The Renault company has run into trouble with young French parents over the name of its latest car. They are unhappy that the firm has bestowed the name Zoé on its forthcoming all-electric offspring.
This is not the first time that Renault has caused discontent since it began giving its vehicles cute feminine names in the late 1980s. Clio and Mégane dropped from favour for girls after the car maker used them for two popular models. At least no-one was called Twingo or Safrane, names which Renault made up for other models. Scots were bemused by the choice four years ago of the pedestrian surname Logan for the low-cost car that has been a European hit for Renault. The oddest of all coinages was the Renault Vel-Satis, the company's luxury car, which has been a failure. The name was supposed to conjure up something futuristic.
With Zoé, Renault is taking a name that has been fashionable for the past few years in France. Its defenders think they have a chance to stop the company from devaluing it because the car remains at the concept stage and could be released under another name.
Petitions have sprung up on the internet. Sébastien Mortreux, from the northern town of Auby, is gathering signatures witha text that calls Renault's action shameful.
"Because our daughters have a beautiful first name, which must not be associated with that of a car, let's unite to bring pressure on a multi-national which is going to destroy this pretty name for our children. It is a scandal that they are able to use common first-names for a product".
A mother of a one-year-old Zoé called Rebecca226 is appealing for support on another site. "I am scandalised by this action and I find it totally abnormal that Renault should decide to take the name of a woman, that of my daughter, to apply to a car, that is to say a marketing product." The name will become ridiculous if it is used for the car, she wites.
You can detect a whiff of good old anti-capitalism in some of the comments on these sites. These are obviously not the kind of people who follow the fashion of giving brand names to their children, like Chanel, Fanta and Armani. Rue89, the excellent French news site, expands on the theme today.
Renault said that there is nothing insulting in the choice. "It is a name that evokes values of femininity, of youth, a playful spirit and vivacity," Valérian David, a Renault spokesman, told us. "It is also a reference to the concept of zero emission.... I think people will be able to tell the difference."
Using girl's names on cars is hardly new. In 1902, Emil Jellinek, a German-born businessman, called a car after his daughter Mercedes. Also, my prize for the oddest vehicle moniker goes to Citroen for a popular van, used by the police among others. It is called the Citroen Jumpy.
While the world has marked a year since the financial crash this week, President Sarkozy has adopted for France a line from the US declaration of independence. Progress in the pursuit of happiness is to be factored into the nation's economic performance. I mentioned this earlier in the week, but for anyone interested, here's a look -- written today for the paper -- at the way that Sarkozy is positioning France ahead of next week's G20 session in Pennsylvania.
The idea of quantifying the quality of life, proposed to Sarkozy by Joseph Stiglitz, the US Nobel economics laureate, has drawn some mockery; with its long holidays, short working hours and early retirement, France will surely emerge as the new superpower, said the comedians.
But Sarkozy’s index for sustainable contentment was a clever move. It fits with the desire in developed nations to shun overconsumption;it raids ideas from France’s popular green movement; it nods to the recent fashion for definingle bonheur [happy French couple in picture]. More widely, it enhances Sarkozy’s claim to the mantle of world statesman. On this front it was a follow-up to his creation last week of a carbon tax, a levy on the use of fossil-fuel.
“Super Sarko” has never been known to miss an opportunity and he is seizing a big one now. As the world begins to pull itself out of recession he believes that he is well placed to play visionary and power broker. This has meant abandoning the reformist, free-market doctrines that won him election in 2007 and recasting himself as apostle of the good old French model of state dirigisme. Reborn a year ago as foe of unbridled capitalism, Sarkozy has proclaimed the “death of the all-powerful market which is always right”.
Sarkozy is preparing his next turn on the stage, starting on Tuesday in New York and moving on to Pittsburgh on Thursday. This week, he threatened to walk out of the G20 if he does not get his way — a repeat of his brinkmanship at the last session, in London in April, which he claims won a breakthrough over tax havens. This time he wants to strongarm President Obama and Gordon Brown into agreeing on a fixed, legally enforced cap on bankers’ pay. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is already onboard.
France has a strong hand, Sarkozy believes, because it has suffered much less than Britain and the United States and its recession is ending faster than the others’ — though it wallows deep in debt.
In time-honoured French fashion, Sarkozy is happy to make himself a nuisance to les Anglo-Saxons as he preaches his doctrine of “remoralised capitalism”. He calculates that with elections facing Brown and Merkel, he is the pre-eminent European, at least for the moment. He is busy cultivating Latin America and the East. He may have rejoined Nato but France is back to playing its old Gaullist game of middleman between Russia and the US. On Iran and its nuclear programme he is talking tougher than almost anyone outside Israel.
The French President is attempting a little one-upmanship over Obama. He has made no secret of his frustration over the US leader’s failure to respond to his overtures of friendship. Privately, he sees Obama as overrated, indecisive and now politically weakened. He is said to have given him “9 out of 20” for his speech on healthcare the other day.
Sarkozy’s international crusade goes down well at home. While his approval ratings have edged back up towards 50 per cent he consistently scores over 70 per cent for defending French interests abroad. However, some old hands worry that he is putting up backs with his world evangelism.
Alain Duhamel, an old-school political commentator, said on RTL radio that Sarkozy’s France was playing an old part. On one hand it was serving as an "extremely sympathique" guide for the big economic powers. “It is also playing an extremely irritating role, that of professor of virtue, the lesson-giver who breaks the rules that it lays down for others.” France is half Le Cid and half Tartuffe, he added -- models of heroism and hypocrisy from the 17th century dramatists Corneille and Molière. .
Here we go again. Another G20 summit and another threat by Nicolas Sarkozy to slam the door.
The last time, in April, Super Sarko huffed and puffed in the days leading up to the 20-nation economic summit in London. If he did not win consent to his demands, he would be out in a flash, he said. He stayed to the end and claimed that he won a breakthrough on tax havens.
This time, the venue is the gathering in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 24-25. Sarko will march out if the other nations fail to agree on curbs bankers' bonuses, the Elysée Palace said today.
Claude Guéant, Sarkozy's chief-of-staff, made clear that he is staging another bout of brinkmanship, this time in the role of scourge of high-paid bankers. His demands for a legal cap on financial sector remuneration have run into opposition, notably from Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, and President Obama's team.
“There must absolutely be an agreement to make things change and the president is absolutely determined on that score,” Guéant said on RTL radio. Asked if that meant a walk-out, he replied: "This possibility must be taken seriously." Sarkozy was also quoted in today's Figaro as saying:"If there is no concrete decision [at Pittsburgh], I will leave."
Sarkozy believes that his walk-out threats ahead of the April meeting in London won the agreement to black-list tax havens. His strong-arm tactics went down fairly well domestically, but were seen by fellow leaders as silly grandstanding.
After summoning French banking chiefs and lecturing them on the dangers of rewarding risk-taking, Sarkozy has won their consent to a system of limits and delayed payment of bonuses. He has the support of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for an absolute cap on bonuses and sanctions for companies that break it. Brown, the only leftist in the the trio of Europe's big power leaders, agreed to sign a joint European pre-G20 letter only after it was diluted to a commitment to "explore ways" of limiting bonuses.
The G20 Finance ministers backed away from the idea of a cap in their meeting to prepare the G20 earlier this month. The focus of the Pittsburgh session has shifted from bankers' pay to the need to impose higher capital requirements on banks, as Brown and Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, want.
Sarkozy knows that he has strong public support for his crusade against bankers and traders, species which have been relegated in France to a rung somewhere below serial killers and child molesters. One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the consensus holds that the financial world has done rather well out of the crisis and changed little. Sarkozy has been quoting Talleyrand's famous line on the aristocrats who came back to France after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte: 'They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.'
A national poll for Libération showed today that a majority of the country thinks that the main beneficiaries of Sarkozy's anti-recession policies are big corporations and banks. Only seven percent rated ordinary workers as benefiting. The Viavoice poll found that 58 percent had a negative view of Sarkozy's handling of la crise over the past year, with 40 percent positive. That's actually remarkably favourable for Sarko, given the general level of grumbling about him.
Sarkozy came up with a new wheeze today for getting the French out of their grim mood. He announced that he is adding happiness as a factor to the usual measure of economic performance. The idea, which is part of the new Green Sarko, is to shift emphasis away from gross domestic product (GDP) towards quality of life matters such as well-being and sustainability.
A couple of years ago, Sarkozy commissioned the economists Joseph Stiglitz and Armatya Sen to come up with proposals. They made them public today at the Sorbonne university. Sarkozy said there that GDP gives a false reading because people have for years (until recently) been told that the economy was growing yet they saw that their living standards were declining. "In the whole world, people think that they are being lied to, that the (GDP) figures are false, or worse, manipulated," he said. "Nothing is more destructive to democracy".
The President called for a revolution. New factors in national performance should include such things as "the services which are rendered inside the family", the quality of public services and access to leisure activities. He has a point, as we are always arguing here. Sarkozy wants to factor in the quality of life. If everyone did the same, France would likely top the world performance charts.
France has a long tradition of taxing its citizens in exotic ways but you might think that now would not be the best time for hitting them with a new wheeze. President Sarkozy has done that today with the announcement of a carbon tax -- a levy on oil, gas and coal used by households and business.
In full statesman-like mode, Sarkozy talked of an historic "fiscal revolution" as he appeared on television from a heat-pump plant [in picture] to present his scheme. Earlier this week, he said his carbon tax would turn out to be a milestone like General de Gaulle's decision to pull France out of Algeria and President Mitterrand's abolition of the death penalty in 1981. Both of those were initially unpopular. Two-thirds of the public do not want the carbon tax, according to polls. But with a rise in his approval ratings, Sarkozy is prepared to put up with some unhappiness. He sees this as a chance to blaze a green trail that others will follow -- starting at a big UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December.
The carbon idea has been operating successfully over the past decade in Finland, Sweden and Denmark and in parts of Canada. This is the first time that it is to be applied in a major economy.
The scheme has been stirring a furore in the political world for the past couple of weeks. Its unpopularity is upsetting sections of Sarkozy's own camp.
The point is to encourage people to use less fossil fuel. Electricity is exempt because most in France comes from renewable nuclear power. The main feature, Sarkozy insisted, is that the tax of 17 euros per tonne of carbon gas will create no overall new burden. Revenues will be put back into taxpayers' pockets through other tax cuts and "green cheques" to the lower-earning classes. This smacks of one of those over-complicated bureaucratic arrangements known, appropriately, as une usine à gaz -- a gasworks. The immediate impact -- from next year -- will be about four cents per litre on fuel and a five percent rise in household gas costs.
As usual, Sarkozy has been astute, wrongfooting the left and the green opposition by embracing one of their themes. He employed Michel Rocard, a former Socialist Prime Minister, to draw up plans for the tax. While the party has quibbled over the detail, Ségolène Royal, the dissident Socialist star, has used it as a weapon to accuse Sarkozy of robbing the poor. The Greens have been reduced to complaining that the President has climbed onto their bandwagon with a watered-down version of what they always wanted.
Sarkozy called on the United States and Asia to follow Europe's lead on climate change. He was too modest to say it, but of course he meant Presidnet Sarkozy's lead.
At the risk of being called a carbon hypocrite myself, it's worth noting that France's new green president is not frugal with his fossil fuel. He jets around the world in the presidential Airbuses more than any of his predecessors. He took two of them to fly for his one-day visit to Brazil last weekend. His brief public outings, such as today's jaunt to the east, require lavish deployment of police, often bused in from a distance. He has just expanded the limousine fleet at the Elysée Palace and when he drives himself it is in his gas-guzzling BMW 4x4 (SUV to Americans).
PS. The Times has done its bit for cutting the carbon in Paris. Yesterday, we moved out of the elegant building on the Place de l'Opéra which has been our home for decades -- with the exception of 1940-44. We are now in much less grand, but still pleasant, premises in the 17th arrondissement. And I promise to get away from Sarkozy in the next post.
President Sarkozy appears to have pulled off a true feat of salesmanship. On a one-day visit to Brazil, he has secured President Lula's agreement in principle to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets. If it comes off, the five billion euro deal is more than a business story. It is a political and strategic breakthrough for France and Sarkozy.
The Rafale has suffered something of a jinx since Dassault aviation began developing it in the 1980s. Though highly agile, technologically advanced and beautiful from the pilot's point of view, the plane has so far failed to win a single customer outside France. Potential clients have found it too expensive or succumbed to rivals' political pressure -- notably from the United States. The Rafale was launched when France decided to go it alone and stay out of the Eurofighter project of Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.
It entered service with the air force and navy from 2000 and a squadron is on duty in Afghanistan.
The failure to sell was a big frustration. The French tax-payer forked out most of the 30 billion euros it took to build the beast and supply it to the forces. Before Sarkozy, President Chirac flew thousands of miles to press France's traditional customers such as Morocco and India to buy the successor to Dassault's legendary Mirage -- which did well abroad. Talks advanced but the orders never came. Chirac's interest was personal as well as patriotic. His father was employed in the 1940s by Marcel Bloch, who changed his name to Dassault and founded the great plane-making firm. It is still family run. I recently sat beside Olivier Dassault, Marcel's grandson, as he landed one of the family Falcons on a visit the Rafale factory near Bordeaux. Serge, his father and current chief, was in the back. He told me that Dassault had not lost money despite the export failure because the state had financed the project.
Last week, Paris even sent two Rafales (the word means 'gust' in English) to take part in Muammar Gaddafi's anniversary festivities in Libya. The Colonel has been toying with the idea of buying a few of the planes, which so far have cost about 138 million euros a piece.
Sarkozy has applied his usual determination to pulling off a first order for the hitherto unwanted plane. In Brazil, the Rafale was in competition with the Saab Gripen NG and Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet. The deal is part of Lula's plans for turning Brazil into "one of the great powers of the 21st century." Sarkozy's clincher was agreement to share all the Rafale technology with Brazil and let the Brazilians assemble many themselves. US bars on exporting military technology meant that neither Boeing nor Saab (which uses US systems) could do this.
"The relationship between Brazil and France is not one of supplier and client, but of partners," Sarkozy said in Brazil. "We want to act together because we share the same values and a same vision on the big international goals."
Brazil is already buying five French submarines - including one that will be modified to run on nuclear power - and 50 military transport helicopters, for a value of around 10 billion dollars. As part of the Rafale deal, Sarkozy agreed to buy 10 KC-390 transport aircraft to be built by Brazil's Embraer.
No contract has been signed yet and there are reports that the Brazilian Air Force feels that it has been strong-armed in a contest that is not officially to be decided until October. Optimistic French officials hope that the final Rafale contract will be announced on October 23. That is the 103rd anniversary of the pioneering flight by Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian aviator, in the Bois de Boulogne in west Paris. The American Wright brothers took off three years earlier, but, as we have seen here before, Santos-Dumont was officially recorded as making the first powered flight because the Aero Club de France was on hand to certify it.
Apple hit back today over the affair of the exploding French iPhones. They dismissed the whole story as nonsense, suggesting that the owners were either negligent or liars. This will not help the image of the makers of the magic gadget, at least in France.
Apple Europe made a terse statement to Agence France-Presse, the national news agency, after the commercial director of its French unit, Michel Coulomb, was called in by Herve Novelli, the Consumer Affairs Minister. Novelli wanted to hear why at least 10 French iPhone owners reported that their devices had self-destructed. Battery over-heating is suspected. The state fraud and consumer affairs agency opened an investigation on Tuesday.
Apple said: "As of today, there has been no confirmed incident linked to battery overheating in the iPhone 3GS, and the number of cases we are investigating amounts to less than a dozen. The iPhones with broken screens that we have been able to analyse so far show, in all cases, that the cracks were caused by an external pressure upon the iPhone."
The owner of the first shattered iPhone has refused to hand over his device for examination, Apple told Novelli. The minister said that it was too early to draw a conclusion but that it was important to hear from Apple that two of the damaged French phones had been examined by an independent laboratory in California. They were found to have suffered an external impact.
Apple's image has suffered in France with the media reporting, and even broadcasting, appalling customer service by the company towards the unhappy owners. The 10 alleged victims, who range from a young girl to an 80-year-old man, have all insisted that they were using their phone normally and had not subjected it to any shock.
You can see Apple's logic. They have sold 26 million iPhones and 200 million iPods around the world. There have been a handful of reports of over-heating iPods in Europe, but the serious claims of iPhone melt-down have come only from France. That doesn't make much sense since they are the standard model.
But Apple's aggressive public stand and rough treatment of its customers surely does not make sense either.
We have often visited this French paradox: The French live better than almost anyone else yet they express the gloomiest views of the state of their country and their future. A good illustration has come up this week.
New figures show that France's baby boom is roaring on, with nearly 800,000 born in 2008 for a mainland population of 63 million. This keeps France at the top of the European league for fertility, which could reach an all-time record of 2.07 children per woman, according to the government. That is about the US level and well above the European average of 1.5. In contrast, neighbouring Germany, Italy and Spain are suffering from a demographic slump. The UK is doing better than average, but suffers from an abnormally high level of teenage mothers.
