they are not panicking since the overall volume fall is expected to reach only three percent this year and exports will slide only about one percent thanks to demand from the east. Rich Russians are still loading up on the very high-end brands such as Cristal and sales to China are expected to rise by about 15 percent this year after 30 percent in 2007.
At Moet & Chandon, they say that that they have weathered war and revolutions, so they are not worried about a slide. Benoît Gouez, chief vintner at Moet, came up with a dubious argument for continued consumption. "It's probably when times are hard that people really like or need to dream more and luxury products are never more necessary as in the tough periods." he told the Associated Press.
It is refreshing to step out of France for a weekend in England because you are reminded how different life still is on each side of the waterway that separates the old rivals.
Here are a few notes. Little will be new to British expatriates and readers here who know both countries. Please add all the points that I have missed.
Arriving in London, you are reminded that France is still a more formal society. In Paris, old-fashioned civility ensures a distance between strangers though this can sometimes seem unfriendly, especially to foreigners. You also notice that while the French state may be more paternal than Britain's, it treats its citizens more as adults.
Old class-ridden Britain has become more egalitarian and friendly. Strangers address one-another in familiar terms that can be equivalent to using tu rather than vous in French. But social interaction has also become rougher. After the relative harmony of Paris, London, with its bustle and multi-cultural mix, seems crowded and rushed, like New York used to feel for visiting Britons.
We witnessed a scene in Islington that seemed right out of modern-day Moscow. A multi-coloured police-car with sirens screaming blasted down a sidestreet scattering pedestrians who were nearly mown down. "C'est vraiment le far west ici," commented my French companion. The aggressive policemen are of course ultimately taking orders from bosses who with names such as Nick, Ed and Andy and who talk as if they are your mates. In France, members of the cabinet are still very much Monsieur or Madame le/la Ministre.
On the social side, my friend, who has little experience of English-speaking countries, draws the contrast between London pubs and Paris cafes. She is impressed by the cosiness and conviviality in traditional pubs, even in the shoving to get to the bar to be served. She is also puzzled by the raucous noise, made by women as much as men. In the Paris café, you pick out a table and keep to yourselves, waiting for service that is often indifferent.
One thing that hits you entering Britain is the nanny-like chivvying from loud-speakers. The London Underground is a non-stop speech. Loud voices, pitched somewhere between TV host and sergeant major, exhort passengers to move along, to stand back from incoming trains and so on. When there are no delays to report, they busy themselves by telling you that service is running normally. On a southern region train to rural Sussex, the talk never ended, between welcoming new "customers" aboard to pointing out that rain makes station platforms slippery.
France and the rest of the continent are catching up in this field, but travellers are rarely harangued this way. After years of criticising Britain's mania for closed circuit television, France is also adopting the practise, but it is nowhere near the blanket surveillance that Britain now applies.
I hesitate to use the word nannying, but the loud-speaker habit is part of a tendency to explain the obvious and organise people's behaviour. You also see it in the simplified language of British television news. That brings up a role-reversal in cultural stereotypes. British TV reporters now wave their hands all the time while French ones hardly gesticulate at all .
In the bossy vein, you could not imagine in France such stunts as the present crusade by Jamie Oliver, the television chef, and his aptly named Ministry of Food. He has set out to shame a whole city -- Rotherham in Yorkshire -- into cooking more healthy food for its children. Some of the junk food die-hards are understandably rebelling.
Linked with the new British enthusiasm for caring and interfering are taboos over language that might be deemed divisive or judgmental. The Guardian, a great newspaper in other ways, has just offered a lovely illustration with a new style guide, the house rules for its journalists.
They are now banned or discouraged from using the following terms because they cause offence: invalid, elderly, suicide, the deaf, old-age pensioner, Asians, mental handicap, grandparent and so on. They have to use softer terms -- in other words euphemisms -- such as "a person with learning difficulties" for mentally handicapped. Even the word nation is out because it supposedly implies homogeneity.
"Reserve nation to describe people united by language, culture and history so as to form a distinct group within a larger territory," says The Guardian's language master. Never could you imagine such an instruction being given in France.
Naturally, the Guardian outlaws the expression that springs to mind for the above: politically correct. This term (of American origin) is "an empty rightwing smear designed to elevate the user", says the stylebook. It's odd then that the Guardian does not ban the word rightwing, which is most certainly a smear in its vocabulary.
George Orwell, that great scourge of the manipulation of language, would have had a field day with the Guardian's strictures.(His 1946 essay Politics and the English language is still the bible on the subject).
France has gone nowhere nearly as far down these paths as Britain. State agencies probably do not do enough explaining, especially for non French-speakers and immigrants (a word discouraged by the Guardian). The bureaucracy is still a nightmare, especially, for poor French-speakers.
But France has its linguistic taboos too. It turns a blind eye to matters of race. Ethnic descriptions are avoided by using euphemisms such as "des jeunes" (young people) for young men from immigrant housing estates.
But sex distinctions ('gender' in the new sensitive English) are still very much alive. A woman thespian is une actrice and a female cabin attendant is une stewardesse. In English, people are reduced to being "chairs" to avoid being man or woman. French is still often more paternal and patronising towards women, reflecting French society. In advertising, female secretaries still take orders from male bosses. At the Académie Française, they still address gatherings as just "Messieurs", ignoring the presence of les Académiciennes.
Those are just random home-thoughts-from-abroad and before anyone points it out, these differences can generally be observed across the Germanic-Latin divide of western Europe and the story is much the same in the rest of the English-speaking world.
Continue reading "France and England: vive la différence!" »
 When no blog topic leaps to mind, at least there is usually a new French tax to report.
This year, we have had the fish tax, a two percent levy which is supposed to help fishermen but has put up the price for consumers. New taxes also apply to junk mail and stock options (almost the same thing nowadays). A couple of weeks ago ministers proposed a "picnic tax", to be levied on throw-away cutlery and paper plates. President Sarkozy scotched that after a week of mockery.
Today, the government has quickly squashed the latest wheeze: a junk food tax. Roselyne Bachelot, the Health Minister, has rejected, for the time being at least, a parliamentary call for value-added (sales) tax to be almost quadrupled on "les produits de grignotage et de snacking" (grignotage means snacking, or nibbling).
The taxe sur la malbouffe (junk food) would be applied to high-fat and high-sugar, processed foods such as potato crisps (chips), chocolate bars and sodas. "Is it right that a kilogramme of potatoes should be taxed at the same rate as a sweet spread?" asked Valérie Boyer, the member of parliament who led the group behind the proposal. To incite healthy eating, they also want the tax to be cut to almost nothing on fresh fruit and vegetables.
Boyer's mission was to devise a plan for stemming the obesity that is increasingly afflicting France. The fat problem is nowhere near as bad as in many other parts of Europe and North America, but France is catching up. One in two adults is overweight and 17 percent are obese -- measured as body mass index of 30 and over. The most worrying thing is the accelerating mass of French children. One in five is overweight.
The fight against obesity should be declared "the great national cause of 2009," said Boyer. Children should be the primary target since a fat child stands an 80 percent chance of staying that way for life, she said. One of her big suggestions is a campaign to persuade mothers to breast feed their children -- still a minority exercise in France.
Needless to say, the food industry is fiercely opposed to Boyer's proposal. "No product is bad for health or it would be withdrawn from the market," said the main industry association. Anyway, it would be impossible to decide what qualified for the tax, it said. Would a French fry be deemed a vegetable or
junk? Would chocolate éclairs and the rest of the favourites from the patisserie be super-taxed ? Surely not.
The tax idea was batted aside because President Sarkozy has given orders to his government to stop frightening people with new taxes when times are hard. Bachelot, the least slim of his female cabinet ministers, said that the tax would penalise poorer people, those most prone to unhealthy diets. Education was the answer, she said.
But there's not much sign that this is working. Health advisories have been required on processed food advertising for the past couple of years, but the incitement to exercise and avoid sugar and fat have made little impact.
Take a good look. Henri Matisse's painting and many like it could soon be banned from the internet, at least in France. That might sound like a joke, but if the health lobby has its way, images of wine or any promotion of alcohol consumption on the web will be deemed to infringe France's strict laws on drink advertising.
[Matisse: la Désserte/ The Dinner Table]
This has arisen from a court decision which forced the Heineken company to block French access to its corporate web site. The case was brought last February by the National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction (ANPAA) on the grounds that France's 1991 law on alcohol promotion does not permit it on the internet. The worldwide web was in embryo when the so-called Evin law was passed, but, say the campaigners, that is no excuse for breaking the law.
Since the Heineken ruling, some of the biggest brands have shut out French visitors for fear of prosecution over what is a legal grey area. A click from France on the Courvoisier site down in Cognac country, for example, elicits the message: "Sorry, the regulations of your country do not authorise us to give you access to our site."