There is a broad consensus over the factors behind France's happy situation. Since the mid-20th century, governments have consistently promoted child-rearing and large families with generous tax benefits and allowances and excellent day and nursery schools. Working mothers are the norm and they benefit from the country's relatively flexible and short working hours.
Another ingredient is the near universal acceptance of child-birth out of wedlock. Fifty-two percent of births were to unmarried women last year. The health service is also helping older women produce children. A record 21 percent of all first births were to women over 35, compared with 16 percent a decade earlier. With France's taboo over matters ethnic, there is no clear picture of the role of immigrants in the boom. The big immigrant population is obviously a factor -- as it is in the USA -- but Germany has many too yet it suffers a baby-shortage.
Nadine Morano, President Sarkozy's minister for the Family, was quick to draw a lesson from what some headlines are calling a French miracle. The high fertility rate is "an encouraging message that the French are sending us which proves their ability to project themselves positively into the future," said Morano.
Alain Duhamel, a veteran political commentator, said today the soaring birth rate seemed to be a "spectacular paradox" given the grim mood of the country. But he made the old private-public distinction. When the French score in polls as west Europe's biggest pessimists, they are talking about public life, Duhamel said on RTL radio. "There is a big gap between what people says about society in general and what they experience on the personal and private level. You always see that the French are quite happy with their own lives and are very critical towards society." But that doesn't explain everything, Duhamel said. He pointed out that the French mid-century baby boom began in 1943, a year before the liberation and two before the end of World War Two, a time when people were certainly not happy at the "personal and private level".
Nicolas Sarkozy had extra reason to enjoy his splash in the Mediterranean with Carla Bruni today. He must have been savouring la divine surprise announced by Christine Lagarde his Finance Minister. Against most expectations, France pulled out of recession in the second quarter, producing 0.3 percent growth as consumers and industry stirred back to life after a year on the floor.
The news was music to a President who believes he is cruising towards a second term, weathering the storms of his own and the world's making. Even le malaise de juillet, Sarkozy's collapse after a jogging session, has rebounded in his favour. Sympathy for the stricken "hyper-president" kicked up his ratings, with one poll (CSA) showing a 12-point rise in approval.
This suggests that, in his third year, France is getting used to Super Sarko, a President whose brash, frenetic style and boundless self-promotion was unlike anything since the two Napoleonic emperors of the 19th century.
Sarkozy stirs deep antipathy in wide stretches of the population. He is demonised by much of the left, trade unions, and the educational establishment, who can barely say his name without a sneer. As they do every year, experts are predicting une rentrée chaude -- another round in France's eternal civil war when the summer truce ends next month. Unemployment is rising to a painful level but strikes and protests seem unlikely because Sarkozy has defeated the public sector unions and the rest are too frightened for their jobs.
Super Sarko's pushy style still draws groans in many quarters but he is also winning grudging admiration. People who wrote him off after the tempest of his first months are coming round to admiring his forceful methods. Thanks in part to Bruni, he has softened his image as a harsh pro-market crusader with little feeling for the common citizen. His stimulus package -- mainly invested in industry and infrastructure -- is bearing fruit, though the experts expect growth to drop back again. He appears to have been right that French consumers did not need tax cuts like the British.
In one field, according to the polls, France strongly approves of Sarkozy: his defence of the country's interests abroad. His hyper-active performance in Europe and in the G20 summits on the global economy have honed his image as a world leader. He has also made himself a nuisance to the US President in time-honoured French fashion.
Sarkozy is already positioning himself for re-election in the spring of 2012. There is even a silly rumour that he is planning a 2011 baby with Bruni to boost the campaign. Barring scandal or economic collapse, he seems likely to win. The forecast is premature, but it can be made because he faces no real opposition and he wields direct or indirect power over much of the media.
The Socialists, who ruled for much of the 1980s and 90s, have sunk into a coma. Despite Sarkozy's poor ratings, the polls show that the majority do not believe that the leftwing party would do a better job at running the country. According to Bernard Henri-Lévy, the grandee penseur, the party is already dead. Manuel Valls, one of its young Turks, wants to change its name. The party's most plausible présidentiable is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a baron whom Sarkozy deftly exiled to Washington as head of the International Monetary Fund. Sarkozy's recruitment of leftwing luminaries to his government may turn out to have been the coup de grace for the Socialists.
I heard the other day that Sarkozy had been told about TINA, a term coined by Margaret Thatcher in her Iron Lady days of the 1980s. It stood for "There Is No Alternative". It is certainly how Sarkozy views his position as the new political season approaches.
[Pictures: The first couple at play last week on Cap Nègre, Bruni's family villa near Toulon]
Since President Sarkozy has put France in the forefront of the international campaign to reduce carbon emissions, this little news item is rather piquant.
It involves a small French company called Voltalis which is marketing a clever device that cuts electricity bills. That sounds laudable but it has fallen foul of the state energy regulatory commission. The agency has just ordered Voltalis to pay the power producers -- dominated by the state behemoth Electricité de France (EDF) -- for the juice that it saves consumers. That will negate the whole point of the exercise.
It's the world upside down, as the French say. The Greens and a group called Sortir du Nucléaire have been having fun with the story, along with the media. "This is organised racketeering, a premium for wasting energy and an absurd decision in total contradiction with the government's undertakings on the environment," said the anti-nuclear group. The villain of the piece is EDF, especially since the company announced this month that it wants to raise its charges by 20 percent over the next couple of years [above: one of EDF's climate-friendly adverts].
The government at first supported the regulators but, in the face of the media mockery, it has now backed off and is looking for a solution.
In reality, there is logic behind the agency decision. Getting technical, Voltalis performs "distributive load-shedding". It installs a box free in consumer's homes that enables the company temporarily to switch off, via the internet, heaters and air conditioners when the demand on the overall network is reaching a peak. This saves the consumer up to 10 percent of their bill and it reduces the need to bring in extra power to meet the peak. RTE, the national grid operator pays Voltalis for the service, which is now in place with some 5,000 customers in France, with tens of thousands more expected. Similar schemes are being tried in the United States.
The trouble comes when the grid operator sells on power that is surplus from one producer because demand has been reduced when its customers' use of the Voltalis system [electricity can't be stored]. That producer is not paid by its customers, so loses out. The regulator says Voltalis must pay compensation (I'm sure experts here will be able to explain it better).
This is obviously nuts since it means taxing energy that is saved. Jean-Louis Borloo, the super-minister for the environment, has set up a group to advise on another approach. It's a good example of the need to change old thinking.
 France has kept its Sunday rituals more than most places. You think of morning street markets, church bells, long family lunches and strolls in the park or by the river. Well, forget that. Nicolas Sarkozy now wants to scrap Sunday.
That at least is the view from the left, the Church, the trades unions and some of the President's own parliamentarians of his plan to allow shops to open on the Lord's day. Parliament is about to pass a law that will, in the eyes of its many opponents, destroy le dimanche, jour de repos, as France has known it for the past century.
Things are of course not so simple. Sarkozy promised in his 2007 election campaign to lift the 1906 law against trading on Sundays. Markets and food shops had always been an exception on Sunday mornings. Trading has also been allowed since 1993 for shops catering to recreational activities in certain areas.
Last year Sarkozy abandoned a first Sunday opening scheme in the face of opposition from a mainly conservative, Catholic section of his own Union for a Popular Movement. The watered down version now before Parliament is so hedged with restrictions and vague definitions that it may well fall foul of the Constitutional Council, like the recent botched law against internet piracy.
Simplifying, shops in designated tourist and frontier areas and special commercial zones will be able open on Sunday but staff must volunteer for duty and be paid double normal rates. This means, for example, that the grands magasins like Galéries Lafayette and the fashion boutiques on the Champs Elysées will be able to do business. The rest of France will observe the sancrosanct traditional Sunday, which means leisure since very few people attend church any more.
Sarkozy has a bee in his bonnet over France's Sunday habits. One of his favourite lines is to mock the local by-law that, he says, allows stores on the north side of the Champs Elysées to open while those on the south side must keep their doors shut. There is in fact no such by-law. He has also been talking about his embarrassment when Michelle Obama wanted to go shopping in Paris on a Sunday last month and he had to arrange a special opening for one children's clothes store. "How are we supposed to explain to them that we are the only country where shops are closed on Sunday?" he asked after that.
As is often the case, Sarkozy is exaggerating. Germany and several other European states have greater restrictions on Sunday trading. And in reality, with its existing local exceptions, big leisure industry and 24/7 public services, France already works more on Sundays than most other parts of Europe. Look at the Eurostat table below.
But both sides of the Battle for Sunday cling to their stereotypes. Take Bertrand Delanoe, the leftwing Mayor of Paris. His city receives more visitors than any other in the world and thousands of people already work on Sundays to satisfy them. "Sunday is a day of rest respected by most citizens and it must not be sacrificed by this vision of a deregulated economy that does not take into account the family and personal lives of workers," he said.
The public is also attached to the sanctity of Sunday, though by how much depends on the question. A poll for Libération on Monday found 55 percent opposed to Sarkozy's new law and 42 percent in favour. A majority does not believe that Sunday opening will help the economy. Eighty-six percent agree with the statement that "Sunday is a fundamental day for family, sporting or spiritual life." Other polls, though, show that a majority would appreciate being able to shop on Sunday.
I won't be sorry if the new law falters -- though I have nearly always worked on Sundays. Perhaps wider Sunday opening will be more convenient for everyone, including the 70 million tourists who visit the country every year. But it's worth remembering that one of the reasons people flock here is the traditional peace of le dimanche en France.
[Below: European statistics for Sunday work. Green is percentage of population that never works on Sunday, orange work occasionally and red regularly.]
The only thing that the ancient Gauls feared was that sky might fall on their heads, at least according to the Astérix comics. Their descendants have lately added a lot of other items to the list of terrors. The sky remains the source of one of them -- radiation from mobile phone masts.
You can understand the background, what with pesticides, asbestos and other modern menaces. But sometimes it seems that irrational fears are getting the better of common sense. France is one of four European states that remains shut to GMO crops despite the finding of the state food safety agency that they are harmless to humans. Fighting GMOs is a popular cause and José Bové, the anti-capitalist farmer is a hero for tearing up fields where they have been tested. He's now running for the European Parliament.
The latest case involves mobile phones. The government has just decided to limit the radiation risk to children. Cell phones are to be banned from primary schools and operators are being told to offer handsets that allow only text messages. Companies will also be required to supply telephones that only work with head-sets in order to limit the danger to the brain from electromagnetic waves, Rosalyne Bachelot, the Health Minister said.
This is no doubt reasonable, given the chances of long-term damage for kids who grow up with mobiles glued to their heads. Campaign groups wanted more severe measures, including a ban on mobile use by children under 14.
Less plausible is the other side of the mobile scare -- telephone masts and wi-fi networks. The Government agreed after a month-long consultation with campaigners and operators to consider the dangers of radiation from phone towers and it is likely that they will eventually bow to demands to restrict their power and locations.
The state and telephone operators are under assault by hundreds of local and national groups which are demanding the removal of phone masts near schools, hospitals and homes. Radiation is commonly blamed for insomnia, headaches, fatigue, cancer, dry cows and so on. Libraries and other public spaces in some cities have switched off wi-fi internet cover after reports that the radio waves are harmful.
Similar campaigns are under way in other countries. What is unusual is that French courts have sided with the opponents despite the absence of any evidence that electromagnetic radiation from the relay transmitters harm anyone.
The operators are alarmed by a decision from the appeal court in Versailles in February. This ordered Bouygues, one of the main operators, to dismantle a mast at Tassin-la-Demi-Lune, near Lyons, because families there feared for their health. The judges agreed that there was no evidence of a threat, but they said there was no guarantee that a risk did not exist. The "feeling of anxiety" of the inhabitants was therefore justified.
The revolt against the phone towers continues to build, with sympathetic cover in the media. Campaign groups style themselves as resistants against the ruling power. The main one is cleverly called Robin-des-Toits, or Robin of the Roofs, which is a pun on Robin des Bois, or Robin Hood. If you look at the site you'll see a lot of what they claim to be evidence of the evils of phone waves, BlueTooth and so on.
The judges' reasoning is known as the "principle of precaution", a doctrine that was used by the Socialist government in the 1990s when it refused to import British beef after it had been declared safe by the European Union. The principle, which is also behind the rejection of GMOs, emerged after Government was shown to have knowingly distributed HIV-contaminated blood in the 1980s.
That scandal gave birth to the idea of maximum caution whenever human health is at stake, but it obviously has limits. If the precaution principle was logically applied, cars would be banned, along with cigarettes, alcohol, red meat, tanning beds and so on. And what about all those nuclear power stations that provide 80 percent of France's electricity ? Other countries halted their nuclear industry and atomic power stirs fear in the United States, but very few people worry about France's 59 reactors and the waste they produce.
Jean de Kervasdoué, a former national director of French hospitals, pointed out the other day that zero risk is nonsense and obstructs progress. "It's dangerous... like the mediaeval inquisitors who demanded that heretics prove their innocence," he said in le Journal du Dimanche. "You cannot always prove your innocence."
Come to Abu Dhabi, visit the Louvre and take a degree at the Sorbonne. That seemingly odd idea comes closer to reality tomorrow when President Sarkozy starts the construction of a Gulf branch of the Paris art museum.
The Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo are not leaving town, but the world's biggest art museum and other leading state galleries are to lend hundreds of works to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The venture has already earned 400 million euros just for use of the brand name.
The franchising of the Louvre is part of a push to extend French influence and power in the Gulf region. Since 2006, the Sorbonne, the ancient university in the Paris Latin quarter, has been offering law and human sciences degrees at its own campus in Abu Dhabi.
The "Louvre of the Sands" as it has been dubbed, will be housed in a sumptuous, marble-domed palace, designed by Jean Nouvel, on Saadiyat Island [picture above]. Nearby, work is already under way on a 200 million dollar branch of the Guggenheim. New York's modern art museum, whose affliliate is to open in 2011, a year ahead of the local Louvre, is said to have charged only 60 million dollars for use of its name.
The French cultural drive, started under President Chirac, is being matched by a new strategic effort in the Gulf. Tomorrow, Sarkozy is also opening a naval and air force base in Abu Dhabi, which is France's first new military outpost overseas in half a century. The step follows the new defence doctrine that focuses on the "Mediterranean, Arab-Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean strategic axis." Paris wants to signal to Iran its defence alliance with the emirates. "If Iran were to attack, we would effectively be attacked also," said an Elysée Palace official.
On his second Abu Dhabi trip in just over a year, Sarkozy is desperately hoping to convince Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan to buy the Rafale jet fighter. The very expensive new-generation aircraft, built by Dassault and in service with the French military, has so far failed to win a single export order.
France's entry into the culture export business ran into resistance when it was announced two years ago. Luminaries of the state art world staged a campaign called "Museums are not for sale" and charged Henri Loyrette, the Louvre director, with betraying the national heritage.
But the complaints have subsided as the state museums realised the windfall that is coming their way from the 30-year deal which Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister, estimates will eventually earn over a billion euros.
A new agency has been set up to coordinate loans for the first 10 years from many state museums, including the Versailles palace, the Musee d'Orsay, the Pompidou Modern Art centre and the new Quai Branly museum of primitive art. As well as going to the Louvre, the income will be spread around the state museums.
The Abu Dhabi affiliate is already starting its own collection. One of the first items is thought to be Piet Mondrian's 1922 "Composition avec bleu, rouge, jaune et noir", which sold for 21.7 million euros at sale of the collection of the late Yves Saint Laurent sale in Paris in February. The Gulf museum is also said to have bought European mediaeval figures and tapestries.
Loyrette is being congratulated for his pioneering work raising commercial funding for the Louvre, which with over eight million annual visitors is by far the worlds most frequented museum. Though heavily subsidised, the Louvre was until recently short of cash for new works. Loyrette is also opening a Louvre branch in the northern French city of Lens and a Louvre section has been on show in an Atlanta museum.
Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the last Culture Minister, said the break with the old, conservative habits of the Louvre was an unmitigated success. "No principle in our museum policy has been abandoned," he wrote on his blog. "The inalienable caracter of our national collections has even been reconfirmed. We have given a new impetus to our ability to make France shine in the world," he said. Actually, he was even more gushing in French. There's no real English translation for rayonnement... shining out to the world, as France likes to think it does.
To close on Abu Dhabi, here's a nice bit of French rayonnement: The Helicopter by Hermès. The Paris leathergoods house teamed up with Eurocopter, the French-based European helicopter makers, to produce this luxurious flying machine. The first one has just been delivered to Falcon Aviation Services of Abu Dhabi. Perfect for taking you out to the Louvre of the Sands. And at only six million euros, it's less than a third of the price of the Mondrian and a fraction of one Rafale.
AUSTRALIAN NOTE:
President Sarkozy, who travels more than any of his predecessors, is to make history in early August by dropping in on Australia, a nation never before visited by French leader. Sarko and Carla Bruni can expect a boisterous welcome on their 36-hour trip to Sydney after a Pacific summit in New Caledonia. "Bonjour mate, allez down under", said the not quite French headline in the Melbourne Age.