Internet visitors who identify themselves as French are even banned from dropping in on Orlando wines in South Australia -- because they are owned by France's Pernod Ricard drinks giant. The site will let you in if you say you are from almost anywhere else, including Kuweit and the United Arab Emirates.
"We are not inciting people to crime. We are sensitive to the risks of alcohol," said Frédéric Delesque, Marketing Director of Camus Cognac, which also bowed to the law and blocks French visitors. "There are three countries in the world which ban the discussion of alcohol: Iran, Afghanistan and France. It is a pity for the image of our products," he told us.
The government is preparing to draft a law to bring the internet into the Evin law, which defines the way that alcoholic drinks may be advertised and limits this only to the press, the radio and on posters. The health lobby want a complete purge of alcohol images and promotion from the internet, though the government is unlikely to go as far as that. Vineyards will no doubt be allowed to keep the sites that are one of their strongest marketing tools but there may be restrictions such as limiting advertising to certain hours of the French night.
In the meantime, the winemakers, merchants and drinks companies are fighting back, pointing out the absurdity of restricting alcohol on a medium which tolerates everything. "Today in France, the sight of a bottle of wine has become as offensive as a picture of war or pornography," said Daniel Lorson, a spokesman for CIVC , the industry body of champagne producers.
Nicolas Sarkozy promised to help the wine industry over the internet during his election campaign in early 2007, but his government has been taking a tough line, introducing measures to combat binge-drinking and under-age consumption and alcohol-related diseases.
The industry complains that it is being demonised and that an internet ban would hugely penalise one of the glories of the French economy and the national heritage. Among the recent successes of the anti-alcohol lobby has been the conviction last winter of le Parisien newspaper for breaching with Evin law with an editorial supplement on champagne. The newspaper argued in vain that its articles were not promoting alcohol.
Even the alcohol-fuelled world of sport has not been left unscathed. When Liverpool played Marseille in this week's Champions League football match, the logo of Carlsberg, the team's main sponsor, was absent from their shirts. Rugby union's Heineken Cup is simply called the European Rugby trophy in France.
The campaign to hide drink in the world's biggest wine-consuming country is inevitably producing jokes. According to one, the state is to ban dozens of place-names because they illicitly promote alcohol consumption. First to go will be Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne and Cognac.
The French government has just invented another good reason to use china, glasses and cutlery when you eat outdoors. It's going to put a substantial tax on cardboard plates and plastic bags, glasses and eating implements.
The so-called taxe pique-nique is to be modelled on a Belgian law which came into effect a year ago. This applies a 20 percent levy on plastic bags, wrap, disposable dishes and cutlery. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the Ecology Secretary, confirmed the tax this morning after it was disclosed by Le Journal du Dimanche. She did not say how big it would be.
President Sarkozy's government has been seriously smitten by the green bug. The picnic tax is part of an imminent big expansion of its "bonus-malus" scheme, which adds a penalty to the price of high-polluting cars and rewards those who buy green- friendly vehicles.
Starting from next January, the green bonus-malus system will be applied to about 20 products, including refrigerators, television, computers, mobile phones, wooden furniture, lightbulbs, paint, detergent, tyres and perhaps even new apartments and houses. The Ecology Secretary added a new item today: disposable nappies (diapers). "We could arrange it so that all maternity hospitals teach you how to use reuseable nappies," she said.
France already puts up with more taxes of different types than most places but the beauty of the scheme, in the eyes of Jean-Louis Borloo, the superminister for the Environment, is that the money will be given back to people who choose the most environmentally virtuous products. The system has worked well with cars. Buyers of small vehicles get up to 1,000 euros back. Completely electric vehicles will get 5,000 euros. Borloo is working on items and the levies ahead of the 2009 budget later this month. But the Finance Ministry is said to be unhappy over the complexity of a system that will need a whole new buraucracy to operate and which could dent consumption when the economy is already struggling.
Maybe they should just ban all produits jetables -- disposable products -- for picnics. French food and drink deserves more than cardboard and plastic. Here's the correct setting for un pique-nique (except for the paper napkins).
The French love affair with mineral water is waning as high prices and concern for the environment have made tap water attractive again.
A five-year slide in sales of bottled water deepened in the first half of the year with a 6.1 percent drop from the previous summer in supermarket sales according to figures from Iri France.
Over two thirds of the French now say that they regularly drink tap water while only 56 percent imbibe still bottled water at least once a week. That compares with 73 percent in 2003, the peak of a two-decade boom in which French brands led a world-wide flight from the public water supply (from Sofres 2008 study here).
In a sign of the times, Evian, the world's top brand, shut its Alpine bottling plant for a week in mid-August to reduce its stock. Sparkling water is suffering a similar decline. The rest of the world has not lost its thirst for the bottled version, but the makers are worried that the backlash in France heralds a global trend.
Evian, Volvic, Contrex, Badoit and the other brands are suffering from the financial pinch that is causing the French to shun designer water. Cheaper brands are benefiting. Everyone now knows that municipal water is supposed to be just as healthy as most bottled brands but they do not agree with the official line that it tastes as good. They are aware, though, that the bottled version costs about a couple of hundred times more per litre. The French are still spending an average of 130 euros a year on portable water, the government says. They were overtaken by the Italians several years ago as the biggest drinkers of the stuff.
People are increasingly influenced by the environmental argument. Even in restaurants, where the bottles are glass, it is no longer quite so chic to drink water that has dumped a load of carbon on the planet during production and shipping. "Drinking bottled water creates 10 to 20 million cubic feet of waste per year in France," the Ministry of Ecology said in a recent campaign. Yet another blow to the bottle has been widespread publicity in France for a study at the University of Pennsylvania last spring that knocked down the longstanding belief that you must glug water all day to lose weight and stay healthy.
The industry is fighting back with lavish campaigns that trumpet health benefits, however fanciful. Evian, one of the water brands of the Danone group, is said to be the "declared source of youth by the body". That reminds me of a joke when imported water took off in the USA in the 1980s: Evian is just naive spelt backwards. Franck Riboud, Danone's chairman, says the makers must market their message better. "Our trade is not transporting bottles of water a a euro each in lorries. It is selling brands with a specific origin and taste," he told La Tribune newspaper.
Below: a recent cheeky advert for Cristaline, a low-price bottled water, mocking the claims that tap water is just as pure. Nitrates, lead and chlorine are coming out of the tap. The caption says "I don't save on the water I drink"
Here's a glimpse of the other French way of life -- far from Paris in the Cévennes, the sunny southern foothills of the Massif Central. The goats belong to the neighbours. After their evening graze in front of my house, they walk home about two miles to be milked. Their cheese is sold in the local markets. Click here for more on Saint Germain de Calberte, our village, which is six miles by road and about one by the crow's flight.
Of course there is a huge lot more to the Cévennes than goats and Stevenson and his donkey. The area was always a refuge for rebels and dissenters. The "Camisard" Protestants held out against the Catholic king's troops in religious wars 300 years ago. In World War Two they were a stronghold for Resistance fighters. In the 1970s, after the 1968 upheaval, young town dwellers dropped out for the simple life, trying to raise goats and live off the land. Many are still there and still struggling.
I'll be picking up as usual back in Paris later in the week.
 France has just lost one of its greatest chefs. Alain Ducasse, the holder of 14 Michelin stars and a worlwide restaurant and hotel empire, has given up his French citizenship for the privilege of becoming a Monégasque, we hear today.
In other words Ducasse, 51, whose interests turn over about 160 million euros a year, has gone into tax exile across the border in Monaco. He could have chosen Switzerland and kept his citizenship but Ducasse, a southerner by birth, has ties to Monaco, where he owns the three-star Louix XV.
Monaco imposes no income or wealth tax on its residents -- provided they are not French. In the 1960s, the late President de Gaulle got tired of deserting tax payers so he forced a deal on Prince Rainier under which French citizens in Monaco must pay their full whack to the Paris treasury. The wheeze for French would-be exiles is to become a Monaco citizen -- a privilege accorded very sparingly. Prince Albert II has just granted this "sovereign order" to Ducasse, who renounces his French nationality in return. There are only 6,000 Monaco citizens (in a population of 32,000) and there is a long waiting list for French candidates.
The move is not wonderful for the image of a celebrity whose brand name is synonymous with French haute cuisine from New York to Tokyo. Ducasse's most recent restaurant openings are at the London Dorchester and the "Jules Verne" restaurant in the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which I wrote about here. Next October, he is opening a a third restaurant in Japan -- "Le comptoir de Benoît in Osaka.
Ducasse's flight from France does not look good for President Sarkozy's "come home" appeal to his country's thousands of tax refugees. After taking office a year ago, Sarko imposed a 50 percent cap on personal taxation. This meant that no-one had to pay more than half their annual income in to the state.
Because of the wealth tax plus steep income and social security taxes, many high earners and very well off people moved over the past two decades to London, Brussels and other capitals as well as the traditional haven Switzerland. They are not returning in noticeable numbers, mainly because the wealth tax remains and they do not trust their country to reverse policy at the drop of a hat.
Sarko has maintained the Impôt sur la Fortune (ISF) as the 26-year-old annual tax is known (the exiles call it Incitation à Sortir de France). The tax gathers relatively little income and drives capital abroad but the public supports soaking the rich, so scrapping it is politically unacceptable.
Looking back at the Jules Verne opening, I was reminded how Ducasse boasted of his pride in bringing the finest French cuisine to the Eiffel Tower, that most Parisian of symbols. Fine Monegasque cuisine does not sound quite the same.
Update Tuesday: Ducasse has been on the radio (RTL) this morning saying that he is taking up Monaco citizenship because of his great attachment to the principality. He said that he was obviously not fleeing for tax reasons because his companies would continue to pay corporate taxes in France. The fact that he would be paying no income tax and no wealth tax in Monaco were mere details, he insisted. "My personal saving will be very slight... absolutely ridiculous compared with what I would save if I put my companies offshore." The "very slight" of Ducasse (presumably several million euros a year) is obviously not what ordinary mortals would consider very slight.
 Who are the world's rudest tourists ? According to a new global survey of hoteliers, they are .....the Americans. This is a little surprising since the cliché would suggest that this prize might go to the French or possibly the Russians.
The French did come second to the Americans in the least polite category of the Expedia-Harris poll of more than 4,000 hotel managers around the world. The travel firm's survey set out to find the best tourists based on their travel traits and habits.
The Japanese are the world's easiest and most delightful tourists for hotel managers. The bottom of the 30-nation list were the Chinese (full list below). The Indians came second to bottom, followed by the French. The Americans came mid-way.
I was surprised to see the British tying for second place along with the Germans. In 2002, the British ranked in a similar poll as the world's worst tourists. It's interesting that the British reputation is raised by their conduct outside Europe. In their own continent, they are ranked much lower.
Continue reading "Americans are ruder than the French, survey finds" »
You don't usually think of fashion and wine-making as part of the soldier's life and especially that of the French Foreign Legion. It was touching to see a contingent of légionnaires at the Saint Roch church for the funeral of Yves Saint Laurent yesterday [my newspaper story]. The honour guard was there among the glamour crowd because Saint Laurent was a Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur, the second highest rank in the state decoration (the two legions have no direct link).
On the wine front, the Foreign Legion has just announced that it is to sell to the public the product of its magnificent vineyard at Puyloubier, in Provence. The 40 hectare estate, home for 100 invalid legionnaires, is on the slopes of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, known to the world from Cézanne's paintings. The old soldiers produce 300,000 bottles a year of red, white and rosé under the Côtes de Provence appellation. Until now these have supplied Legion messes around the world. One of the traditions of the corps is that the men dine well, even in the toughest conditions. I discovered this at dinner with Legion officers during the siege of Sarajevo in 1993. We were served the legion wine in fine regimental glasses while mortar shells were exploding nearby (that was three years before Hillary Clinton's fantasy sniper episode).
The wine, being sold under the label Esprit de Corps, is the product of "the cult of the mission and the love of a job well done which is dear to all légionnaires," says the Ministry of Defence. Income will help the estate care for its residents, former soldiers who are physical invalids of have difficulties in adjusting to civilian life. Explaining the existence of its estate, the Legion quotes one of its sacred rules: "Tu n'abandonnes jamais les tiens, ni au combat ni dans la vie -- you never abandon one of your own, neither in battle nor in life.
Given the Legion's reputation for fierce discipline, it's interesting to see how it describes its rosé:
Rien d’audacieux n’existe sans la désobéissance aux règles. Cet aphorisme traduit parfaitement les intentions du vin rosé de la Légion étrangère.
Nothing bold exists without disobeying the rules. This saying perfectly translates the intentions of the Foreign Legion's vin rosé.
[Old légionnaire tends the Provence vines. Beards are Legion tradition]
One of the good things about blogs is that they allow you to add nuance. In the news business, there is little space to tell a story. To earn the limited slot you usually have to stick with one angle. That's a preface for expanding a little on the article we wrote in the newspaper today on France's embrace of New World methods for selling its wine.
The story fits into the classic category of "French tradition surrenders to superior Anglo-Saxon forces". The enlightened reader smiles at another Gallic retreat in the face of globalisation but feels a twinge of regret that obstinate French excellence is again compromising with the modern world.
The reality is a little more complicated. France has lost market share in volume to the New World and other European countries, but it still rules in quality exports. Even with its recent modification to suit Anglo-American taste, French wine is still the gold standard. A great product from the Napa or Barossa (South Australia) valleys, is still measured against the French version. Good Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy are still the essence of terroir -- the mystical combination of tradition, soil and climate that is the heart of French wine and which few others can match.
In addition, much of the French wine business has been adapting faster than realised to world taste. This is especially the case in the Loire Valley and down south in the Languedoc, the oldest wine-growing area in France. That Mediterranean region, long associated with poor bulk wine, was the hardest hit by the New World wine revolution. They are still ripping up poorer vineyards, with European subsidies, but the region has transformed itself. It has innovated and won back exports with simpler, well-marketed medium quality products. Some, with names such as "The Arrogant Frog", are sold with the kind of self-derision that Australian wines go in for. The area has also made a name for new high end wines like the Domaine de Daumas Gassac in the Hérault département. The many readers of this blog (who include winegrowers) in the Languedoc may wish to correct me or expand on this. I only have the big picture. I love the wine and my Cévennes home is in the region, but I don't claim to be an expert.
French wine is also selling extremely well in the huge emerging markets of Russia, China and India, there the cachet of Frenchness carries weight.French wine sales jumped 52 percent in Hong Kong last year, 58 percent in Korea, 25 percent in Singapore and 113 percent in China, according to French officials at the Vinexpo Asia-Pacific wine show this week.
Wide sections of the French industry, fragmented into thousands of small vineyards, are still sticking to the old ways rather than joining the Californians, Australians and south Americans. Their biggest handicap is the corruption of the once coveted AOC label. This top appellation is no longer a guarantee of quality. But I encourage them to stick with the terroir tradition -- for the same reason that I prefer the expresso from the grumpy waiter at our local café to a latte at the Starbucks a few yards away.
[picture: le Domaine Daumas Gassac]
 A glance is often enough to tell the nationality of the groups of young tourists who throng the street outside our office on the Place de l'Opéra. You don't need to listen to the language or study the dress. The American kids are really wide. The Britons are next in excessive girth followed by Germans, Australians and Russians.
All right, that's an intolerant generalisation. Obesity is a global epidemic and Americans and Brits are just leading the way, we are told. The "thin" countries like France are fast catching up, thanks to junk food and the sedentary habits of their kids. I read in a US newspaper: "Child obesity is the new 'normal' of the 21st century. It will remain that way".
Well, perhaps not. This week, France reported that it has stopped the rise in overweight children over the past decade or so.
The news emerged from the 2008 European Congress on Obesity in Geneva. One study showed that there was no change in the weight of French seven to nine-year-olds between 2000 and 2007. In another survey the French Food Safety Agency (AFSSA) found no significant change in random samples of three to 17-year-olds in 1998-99 and 2006-2007.
The French results have caused a stir because they are the first evidence that it is possible to stop the blight of obesity that is sweeping the affluent world -- including France. The experts are being cautious, but credit for the French success is being given to programmes that have been running for over a decade.
Continue reading "French children beat weight problem" »
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:
Continue reading "Help save the French language" »
After camembert and the decision to redraw the map of champagne country, it is time to take a look at another highly successful celebration of France's terroir, or its rich rural roots.
What does it take for a television network to beat a big football match in prime time ? Manchester United was knocking Olympique Lyonnais, France's top side, out of the European Champions' League the other night, but the French preferred to watch a yarn about a bigoted 19th century widow and her search for virtue.
Seven million people tuned in to the episode from Chez Maupassant, a costume drama that has pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of drawing a mass audience to high-quality television. At the start of its second season, the setting of Victorian-era short stories by Guy de Maupassant, is such a hit that President Sarkozy is using it as an argument to convince broadcasting bosses that the French will watch high-brow television if they do it right (Unfamiliar with modern Britain, he usually cites UK television as his model).
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Continue reading "France flocks back to good old days on TV" »
I've been having fun lately with France's penchant for regulating everything, but here's a rule worthy of support. It concerns camembert, the pungent Normandy fromage that springs to mind in much of the world when people say "French cheese".