Australia enjoys a fine reputation in France as a distant home to exotic animals and people, rugby players and Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Mel Gibson. However France's image is not so good in Australia thanks to disputes over farm exports, the Iraq war and, most of all the nuclear tests that President Chirac carried out in the mid-1990s in the French Pacific. Before that, in 1985, President Mitterrand poisoned relations with the antipodes when French secret agents blew up the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. 
Australian anger has cooled in recent years. Australians have even come to France to teach the locals how to make "modern" wine and how to play rugby. At the weekend, one Australian newspaper chain described the Sarkozys as "the world's undisputed glamour political couple" -- a rank that neglects the Obamas and which I have never seen any French media bestow on them. My Adelaide sources tell me that Bruni's latest album of songs, a flop in France, has even been given a serious airing on a local radio station.
[Note for French readers, Oz is Australia]
Spot the common factor among the following:
-- A train crash that paralyzed rail service between Paris and Bordeaux all day on Wednesday.
-- Plans this week to introduce guilty pleas in French criminal courts
-- The anguish of thousands of university students who are not prepared for end-of-year examinations next month.
The answer is not Nicolas Sarkozy. The common thread is the free market, or more precisely France's reflexive suspicion and fear of "Anglo-Saxon liberalism". Sarkozy is behind two of the three items. The case of the universities is the most immediately damaging, but first, in order:
The unions and left are blaming the train crash in the western Charente département on the opening of rail freight to commercial operators. No-one was injured but the accident was spectacular. A load of tractor diggers on a German-operated train ripped the side off a passing state railways locomotive.
According to the unions and leftwing parties, the accident was the consequence of the deregulation of rail freight that the European Union supposedly forced on France. Britain's disastrous privatised system is always held up as the example of how not to run a railroad.
In reality, the crash had nothing to do with the new rules -- introduced in 2006 before Sarkozy was elected. "Privatisation" is limited to allowing some competition for freight services. France reluctantly agreed to this to conform to EU single market rules. Dominique Bussereau, the transport minister, pointed out that the badly-loaded goods wagon was being hauled by German state railways and that foreign trains have been using French rails for over a century.
On the law courts, the traditionalists and the left are up in arms over a supposed attempt by President Sarkozy to sell out France's Republican criminal court system and replace it with Anglo-Saxon rough justice.
We've visited Sarkozy's court reforms before. What's new are the proposals this week for revamping the assizes, the jury courts which try the most serious crimes. The judicial unions are upset over two items. One is the introduction of guilty pleas, in the style of English law.
The idea is to free-up the hugely overloaded courts. In France, assize cases are given a full court trial with all the witnesses and evidence even when the defendant admits guilt. The reform, say the critics, will create cut-price "American-style" justice with plea-bargaining and pressure on those who cannot afford lawyers to plead guilty. Sarkozy has already introduced the system in lower courts.
Judges and prosecutors (who are also judges) are also resisting Sarkozy's plans to reform the court structure. He wants judges to become referees, in the English-law style, rather than super-prosecutors, as they are under France's Napoleonic law system. Prosecutors would then plead their cases as adversaries of the defence lawyers rather than high accusers. This, according to the unions and traditionalists, boils down to "privatising" criminal justice.
On the Universities, the academic year has been disrupted and, in some establishments, ruined, by a campaign of strikes and "blocages" by staff and students in protest against Sarkozy's reforms. The protesters at the Sorbonne in Paris and most of the remaining hotbeds of strife caved in this week and went back to work, but months of disruption by a militant minority has wasted a year for many students around France -- and the parents and tax-payers who finance them.
The protesters accuse Sarkozy of "privatising" the state university system. This, they say, is his secret agenda though all he has done is grant limited autonomy to university directors and encouraged competition among establishments. The protesters are also resisting changes to teaching duties by research staff but it is not clear what their objection is.
French universities have long been neglected. They are starved of resources compared with the well-endowed grandes écoles which educate the higher achievers. The waste is colossal. A third of the 741,000 undergraduates leave without a degree. Sarkozy's reform, which has already been watered down, is supported by most university chiefs as a move to help France catch up with the rest of the world. It is absurd to claim that the system is being privatised.
The conclusion from all this is that Sarkozy is still pushing on with reforms that he promised in 2007 despite his unpopularity and resistance from the left and traditionalists. He has been giving ground on some fronts, like health, where he hit resistance against plans to put managers rather than doctors in charge of hospitals. But his persistence is remarkable at a time when the old dirigiste République has been given new legitimacy by the financial crisis.
Sarkozy is no free marketeer in the Anglo-American sense. He is the first to use his formidable presidential power to shore up the old interventionist system and he has dropped the free market rhetoric that took him to office in 2007. But he is pragmatic and is largely sticking to his project for fixing what does not work in France.
There's no simple English word for dépaysement, the sense of disorientation when you arrive in another place or another country. You feel it most crossing continents and time zones, but after all these years I'm still struck by how much it hits you after a quick train trip under the Channel.
A couple of days in England have been a reminder that the big island off the western continent still feels separate despite everything that has harmonised and homogenised Europe -- football, the single market, the internet, the Eurovision song contest (Norway won, France came eighth on Saturday). Here are some random notes.
Emerging from Paris into the London morning rush-hour, I feel like the country mouse arriving in the city -- le rat des champs who has come to town. It's big, fast and noisy. Paris transport is sometimes crowded but it's like the village bus compared with the Underground with its masses sweeping you along while loudspeakers bark orders and announcements.
But the jostling is good humoured. There's give-and-take in the crowd, which is more multicoloured and scruffy than on the French side. The once discreet English are now the noise-makers of Europe. English pubs are one of the country's big attractions, but the din surprises continentals. On suburban trains people talk loudly on mobile phones sharing their lives with the whole carriage.
There's more bustle in London. The city feels more alive, even if bankers and foreign billionaires have dwindled. Paper sellers shout the news. In cafes, pubs and on transport, people carry and read newspapers in a way you do not see in Paris. Another difference is service. In Britain, like the US, it is friendlier and faster because there are more personnel. In France, with high payroll charges and heavy job protection, proprietors hire the minimum so assistants and serving staff are in short supply and over-stretched.
The media talk of quite different subjects. Putting aside Hollywood stars, rock idols and supermodels, the celebrity cast is completely different. France worries about Jenifer. In Britain it's Jade. And away from posters for fashion chains and car brands, British and French advertising are still oceans apart. The British turns on urban humour and social status. The French plays on old-fashioned glamour, romance and also the absurd, with such things as dancing insurance agents.
The recession and unemployment have hit both sides of the Channel, but preoccupations are not in phase. France is worried about social conflict, street revolt and disruption in hospitals and universities. It has a strong, hyper-active leader whose exploits are a source of both fascination and infuriation.
In England, there is a sense of political collapse and drift, with a discredited government stumbling through a long fin de régime. A certain sadistic glee has greeted the drawn-out revelations of mass expense-fiddling by members of parliament. In France they would be shrugging this off with a "tous pourris" -- they're all rotten. Politicans' morality is not an issue here at the moment [post last week].
Sport is often seen as the area in which Europe has converged most. But that's really only because of football, a pastime now dominated by English clubs who depend on French players. France takes seriously such things as volleyball and handball. England has cricket. On Saturday, my French companion gave up after I tried to explain the point as 13 men in white performed the ritual on wet grass in a west Sussex village.
The cost of living is worrying France, but with the cushion of the welfare state, people do not talk money as much as the British. The English middle classes obsess about house prices, schools and health care in a way that you do not hear in France. Yet you get the impression that there is still more money for spending in England. Shops are full and in the southeast, at least, the cars are still flashier than in France.
There is one big change. Britain no longer feels like the most expensive place in Europe. The crash of sterling over the past year makes London affordable. This makes a visit to London especially welcome to continent-dwellers who are paid in pounds and have suffered a 30 percent drop in euro income. But even with the devalued currency, Britain retains the crown for Europe's most expensive rail transport. I'm still smarting from the 16 pounds (17.6 euros) that I was charged at the luggage depot at Victoria station for leaving two small bags for seven hours.
[Below: an island ritual which has never quite taken off on the continent]
France is amused, along with everyone else, by the fuss over the fanciful expenses of British members of parliament. All those claims for castle repairs and tennis court maintenance are good for a laugh. No-one could imagine such a scandal occurring in France for a simple reason: members of the government and parliament don't have to account for their expenses.
Unlike parliamentarians in northern Europe, French députés and senators do not have to hand in receipts or explain how they dispose of the fixed 70,000 euros that they receive annually to cover their their spending on housing, offices and transport. The European Parliament still uses largely the same method, to the disgust of the northerners and delight of Eurosceptics. Luxurious style and lavish perks are expected by French ministers and other high servants of the state and few see anything wrong with this.
Laurent Joffrin, editor of Libération, tried to explain on the radio this morning why France tolerates and even rather approves of the regal life-style of its ruling class. "There are two reasons: we have a culture of secrecy about money and also a reverence towards people in power," he said. "The Anglo-Saxons and Nordic states have a quite different culture. They don't have our delicacy about money."
Joffrin traced the attitude back to revolutionary days when the rulers of the young Republic sought to impose their legitimacy by looking like the old caste of the monarchy and aristocracy. "Napoleon said the prefect's (local governor's) house had to be as impressive as that of the nobleman." he said.
In the same debate, on France-Info, Michel Colomès, a magazine journalist, said people do not expect high dignitaries to live like ordinary people. "I don't think the French would want to see our prime minister living with the same life-style as the premiers in northern Europe," he said.
The subject came up because, parallel to the British scandal, an unusual glimpse of French ministerial spending has emerged this week. It came from René Dosière, a leftwing parliamentarian who has for years been trying to pierce the secrecy that surrounds the state aristocracy. It was Dosière who, a few years ago, exposed the way that French Presidents enjoyed an unlimited, secret budget, drawn from a number of ministries. President Sarkozy reformed this up to a point. He still lives like a king -- though that is probably the wrong expression since some of Europe's royal houses live modestly in comparison.
This time, Dosière used his parliamentary rights to force reluctant ministries to produce their running expenses. He got the figures after eight months but only one, the Justice Ministry, gave much detail. Among other things, we learn that Rachida Dati, the Minister, has put a fleet of 20 cars with 19 drivers at the permanent service of her 20 personal staff. Madame Dati [pictured above in her office] and her ministry on the Place Vendôme spent 270,000 euros last year on receptions and meals. She clocked up 416,370 euros on air travel for herself and advisers. Much or perhaps all of that was legitimate, but there's no way of knowing. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister (see last post) beat Dati on the travel front, spending 562,346 euros on flights.
Dati, who is about to leave office, does not live in the official residence which is provided for her, unlike many other ministers. Scandals occasionally break when ministers go too far on that front. Hervé Gaymard, a Finance Minister under President Chirac, was forced to resign after only a few weeks in 2005 after it was revealed that the state was renting a palatial apartment for his family because he considered that his official residence was not grand enough. As a result of this, ministers are now expected to pay some of the running charges of their mansions. That is a change from the days when President Mitterrand managed to house his secret second family at state expense in a sumptuous apartment for over a decade and no-one raised an eye-brow when the news came out in the mid 90s.
Dosière, who is regarded by fellow parliamentarians as something of an eccentric, commented drily in Le Monde today: "The culture of monitoring public spending is not very developed in France, at least it's not much liked in the ministries.... Our administration is not yet used to transparency."
A jinx seems to have latched onto President Sarkozy's scheme to make France the first democracy with an internet police agency. A furore is raging in the French blogosphere over the sacking of a television executive because he criticised Sarkozy's imminent three-strikes-and-you're-out law against illegal downloading.
The episode tells you about the cosy ties between Sarkozy and TF1, France's dominant -- commercial -- television network. Here's what happened:
Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, 33, TF1's chief of technical innovation, voiced his disagreement with the internet law -- known as Hadopi -- in a private e-mail to Françoise de Panafieu, the member of parliament for his home district in western Paris. Panafieu is a one-time minister and veteran member of Sarkozy's UMP party (She's also my MP and her office is opposite my apartent). Her assistant forwarded the e-mail to the office of Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister [above], requesting points to make in response to Bourreau.
The deputy-chief of Albanel's staff then zapped a copy of the e-mail straight to TF1. Bourreau's boss called him in, read out his e-mail and told him he was fired because it betrayed the network's policy in favour of the internet law. When the story broke in Libération, Albanel dismissed it as absurd and indignantly denied before parliament that her office had forwarded the e-mail. Over the weekend, she reversed her story and admitted that the dirty work had been done by Christophe Tardieu, her staffer. He has been suspended for a month.
Albanel says she regrets the incident but is pointing out that nothing in the e-mail said that it was confidential. Bourreau (the name means hangman or executioner) is suing TF1 for wrongful dismissal, citing a law which employees' rights to voice political opinions.
At this stage I would argue that an executive in a sensitive post should be more careful about airing opinions in contradiction with an important company policy. But that's not really the point here. The scandal comes from the Culture Ministry ratting on Bourreau to the private company that it is involved in regulating.
This is being taken as proof of the incestuous network of friends and interests through which Sarkozy influences -- some would say controls -- the media. TF1 is owned by the billionaire Martin Bouygues, a Sarkozy friend who is is godfather to his youngest son. As we saw here before, Sarkozy last year got rid of advertising from public television -- a huge gift to TF1 -- on the suggestion of Bouygues. TF1's second-ranking executive is Laurent Solly, who was deputy director of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign. And so on.
Bourreau is being hailed as a hero, admired with dedicated Facebook groups and a special song "Qui a tué (Who Killed) Bourreau-Guggenhem ?" He has been called the first "internet martyr" in the cause of resisting what is seen as Sarkozy's Big Brother Hadopi scheme.
Much of the emotion is over-blown, but the Hadopi law is beginning to look like a loser before it has even finished its tortuous passage through parliament. It is supported not just by the big corporations of the entertainment industry but also by many artists as the only way to stop their work being pillaged. But its foes have done a good job painting it as an out-of-date plot by the establishment to punish the young and poor who download music and films.
That case was put today by a group of 90 independent record labels which have signed a declaration attacking the Hadopi law (which takes its name from the acronym for the new High Authority which will track down and punish illegal downloaders). The independents, who say they represent 90 percent of French musical artists, attacked the majors for impoverishing them and supporting a policy "which designates the public as potential thieves rather than music-lovers."
The anti-Hadopi crowd could not have wished for better ammunition than the case of the unfortunate Mr Bourreau.
[Picture at top is Albanel in parliament last month after a first attempt to pass the Hadopi law was unexpectedly defeated. It's back for a new vote later this month and will very likely pass]
As a follow-up to the last post on Sarkozy's new French model for Europe, have a look at the cover of the latest edition of The Economist. Sarkozy towers over Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany while Britain's Gordon Brown wallows in a hole with the Anglo-Saxon model.
The editorial neatly summarises the ideas behind the debate that we're always having here. Naturally it's on the Anglo-Saxon side, but it admits the merits of the continental approach. Their report from inside France, by Sophie Pedder, the Economist's Paris correspondent, is excellent.
Nicolas Sarkozy has just done a favour to British Conservatives and other sceptics who like to see the European Union as a plot for putting a French face on Europe.
Super Sarko used his second anniversary in office to sketch a vision for the Union which fell somewhere between that of the late Charles de Gaulle and the pro-European French leaders of the 1970s and 80s. If Europe follows his recipe, it will be able to pull out of the "deep intellectual and moral crisis" from which it is suffering, he said.
Sarkozy wants a Union with a new "economic government" -- run by the member states not the supranational Brussels Commission. He wants a centralised industrial policy, new tight financial regulations, a closed door to "predators from the world at large". He wants a curb on the free market laws that are policed by Brussels. He also reaffirmed his pledge to stop Turkey ever joining the Union.
Sarko was speaking in Nîmes to kick off the campaign for next month's European Parliament elections but the assembly -- the other supranational pillar of the Union -- got barely a mention in his manifesto for a continent run by the Council of member governments. He shares ground with the British sceptics on that front, but not on much else.
Sarkozy sees the economic slump as a chance to assert France-friendly regulation in the Union after two decades in which, in French eyes, Europe has worshipped at the "liberal" -- meaning free market -- altar. He wants an end to competition among states on tax rates and an end to market rules that block mergers between big European companies, he said. A "European preference" must also be applied to favour the goods and services of the Union over those from outside. That was a Sarkozy campaign promise in 2007, but we had not heard about it since then.
Looking to the outside, Sarkozy said Europe "must cease diluting itself in an endless enlargement. Europe must have frontiers." Turkey could never become a member but should have a special partnership. Russia should have the same, he said. That goes down well in France and Germany but not with Britain -- nor the United States, as we saw when Barack Obama called last month for Turkish EU entry. Sarkozy has not been so tough in practice as in his rhetoric. He has not attempted to stop Ankara's accession negotiations, which began in 2005.
Sarkozy took a few swipes at Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, for not being cooperative enough and he floated another idea: a central agency to purchase the Union's gas supplies. This would prevent the Russians from playing states off against one-another. "Europe must fight to build a true energy policy, which doesn't just involve competition," he said
And French farmers were relieved to hear Sarkozy's pledge to maintain forever the Common Agriculture Policy -- the multi-billion euro subsidy mechanism that distorts the world food market and benefits France more than any other of the 27 member states. Previously, farmers had worried that the city-slicker President might yield to pressure from Britain and other northern states to dismantle their sacred system.