A decision has just been made that will bar producers from using the coveted "appellation côntrolée" (AOC) label that designates genuine camembert if they make it with heat-treated or micro-filtered milk.
If you are outside France, this is theoretical since exported camembert is mostly the chalk-like industrial product that is made from fully pasteurised milk. Real, ancestral camembert, which goes gooey and yellow and carries a whiff of the Norman farmyard, is made only from raw milk. It accounts for a minority of the market even in France, which has only lately rediscovered a taste for authentic cheese. Lait cru (raw milk) is used to make only about 10 percent of the 650 cheeses sold in French supermarkets.
The "camembert war" was started a year ago by the Lactalis dairy giant and a cheese cooperative at Isigny, in the Calvados département of Normandy, the cheese's home region.
Continue reading "Don't mess with the camembert, say French cheese experts " »
Let me balance the slightly caustic tone of some recent postings with praise for a book that sums up everything we love about France.
Dictionnaire Amoureux de la France is a love-letter to his country by Denis Tillinac, a prolific writer whose novels mainly celebrate la France profonde, especially his native Corrèze. Tillinac, 60, is an unabashed patriot. I know that he is seen as at bit "reactionary" and a friend of Jacques Chirac, the last and not greatly lamented president.
But Tillinac, a puckish, twinkling-eyed chain-smoker, has a sense of fun and an eye for the quirky side of the French character that is so endearing -- and exasperating. I have got to know him on a TV show that we take part in and I appreciate his eloquent, self-mocking manner.
His book is part of a series from the Plon publishing house, in which famous writers celebrate their passions. It is a collection of sharp little essays on the things and people that for him are the essence of France. His country, he says, is about flair and panache plus despair and pathos. "I love France in body and soul, as a transfixed admirer and a fulfilled lover," he writes.
Run through the index and you get an idea....d'Artagnan.. Bovary... le Coq Gaulois...Cyrano de Bergerac... les Départementales (country roads)... Deux Chevaux (Citroens)... Gares (railway stations), Grandeur.... May 68... Maigret... le Panache... Paris...la Province...Sub-prefectures...Ricard (pastis)... Zidane..le Zinc (local cafe)
Take le Zinc -- the corner bistrot:
"Le zinc offers the godsend of conviviality, silent or garrulous...It is very French, this decompression chamber. We like to linger in the bistrot. The atmosphere is not like a Viennese cafe, an English pub, a German tavern or even an Italian bar. In the Zinc, once you have your elbows on the counter, you are more than a customer. You become owner of a little part of the establishment...A mysterious connivence brings you close to your neighbour, to the neighbourhood... Whether it's in the countryside, in the provinces or in Paris, le bistrot français is the temple of inexpensive fraternity, of the meditative break, the road to the stars for solitary hearts, or lacking that, their oasis.
On la Grandeur, Tillinac tries to put his finger on why France thinks it is so special. France excelled in no single field, he notes. Great western painting was Italian and Flemish. The music was Italian and German. The great philosophers were German and the three major western writers of the modern west were Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes. France had no Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud or Einstein, he says. France's pride in its innate superiority is completely unreasonable, he says: "It is as if we only had this alternative: pride in being French, or grating, sneering morosity."
To justify this pride, France throughout history has striven to achieve unrealistic ambitions "far beyond its apparent capacity", from Joan of Arc through Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle. "France offers an exemplary and muddled irrationality, a mixture of dashing bravoura and missionary zeal which no sporting or economic victory really conveys."
France could not be France without la grandeur, whether we are the seventh or second last economic power in the world. French genius has to astonish the world. I think it is still alive, smouldering like an ember of the spirit under the cinder of mercantilism: this naive faith is one of the well-springs of my patriotism."
Tillinac's model of the French spirit at its best -- generous and reckless -- is D'Artagnan, the musketeer of Alexandre Dumas.
D'Artagnan is the older brother who I never had... At an age when my friends were seeking a cause between Jean-Paul Sartre and Che Guevara, I had read the Three Musketeers. My cause was that boisterous camp where the four jolly fellows served up their knightly heroism with epicurian pleasure.
It's a lovely book, a perceptive, easy study of Frenchness by an insider, not one of the Brits or other foreigners who presume to know the country.
Here's another glimpse of why Nicolas Sarkozy is unlike his predecessors. In the clip Sarko gives a taste of his rough side at the annual Paris Agricultural Show. When Sarko approaches while shaking hands with the crowd, the man on the left says (in ungrammatical French): "Don't touch me". Sarko replies: "Then get lost". The man: "You dirty me when you touch me". Sarko: "Then get lost, pauvre con." This translates roughly as "stupid a-hole", stupid sod, or the equivalent.
Sarko's more regal predecessors no doubt used such language, but never in public. His readiness to mix it in an unpresidential way with hecklers is part of the reason that his popularity has slumped. The latest poll in today's Journal du Dimanche, shows him down nine points in a month at 38 percent approval. In contrast, François Fillon, his prime pinister, is at 57 percent.
The pollsters say this reflects the way that Sarkozy has reversed the traditional roles. The prime minister is reserved and dignified, staying in the background like a president, while Sarkozy is out in front taking on all-comers. The presidential visit to the annual Salon de l'Agriculture is an important ritual because of the mystical bond which France entertains with the countryside and its produce. Jacques Chirac, pretended to be a countryman and put on a great show at the salon, wandering around stalls slapping cattle, knocking back wine and tasting sausage.
Not Sarko, a life-long urbanite. He made a quick drop-by and, before exchanging the insults in the video, he delivered a speech that was mainly about protecting France and its food producers from foreign competition.
The most quaint point was his announcement that France will apply to Unesco to have French cuisine listed as part of the world's heritage.
Continue reading "Sarkozy loses cool and wants UN defence for French cooking" »
 Much of the world thinks of France as a sunny Latin place with vineyards, windows with shutters and a fine art de vivre. Many French also prefer that image and look down on the bits that do not fit the picture, especially those along the northern fringe next to England and Belgium.
This week, the far northerners -- a tribe that calls itself Ch'tis -- are celebrating a chance to shake off their uncouth image as potato-guzzling beer-drinkers who dwell in a rain-soaked rust-belt.
The excuse is the opening in Lille yesterday of Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a film that makes fun of the region's unflattering stereotype in order to show the people as warmer and generally nicer than those in the sunny south.
Starring and directed by Dany Boon, the film has won critical praise and seems destined to become a hit. So it should boost the much-maligned Ch'ti country, the old port and mining area which runs from Calais eastwards to about Maubeuge (I have a fondness for this area of red-brick terrace houses and tall bell towers from four years living in nearby Brussels in the late 1990s).
Dany Boon is a popular stand-up comedian and actor who is a native Ch'ti or Ch'timi. The name comes from Picardy patois. Like comedies about England's "Geordie" northeast, much of the film's fun stems from a working class dialect so impenetrable that it needs subtitles. In Ch'ti, "ch" replaces "s" and it includes expressions from old Picard and Flemish as well from the Italian, Polish and other migrants of a century ago. The Ch'ti language splash in yesterday's Voix du Nord was: Dany Boon, Bienvenue à s'baraque!" ('welcome home'). Instead of a "chortie nachional" (sortie national-- national release) the film has started with a "chortie ch'timi". Have a look at the promotion site, with the CNN parody "ChtiNN, une chaîne qui ne perd pas le nord".
Continue reading "Self-mockery in France's unlovely north " »
The most sought-after hotel room in Paris is a shoe-box perched on a roof in the opulent 16th arrondissement. There is no room service except for breakfast. The furniture is made of plastic and there is no television. Yet every day, 40,000 people are trying to book a night there.
The word novelty comes in here. The Hotel Everland is a room with adjoining bathroom which costs at least 333 euros a night but it's not really a hotel.
It is a 10-tonne art installation that has been perched since last November on top of the Palais de Tokyo, the Art Deco home of the contemporary art museum on the Right Bank. For its creators, the Swiss artist-designers Sabrina Lang and Daniel Baumann, Everland makes the guests part of the art.
Continue reading "An exotic hotel night in Paris" »
They said it could never happen. Unlike Americans, Britons or Italians, French smokers would rebel rather than yield to government orders to stop. But nearly six weeks into the start of the ban, they have meekly obeyed and the predicted revolt has not occurred in the bars and bistrots.
As in other places, there have been some odd consequences. One is the body odour that fills the smoke-free air in discos and crowded clubs as the night drags on. Paris clubs are struggling to find alternative scents to mask the sweaty smell that is said to be turning off customers, especially women. Managers do not want to talk about it for fear of losing trade. "We've had enough trouble with the ban on smoking. On top of that we don't want people saying that the place stinks as well," said a club manager near the Place de l'Etoile.