Sarkozy is of course telling voters what they want to hear ahead of an election which will serve as a referendum on his two years in power. He is echoing the public mood. The Socialist opposition wants roughly the same though it disagrees with Sarko's hostility to the Commission and Parliament. Northern Europeans do not generally realise it, but Europe has been widely seen in France for the past 15 years as a British-backed plot to undermine the French welfare state and way of life. Sarkozy is posing as its saviour. Or, in the gushing words of Luc Chatel, the Government spokesman, today: Sarkozy's vigorous leadership has revived in Europe "la pensée universelle française".
Nicolas Sarkozy dislikes anniversaries and plans to ignore his two-year point in the Elysée Palace on Wednesday, but France is taking stock of an eccentric presidency that was born on high hopes and now wallows in deep unpopularity.
Sixty-three per cent have written off Sarkozy's first 24 months as a failure, according to a poll today for Metro newspaper, with only 28 per cent holding a positive opinion.
Sarkozy puts the discontent down to the global slump that hit France just as he was hoping to see results from "la rupture", the clean break that he promised with the country's over-regulated, over-taxed welfare state. He is right in part because the recession has for the time being demolished his vision for a dynamic new France. His promises to reward hard work with prosperity were never as Thatcher-like as they seeemed but they ring hollow now that a fearful France has turned back to the state for succour in the face of unemployment and uncertainty.
But disappointment with "Super Sarko" set in well before America's sub-prime disaster rebounded on the French economy last year. It stemmed from a perception that he was out to help the rich, from his autocratic methods and from the brash new style that he brought to the monarchical presidency.
Instead of retreating to the palace and at least simulating a lofty distance from his government, Sarkozy created a "hyper-presidency", running the country with a handful of advisers and behaving at times more like a self-satisfied television host than father of the nation.
He turned up the gravitas after crashing in opinion polls well before his first anniversary, but France has still not digested the initial "bling-bling" phase, symbolised by his flashy friends and his lightning romance with Carla Bruni, the Italian heiress, singer and former super-model. Sarkozy has still not modified his vulgar side, typified by his slangy language, boasting and fondness for taking swipes at colleagues and fellow leaders with remarks that quickly reach the media.
The aggressive style feeds the sense of injustice that has turned Sarkozy into a hate figure for opponents, mainly on the left, among teachers' unions, students and state sector workers. As we've seen here, many hold Sarkozy personally responsible for factory closures, unemployment and other ills.
The case for the prosecution has just been set out in a book-length diatribe by François Bayrou, the centrist and would-be president who has become Sarkozy's most effective opponent. In Abus de Pouvoir (Abuse of Power), Bayrou says that Sarkozy has foisted on France an alien regime. He is violating the republic with and "an ideology which had never dared express itself in France unmasked, a model of society based on inequality," writes Bayrou
Eric Fottorino, editor of Le Monde, concluded today that Sarkozy's style rather than substance was his chief handicap -- "a style which has ended up irritating people after stirring curiosity and hope." France now expected action or Sarkozy risked being dismissed for "television Bonapartism in which the show of willpower wins over reality."
But the clamour of demonstrations and public abuse masks the credit that a substantial minority gives Sarkozy for broadly sticking with his promised revolution despite the crisis. In the face of revolt, he has compromised on several fronts, such as schools and hospitals, but he is continuing to shrink the civil service, and he is persisting in tax reform while easing labour regulation. His stimulus plan, based largely on investment in business and big state projects, is generally approved although he is widely faulted for failing to do more to help ordinary households. He has lately renewed his popularity on the right by returning to his old pet theme of law-and-order.
In one field — his handling of foreign policy — Sarkozy wins generally high marks. About 70 per cent approve of his forceful leadership in Europe and in the wider world at events such as the G20 economic summit last month. His antics ahead of the G20, with the phoney threat to stay away, looked silly outside France, but they won him credit at home, making him look like a tough advocate of new regulation. And Bruni, whom he married in February last year, is now deemed to be one of his biggest diplomatic assets.
Sarkozy has made little secret that he wants a second term in 2012. He has reason not to despair over his present unpopularity. Polls show that if the 2007 election were restaged now, he would still win hands down in the all-comers first round. The Socialists who are the official opposition have no candidate with the stature to beat him. Bayrou, though popular, looks like a loser and, for the moment, there is no other plausible alternative.
![Lagarde_stewart[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e201156f69fe95970c-400wi)
Paris is talking about the fine performance by Christine Lagarde, the French Finance Minister, on Jon Stewart's Daily Show (Watch the Monday evening interview below). If you have only seen Lagarde inside France, it's an eye-opener. She is at ease, bantering in near perfect English, drawing applause when she says she had fired a few bankers because "they did a crappy job". Her advisers were initially nervous about exposing her to one of Stewart's comic grillings but she did well, batting off questions such as "Is America now more Socialist than France" and on France's debt to the US from the war.
Inside France, Lagarde, 53, has proved a liability to President Sarkozy. She is politically inept. Publicly, she seems stiff and out of touch and she is known as Christine Lagaffe because of her many verbal blunders. These have included telling the French last year that if motor fuel was too expensive they should just ride bicycles. As an outsider from the elite technocracy, she is flanked by junior ministers who run the financial machine. Lagarde is a non-politician who was brought into the government in 2005. She was humiliated last year by colleagues who said publicly that France needed a heavyweight Finance Minister. But a lot has changed since the slump set in last autumn. She has become an international star.
[May 4 update: Lagarde has just been named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Read Tim Geithner's tribute to her in Time. Sarkozy is the only other French person on the list. Lagarde's nomination is ascribed in France entirely to the fact that she speaks good English]
Lagarde is the only member of the government who is at home in the Anglo-Saxon world. As such, she is invaluable to a President who, though an Americophile, is unable to construct a sentence in English. A former member of the French synchronized swimming team, Lagarde worked for 20 years in the USA as a lawyer with Baker & McKenzie, the Chicago-based firm. She was its international chairwoman when President Chirac recruited her as Trade Minister in 2005.
Lagarde does not just give a good impression in English, charming TV viewers. She is in her element in the world of internationl business and finance. When Lehman Brothers was collapsing last September, she was the only European Finance Minister called by Henry Paulson, the then Treasury Secretary. She knew him from his days with Goldman Sachs in Chicago.
Le Figaro, the newspaper closest to the Sarkozy court, carried a double-edged profile of her today, praising her for her new role as France's international face but noting her continuing low reputation with the Elysée Palace. A palace staffer told the paper: "She scores 100 percent for international relations. In explaining the economy she scores 30. That makes an average of 65."
While on the France-America theme, le Monde reported yesterday that Barack Obama has riposted over Sarkozy's claim that he was not up to speed on climate change. Obama pulled aside Jean-Louis Borloo, the Environment Minister, at a Washington conference and told him to tell Sarko that he was doing his homework and the next time they meet he will beat him on the subject.
[Click to watch Lagarde interview. For French readers here, Jon Stewart's satirical nightly news show is roughly equivalent to the Canal+ Grand Journal with a bit of Laurent Ruquier and Nicolas Canteloup thrown in.]
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.]
An old but fairly accurate cliché holds that France is a conservative nation that advances through periodic upheaval. A lot of people would like us to believe that we may be entering one of those moments.
There is even a touch of 1789 in the way that the strongest prophesy of insurrection has come this week not from a ragged sans-culotte, but from an outcast aristocrat who wants to bring down the king. Dominique de Villepin, the last Prime Minister and bitter foe of his former subordinate Nicolas Sarkozy, has pronounced that "France faces a risk of revolution". He did not say whether he had in mind something like 1789, 1848, the Commune of 1871 or May 1968.
Here's the case: The economic slump is destroying jobs by the thousand. Over 20 percent of the under 25s are out of work. The sense of injustice is being fed by the golden incomes still enjoyed by disgraced bosses; dismissed workers are kidnapping managers and one lot last week sacked government offices in the town of Compiègne; about a third of the universities are "blocked" by students protesting against President Sarkozy's higher education reforms. Electricity workers are pursuing a pay claim by cutting off the current from tens of thousands of people.
Next Friday, the labour unions are joining in rare May Day unity in mass marches to alert Sarkozy to the anger and plight of the working classes. Today's Journal du Dimanche, a conservative national newspaper owned by a friend of Sarkozy, is asking dramatically on its front: "Is a 'May 2009' possible in France?'. In other words, could we be about to live a replay of May 1968, the student uprising that ignited strikes and briefly shook the rule of President de Gaulle.
I will take the risk of answering the newspaper's question in the negative. There is a lot of anger around and insurrection is certainly desired by the usual crowd on the utopian far left -- Olivier Besancenot, the Trotskyite leader of the New Anti-Capitalist Party, students and the hardline labour unions such as the Trotskyite Sud federation.
But history is unlikely to repeat itself. May 1968 came as a surprise to a country that was enjoying unprecedented prosperity and high employment. It was also a time of cultural revolt and dreams of other worlds. It was followed by a period of industrial turbulence in the 1970s with far more strikes and factory sit-ins than now.
Revolution is being talked up by people in the Establishment with their own ambitions at heart. Villepin is the most glaring example. He is a never-elected diplomat who owed all his government appointments to his mentor President Jacques Chirac. He is to stand trial later this year on charges of trying to smear Sarkozy in the so-called Clearstream affair. Last Sunday he talked of possible revolution saying he feared that public despair would lead to "collective behaviour that we might not be able to control". On Friday, he announced that he hoped to stand against Sarkozy in the next presidential election in 2012.
That prompted a little mirth and jokes about his mental balance. The same response has greeted the utterances of Ségolène Royal, another member of the elite who is hell-bent on bringing down the elected monarch. Royal, the Socialist who was defeated in the 2007 presidential election and failed to win her party leadership last December, is waging a manic personal campaign against Sarko. She is issuing public "apologies" in the name of France for his imagined sins and she is all but preaching revolution, siding with the workers in every violent episode. Relations between workers and employers in France "remain in the Middle Ages", she said this weekend. Like Villepin, Royal is out for revenge against Sarkozy in 2012.
So, when you hear of unrest in France, add a pinch of salt. The mood is definitely dark, as it is in Britain, Spain, Ireland and the United States among other places. The work-place violence and street and student protests may increase, but we are far from revolution. People are not ready to risk their jobs, as some were in 1968. The French welfare safety net protects the unemployed and low-paid to a degree unimaginable to Americans or even the British. Revolution is not really in the air when the leader of the French Socialist Party complains that the French president should do more to follow the example of the president of the United States. Martine Aubry, the party leader, has just done that. And on the anecdotal side, many people are not suffering too much, judging by the traffic jams around the suburban shopping centres at weekends.
Sarkozy must have been comforted by an Ifop poll just published by Sud Ouest Dimanche newspaper. This found that despite all his unpopularity, if the 2007 election were staged again today Sarkozy would still beat Royal and all the other candidates who stood in the first round that year.
[Below: The struggle of 'les Contis', northern France workers demonstrating against their factory closure by German tyre company. Their case has become symbol of immoral action by rogue employers]
Get ready for a deluge of Chanel. In an astute bit of marketing, the Paris fashion and perfume company is about to relaunch its No.5 scent with a new muse: Audrey Tautou.
The actress with the girl-next-door looks replaces Nicole Kidman, who has been Chanel's ambassador-model since 2004. There have been only four or five such égéries, or muses, since 1921 when Coco Chanel invented the heady scent that became the world's best-seller. Marilyn Monroe [below], the first after Chanel herself, ensured its fortunes in the United States in 1954 when she was asked what she wore in bed: "Why, Chanel No.5, of course."
Tautou's role as Amélie (In France known as Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) in 2001 made her the world's most famous young French actress. Chanel's move is clever because Tautou is about to star as the company's founder and the perfume's inventor in a would-be block-buster film which opens this week.
Coco Avant Chanel, directed by Anne Fontaine, is the most lavish among recent films and mini-series on the woman who was fashion's version of Picasso or Stravinsky. The new movie focuses on the young Gabrielle Chanel [Top picture]. It is the latest in a trail of French biopics trying to match La Môme, the Edith Piaf film that won last year's best actress Oscar for Marion Cotillard. [Coco trailer here]
Chanel hired Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who directed Tautou in Amélie and Un long Dimanche de Fiançailles, to shoot a commercial. Ridley Scott, Luc Besson and Baz Luhrmann did the same for previous Chanel muses.
[Kidman]
Jeunet said Chanel's brief consisted of only three words: mystère, frisson, émotion. He scripted a sepia-tinted, atmospheric yarn about an encounter between travelling strangers. From those words you know that we are talking about the Orient Express or an ocean steamer. For Jeunet it was the Express. He filmed for three weeks with a crew of 250 on locations from Paris to Istanbul. Luxury goods, it seems, cannot get enough of steam(y) romance. Only last year Catherine Deneuve perched on a suitcase beside the same train for Louis Vuitton.
In the Jeunet advert, a whiff of Chanel 5 enables Travis Davenport, an an American model, to find the mysterious reporter (Tautou) who was on the express to Istanbul. The couple finally embrace to the strains of Billy Holiday's I'm a Fool to Want You. The idea of tracing a woman by scent is apt for Chanel No.5 because it was one of the first "parfums à sillage", perfumes that leave a wake. Unlike the floral-based scents of the time, Chanel's product contained chemical aldehydes that gave the jasmin-based essence its lingering effect. Only three people know the formula, according to Chanel.
[Bouquet]
Both Fontaine and Jeunet have been saying that Tautou is the very incarnation of Mademoislle Chanel and the actress agrees. She told L'Express this week that she had always identified with the pioneering couturière. They had similar rural backgrounds and physique. Chanel believed in independence for women, said Tautou. "That's a view that I share."
In the trade, they say that Chanel has made a smart move cashing on the big movie and using a star whose approachable style will attract younger women to its venerable scent. The Coco film opens in France on Wednesday and the commercial airs on May 5. And note: I managed to write the above without using the icon word.
France has been cooing along with everyone else over the arrival of Bo Obama at the White House, but the master of America's new First Dog is no longer in such good odour with Nicolas Sarkozy.
[Friday Update: Here's Sarkozy's latest outburst over Obama and European leaders.]
The French presidency is pouring cold water on President Obama's efforts to recast American leadership in the world, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and over-rated. Behind leaks and briefings from the Elysée Palace lies Super Sarko's irritation at the the rock-star welcome that Europe gave Obama on his Europan tour the other day.
The American President's call "to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare" was hot air, said a report to Sarkozy by his staff. "It was rhetoric, not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States," they said. Most of Obama's proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, said the report, leaked to le Figaro.
Personal pique and French politics are also behind the souring of Sarkozy's self-promoted honeymoon with the United States. On the personal side, the French President is needled by the adulation for an unproven US leader whose stardom has eclipsed what he sees as his established record as a world troubleshooter. "The President is annoyed by what he sees as the naiveté and the herd mentality of the media," wrote Claude Askolovitch, a commentator with good Elysée sources.
Sarkozy has put out a version of the London G20 economic summit which casts him as hero, in the classic French role of intransigent defender of principle in the face of the American steamroller. This recolours last week's account of Obama saving the day by persuading President Hu of China to accept Sarkozy's demand for naming tax havens. According to the leaks, Sarkozy shamed Obama into intervening: "You were elected to build a new world. Tax havens are the embodiment of the old world," he lectured the younger President. He also reprimanded Obama on setting US goals for climate change that were inferior to Europe's, according to his staff.
Again, according to the Sarkozy version, at the Nato summit in Strasbourg, Obama was meekly yielding to Turkey's refusal to endorse Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance's new Secretary-General. It took pressure from Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to stiffen him up and change his mind, say the French.
Obama's favour for Ankara has irked but also helped Sarkozy as his Union for a Popular Movement campaigns for European Parliament elections in June. Sarkozy slapped down the US President on French TV after he publicly encouraged Turkish entry to the European Union. Permanent refusal of Turkish membership is a popular Sarkozy policy plank. Obama's venture into EU affairs has enabled Sarkozy to score political capital. It shows that France can still stand up to the United States despite rejoining the full Nato command last week after four decades' absence.
It was good old Franco-American business as usual this morning when Bruno Le Maire, Sarkozy's young Europe Minister, accused Washington of backing the northern and Eastern EU members who want to turn the Union into a mere free-trade zone. France and Germany are sticking to their vision of the "political" Europe that "others" do not want, he said in a radio interview.
Behind the policy argument, it is easy to detect disappointment over Obama's failure to reciprocate the Sarkozy charm offensive that began when he befriended the junior Senator on a visit to Washington in 2006. Obama showered compliments on France's "hyper-president" in Strasbourg, but the one that has stuck was double-edged: "He is courageous on so many fronts, it's sometimes hard to keep up with him."
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Nicolas Canteloup footnote: You might have heard the impersonator's rather cruel gag on Sarkozy's dog rivalry with Obama on Europe radio this morning. Canteloup's Sarko said that he had a pet long before Obama -- François Fillon, his Prime Minister.