France being the thoughtful place that it is, the pong issue has prompted discussion not of hygiene but of the psychology of odour. Why are we repelled by bodily scent, Libération wondered the other day. It hauled in Annick Le Guerer, an anthropologist and philosopher, to explain that bad smells trigger a part of the brain that makes people think of death. She suggested taking Nietzche's positive approach to smell rather than Freud's bourgeois negative one. Nietzche apparently proclaimed that "my whole genius is in my nostrils." Freud said that society could not function unless it ignored smells. Before anyone starts making anti-French remarks, the same smell problem caused a stir in England when they stopped smoking there.
Continue reading "France stops smoking, starts smelling" »
It's impossible to write this post without making an obvious pun about haute cuisine. Paris cooking doesn't get any more elevated than the restaurant that has re-opened today 410 feet (125m) up on the second level of the Eiffel Tower.
The setting of the old Jules Verne restaurant has always been superb, perched inside the iron girders of the tower. What makes it special now is the new boss, Alain Ducasse, the super-chef and businessman who has 27 restaurants with 15 Michelin stars around the world.
Ducasse [above] won the tower catering concession a couple of years ago after the old management let the restaurant slide into expensive mediocrity. Doing the promotional rounds this week, Ducasse has said that he aims to lure Parisians back onto a site that was long left to tourists, with fine, all-French cooking.
"There won't be any nems (Vietnamese spring rolls), only French products, beef, scallops, turbot, Saint Pierre, langoustines, Limousin lamb, Landes farmer's chicken with crayfish... Even the whisky will be French," he said.
The tight confines of the tower and the need for reasonable prices has led Ducasse to aim for less majestic fare than his Paris Plaza Athénée and his other high culinary temples. They are haute couture while the Jules Verne, one of two eateries on the tower, will be "luxury ready-to-wear," he said.
Continue reading "Dining high on Eiffel's Tower" »
 The air is so thick with foreigners' odes to the French rural idyll that I hesitate to commit another of my own. Yet, c'est plus fort que moi, on this All Saints day with the morning sun on the chestnut forest in our valley in the Cévennes. The autumn leaves (not yet feuilles mortes) are the most radiant gold that I have seen in the 14 Toussaint holidays that I have spent in the old farm-house. Perhaps it's the result of the declining rainfall that is also drying up the spring upon which we depend.
Yet nothing has really changed on the November 1 holiday. My neighbours -- mostly hill farmers, artisans and unemployed locals -- are out with their guns and hounds in pursuit of wild boar. The only innovation on that front is that they now wear fluorescent vests over their camouflage. The measure, imposed nationally, is supposed to help les chasseurs avoid shooting one-another, but those flashes of yellow in the forest must certainly tip off their prey.
Across the valley in the village of Saint-Germain-de-Calberte, everything but the church is closed except for the stand selling chrysanthemums, the seasonal flower for commemorating the dead.
Our spot in the Cévennes, a sort of Scottish highlands with sunshine, is only 100 kilometres north of the saturated Mediterranean coastal strip. Drive only 15 kms down the valley into the département of le Gard and the architecture starts turning from austere stone and slate roofs to the white arches and red tiles of the Med. We are far enough up into hill-billy country to keep the feeling of sanctuary that shaped the history of this southernmost fringe of the Massif Central. In the religious wars of the 17th century, the persecuted protestants found refuge, as did the resistants of world war two. In the 1970s, the first generation of drop-out ecologistes came down from the north with their guitars and 2CV Citroens to take over abandoned farm-houses to try their hand -- usually without much success -- at goat raising and living off the land.
Continue reading "Goat's cheese, chestnuts and no Sarko " »
 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.
Continue reading "Don't kill us, say French shop-keepers" »
Don't remind the British and the Americans that their meat comes from animals and be friendly when you serve them. The tip comes in a brochure for French restaurateurs that has just been issued by the Ministry of Tourism for the Rugby World Cup.
In advising how to deal with foreigners, the booklet, updated from a 2003 version, is not only a handy guide to national habits but also a useful mirror for the French hospitality industry.
Among the meal-time dislikes of nearly all the main visiting nationalities are unfriendly service, "French ethnocentrism", poor hygiene and undercooked meat. Foreigners are also turned off by the quantity of butter and fat in French food, it says. The information was drawn from surveys of foreign visitors.
When dealing with Dutch tourists, "pay attention to the cleanliness of your premises and personnel. French hygiene rules are not strict enough to their taste," it says.
With all foreigners, French restaurateurs are advised to explain when a dish comes from offal or includes meat with blood still visible. "Americans like their meat de-animalised," it says. "Its origin with a living animal must not be visible. Offal dishes, frogs' legs and snails disgust them. Nevertheless certain adventurous Americans like to try them out."
Continue reading "How to feed foreigners, French-style" »
Rémy the rat is doing exceedingly well in France. Hollywood's big animated films are usually popular here but Ratatouille, Pixar studio's tale about a Parisian rat with a talent for haute cuisine, is breaking records. It has topped the box office for the two weeks since it scored the biggest-opening day for an animated film in France. This has got me thinking about the long tradition of Franco-American mutual admiration.
The audience in my cinema at the Porte Maillot gave Ratatouille a standing ovation the other night after the finale, in which Rémy triumphs with a message that echoes the can-do doctrines of President Sarkozy: If you work hard, you will prosper. Even a lowly rat can become a gastronomic celebrity
The film, for all its technical prowess, is of course another a feel-good Disney about a cute rodent and its sensibility is all American. Yet something in the film has touched a Gallic nerve.
Continue reading "Rémy the rat and Americans in Paris" »
Perhaps it's the execrable July weather, but Paris is in a bad mood. The rain seems to be making everyone rattier than usual. Take the man at our newspaper kiosk. He usually shrugs and turns his back when tourists ask him for directions. Yesterday, he was swearing at at them.
The kiosk man is a prime candidate for re-education under the city's new friendliness programme. This latest in many attempts to teach Parisians to smile at strangers was launched with fanfare by the municipal tourist authority this week. Tuesday was declared the first Day of Tourism. Mayor Betrand Delanoe attended festivities by the Eiffel Tower, visitors were shown round neighbourhoods by residents and the media alerted France once again to its poor reputation for accueil -- welcoming people.
A charter has been issued for the Parisians and the visitor [printed below]. The Parisian, for example, pledges to "take time to give information to visitors" and the tourist promises to try to get into the spirit of the town.
We've been around the "rude French" track with several postings already, but this gives me a chance to speak up for Parisians.
Continue reading "Stop being beastly to Parisians" »
 We all know that women still do most of the household chores despite over three decades of supposed equality between the sexes. A French researcher has just produced an interesting book that seeks to explain why women have not asserted their rights in the home like they have at work.
Part of the answer, according François de Singly, a Paris sociologist, is that women wield power over their partners by retaining their traditional role of maîtresse de maison. "The unequal split of chores has the effect of making the man dependent. While the man benefits from the service of his companion, he loses a little of his mastery over his world."
It is a sacrifice that men are of course happy to make. "The man's loss of autonomy inside conjugal life is not equivalent to the loss of independence that stems from the woman's overload of domestic chores," Singly concludes in L'Injustice Ménagère (Household injustice). "Most men accept being disposessed of a role in building the shared life in order to avoid the work it requires."
Singly and colleagues from the CNRS, the state research institute, use case studies and statistics to show that women have not made housework a priority while they imposed a revolution in male attitudes in other domains.
Continue reading "Why Frenchwomen enjoy housework" »
It's the time of year when many French families are about to send their children on home stays abroad to pick up some English. That means another chance to look at cross-Channel misunderstanding.
For decades, French youngsters have spent time with British families -- usually around the south of England -- and come home with mixed memories. Friends of my generation recall poor food and draughty houses but a reasonably decent welcome. Back then, teenaged boys used to leap at the chance of getting to know les petites anglaises, who were more fun than straight-laced French girls -- at least according to legend.
In recent years, though, the reputation of British home stays has taken a dive. French parents are turning to the warmer welcome of Ireland and countries further afield such as the USA and Australia. We took a look at the matter today after France-Inter radio reported on England's reputation for poor hospitality. [Picture: France's idea of Dickensian British welcome for children]
Continue reading "Britain's miserable hospitality -- French legend or fact? " »
 On the other end of the scale from last week's post about French health warnings on food, here is my interview from today's newspaper with Anne-Sophie Pic, the new three-star Michelin chef in Valence.