The slump does not appear to have lessened Europe's taste for Easter in Paris. The city has been full of visitors over the weekend and many of them are choosing to wait for hours in the queues outside the big museums and galleries. The French capital and other cities are in the midst of an art bonanza on a scale never seen before, according to curators and enthusiastic reports in the media.
The consensus says that the boom is a reflection of imaginative special shows, economic hard times and a trend amplified by the internet and other media. It's worth wondering why the phenomenon appears stronger in Paris than any other world city, at least judging by anecdotal evidence.
After a winter that saw people staying up all night to visit Picasso and the Masters at the Grand Palais, the new Andy Warhol show at the same site is such a hit that they are planning 24-hour opening to cope with the crowds. De Chirico is packing them in at the Paris City Modern Art Museum. The Pompidou Centre has just scored a smash with a new mega-show of Kandinsky. William Blake is drawing crowds at the Petit Palais. 
The Quai Branly, the ethnic art museum founded by President Chirac, is enjoying its biggest success so far with a show on the cultural impact of jazz. In four weeks about 50,000 have toured the show.
Photography is also enjoying good times. There are two interesting exhibitions -- without such queues as the art expos. One is Controverses, a collection of shock photos from history at the wonderful old reading room in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The other, closing this week, is a fascinating collection of 19th and early 20th century photochromes -- the first type of colour photography -- in the Bibliothèque Forney in the Marais. The show is an eye-opener if you imagine the 19th century in black and white (see Victorian Alpine clmibers below).
Many of the foreign visitors are happy to stick to the permanent exhibitions. The Louvre, the world's most visited art museum, is breaking new records. It drew 8.5 milion people in 2008, well ahead of the 5.93 who went to the British Museum in London. The National Gallery in Washington DC came third with 4.96.
And the boom is not just affecting the beaux arts. Opera is flourishing, along with pop concerts, the cinema and the state-subsidized national theatres. "La culture is showing insolent good health" le Monde concluded, the other day.
So why the rush for culture? The standard view is that, at a time of anxiety and shrinking assets, the French are reverting to old-fashioned valeurs sûres. "The crisis incites people to turn towards preserved spaces," says Marie-Christine Labourdette, Director of the Museums of France. "The world is changing and the future is worrying ? They are reassured by the intangible in art works and the stability of museums," she explained in le Figaro. The experts cite the example of the Hollywood boom of the 1930s Depression years.
Sometimes the explanation can be a little abstract. Le Monde found a curator who explained: "In times of crisis, people need the emotional compensation of nearness". [Les gens ont besoin d'une compensation affective de proximité...]. That's not so easy to convey in Anglo-Saxon.
The phenomenon also confirms France's tradition -- eclipsed in recent decades -- as the world's cultural capital. Thomas Grenon, Administrator of the Union of National Museums, says that "the richness of French collections explain the success. France is historically a land of art. And then there is the deep taste of the French for art."
The same travelling exhibitions draw about 30 percent more visitors in Paris than London, he told us. This applied to recent Turner, Whistler and Monet shows at the Grand Palais and the Tate in London, he said. "It's linked to our education and to a form of French taste," he said. And yes, many of the current shows feature British, American, Russian, Italian and other nationals, but Paris excels in the art of presenting them.
[Below, the waiting line for Warhol]
We did not need an opinion poll to confirm that much of France supports workers who kidnap their bosses. This ploy, long a French speciality, has been used about five times in recent weeks by employees of firms that are laying off workers.
A survey by CSA for today's Parisien reports that 45 percent of France "finds this method of action acceptable". Fifty percent do not. A cynic might be surprised that only 45 percent approve of sequestration, as boss-napping is politely called. Even President Sarkozy, the champion of law-and-order, has sympathy for workers who practice it though he said today that it must stop.
Unions have won concessions and sympathy by detaining senior executives at Japan's Sony Corp, the American firms Caterpillar [picture above] and 3M, Michelin tyres and Préciturn, an engineering group. In the usual routine, detained executives are shut in their offices overnight. The workers order in pizza but do not always share it with them. The police keep a polite distance and in in the morning, the tired bosses give ground.
At Caterpillar's plant in the Alps, where 700 jobs are to go, four executives were kept from sleep by harassment. They were released after Sarkozy promised that he would "save" their factory. They were even given to understand that he would bring up their plight with Barack Obama.
Politicians of the centre and left have been competing to voice their understanding for the boss-nappers. Les patrons have never been popular in France, but their name is blacker than ever with fear of unemployment and the media full of fat cats awarding themselves bonuses and golden payoffs. Cashing in on the mood, Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, said that while it was illegal to deprive someone of their liberty, there were times when "workers must smash the barriers of absolute injustice."
Sarkozy's government is worried that locking up bosses could presage greater violence as the sense of injustice grows with rising unemployment. François Fillon, the Prime Minister, says that he will not tolerate more "hostage taking".
But in France, there is violence and violence, as all students of history know. Two years ago exactly, a certain presidential candidate took the side of angry fishermen who had smashed up their port. "When you resort to violence it is because you are desperate, because you feel condemned to economic death," he told them. "I will never put the anger of fishermen who do not want to die on the same level as the gratuitous violence of thugs." That was N. Sarkozy.
[Below: cartoon by Cabu in Le Canard Enchaîné. Caption: The boss: Never without my sleeping bag.
He says to his wife: I'm practising in case I am held in the office by discontented workers.
Within a few months, Big Brother will be watching your internet habits when you go online in France -- and he might decide to cut you off.
[Thursday update: surprise defeat for Sarko]
This seems sure now that both houses of parliament have approved President Sarkozy's novel scheme for punishing people who habitually grab copyright music, video and films from the web. A new state High Authority (yet another) will run a three-strikes-and-you're-out system against pirates. Illicit downloaders will receive two e-mail warnings. If they persist, the service provider will be ordered to cut access to the net for the offenders (and their families) for up to a year.
Officials start tomorrow producing the final version of the so-called "Creation and Internet Law" after a lower house session attended by only 16 members voted through the bill last Thursday. The new law should be adopted in a month or two. Many artists and all the entertainment industry are delighted to see France blazing an innovative trail that will help stem the piracy that is endangering their trade. Sarkozy, who has been advised by Carla Bruni, his singer wife, will claim victory in what he calls the battle against "the High-Tech Wild West... where outlaws pillage creative work without limits."
Needless to say, others see the law as a threat to liberty. Internet user groups, civil liberties monitors, bloggers, the European Parliament, the French left and others are calling foul and saying the law is unworkable. In the words of Christian Vanneste, a Sarkozy MP who opposes the law, "legislating over downloading is as presumptuous as trying to chase the horizon... A solution exists, but it is for the market to find it, not the lawmaker."
On the face of it, the new law sounds sensible. It replaces failed attempts to deter illicit downloaders by prosecution and, as the government says, it is gradual. A poll reported that one in three of France's 30 million web users admits downloading music, films or video games without paying -- one of the world's highest rates of piracy. One billion files are estimated to have been illegally shared in France in 2006.
Here's what will happen once the law is in place. Music and film companies will monitor file-sharers on the net and turn them in to the new authority, called HADOPI from the mouthful of its initials -- Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet (High Authority for the dissemination of works and the protection of rights on the internet). Service providers will be required to name the owner of the IP address and the agency will send its warnings or cut-off order. A blacklist of offenders will be circulated to prevent them signing up with other operators during their suspension.
You don't need much knowledge of the net or the law to see the flaws in the scheme, which is expected to lead to hundreds of people being blacklisted daily. One campaign group called Quadrature du Net says the law breaches the French constitution in 50 different ways.
For a start, it will be hard to identify offenders. Someone parked outside your window with a laptop could be hooking onto your WiFi, whether protected or not. How about people at work, visiting teenagers or copyright abuses who are simply using public WiFi? It's also apparently quite simple to pirate IP addresses.
Jacques Attali, the economist and thinker who has advised successive governments, has joined the blog assault on the law, saying it "paves the way for blanket surveillance" of the web. "It is absurd, because people no longer download, they stream audio and video ... absurd because it would deprive entire families of internet access ... because real artists have nothing to lose by letting people know their work."
The service providers are also unhappy because -- contrary to what the government originally promised -- they will have to strip out the internet from bundled TV-net-phone contracts without any compensation. The system will cost an estimated 70 million euros a year, with no money going to the holders of violated copyright, they estimate.
France, which loves big regulation, sees itself setting a trend for a new more orderly internet. Google -- which is not free from Big Brother charges itself -- is upset because the government aims to introduce a "label of quality for legal downloading sites". Search engines will be obliged to give them priority in their results, which Google says contradicts its policies.
The Hadopi is also expected to use secret codes to track banned offenders. Apart from the breach of privacy, this will create problems for users of Linux and other open systems, according to the experts.
The American and European industry hopes that the French law, which goes much further than experiments already tried in Ireland and New Zealand, will inspire similar action in other countries.
And before you think this is all about the French devotion to regulation, the law was enthusiastically praised today by Paul McGuinness, manager of the band U2. France has become "a pole of resistance to the blight of piracy. The (new) law is the right solution... It is equitable and balanced and will work in practice," he wrote in le Figaro.
In my humble opinion, the new scheme sounds like une usine à gaz -- a complicated, unworkable contraption. It means more bureaucracy and seems unlikely to fulfill the worthy aim of helping a troubled industry. But I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
Sarko's moment finally came. After months of frustration during which the White House stayed cool to the entreaties of the French President, Barack Obama stood alongside Nicolas Sarkozy today and showered him with praise.
You could feel the joy radiating from Sarko as the pair proclaimed a new era of Franco-American unity on the steps of the Palais des Rohan, the old bishop's palace in Strasbourg. Obama listed the qualities of his friend 'Nicolas'. "Thanks to the great leadership of President Sarkozy, courageous on so many fronts at once that it's sometimes hard to keep up with him...." .
He thanked Sarko "for France's outstanding leadership with regard to Afghanistan" and he praised him again for his "extraordinary leadership role in NATO". The London G20 summit could not have succeeded without the problem-solving leadership of the French President, Obama added. "I am personally grateful for his friendship". Obama also announced that he will be back to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the allied landing in Normandy on D-Day.
This was all sweet music for Sarko, who had rolled out maximum military and civilian pomp to welcome the Obamas to France ahead of tonight's Nato summit. Only this morning, French media were noting Obama's apparent indifference to Sarko at the London summit. Sarkozy's offensive against Les Anglo-Saxons before the G20 summit also chilled the atmosphere.
After an hour's tête-à-tête, his first with the new US President, Sarkozy struck an unusually solemn and statesmanlike tone as he opened their joint press conference referring to "The President of the United States" and addressing "President Obama" with the formal 'vous'. But Sarko's excitable nature got the better of him and he closed trembling with emotion, using the the intimate "tu" and calling him "une sacrée bonne nouvelle" -- bloody good news -- for the world.
Sarko being Sarko, he could also not resist chucking a couple of stones in the direction of his former great friend George W. Bush. He contrasted, without naming him, Bush's closed, America-centric outlook with Obama's open-minded model and talked about the "terrorist methods" which the Bush team had used on the detainees of Guantanamo Bay
It was fascinating watching the pair: Obama grave, measured and still alongside the much shorter, energetic and punchy French leader. The monolingual Sarkozy also ventured timidly into English, saying "okay" to US journalists several times.
On the substance, Sarkozy and Obama of course agreed on everything, from emergency treatment for the world economy to Russia, Afghanistan and Iran. But the differences were there. Obama, for instance, wished that Europe would take on a bigger share of its own defence
Obama later talked bluntly about the rift in Transatlantic relations in recent years. Both sides were to blame, he said. America had failed to treat Europe with respect. "There have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." But anti-American feeling in Europe often seemed unfair, casual and insidious, he said. "On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise."
Obama was greeted like a hero by the crowds that were allowed to get close to him as the French security forces locked down the deserted centre of Strasbourg. While their husbands were doing business, Carla Bruni lunched with Michelle Obama and showed her around town. Bruni stayed away from London as the US First Lady took the spotlight, but the Elysée Palace is deploying her in Strasbourg as a sure bet for enhancing Sarko's moment in the sun.
To end, the Elysée is delighted by the Francophiles in Obama's entourage. General James Jones, his National Security Adviser, grew up in France as the son of a US marine officer and attended a lycée in the Paris suburb of Saint Germain-en-Laye. He always talks in French with Jean-David Levitte, Sarkozy's foreign affairs director. Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser to Vice-President Biden, also studied at a Paris Lycée and Sciences-Po, the top political science college. Philip Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, is an academic France expert who translated the US edition of Testimony, the manifesto-memoir that Sarkozy's published during his 2007 campaign.
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Lyon is one of Europe's most delightful big cities. I've often thought it would be a fine place to live, with its sunshine, history, cuisine, the Rhone river and nearby Alps. But you have to wonder a little about the judgment of the city's managers. They decided the other day that French was not good enough for the company known as Aéroports de Lyon and renamed it Lyon Airports.
The rebranding followed a successful English-language project to promote the region called "Only Lyon". It was designed to "give a new identity, a new, more international image" to Lyon Saint-Exupéry airport, its international hub, and the smaller aerodrome called Lyon-Bron. It was pretty obvious that Anglicizing something as symbolic as an airport would run into trouble. What next, wondered a local friend of mine, "perhaps they'll call it Lyon-Wright-Brothers airport ?"
Inevitably, the heavy hand of the state has come down on the scheme, which has cost up to half a million euros to implement. The prefect of the Rhone-Alps -- the state official in command of the region -- has dispatched an angry letter to the airports company demanding that it revert to French immediately.
Jacques Gérault, 57, whose past jobs included a stint on Nicolas Sarkozy's senior staff, fulminated against the folly of "copying les codes anglo-saxons" to promote one of France's most important regions. He chose last Friday's "Day of the French Language" to launch his attack.
"It is inadmissible that certain institutions underestimate to such an extent the economic and cultural weight of the French language and the values that it carries," he said.
Since the state holds 60 percent of the company, we can expect that it will soon be Goodbye Lyon Airports and rebonjour Aéroports de Lyon. And as le Progrès de Lyon, the local newspaper, pointed out today, even Anglo-Saxons can probably figure out what Aéroports de Lyon means. And a final note. The traditional English name for the city is Lyons, which is still the official style for The Times. If I write Lyon for the paper, it is corrected. But then we called Mumbai Bombay until a couple of months ago.
Nicolas Sarkozy finally got his chance to talk to Barack Obama today. Phone calls between leaders may be routine, but so eager was the French President to get time with "My friend Barack", that the Elysée Palace cast the video conference via interpreters as a virtual summit. Take a look at the silly photomontage on the front of yesterday's Figaro, the pro-Sarko newspaper, below. The conversation lasted just half an hour, the Elysée tells us. [Top picture: anti-Sarkozy demonstrator in Nice last week]
The coolness of the US President towards the overtures from Paris is embarrassing Sarkozy. It has dampened his hopes of finding a kindred dynamic soul in Washington and founding a new Paris-Washington axis. It is leading him to realise that he may find few takers for his ambitious plans for "refounding capitalism" at the April 2 G20 summit in London.
China is certainly out. After making waves over Tibet and human rights last year, France is in Beijing's doghouse and Sarkozy is the only leader known so far to have been refused a session in London with President Hu Jintao. Sarkozy irritated President Calderon of Mexico with his behaviour on a visit there this month, so he does not have an ally there. Turkey abhors Sarko because of his promise of a permanent veto against its entry to the European Union. Relations with his European neighbours, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel of Germany, are are not much better than "cordial", which is diplomatic speak for bumpy. President Medvedev of Russia may prove to be one of Sarko's main allies.
But it is Obama's resistance to the persuasive charms of Super Sarko that is causing angoisse at the Elysée. "Sarkozy l'Américain" as he was once proud to be called, has pulled out all the stops since the night of the US election, when he mis-spelt a congratulatory fax to "Dear Barak".
French lobbying failed to win an early invitation to the White House. While Brown was being fêted in Washington, Paris made it known that Obama would meet Sarkozy on a Normandy beach on April 3 on his way to the Nato anniversary summit in Strasbourg. US advance parties checked the local security and accommodation but Washington dropped the idea. It is now not even certain that Obama will give Sarkozy private time in Strasbourg.
Sarkozy was gratified last week when Obama welcomed his historic decision to take France back into the military command of the US-led Nato alliance. But the glow vanished when it became known on Friday that Obama had sent an effusive letter to -- of all people -- Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy's bête noire, who did everything to stop his younger colleague succeeding him in the presidency in 2007.
"I am certain that over the coming four years, we will be able to work togetyher in a spirit of peace and friendship in order to build a better world," Obama wrote. Chirac stuck it hard to his successor, saying in public how "sympathique" he had found Obama's letter. It provided obvious fodder for the comedians, who wondered whether Obama might be under the impression that the chief international opponent to President Bush's war in Iraq was still running France.
Nicolas Canteloup, the breakfast radio impersonator, today performed an hilarious sketch on the President's imagined phone-call with Obama. "Allô Barack, this is Nicolas... you know, Little Big Man," said Canteloup-Sarkozy. "You know me, the husband of Carla Bruni, you know, the bombshell."