And this is what lunch was like: Despite what colleagues believe, Paris corespondents do not often dine in Michelin three-star establishments. In my years in the job, I had never sat down to the gastronomic magic promised by les trois macarons of the venerable Red Guide. Expectations were high when Magali Delporte, our photographer, and I were led to our table chez Pic. We were in a corner, looking out on a lawn with pine trees behind. On the table, a single tall lilly, bound with a white paper ribbon, set the pared-down tone for the gastronomic rite.
Continue reading "A lunch to remember" »
Your writer
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times. He started out as a journalist in Russia and then moved to the United States. He has reported from all the continents but most enjoys observing the exotic tribe on Britain's doorstep. Though France is home, he avoids going native by offering what the locals call an "Anglo-Saxon" eye on their country.
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@DANIEL STROHL & RICHARD JONES
Although the discussion is now becoming quite interesting, especially thanks to Richard's explanations, I promised to shut up and keep my own counsel. No contempt whatsoever intended.
Posted by: Rulf | 12 Dec 2009 00:23:40
"Can you imagine Brown & co doing that!!"
LOL good one. I for one would LUV to see that. Just the thought of Mandy lording it to the rhythm makes me ROTFL !
Posted by: Valentin | 11 Dec 2009 22:05:17
Jay,
I'd be grateful if you could tell us about persecution of christians in India, I am all ears.
Posted by: Romain | 11 Dec 2009 18:55:49
RJ
Just getting to your 'state of the financial world' post which mirrors my opinions, thus quite brilliant, and eloquent.
Geithner wants the TARP extended which is another sign the Administration & Fed don't think this thing is over. Commercial real estate remains in the tank with a trillion of refinancing needed in 2010 which won't all be forthcoming.
What I don't know, among many other things, is whether the Fed and Congress can inflate the U.S. out of the mire with inflation being the major lingering effect, i.e. can markets hold their gains (my primary interest since my money is on the line :))? And is it even possible to prime the pump of private investment to replace the enormous sums of public monies now being injected into the system. The notion of priming assumes a deep well of source capital simply waiting to be drawn up from below. Is it there?
Institutional investors seem to think (do they really think?) this is a possiblity in the near term, maybe longer, but that we won't know have a better take on this for a year or so. In the meantime, they are betting investors' money, but hedging their bets.
Though they won't admit it, I think many people in the know are scared shitless.
Posted by: azloon | 11 Dec 2009 17:56:01
DO-RE-MI, re the ‘multi-culti’ industry aka gravy-train: the moral high ground was occupied by the sanctimonious and naive. They have much to be ashamed of. As your postings show, their victim-radar malfunctioned.
Posted by: Rick | 11 Dec 2009 17:45:32
Thank you for Part 1, RICHARD.
Posted by: Rick | 11 Dec 2009 17:34:06
[the US still have a significant advance over old Europe :)] Scotian
I won't dispute this.
And we will lead the world again as we slim down to the point of anorexia, a nation of sticks (aided by some miracle drug, no doubt).
Half-way measures are not in our nature.
:)
Posted by: azloon | 11 Dec 2009 17:02:39
More scary than funny, especially this bit :
http://s407.photobucket.com/albums/pp157/oblomov_bucket/?action=view¤t=lipdaube.flv
Posted by: Oblomov | 11 Dec 2009 17:02:19
DO-RE-MI, my brother-in-law does not like his wife being out of his sight, though she is allowed women’s PE and Needlework classes in the morning. Neither does he like her wearing attractive clothes and, insultingly, thinks wife or daughter-in-law are itching to be off having a fling. His catch-phrase is an incredulous: ‘And you let her go?’ He now has one daughter-in-law who mocks him unmercifully. His late father escaped Francoist Spain.
Posted by: Rick | 11 Dec 2009 17:00:51
Jay
First of all, I didn't say we are a showcase for Muslim integration, simply that we've probably assimilated them better than Europe has.
It's interesting, Jay, that it's taken the FBI to discover jihadist activity, by 'hyphenated-American' citizens operating in India and Pakistan, that sub-continental intelligence services aren't up to the task. Good thing we know what's happening here. Or you might have another Mumbai catastrophe on your hands (owing of course to your wonderful relationship with your Muslim minority).
Now please quit sniping. :)
Posted by: azloon | 11 Dec 2009 16:54:20
Rick
"well-meaning government policies helped to support the traditional, tribal",
When these "tribes" contributes to the economy they obviously want political power as well. Some policians rejoiced in their support as " tribe". Maybe it was "white's man burden - consequences of colonial's policies and guilt " involved, at least that clouded some judgement. Also institutions have a way of taking a life of their own, rolling over human being telling them they are crushing them for their own good .Things might change now, multiculturalism has limitations specailly when a small group fracks it up for the majority.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 11 Dec 2009 16:38:22
RICHARD,
Thanks for your interesting explanations regarding the Greek diaspora. Of course, I was not aware of a part of all this, although I remember you explained may be two years ago what was Ladino - I had heard of it previously, but that was about all :).
RULF is obviously aware of "the P C cover for of Jewish origin" :).
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 11 Dec 2009 16:35:44
[there is no such thing as a harmless joke about an ethnic group... starting with the Welsh and Irish] Rick
Though the British can be quite amusing themselves, there is very little funny 'about' them. Quirky maybe. But funny? No.
They are the standard/base against which all other ethnic humor is measured. Pale and neutered, I would say they are. Boring. Careful to a fault. Embarrassingly self-conscious. Maybe all that is a little funny, but not very.
So the good thing about this is that the 'truth commissions' governing racial/national characterizations really have very little to work with in the case of the British.
Besides, their air of superiority is so strong, that if you could find something humorously offensive to say about them, they wouldn't care.
:)
Posted by: azloon | 11 Dec 2009 16:35:23
John O'D :
"Americans can stop feeling smug about superior integration of Muslims when they see this
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6952501.ece"
Was this,by any chance,specially meant for one American who was prattling on a few days back in CB's blog about the U.S being a showcase of a Muslim minority integrating well in a non-Islamic country ? Azloon, wake up and smell the coffee, as they say in your neck of the woods.
Posted by: Jay Bhattacharjee | 11 Dec 2009 16:03:45
Once again, I find reading you so enlightening, DO-RE-MI.
The question is this: how far have misconceived yet well-meaning government policies helped to support the traditional, tribal, and clan attitudes that you so graphically describe. French ‘laïcité’ provides French authorities (not renowned for their backbone) with such an advantage over their Brit counterparts!
I recall a representative of the ‘race-relations industry’ (job title: County Advisor on Multiculturalism) trying to persuade a relapsed (=grown-up) Sikh colleague and me that there is no such thing as a harmless joke about an ethnic group... starting with the Welsh and Irish. Only politeness prevented our telling him not to ‘talk wet’. Silly us!
Posted by: Rick | 11 Dec 2009 14:14:12
AZLOON
[My jaundiced eye also noticed that France now seems to have its own fair share of portly/oversized citizens (as France delights in reminding Americans about their own disproportion of corpulent souls).]
Schadenfreude, anyone ? Please be reassured. As in many other fields, the US still have a significant advance over old Europe :)
Posted by: Scotian | 11 Dec 2009 13:43:11
Rick,
It is incredibly hard to escape your clan, it can be your safety as well as lock you in a historical and cultural pattern . Many people give in freedom for financial safety, totally understand, nothing noble in poverty.
Girls here are disappearing from schools here sent back home to get married to a members of their clans, as tribes and clans become suddenly incredibly important as is not losing sight of where you come from, even if had you been home you would not have considered that man. The aunt of an Asian acquaintance had a nervous breakdown rather than face to her parents and brothers and she is no better than a slave as she is unmarried. My Greek friend can't say no to her father despite the fact she is in her late 40's and he is a chauvinist pig, she is a tyrant to her children and expect the same unquestioning devotion she herself resent giving. If she ever did anything different she would be ostracised and given the guilt treatment by her family. I know Asian boys who want a bride from India or Pakistan because she would not fight or answer back and told them they are not Gods. When the bride comes over she is at the beck and call and call of the mother in law ( below her on the food chain and no more than a slave). One of my Asian co-workers cook for all her family at 6 am, (no grown men can cook for themselves apparently ) and well I resent her pungent smelly clothes next to mine.( I am not the only one). Maybe if I was raised on curry I wouldn't mind. My feminism and swearing upsets her.
Her daughter doesn't want to get up at 6am and cook, she likes pizza.
See I am no angel, my tolerance has limits.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 11 Dec 2009 10:36:24
I heard this morning that Harriet Harman (deputy Prime minister) was organizing a Karaoke show by Westminster parliamentarians!!
The idea must be catching on, or is it a show of solidarity with Gordon's "new friend" Nicolas?