Sensing the differences with Washington ahead of the London summit, Sarkozy has toughened his rhetoric this week while François Fillon, his Prime Minister, was dispatched to lobby in Washington. Sarkozy is determined at least to get a commitment from the reluctant Americans to start work on new world financial regulations.
In a speech in Saint Quentin on Tuesday night, he warned Washington and other foot-draggers that the G20 must take action to "put morality back into financial capitalism". He added: "I will not associate myself with a world summit which decides to decide nothing." It's not clear what he meant by that.
It's a beautiful spring Thursday all over France and several million people are taking the day off. It's another "day of mobilisation", a strike for the public sector and a general venting for others who are joining in mass protests against President Sarkozy, la crise and injustice in general. Paris is almost as quiet as a weekend since many commuters in the region are using their allotted rest days and staying at home.
No matter how often you have watched this ritual, it's always impressive to see the degree to which public opinion and the media approve of the widescale disruption and mass protest. Radio and TV are out this morning with busloads of protesters as they make their way to the demos like supporters ahead of big matches. The state radio stations -- whose staff are on strike -- are broadcasting up-beat music like Soviet radio used to do on May Day mornings.
One poll, by the Ifop institute, found that 78 percent of the public support today's "social movement". It's ironic that the boss of Ifop is Laurence Parisot, who is also the head of Medef, the employers' federation. Parisot has earned widespread contempt for deploring the French habit of taking to the streets to protest against economic hard times. She accused the unions of populism and creating false expectations.
This was deemed such a provocation that Alain Juppé, a former conservative prime minister who was driven from office by the street in the mid-90s, slapped down Parisot in public today. "It's not with arrogance or a form of ignorance of people's concerns that we will get out of the crisis," Juppé said of Parisot's remarks.
The unions, who are organising the marches and strikes, say that Sarkozy will have no choice but to respond to the deep discontent and give way on their demands: These include a higher minimum wage, more taxes on the well-off and an end to his shrinkage of the civil service.
Sarkozy says that he will not offer more than 2.65 billion euros of additional aid for vulnerable households that he promised after the last day of protest, on January 29. The President is said, however, to be seriously worried that alarm over private sector job losses and the economic gloom will feed into the long-simmering revolt by the hardline public sector unions and students. Unemployment has surged past eight percent with an expected loss of a further 350,000 jobs this year. The picture at the top comes from angry protests at a French plant of the German Continental tyre firm which is to close. The "Contis", as the workers there have become known, are the new symbol of abusive business practices.
Sarkozy is not helped by the near absence of the usual opposition, the Socialist party, which is still enfeebled by internal feuding. The Socialist leaders have not even been invited to march with the unions. Polls show the most effective opponent of Sarkozy to be Olivier Besancenot, the young Trotskyite chief of the recently-founded New Anticapitalist Party. Besancenot and his substantial band of followers are bent on the destruction of the system and have no intention of seeking any office. They dream of a brave new dictatorship of the proletariat.
For these people as well as the moderate left, Sarkozy stands as a useful hate figure, for his policies and his personality. I don't usually agree with Figaro, which acts as obedient cheer leader for the President, but it makes a good point on this Sarkophobia today. "In the economic crisis, anti-Sarkozism has become for many a new humanism, a moral posture which suspects everything that touches on money, business, bosses or le pouvoir (the ruling powers).
There is excited talk of a hot spring and even another May '68 but old hands are pointing out that the revolt that year and a rash of violent strikes in the 1970s happened in benign economic times. In 2009, people are too worried about losing their jobs to risk them by joining in revolt. Also, as Sarkozy points out, the majority may approve of the strikes and demonstrations but they do not take part in them.
But you never know with France. Insurrection against le pouvoir is such an old habit.
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]
Regulars here need no introduction to Nicolas Canteloup, the humourist who draws two million listeners on Europe 1 radio every morning with impersonations of politicians and celebrities. Improvising on the day's news Canteloup has a great talent for skewering, not always gently, President Sarkozy and the other big egos who crowd the public stage.
Canteloup gave me an hour of his time today in the Train Bleu, the Belle Epoque brasserie at the Gare de Lyon. He was on his way to the next leg of a sold-out two-year touring show. It was good to get a chance to sound out the man behind the famous pastiches of Super Sarko, sanctimonious Ségolène Royal and the inaudible goody-goody Carla Bruni. Canteloup had come from exercising the horses which are his escape from his day job of mocking France's rulers (a life-long equestrian and former riding instructor, he says his big ambition is to enter England's Badminton trials).
As often with comics off-stage, he is rather diffident, a little austere and modest about what he does. He claims to have no great skill at imitating voices but rather a gift for picking up people's tics and traits and turning them into caricature. He discovered his talent as an amuser when he was a child but only went professional after failing to make it into a police college while a law student at Bordeaux and then working at Club Med resorts.
"I rather fancied the idea of gendarmes and robbers. I suppose that's what I still do in a way," he said. Canteloup, who does not drink or smoke, says he is blessed with political "clients" you couldn't make up. "Sarkozy, with his hyperactivity, is a comic strip character who gives us a lot to work with. He's a gift." The trick is to latch onto the detail. "Every character has their mask, like the commedia dell' arte. For Sarko it's heavy wrist-watches, for Rachida Dati [disgraced Justice Minister] it's beautiful dresses. Carla Bruni, its the little voice and 'everyone is nice'. Bruni is difficult because she is a real pro, in complete control of herself in public -- unlike Sarko-- he says.
Canteloup tries not to meet the targets of his sketches and refuses invitations from politicians. He says that he avoids vulgarity and draws the line at mocking physique -- though his jokes about Sarkozy's short stature are a running gag. He recognises that some of his material skirts the edge of the acceptable. One example was a sketch in January on Israel's bombardment of the Gaza strip.
Most of his victims take the humour in good spirit, even when it verges on the cruel, he says. An exception was Ségolène Royal, who Canteloup sends up as a perpetually indignant victim. "When she lost the presidency, she tried to find the reasons. She said that I was one of them. I was wounded by that because I did not set out to make Segolene lose. I don't take political sides. My aim is to try to find what is funny."
Another who was wounded at first was Gérard Schivardi, a village mayor with a slurred southwestern accent who ran for the presidency in 2007 as candidate for an obscure Trotskyite party. Canteloup's Schivardi is permanently drunk as he offers his views from the supposed village cafe. This has turned the fictional Schivardi into a familiar character. "It has been a jackpot for Schivardi," says Canteloup. "He has gone from a near unknown to a celebrity. I hope he'll stand again for president." Canteloup does Schivardi well because, he says, the south-western twang is his own "native language."
Canteloup agrees that he and his colleagues -- Laurent Gerra, Stéphane Guillon and others -- are benefiting from the economic crisis. "We are in a September 11 atmosphere. There is a kind of world malaise, economic insecurity. People want release."
Taking my leave, Canteloup was curious to know why Times readers would be interested in him since he is not known in the English-speaking world and humour does not translate easily. My answer was that the current French comedy boom is a phenomenon that merits attention and he is one of the leading exponents. Now I have to make it work for the readers who, unlike those on the blog, have not gone looking for something to read about France.
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[Below: Canteloup performing Sarkozy and his other characters on Michel Drucker's TV show. Unusually, he is impersonating one of them to his face: Bernard Kouchner, the perpetually breathless Foreign Minister. Canteloup caricatures Kouchner's emotional, old-fashioned rhetoric, complete with language mistakes. CB]
Canteloup et Kouchner chez Drucker le 26-10-08
[UPDATE March 8. Sarkozy has apparently persuaded Obama to meet him for a quick session at a Normandy beach between the London and Strasbourg summits, on April 3 -- according to le Figaro.] ---------- For a French leader who has often seemed dazzled by the United States, Nicolas Sarkozy has not been helping his case for new friendship with Washington. But you can also understand that he is needled by today's White House visit by Gordon Brown, the first European leader to be invited by President Obama.
Sarkozy had pulled out the diplomatic stops to woo the Obama team before and after his November victory. As Europe's new strongman, as he saw it, Sarko was hoping to make France the new "go to" country for Washington in its relations with the EU. He began, though, with a little spelling mistake, sending a congratulatory note within minutes of the election result in which he wrote by hand "Dear Barak".
The Elysée lobbied hard for a quick Washington invitation and, US diplomat friends tell me, the White House hesitated before falling back on the old relationship with London -- which is really only seen as special on the UK side. "This is obviously a serious diplomatic reverse for President Sarkozy," said Le Nouvel Observateur, a left-leaning weekly that likes to play up the President's difficulties. "He was hoping to be designated by the Obama administration as the privileged interlocutor of the United States in Europe, as the de facto leader of the Old Continent," it said. Le Parisien says today that Washington is snubbing Sarkozy.
The President asked Obama to drop in for at least a photo-opp at the Elysée around the Nato summit in the French city of Strasbourg on April 3. That was refused too. Sarkozy now says that he will "receive" the US leader on the sideliness of the Strasbourg session. Yesterday he had a few minutes with Hilary Clinton at the Gaza aid meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. A few weeks ago, he was saying that meeting the Secretary of State was the job of his Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, not the President of France.
So why the relative cold shoulder from the Americans? Sarkozy is after all about to take a big step towards Washington -- much more than a gesture -- by bringing France back into the military structure of the Nato alliance after a 43-year break? Part of the reason is Sarko's big mouth. Since the financial crisis began in earnest last October, he has sought to score points at home at the expense of the Americans and the British, blaming them for starting the mess. The new administration is not greatly impressed by his messianic demands for "refounding" the international economic system. It has also been annoyed by his public refusal to send more French forces to join the Nato operation in Afghanistan. New French criticism of Israel is another factor. None of this has helped the atmosphere.
In private, Sarkozy is now saying that he has few illusions that the Obama administration will be much more open to Europe than its predecessor. He is said to be irritated by the global adulation of a US president who has eclipsed his own stardom. "It is difficult not to see a little jealousy on the part of a President who so loves to be on the front page -- a little annoyance towards someone who is more a media darling and more powerful than him," said Sud-Ouest newspaper.
That may just be atmospherics and Obama has yet to land in Europe. I suspect that Sarkozy l'Américain,as he once proudly called himself, has not lost the fascination for the United States that he has so often shown. Don't forget the compliments that he paid his last and current wives. Cécilia was the new Jackie Kennedy when he won the presidency in May 2007 and a few months later, he was calling Carla Bruni, her successor, his Marilyn Monroe.
[Picture: Carla and Nicolas taking Manhattan last September. Top picture:Sarkozy playing cowboy on election-eve 2007]
We saw a few months ago that Nicolas Sarkozy was having a good crisis. Like Britain's Gordon Brown at the time he appeared to be on top of the financial turmoil. His boss-of-everything style suited the moment. Now, Super Sarko is coming a little unstuck.
The "hyper-president" has hit trouble with his mania for running France from his palace and reducing his government and parliament to simple executants and spectators. His leadership is looking arbitrary and even autocratic. Members of his cabinet are talking about their doubts. Comparisons with Napoleon Bonaparte and Vladimir Putin are coming not just from the Socialist opposition, but from within Sarkozy's own rightwing camp.
That is exaggerating, but this week a couple of cases have added to doubts about his judgment. One is his appointment of Francois Pérol, his deputy chief of staff and closest economic adviser, to the post of chief of a big new banking group. Pérol had himself put together the now state-aided group -- a union of the Caisse d'Epargne and Banque Populaire -- from the Elysée palace. This brought howls of conflict of interest. Sarkozy then said that the appointment had been cleared bythe state Ethics Commission. That turned out to be false. The head of the commission had merely given a personal opinion in private. Even Edouard Balladur, the former Prime Minister who was Sarkozy's mentor, said this was too much. The Socialists want criminal charges brought if the appointment goes ahead.
Balladur was the source of Sarkozy's other trouble. Appointed by the President to suggest administrative reforms, he came up with a new map of France. The historic regions of Picardy and the Auvergne would simply vanish, Brittany would reclaim its lost region around Nantes, Normandy would be united and Paris would be expanded to engulf the surrounding region. In a nice political touch, Poitou-Charentes would also be eradicated. That region happens to be the power base of its president, Ségolène Royal.
You don't need to know much about French attachment to le terroir to guess the reaction. The regions may only have been political entities since the early 1980s, but the attachment to the historic provinces, such as Auvergne and Picardy, runs deep (we saw this with the car license plates last month). The Balladur scheme may fizzlebut Sarko is being accused of trying to recast France with the whim of an absolute monarch.
Sarkozy's critics, including some in his own Cabinet, say that his system of forcing la rupture by riding rough-shod over tradition and institutions has reached its limit. In a time of unrest and upheaval, he should stop behaving like a monarch and delegate power to his Prime Minister, François Fillon. He should appoint ministers with authority in their own right. His present cabinet is full of indebted courtiers who take orders from the palace advisers who run their sectors. A good example is Christine Lagarde, the Finance Minister, a lawyer with no political background who is struggling out of her depth while Sarkozy and his staff run the economy.
An un-named minister told le Monde: A real government has to be established, with a screen between the President and events. Nicolas Sarkozy must do what he does not know how to do: work in a team and confer value on his ministers. The question is whether he can put into question his two years in power so far.
That remark, albeit anonymous, has caused a stir since it appeared yesterday. Criticism also came on the record from Jean-Francois Copé, the parliamentary leader of Sarkozy's UMP party, who has turned into a dissident. "The challenge is to create a hyper-parliament opposite the hyper-president from which ministers can draw support," he said.
Sarko is a pragmatist, but few see him retreating from the pilot's seat and becoming a lofty chairman like his recent predecessors and especially Jacques Chirac, the last incumbent. French presidents have enjoyed near absolute power most of the time since the job was invented for Charles de Gaulle in 1958. The exception has been nine years of cohabition with opposition governments. Until Sarkozy, recent presidents have followed de Gaulle's precedent of delegating management of the country to their Prime Minister. Sarkozy is telling people that he is aware of the discontent -- which is reflected in rock bottom approval ratings -- but he says the mood is the result of the economic slump, not his leadership. In other words, Europe's modern Bonaparte will march on, heedless of the storm around him.
[Top picture is from the cover of a recent edition of Le Point news magazine. ]
![Bronzes_chinois[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e20112790e45ab28a4-400wi)
France often quotes a 1995 pop song by Alain Bashung called Ma petite entreprise ne connais pas la crise -- The crisis isn't touching my little business.
The title could be sung by the art market today after the spectacular sale of theYves Saint Laurent-Pierre Bergé collection. The three-day auction at the Grand Palais has defied the economic gloom and brought in 373 million euros, breaking several world records.
The song does not apply to the petite entreprise of Franco-Chinese relations. Beijing is using the sale of those two little Chinese animal heads to further its punishment of President Sarkozy for his antics last year around Tibet and the Beijing Olympics. The hare and the rat, stolen when the British and French sacked Beijing in 1860, went for 14 million euros each to anonymous bidders despite China's attempts to block the sale. Jackie Chan, the Kung Fu actor, jumped in on Beijing's side today. Here is my story.
Back to the rest of the art. The sight of all those bidders flush with their millions has not cheered France much as the bleak times hit home but it is being greeted as as a triumph by Sarkozy's government. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister, called the auction in the Grand Palais a "a world success which shows that Paris is one of the major centres for the international art market."
In a market that is apparently withstanding the slump, you would expect works by Matisse, de Chirico and Degas to notch up records. For example, Matisse's 1911 oil "Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose" [right], fetched 32 million euros, the sale's highest price and a record for the painter whose collages inspired Saint Laurent's designs.
![YSL-fauteuil-dragon_large[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e20112790e83fe28a4-300wi)
But how about this elephant-like arm-chair from the early 20th century Art Deco era? The squat, very worn, brown leather seat by the Irish designer Eileen Gray sold for 21.9 million euros. Souren Melikian, the veteran expert at the International Herald Tribune, said today that this was "a price that was until now utterly unimaginable for any piece of Art Deco furniture."
Crisis or no crisis, the Paris auction had shown that there had been no change since the days of bubbling optimism, he said. "The prodigious vitality of the art market across the board cannot be doubted for a second. If the goods are there, the prices rise higher than ever before."
To close, we can admire this piece by Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian sculptor. It was made from stacked wood blocks between 1914-1917 and entitled "Madame L.R.". It sold for 26 million euros -- 33 million US dollars.
As a follow up to last week's post on the evils of wine, the Health Minister has just injected a little common sense in the debate. Roselyne Bachelot says that alcohol should be consumed in a "reasonable, cultural and balanced" way. That's Bachelot with the pink champagne above, with Xavier Bertrand, the new boss of President Sarkozy's Mouvement Populaire party.
Bachelot noted the conclusion of the cancer institute that a single glass of wine a day more than doubled the risk of certain types of cancer. But she added: "We are a country that produces wine. I enjoy a glass with my meals. Banning wine in our country is impossible and not desirable."
Growers are reassured. They are also pleased that the Government does not, as they feared, intend to forbid wine-tasting at winery cellars and food fairs. This prospect had arisen because a new law will ban open bars at public social events. This is intended to discourage youngsters from getting drunk. These as-much-as you-can-drink venues are said to contribute to the rapid spread of British-style binge-drinking among French teenagers and students. Wine-tasting has nothing to do with this, said Bachelot. "I have never heard of wine growers offering as much as people want. They usually just put a little drop in the glass."