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 11 Dec 2009 10:29:36
TO EMINENCE,
Just a refinement for you from the Orthodox Nuncio. The Greek diaspora comes in several spoken forms. First the so-called 'Post WW2 diaspora' which is a reference of the Egyptian nationalist movement under Nasser in the 1950's and on pressuring some 3 million Greeks to leave Egypt (wherein they were originally middle management and foremen on the construction and maintenance of the Suez canal). Large swathes of my wife's family are so categorised. They resettled in order of priority in Australia, USA, South Africa, Canada, Antwerp, the Rhodesias (as they then were), London, Hong Kong, Paris and Basel. 'Greek diaspora', simply stated means any other exodus from the independence period (1820 to 1830) until now, the USA being usually the prime target.
There is no inference of Jewishness in Greek circles (wheresoever they might be)until the city of Thessaloniki, or Slaonika, or even for the brighter ones, Makedonia (the Greek province, not the neighboring country)comes in the same breath.
The inferences are historic and date back to 1501 when a new, highly federalised but united Spain under the joint monarchy of Isabella of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon (crossword clue - Poorly dressed provincial in Spain (6 letters))expelled their Jewish population. The Turks permitted them to settle in the fairly free millet of Thessalonika and the citie's population sextupled in 20 years as Jews arrived from Spain and the still Ummyad (but not for long)provinces in today's Morocco. Salonika was by 1600 the largest Ladino speaking (Spano-Hebraic language) in the world. Ladino is still used in the parts of the city (fastest growing city in Greece now, having surpassed Athens in view of its port facilities and trading outlets afforded to Macedonia and Kosovo and Southern Bulgaria) today.
Thus 'part of the Salonika diaspora', regardless of when it happened is the P C cover for of Jewish origin.
Posted by: richard jones | 11 Dec 2009 09:42:57
Americans can stop feeling smug about superior integration of Muslims when they see this
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6952501.ece
Posted by: John O'D | 11 Dec 2009 09:20:32
This is the full version of the clip:
http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/le-lip-dub-des-jeunes-ump-l-integrale_835219.html
Posted by: Romain.poustis@free.fr | 11 Dec 2009 07:17:00
Not moving.
Not engaging.
Not funny.
Pathetic.
Posted by: Yogi | 10 Dec 2009 23:11:04
RULF,
If Sarkozy is not "hated", then - if I rely upon what you write :), he is "despised", among other things because he is "un fils d'immigré" (and furthermore his mother and grand-father came from the "Greek diaspora" - this is a PC way to say that they were of Jewish descent :). Your mention of his first wife as being Corsican is funny :) - may be not for Corsicans...
Since I don't find Segolène's antics especially funny, and even less so the antics of a few other would-be PS candidates :), I fully understand that you (and many others as well :) can not stand Sarkozy's "traits de caractère".
Le vrai problème est que la gauche s'attendait à gagner la fleur au fusil la présidentielle et la suite, qui leur revenaient de droit :), mais ils se sont fait damer le pion par quelqu'un de plus intelligent et de plus décidé qu'eux. C'est d'autant plus mortifiant que le quelqu'un en question est loin d'avoir le profil jugé nécessaire pour occuper la fonction suprême (i.e. être descendant d'une lignée de hauts fonctionnaires bien français + X-Mines et/ou Sciences Po (avec un anglais décent :) + ENA.
Mais je ne tiens pas non plus à abuser de la patience de CHARLES :). On va donc s'arrêter là.
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 10 Dec 2009 22:44:12
DO-RE-MI, I wrote: ‘She’s sending out mixed messages. She or her string-puller should realise this. A pious pr*ck-teaser’. Yes, she and her minder choose to send out mixed message: I am super modest and I’m announcing the fact in the most striking way I can think of; I am ignorant of Molière and Freud (‘Cachez ce sein que je ne saurais voir’); men are apes; and if I offend the host community – am I bothered?
Posted by: Rick | 10 Dec 2009 20:37:45
23% of French residents from Muslim backgrounds attend mosque on a weekly basis.
Much more than Mass attendance by Catholics, but hardly the stuff of an Islamic fifth column.
Ah well... for French people who are French by chance and feel nothing about French identity (read, Sarko), Islam sure is useful in defining French identity... as if France did not exist before car manufacturers started importing slaves!
Posted by: Dominique II | 10 Dec 2009 20:22:13
DO-RE-MI, I appreciated your long and thoughtful piece. You wrote that moving to another country can be traumatic. Yes, indeed and you were brave because you stood on your own two feet. But don’t conflate your experience with the experience of others who arrive surrounded by (extended) family and maybe clan. You adapted and succeeded – they struggled. And this ties in with education and religious barriers to self-development. Hell, DO-RE-MI, I don’t like writing this sort of stuff because it makes me sound like the BNP... but I prefer honesty to self-righteousness. If one’s mind is closed, one never really arrives.
Posted by: Rick | 10 Dec 2009 20:21:54
La Cour des Miracles.
Posted by: Dominique II | 10 Dec 2009 20:13:21
DRM
Your vivid description about emigrating reminds me so of Isabel Allende's in 'Mi Pais Inventado.' You said you've read her, but did you read this memoir?
Humanists don't fare well when religious fervor is ignited. Erasmus, Mr. Humanist himself, and his buddies, were tolerated, even supported, by the corrupt papacy.
Then an enraged Martin Luther, emboldened by humanism, emerged to inflame the ignorant masses. After that, no sane soul, on either side, was safe from murderous zeal. Eminent humanists of the day were forced into exile to suffer lonely deaths.
Reminding us that decent human sensibility is a fragile contrivance.
Posted by: azloon | 10 Dec 2009 20:02:18
Charming, totally unself-conscious; they are really enjoying themselves. That's what politics is about for politicians. Thank God for them.
Posted by: thomasine | 10 Dec 2009 18:43:39
Azloon,
Classier than Heidi Fleiss.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 18:26:04
Rick you told me to read Homage to Catalonia didn’t you?
Moving to another country, even if you want, to can be traumatic. You have to learn another language, another way of being, thinking, acting, reacting to people and events. It can liberate you ( in my case) or events scare you into not functioning. If you have escaped war, rape, poverty, the promise land you thought you were reaching may not be as easy to negotiate as you imagined.
If your resilient quotient is low after your struggles, if you don’t find a support system, one more might push you over the edge.
It depend on so many things, your DNA, cultural heritage, your upbringing and the people you meet. I was alone, with a family to look after, you can become insular as the world out there can be harsh and you can be treated unkindly.
Your family becomes your heaven. You sometimes sentimentalise and romanticize the place you left and see it as you want it, you don’t want to forget where you come from, betray your ancestors. You send money back home to the wrong people. You have changed, your birth-place has too and sometimes you can’t acknowledge neither.
The covered head to toes is a cultural thing, it’s from the house of the Wahabi. I hate seeing women dressed like that, it’s desexualising but from a country in the throes of sexual repression it makes sense. Lots of it has to do with the culture and the politics of the time, and who pays for the books.
Yet many women welcome it ( peace and quiet from their folks – they are good Muslims so they can go about their business and out of the house), the equivalent of western women who dress short to please their men folks or shave the hair on their arms because they want to be feminine ( wanted by men) or pole-dancer shoes. Ok I exaggerate a bit.
“A pious pr*ck-teaser” , maybe for you, but I truly hate seeing it.
“suicide bombers ..., but victims of what? “
Your pain ( whatever that is- in second-generation immigrant in a cultural quagmire – or a Gaza resident with no hope), confusion gets taken away when your mind gets reprogrammed for the annihilation of others – ( yours included). Your mental and physical pain on this world will disappear and you will get willing girls. You are being programmed by people who will not be putting their own bodies on the line but like control and power.
Here we have “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”..
In a changing world “stubborn conviction” is so reassuring, enlightened liberal humanists look like sissies or deluded dreamers.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 18:23:33
AZLOON
"Eating the creme brule out of a bag on the front seat of my car will be challenging, but I'll figure it out."
Suck it out with a straw, dude!
Be daring like the UMP!
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 16:36:22
Dot -- yes, completely misread Estrosi.
African-Americans will remark occasionally that they were stopped by the police for 'driving while black.'
Following the money will usually lead one to the root of a problem. Easily-obtained European welfare benefits surely are a 'carrot' for many non-caucasian immigrants (and Brit retirees seeking medical care?). Why wouldn't a person want to go where he can live better and for free? This mindset starts the whole immigrant experience off on the wrong foot. Few emigrate to the U.S. for welfare benefits because they aren't there. When they were more liberal here, a taxpayer rebellion forced states to require recipients to get jobs quickly or lose benefits. It worked. But there have to be jobs for this to play out.
It's amazing how integrative an invitation to the capitalist orgy is, if one believe that they can as naked and drunk as everyone else.
Note: the orgy is currently on hiatus.
Lex -- Your Knox analogy is perfect.
Posted by: azloon | 10 Dec 2009 16:01:21
'Changeons Le Monde Ensemble"
Now that's the scary part......
....but 'cute' in a treacly way. People willing to make asses of themselves can't be all bad.
My jaundiced eye also noticed that France now seems to have its own fair share of portly/oversized citizens (as France delights in reminding Americans about their own disproportion of corpulent souls).
How creme brule can be such a good thing and a Big Mac so bad is one notion I've never quite been able to grasp. I am hoping McDo will offer both so I can have one followed immediately by the other.
Eating the creme brule out of a bag on the front seat of my car will be challenging, but I'll figure it out.
Posted by: azloon | 10 Dec 2009 15:42:40
JGF
I believe HEREWEGOAGAIN says Bible, not New Testament. Notwithstanding JC's updates on what is and isn't allowed in the New Testament, there are plenty of people who treat it as a documentary, rather than collection of works written hundreds of years afterwards to fit the known facts at the time and serving as a useful allegorical tool for the primitive. And I haven't even read Dan Brown!
Posted by: Ray Alist | 10 Dec 2009 15:25:13
It 's correct to put that on this blog?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbfdzb_lipdub-ump_fun
Posted by: Francois D | 10 Dec 2009 15:23:23
The video has dissapeared as of 15:48
?????????????????
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 14:48:48
Dot,
As long as you don't promote Pyrénées bears wildlife, it's ok by me.
ROMAIN
Yes, I've often wondered what might happen in the unlikely event of my doing a spot of strolling about the Pyrénées in my swimsuit, tiara and spike heels, if I met a bear.
Sweet! :)
I'd better take Simon Smith with me in case - it's just the "set Price" a girl has to pay. ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8zI5xjwKYw
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 14:17:28
Time for the Dalai Lama show.
Posted by: richard jones | 10 Dec 2009 14:09:56
What proportion of French Muslims consider themselves fully integrated and how many would be prepared to abandon parts of their religion and culture that conflict with French law? Would it be too dangerous to ask?
JOHN O'D
I think that might not be the right question.
The problem is that in France "looking Arab" is enough to get you stopped and asked for your papers more than once a day - it is also enough for you to be thought of as Muslim -> Islamist -> Integrationist -> Terrorist (or at least hoodlum).
Yesterday I heard Jamel Debbouze quoted as saying that he was born in France, grew up in France considers himself to be French and loves France, but is always referred to as being of a different nationality. What should he do, change his name to Jacques Dubois?
Come to think of it, perhaps all people with non-French names should change to being Jacques or Jacqueline Dubois - but what we do about their faces . . . hmm problem.
Many who are thought of as "Muslim" have already given up many of the habits and customs required by their religon, but, what a bummer, they still "look Arab".
So, maybe we should ask them to give up the Qoran, but keep the couscous?
I think the right question might be: What is it that prevents you from feeling French despite the fact that you were born in Trappes?
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 14:09:10
TO RICK,
Part 1 of 2
I tried to copy a map for you but technology defeated me.
I know yer old road very well. La mosque de Genève was built in the early 70’s at the junction of Champ d’Anier and ch. de Colladon would have been 5 minutes walk away. At the ave. Trembley junction would have been the newly started (prefabricated) Annexe to the UN, built on old League of Nations bequest land and initially viewed as a the L of N's ‘cultural centre’. This land was part of the L of N pension trust and still affords me Sfr. 200 a year.
You would also have been 10 minutes from la place de Petit-Saconnex and therein the outer stables (carriage and wagon horses only) of le duc de Budé, the attached groom’s lodgings used by Napoleon Bonaparte (not a long séjour apparently) and now called le café du Soleil. When I returned to Geneva in 1954 (maybe 1955) after settling all the problems linked to my illegal 1939 joining of the French Army, I lived in Moïse-Duboule next door to the café and had one of the first offices in the UN Annexe, on a daily contract, working under my Argentinian national identity CH not in UN). I was in charge of a project called GPBVA – Global Pig’s Bladder Verification and Assessment – no!I joke. I was part of a tiny group that eventually (I’d already gone) became UNCTAD in late 1962 with their first conference in Geneva in 1964.
1962 – no mosque, only bits of the first Swiss autoroute to Lausanne, still a tram into la Place. Wonderful world wasn’t it?
Posted by: richard jones | 10 Dec 2009 14:04:54
The danger with a French debate about identity is that definitions might result.
For example, who might be defined as French, part-French, or almost French?!
EU rules allowing migration of its inhabitants begs these questions.
And, how might (non-EU) immigrants be defined?
So, anyone without an acceptable definition might find life difficult.
This is what the Nazis did in the 30s with Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and certain other groups with a discernible ethnic origin.
However MAGGIE et alia, muslims come from all ethnic groups and are not a "race of people", so the analogy, and hence the comparison is not exact.
And the problem is with the AGENDA they might want to impose.
I'm not saying a pogrom aganst Islam won't develop, it could and it might, but the reasons would be more to do with those of the Crusades.
HERWEGOAGAIN - the New Testament does'nt say the earth was made in 7 days.
Yes DANIEL, "the problem is the concentration in big cities". It has a multiplier effect on their influence as we can see in the big cities of Europe.
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 10 Dec 2009 13:53:37
Dot,
As long as you don't promote Pyrénées bears wildlife, it's ok by me.
Posted by: Romain | 10 Dec 2009 12:39:11
Susan,
I am a hard-ass liberal by the way.
I read the Times for fun and challenge.
"Moderation is already gone out of the window"
Of course I hope I am wrong.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 12:33:54
Nat
Your comment is a little bit "condescendant" no?
I have watched the show and i don't like Jean Pierre Pernot, and i'm not a "beauf".
This year many girls seems to be not bimbos. The winner studies law. Miss provence (who was for me te most beautifull and the reason why i watched the end of the show ^^) is nurse student.
And Madame de Fontenay is a Revolutionary Left support! It's not a joke, she votes Besancenot ^^
Come on Genevieve!
Posted by: rem | 10 Dec 2009 12:14:40
"Amanda Knox, the American girl who was found guilty...in Italy. I am totally stunned by the hysterical reaction in the US." -- Maggie
We Americans were stunned when the British reacted hysterically when Louise Woodward was convicted of killing the baby in her care.
Had Amanda Knox been involved in that murder in the US, the mob would be demanding that she swing for it.
The mob never makes sense, and those selling soap often make even less sense.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 10 Dec 2009 12:11:14
Can you imagine Brown & co doing that!!
Posted by: Jake | 10 Dec 2009 12:07:18
Pathetic, not even funny.
Posted by: John O'D | 10 Dec 2009 11:59:27
In Matt Carr's criticism I was alarmed to read the following extract:
"Caldwell mobilises similar factoids in an attempt to demonstrate that 'the tabloid-reading public is not off-base to fear the introduction of sharia law'. To prove this thesis, he claims that 57 per cent of Irish Muslims want Ireland to become an Islamic state, citing a survey carried out for the Irish Independent/RTE by the Lansdowne market research company. The actual figure quoted in the survey found that 57 per cent of young Irish Muslims wanted this outcome, compared with only 37 per cent of Irish Muslims overall. The same survey found that 73 per cent of Irish Muslims considered themselves 'fully integrated' and that 58 per cent were prepared to abandon parts of their religion and culture that conflicted with Irish law."
What proportion of French Muslims consider themselves fully integrated and how many would be prepared to abandon parts of their religion and culture that conflict with French law? Would it be too dangerous to ask?
Posted by: John O'D | 10 Dec 2009 11:56:15
I'm sorry, but Miss France, when her prénom was mentioned the other evening on LGJ by Ali Badou, her reply was "Oui, mais je suis française, moi" (now how do you spell that farting noise of the hooter that signifies "mauvaise réponse"? How about THHHWWWWWPPP?) Ali Badou is also French, but he isn't called Pierre.
Malika means "queen" so Ali Badou said, but that was after she'd blurted out her Frenchness, spoiling the effect and ignoring the fact that someone with a brain was treating her as an equal.
After all, what's in a name?
Someone above posted that the Miss are all "gourdes" - this one certainly is - I think this year there was a subliminal collective selection of a physical style called "Carla".
And the same whispery, childlike, unconfident voice. She sounded like an insecure teenager.
Oh, and worry not Charles, she said she just wanted to be a journalist at local level.
(Anyone know if her father owns the local newspaper? :))
I would just like to say that if I'm elected Ms Blogger (wonderful typo - I'd put "Ms Blooger" ;D) of the year, I would like to travel and spread happiness and help starving children in Africa, discover a cure for AIDS, sponsor a white rhino and generally help save the planet.
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 11:32:21