The industry was also pleased to hear from Bachelot that the government will not prevent them from advertising and selling on the internet. A new law will set rules on the net and the alcohol trade. No pop-up advertising will be allowed and none will be tolerated on sites for sports or young people. But vineyards can continue to promote their produce and take electronic orders.
In the midst of the winter gloom, President Sarkozy's administration has chosen this moment to tell its people to stop drinking wine. You are hearing right. The Ministry of Health has issued rules for reducing the risk of cancer and one of the main ones is never drink alcohol.
"The consumption of alcohol, and especially wine, is discouraged," say guidelines that are drawn from the findings of the National Cancer Institute (INCA). A single glass of wine per day will raise your chance of contracting cancer by up to 168 percent, it says.
Not surprisingly, the wine producers are seeing red. Forget those 1980s findings that anti-oxidants in wine were good for your health. "Small daily doses of alcohol are the most harmful. There is no amount, however small, which is good for you," said Dominique Maraninchi, INCA's president.
Of course this is not new. Experts around the world have been telling people to go dry if they want to stay healthy. But it's sobering when the authorities in France, a country where wine is part of life and the national heritage, decide that it's time for everyone to get on the wagon.
The pleasantly-illustrated ministry brochure makes grim reading. In the interests of prevention, the INCA collated hundreds of international studies and summarized the relation between types of cancer with food, drink and life-style. As you can guess, apart from wine, the dangerous stuff is red meat, charcuterie, salt and so on. Sentences like this do not do much for the appetite: "The risk of colon-rectal cancer rises by 29 percent per 100 gramme portion of red meat per day and 21 percent per 50 gramme portion of charcuterie."
Being over-weight greatly increases risks of certain types of cancer. As well as eating a balanced diet, the ministry tells us to undertake 30 minutes of vigorous exercise at least five days a week.
Alcohol facilitates cancers of the mouth, larynx, oesophagus, colon-rectum, and breast, says the guidelines. "The cause is above all the transformation of ethanol in alcohol to acetaldehyde, which damages DNA in healthy cells."
The wine producers are calling foul, accusing the "ayatollahs" of the health lobby of trying to kill one of the glories of the nation. They are noting the suspicious coincidence that France now has its' first tee-total president. Nicolas Sarkozy sips mineral water and orange juice when all around him are knocking back the Champagne and Burgundy (Carla Bruni, his wife, is not so abstemious and both she and Sarko are smokers). "This persecution of wine has to stop," said the General Association of Wine Producers. The growers say that the scientific evidence is contradictory and they point to a World Health Organisation study that found that moderate consumption had a preventive effect against cancer.
Xavier de Volontat, president of the producers' assocation in the southwestern Languedoc region, told us by phone today: "The extremists must not be allowed to take consumers hostage... Wine consumption has dropped by 50 percent over the last 20 years in France but cancer has increased. You have to admit, that's a paradox."
"We never said that alcohol is not dangerous for health," de Volontat said. "We give advice on our internet sites and at public events. We are for responsible, reasonable and moderate consumption. .. It is not in our interest to see our consumers dying of cancer or in car accidents."
I would like to believe Mr de Volontat and his fellow growers. It's hard to imagine a good meal in France without wine (if you're not working, driving or piloting planes afterwards). But I remember reporting similar defensive arguments from the tobacco industry when they were fighting cancer claims in the 1980s.
Recognising that the French people are not super-human, the ministry says that if you are unable to stop entirely, the main thing is to drink only occasionally. It's wishful thinking, I suppose, to imagine that maybe an extra dose of my daily exercise will cancel the damage from the daily wine.
[Below: Bordeaux vineyard]
A day out in Iraq must be relaxing for Nicolas Sarkozy, given the troubles that are stacking up for him at home. It's time for a run through his formidable list of headaches and I will respond to a false allegation from his office today that we British media misreported him.
First the news: Sarko dropped into Iraq this morning, becoming the first French president to visit the country. His arrival turns the page on the Franco-American spat over the 2003 invasion. It is a step towards restoring the diplomatic and commercial interests that France used to have in Iraq. Before the first Gulf war, Paris was one of the chief arms suppliers to the late President Saddam Hussein. And before the 2003 war, France's Total company had obtained Iraqi oil rights in anticipation of the end of the embargo applied to Saddam at the time.
Meeting President Talabani and Noori al Maliki, the Prime Minister, Sarkozy said: "France believes in the unity of Iraq. The world needs a united, democratic, sovereign and strong Iraq. France wishes your complete integration in the Middle East and in the world." France is ready to give Iraq unlimited cooperation, he said, adding: "We say to French companies that the time has come to return to Iraq.”
And here is what is not going right for the French President:
His TV talk last week failed to quell unrest over the crisis. The unions have called for another day of national strikes, on March 19 although that is in part a lever ahead of negotiations with the Government next week.
Sarkozy's ratings have slumped again after months of recovery. Approval for the President has sunk between five and 10 points over the past month to the mid-30s, according to several polls in the past week.
His bail-out for the car industry has started a fight with Brussels and Prague over protectionism. He obliged the two big car-makers to promise to stop off shoring production in return for the state's six billion euros. He singled out French car production in the Czech Republic in his TV talk. The Czech government, which now holds the EU presidency, has called an urgent summit to deal with this.
In a reversal of roles, the formerly free-market Sarko was attacked this morning by François Chérèque, leader of the big CFDT labour union, for indulging in protectionism. "Blocking the market economy in order to make the French buy French means going back to the level of debate of the 1970s," Chérèque said on France-Inter radio. Of course the same alarm is being sounded in Britain, the US and elsewhere.
A strike is spreading in the universities. Valery Pécresse, the Higher Education Minister, is trying to defuse a revolt by teacher-researchers. Sarkozy seems to fear a wild-fire uprising by teachers and students more than anything else.
Resistance is growing from both the opposition and Sarkozy's own camp against his plan to take France fully back into the Nato alliance in April, 43 years after President de Gaulle withdrew in the name of national independence. Sarkozy is being accused of selling out French sovereignty. He is worried that Parliament, in which his party holds a strong majority, may not support the Nato move.
Guadeloupe, the French-owned Caribbean island, is in insurrection [right] over high living costs and Sarkozy is worried that the unrest will spread back to France.
He is in a quandary. If he appeases the three-week revolt by giving in to demands for subsidising higher incomes, he will further disrupt the local economy and contradict his strategy for handling the crisis in France. So today, Sarkozy refused the wage rise demanded by the group leading the mutiny. It goes by the colourful Creole name Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon" (In French, Collectif contre l'exploitation outrancière or Collective Against Extreme Exploitation).
The Caribbean strike, which has now spread to neighbouring Martinique, underlines the impossible costs of subsidising poor colonies on the other side of oceans while treating them as almost ordinary French départements (counties) with welfare protection and seats in the national parliament.
Perhaps the most minor of Sarkozy's problems has been the fall-out from his swipe at Britain in his TV appearance. It seemed gratuitous and it has lost him the goodwill of Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister.
I don't like wasting time on cross-Channel rivalry, but will make an exception because the Elysée Palace blamed us for the row today. Sarkozy's office tried to weasel out of the affair by accusing us of mis-representing what he said. "President Sarkozy deplores the way in which his comments on the British economy were reported in the United Kingdom," their statement said.
That is shameless. There was no misreporting. As we saw here already, Sarkozy chose to bring up Britain as the counter-example of what he wants for France. Gordon Brown had cut taxes to re-start the economy and it had not worked, he said. Britain was suffering because it was so tied into the US financial sector, he said. "England no longer has industry, unlike France. That is because England, 25 years ago, made the choice of services and notably, financial services," he said.
This was accurately reported, though we did fail to point out that Sarkozy got his facts wrong. Le Monde made amends today, explaining that Britain still has more industry than France.
--------------------
Footnote: My use of the term Anglo-Saxon last week has stirred some argument. I don't think there's anything wrong with the French using it as short hand for the developed English-speaking nations that originated with immigration from the UK. For France and the rest of the continent this has a clear sense. Simply saying "English-speaking countries" does not cover the same thing. I'm hybrid Scottish-Australian but am not offended when Britons are collectively known as les anglais, los ingleses, англичане (Anglichanye - in Russian) or whatever. It's just custom that's all. And I also fail to see what's patronising in using Gallic as a variant for French in the broad sense, even if it offends Bretons, Basques, Ch'tis and residents of le neuf-trois -- the Seine Saint Denis département on the poor northeastern edge of Paris. I don't call the French Gauls -- although Variety, the Hollywood trade paper, has always done so [example here].
President Sarkozy pulled off a smooth performance in his long television audience with his restive nation last night. It was a strange show -- a regal lecture from the Elysée Palace in answer to soft questions from four journalists, one of whom he romanced a couple of years ago.
More on the behaviour of the journalists below, but first the summmary. Over 15 million people tuned in to one of the three main television channels whose prime time Sarko had commandeered for his pep talk. For 90 minutes, he held the stage, exuding his usual self-confidence as he explained that he understood people's anguish -- which was due not to his policies but to a world crisis caused by the Anglo-Saxons.
Sarkozy gave a little ground, promising corporate tax cuts, some welfare benefits and talks with the trade unions. Otherwise, he refused to follow demands that he cut taxes and raise the minimum wage to boost consumer spending. The British have tried that and it did not work, he said. France would stick with his 26 billion euro plan for investing in infrastructure and industry.
"The English have chosen to follow the strategy of stimulus through consumption, notably by lowering VAT (sales tax) by two points. It has done absolutely nothing," he said.
The British and the Americans came in for harsh treatment. The USA and the UK had been hit far harder than France in this "worst crisis for a century", said Sarkozy. "When you see the situation in the United States and the United Kingdom, we don't want to look like them."
Sarkozy also said he would refuse to "pay America's debt" and he demanded US agreement to radical reforms of the world financial system. "They're not going to get away with explaining that everything is going to go on as before."
You hear the same points about the US and Britain all over Europe, but not usually from heads of state. Sarkozy's relations with Gordon Brown and Barack Obama are clearly not as rosy as we thought. On the other hand, he went out of his way to praise Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, with whom he has really does not get on. Downing Street seethed as the British media and opposition had fun with Sarkozy's words today.
Predictably the unions and the Socialist opposition gave Sarkozy a low grade. "He is fobbing us off with talks and negotiations," said Martine Aubry, the Socialist leader. "He has no problem ramming decisions through when he wants to cut taxes for the super rich, or to make people work on Sundays," she said.
The unions are not satisfied and are talking of another day of strikes and protests. I have a feeling that they will happen.
The Sarko-show has generated another story today -- the meek behaviour of the star TV journalists who were invited by the palace to question the President.
There is not much new in this because France's political boss is also the head of state, unlike most other European countries. That makes an interview more ceremonial than with a Prime Minister. Since General de Gaulle in the 1950s, journalists have always deferred heavily to French Presidents. One exception was Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, who became an ex star presenter last year after telling Sarkozy in an interview that he had been acting like a little boy.
But Sarkozy does more than his predecessors to bully and influence the media and he can be intimidating in an interview, as I have found out first hand. As president, he loads his evening broadcasts in his favour by summoning the TV to his turf -- a studio set up in the palace ballroom. Last night there was a visible studio audience of palace staff.
He was given an exceptionally easy time by Laurence Ferrari of TF1, David Pujadas of France 2, Alain Duhamel of RTL and Guy Lagache of M6. Mediapart, a serious leftwing news site, poured scorn on them today. "Nicolas Sarkozy offered the pitiful spectacle of an idle king... revelling in vague but gilded questions."
The SNJ, the main -- and leftwing -- journalists' union, condemned the interviewers in a statement. "They perfectly played their role as court jesters... In no other so-called democratic country do politicians choose their interlocutors like that," it said.
No-one has publicly mentioned what many people knew as they watched Ferrari lobbing her questions to Monsieur le Président, that she went out with with him in the short period after his divorce in October 2007. He is said in the business to have played a role in her promotion Poivre d'Arvor's job.
When he was elected, Sarkozy promised to hold open US-style presidential news conferences. The only time he tried, in January last year, the result was so disastrous for him that he forgot about the idea.
[below: Ferrari and Pujadas not grilling Sarkozy]
No apologies for another French nostalgia post so soon after the last one. It would be impossible to ignore this item. The Citroen car company has just set pulses racing with news that they are to take a leap back to the future by relaunching their legendary DS model.
Word of the rebirth of the symbol of post-war driving dash prompted a burst of day-dreaming. Could we be in for a revival of the swooping-nosed flying-saucer of a car that came out in 1955 and defined the style of the de Gaulle era? "Please don't change a thing," pleaded one Citroen die-hard on a Californian web site. A radio commentator wondered: "What will be back next? Young Brigitte Bardot and the Caravelle (airliner) ?"
[Read The Times original 1955 review of the DS from our archives, here]
[Below:Bardot in her DS. Top picture: fanciful advertisement of the era]
Well, it seems that Citroen may be pulling a bit of a hoax. The company has rushed to calm the excitement, pointing out that its new DS series will not be a replica but a modern homage to the "spirit" of the car whose initials are pronounced déesse -- goddess. The new models which are due to be unveiled tomorrow and sold from next year, are apparently not an exercise in retro design like the Volkswagen's New Beetle, BMW's Mini and the new Fiat 500. Citroen, whose cars long ago lost their magic, may be taking a risk if they are just using the revered badge for a marketing exercise at a time of slumping sales.
Citroen fan sites the and media have seized on the DS news to revisit a car that qualified for the much-abused word icon. Libération,which one would expect to be ideologically opposed to the symbol of the 60s bourgeoisie, produced a two-page tribute with an A-Z of DS lore. B was of course for Roland Barthes, the semiologist who elevated the DS to cultural object in his 1956 book Mythologies. The DS was "one of those objects that have descended from another universe...from science fiction. La Dé-esse is firstly a new Nautilus," wrote Barthes.
Unlike the humble originals of the Beetle and the other modern retro-mobiles, the DS was a luxurious big car with a revolutionary design for its time. Adored by film stars, President de Gaulle and the well-off, the DS was as sophisticated as its proletarian sister, the Deux Chevaux (2CV) was primitive [my 2CV post]. Its aerodynamic looks came from jet designers and its hydraulic suspension, steering, brakes and transmission were beyond the abilities of many a rural mechanic. It scored only modest sales in Britain and the USA, although many are kept running in both countries by loyal admirers.
The DS bowed out in 1975 but a decade later its quirky looks were still so futuristic that Hollywood used one in Back to the Future II as a taxi set in the year 2015.
Citroen, which is part of the Peugeot-Citroen group, has never since managed to recapture the old excitement. President Sarkozy is driven around in a Citroen C6, as well as in a Peugeot 607 and Renault Vel Satis. Sales of the flagship C6, a big saloon that was launched two years ago as a "Mercedes-beater", have been disappointing.
This imposing 20-foot tall hunk of steel is drawing curious glances on the Champs Elysées. It's not sculpture or a bit of a movie set. It's the original top of the bow of the SS France, the great 1960s ocean liner.
The four-ton slice of maritime history, which inevitably brings to mind the Titanic film, is the biggest item in an auction of relics from the liner that was once the pride of the nation. Most of the collectible items from the France were sold off years ago, but world-wide enthusiasm for old French design has opened a new market for unlikely memorabilia.
Jacques Dvorczak, a nautical enthusiast, went to the Indian shipyard where the former France is in the last stages of being broken up. They cut up the bow and he shipped it along with 445 other pieces for the sale at the Artcurial house on February 8 and 9. The items, which range from a captain's chair and deck stools to portholes and railings, are being estimated at between 10,000 to 80,000 euros each. Among the odder objects are children's nursery decorations and a control panel from the engine room of the 57,000 tonne vessel that was the rival to the Queen Elizabeth and the USS United States.
[TUESDAY UPDATE: see item on new DS Citroen at end of this post]
The SS France was the ultimate in ocean-going elegance but entered service late, when the jet airliner was putting an end to the old New York-Europe liners. It was sold off in the late 1970s and ended its days as a cruise liner called The Norway. It's demise as the flagship of the nation was mourned in a famous lachrimose pop-song by Michel Sardou, "Ne m'appelez plus jamais France" [Never call me France again"]. (watch video here)
"The buyers are people who want to take away a little bit of one of the great works of French industrial history," François Tajan, the auctioneer in charge of the sale, told us. "A sale like this is like a final homage. In these days of economic crisis, these sales are very far from financial speculation. They are tangible, real, human objects from an age of progress... They symbolise both technical success and un art de vivre. Today everything is different, all about zapping."
[Below: the France]
Despite the slump, the sellers hope that they will follow other recent auctions which have scored unexpected millions for remnants of France's stylish industrial past. In October 2007, the auction of 1,000 parts from Concorde supersonic jets -- a Franco-British technical triumph of the 1960s -- brought in a million euros, four times the estimate.
Several slices of a dismantled iron staircase from the Eiffel tower (left, with Gustave Eiffel) have been sold off for hundreds of thousands of pounds the past two years. Two of them grace restaurants in New York and New Orleans.
Excitement is also building around the imminent sale of the rusting, eight-trumpet siren [below] that graced the historic Renault car factory at Billancourt, on the edge of Paris. Installed in the 1930s and used in the war to warn of British bombing raids, the siren is an emblem of France's heroic industrial age. Described by le Nouvel Observateur magazine as an "icon of the working class", it is expected to raise over 30,000 euros.
![Sirene_renault[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e201116836ec68970c-150wi)
In similar vein serious sums are being paid for the few surviving black and white Renault 4CV cars of the Paris police in the 1950s. Also being auctioned are the gaily decorated advertising cars [below] that followed Tour de France cycle race in the 1950s distributing free sweets and product samples.
![Voitures_pub_tour_de_France[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e201116836ef0e970c-200wi "Voitures_pub_tour_de_France[1]") Another piece of retro nostalgia now on sale is a DS Citroen [below] that was custom made in 1973 for Philippe Bouvard, a star radio journalist who is still going strong. The DS was one of the great design monuments of the age. Roland Barthes, the semiologist and author of Mythologies, famously dubbed it the French cathedral of the 20th century. Bouvard's version, with coachwork by Henri Chapron, was equipped as a mobile office and radio studio, with a double walnut desk in the back.
All these are symbols of a time when France and its design had a much more distinctive flavour. "They are the symbol of a history that has come to an end," said Hubert Delobette, author of "Crazily French", a book on great French objects, such as the Bic ballpoint and the Solex mo-ped (celebrated here last month). "We are afraid of tomorrow," said Delobette. "These familiar objects are reassuring. There is nothing like that today. There is the grandeur of French luxury products, but they do not move people like the SS France and the Eiffel tower."
UPDATE: Citroen cars have just announced that they are about to relaunch the great DS model. The original ended production in 1975 after 20 years. They are to unveil the prototype later in the week. Like the new Mini, Beatle and Fiat 500, it will be an attempt to revive the design in modern form, keeping a flavour of what made it so special. I'll post on it when there is a picture available in a couple of days. The car will be marketed from next year, they say.
[Bouvard's Citroen DS 1973]
![Ds_bouvard_1[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e2011168390bfd970c-320wi)
It's time for the score card from France's 'day of mobilisation', as yesterday's strikes and protests were politely called.
First, "Black Thursday", as it was billed, did not happen. The rail and city transport unions failed to paralyse the country as they had hoped. Services were cut, but continued to run. The lines I use on the Paris Métro were almost normal and delightfully empty.
That is because millions across France took the day off, to avoid the hassle of commuting and also, for some, to take part in protest marches against President Sarkozy. Unlike the low-key strikes, les manifestations were largely a success. Over a million people -- 2.5 million according to the unions -- turned out for the marches, of which by far the biggest was the Paris parade from la Place de la Bastille to the Opéra. Over 100,000 seemed to be on the street.
The provincial papers joined in the festive mood today, proclaiming local marches to be "massive", "giant", "record" and, according to La Dépêche du Midi, they were "monster-sized". François Chérèque, the head of the moderate CFDT union, called the march one of the biggest demonstrations of the last 20 years. That is over-stating things. The manifs were the biggest against Sarkozy since he took office in May 2007, but about the same size as protests in 2003 and 2006 against reforms by Jacques Chirac, his predecessor.
But the unions are right to boast that the marches saw an unusually strong turnout from beyond the public sector that always dominate France's ritual days of labour demonstrations. There were throngs of students, retired people and battalions from the car industry and other parts of the private sector where fear of unemployment is running high. There were no private sector strikes. People took the day off to vent their wrath against Sarko. There was even a contingent of police officers -- in plain clothes and off duty -- who were demanding "du fric pour les flics" -- cash for the cops. They were presumably not among the trouble-making stragglers who were being walloped by riot police when I left our office on the place de l'Opéra last night.
Down at the Elysée Palace, Sarkozy's team is relieved that the strikes made little mark and that the parades were not as big as they might have been. The President put out a conciliatory post-match statement, saying that "the fears expressed in the streets are legitimate" but he made clear that he blamed the economic crisis, not his policies. "In this particularly difficult time, our fellow citizens fear for their jobs," he said.
Sarkozy has also invited the union leaders in for talks -- but not before the end of February. They are warning that they will not let him off the hook, but the Elysée made clear this morning that nothing will change. Raymond Soubie, Sarkozy's chief adviser on labour relations, said that the President has no intention of heeding the unions demands that he go beyond his 26 billion euro stimulus for the economy: They want him to boost consumer spending. The relaunch plan, aimed at banks, industry and infrastructure investment, has only just started, said Soubie. "Historically, stimulating consumer spending has always been a failure."
So that leaves us heading for more frustration and anger in the street. The mood is definitely dark. I hear it everywhere -- from real people, outside our Parisian media-political world. People feel that they are the chief victims of a crisis for which others are responsible, yet Sarko is shovelling billions into banks that are still making profits and paying their bosses handsomely.
With an approval rating of 47 percent, Sarkozy can still count on support from a large silent minority. But there will be more unrest. The President may be regretting having tempted fate with his provocative boast last summer that "when there is a strike in France now, nobody notices".
[Note on the banner slogan in demo picture that says "Yes weekend". That's a pun on President Obama's Yes We Can, attacking Sarkozy's attempts to allow shops to work on Sundays]
[Below: a common slogan yesterday: Rêve Générale -- General Dream -- a play with Grêve Générale -- General Strike]
President Sarkozy faces the broadest revolt in his 20-month reign this week when state workers and other disaffected groups vent their discontent by staging a day of strikes and protest that they hope will paralyse France
Sarkozy has faced down public transport, school and hospital strikes before, but this time he is worried that the usual ritual of disruption and street marches could herald more general unrest.
The stoppages on Thursday are being led by the usual conservative crowd -- the public transport, teachers and hospital unions who are resisting Sarkozy's cost-cutting reforms. But all the main trade unions are piling in, along with students, some private sector workers and the slowly-reviving Socialist opposition. The idea is to register a giant ras-le-bol, a display of anger towards Sarkozy, his reforms, falling incomes, the economic crisis and the system in general.
The hardliners, such as Christian Mahieux [top picture] and his SUD union, want nothing less than old-fashioned insurrection and the overthrow of France's semi-capitalist state. Libération gave pride of place today to Alain Badiou, a philospher, who said: "My dream is that Sarkozy will be chased from office by the street."
Badiou is indeed a dreamer, but remarks like that are striking a chord beyond the usual radical world. As I reported last week, the hard times are breeding sympathy for the the old revolutionary devil, though in a limited way. People feel that they are bearing the brunt of the crisis while Sarkozy's friends, the bailed-out bankers, are walking off with their money. This explains why, according to a CSA poll last weekend, 70 percent of the country sympathises with a day of strikes that will disrupt their lives.
Sarkozy is said to be fearing a flare-up driven by unions and students of the type that came from no-where in the peaceful France of 1968 and almost overthrew President de Gaulle. Some members of his UMP party say that there is a dangerous mood afoot. Sarkozy is doing his best to sound reasonable. He dropped into a factory near Chateauroux today and said that he found it normal that people were protesting to express their fears but that he had to keep up his reforms.
"I understand your difficulties. I understand the problems of rising costs, of paying for retirement, the kids' school.. but I have to see things with sang froid and not react to what is written in the newspaper or the person who is shouting loudest," he said.
Sarkozy may be right to be worried. It does not take much to spark one of France's regular upheavals against the ruling power. But the time does not seem to be right for revolution. Outside the job-protected state sector, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of French strikes, people are more worried about holding on to their work than overthrowing Sarko.
The President can take comfort from his latest ratings. The monthly BVA poll today reported that he remains relatively popular compared with his nadir this time last year. He slipped by only one point since December. Forty-seven percent approve of his performance while 45 percent disapprove.
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.
A hint of revolt is floating in the French air these days. It's not dramatic enough to grab foreign attention, like rioting on the Left Bank or cars ablaze in the ghettos. But you get a sense that, with recession biting, a small part of the country is spoiling for a bit of old-fashioned insurrection.
There is a whiff of the old civil war which France has never really resolved since the revolution of 1789. President Sarkozy is, as usual, stirring it up, demonizing the foe. The adversary is embodied by Olivier Besancenot, the anti-capitalist figurehead, and a cast including a bloody-minded trade union called SUD, radical school students and an assortment of dreamy anarchists.
The most dramatic incident so far was the 24-hour shut-down by SUD workers last week of the Gare Saint Lazare, France's second-busiest railway station. Their wildcat strike caused havoc for hundreds of thousands of Paris commuters. It made a mockery of Sarkozy's new law on minimum public service during labour disputes. He told them that they would not get away with it again.
This was a new kind of strike -- or social movement, to use the funny euphemism. The SUD people have been gaining power over the past few years. They use the hard language of revolt and make clear that they want to break the system, not earn more money or retire earlier. Even the CGT, the communist-led union that used to dominate the railways, flinched from supporting SUD stoppage.
Besancenot, the cherubic Trotskyite who is one of France's most popular political figures, backs the SUD movement -- which extends beyond railways -- and the other radical stunts which have been making headlines.
Among the odder episodes has been the affair of the "Tarnac gang". This involves a group of anti-capitalist, middle class university drop-outs who were arrested in a spectacular police raid on a farm in November. They were charged with terrorism. Their alleged offence was to have stopped three high-speed TGV express trains by sabotaging their electricity lines. All but the alleged ring-leader have now been released on bail. Their rural neighbours are rallying behind them, the leftwing media like them and concerts are being organised to support them.
Then there are the highly publicised raids on supermarkets by self-appointed "Robin Hood" groups. They walk through the aisles of busy supermarkets piling up carts with food and drink, including luxury items like champagne and foie gras. They proceed to the check-out and refuse to pay. They explain to management that they are "liberating" the food for distribution to the poor. In all but one of about a dozen raids so far, the Robin Hoods have got away with their goods after causing a scene that risked driving customers from the store.
Since a raid that garnered 5,000 euros of food in Paris on December 20, the Monoprix chain has been attempting to prosecute these 'subversive shoppers' for robbery with violence and insults. Civil disobedience of this type is sometimes organised via Facebook. It is encouraged by various websites and leftwing media such as Libération and le Nouvel Observateur. Cheeky stunts like that please older journalists who remember chanting "Property is Theft" back in the demonstrations of their youth.
The Obs published an admiring piece last week on "Those French who don't want to play the game". It tracked groups that go around switching off department store lighting and state post-office workers who disobey orders to raise the price of services.
Writing approvingly of the "collectives" who raid supermarkets, Libération said: "The politicians would be wrong not to listen to these sounds from a society pushed to the limit, which feels that the straightjacket of ultra-liberalism is being torn apart." Of course Libé talks like that. It was born in '68. But it is also a respected mainstream daily, so that gives a flavour of the mood in part of France. (And for the record, I love Libé and it's the paper I buy first in the morning)
Sarkozy's people say that the President has been getting warnings from police intelligence that discontent is brewing, especially among the young. He is worried that a hard year will stir unrest in the streets. Fear of Greek-style riots by teenagers caused him over Christmas to shelve plans to reform the Lycées -- the high schools. The left are pointing out, with some cause, that Sarkozy is using the threat of the hard left for his own political ends in the same way as President Mitterrand used Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far right bogeyman in the 1980s and 90s. By inflating the importance of Le Pen, the Socialist president discredited the moderate right. Now, with the Socialist opposition in semi-coma, Sarkozy is exaggerating the dangers of Besancenot and the potentially violent left.
On the plane coming home from the Middle East two weeks ago, King Sarko I sounded a little anxious about his fickle subjects and his possible fate. "France is one of the most difficult countries to govern," he said. "Louis XVI, with his young wife, was one of the most loved kings for 10 years. Both of them ended with their heads on the block." Don't worry. No-one imagines that Sarko and Carla Bruni will end up on the guillotine.
Here's another reason for France to cheer up. The country is enjoying its biggest baby boom for three decades.
In 2008, 800,000 babies were born in continental France, a figure not achieved since 1981, according to figures today from the National Statistical Institute. The fertility rate rose in 2008 from 1.97 to 2.02 children per woman, consolidating France's lead over the rest of Europe.
The Europeans have lately produced on average 1.5 children per woman. The EU's 2008 figures are not out yet, but Ireland was second behind France in 2007 and Slovakia was bottom at 1.25.
The rising birth figures are testimony to the success of France's long-standing effort, following long population decline, to encourage people to have children. I don't need to run through all the generous (expensive) state-provided child care benefits, the free nursery schools, travel subsidiess and the family allowances than can reach 500 euros a month.
The return to work last week of Rachida Dati, the Justice Minister, five days after giving birth, was an exception to the tradition of long, paid maternity leave. One of Dati's Cabinet colleagues has just suggested making the 16 weeks' paid leave compulsory for all working women.
If recent trends continue, France will overtake Germany as Europe's most populous nation around the middle of this century. The new year began with 64.3 million inhabitants, 366,500 more than in 2008. Germany has 82.4 million but has long suffered from a low fertility rate of below 1.4. Russia, with its big demographic problem, managed to get back to that level in 2007 from 1.2 in 2000. The United Kingdom, with a population of just under 61 million, has been doing better lately with a 1.85 fertility rate and it could also overtake Germany.
France is approaching the fertility of the United States, which, with its influx of young immigrants, is usually held up as the model for ageing Europe. The expected US rate for 2008 is 2.1. The very healthy French birth rate is certainly helped by the fairly large and young part of the population of recent immigrant origin -- as in Britain and Germany. Public discussion of the role of immigrants in the population growth is still largely taboo in France, though this is changing.
The French figures are impressive because the population is ageing faster than that of the USA and other regions outside Europe. The number of women of child-bearing age -- mainly born in the 1970s and 80s -- has been shrinking by two percent a year for the past two years. The average age of motherhood has now risen to nearly 30. Another big change from the old days is that 52 percent of children were born to unmarried parents. The figure was only six percent in 1970.
That's a big load of statistics, but they tell a story. The good population news is an example of the intelligent long-term policies in which France has excelled in recent decades. It was echoed, in the economic domain this week in a Newsweek magazine column headlined: The Last Model Standing is France.
 The economy is down, yet the French are flocking in near record numbers to entertainment, or culture as they prefer to call it.
Theatres, concerts, art shows, museums and festivals have been packed over the past year. The biggest success has been the movie industry. Cinema attendance jumped 6.2 percent in 2008 and, for only the second time in 22 years, French films took more than American ones (45.7 percent of the market compared with 44.5 for the Americans). None of the other big film markets in Europe saw such an overall box office rise last year.
I'll sketch the detail below, but news of the good year has coincided with an emotional moment for cinéphiles and France at large: the return to the screen of the much-loved Jean-Paul Belmondo, 75. Seven years after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage that initially paralysed him, "Bébel" is to appear this week, with diminished capacities but all his old charm, in a tear-jerker called Un Homme et son Chien (A man and his dog). It is clearly a multi-Kleenex movie since people cried during the trailer when I saw it the other day. Television also showed customers emerging in tears from previews in Lille last week.
A tall, physical, larger-than-life character with a rumpled face, Belmondo broke onto the scene as a star of the Nouvelle Vague, the golden age of postwar French cinema. It's hard not to apply the over-used "icon" word to his role in Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless)(1960), with Jean Seaberg (picture)
He gave up artier films and became a big comedy and action star in the 1970s and 80s, playing in classics, such as Borsalino -- with Alain Delon. He was above all an action-man, performing his own stunts in films such as Le Professionel, Flic ou Voyou, Peur sur la Ville and L'As des As. While Delon was known as a difficult and vain character, Belmondo was a chic type, a nice guy.
In his first TV interview since his illness yesterday, Belmondo was frail and his speech was slurred but he was perfectly lucid. Michel Drucker, France's favourite celebrity host, treated him like royalty and brought in big cinema names to pay tribute to his courage in going back onto a movie set. Philip Labro, a journalist-writer and film producer, summed up the effect of seeing Bebel again. "Belmondo is sunshine when he smiles. His face is a landscape whose every wrinkle is a life."
Francis Huster directed the new film, a remake of a Vittorio De Sica 1951 classic Umberto D about an old man who loses his home and only has his dog left. The reviews have been reverent. Figaro called it "troubling, moving, even shocking because we don't know where the broken star ends and where the great actor begins." But foreign reviewers have not been so kind. One Swiss critic trashed it as "indecent" and "disgusting" because it shows a star who is a shadow of his former self.
Belmondo's popularity will guarantee a good audience for A Man and his Dog in 2009. Last year, French-made films got a big push from "Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis", the Dany Boon feel-good comedy about northern bumpkins which became the most successful French film ever (Will Smith is to make an Americanised version) . Most of the top 10 were still American blockbusters, but the French industry is taking heart from the strong performance of 18 other domestic films which each sold more than one million tickets. They were mainly popular comedies or thrillers and included the hopeless Astérix and the Olympic Games, but their popularity testified to the strength of the French industry.
Just after I posted this, they announced the death of Claude Berri, one of the biggest producer-directors of recent decades. His last production was Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis. Here's Le Figaro's news item
Top 10 French Box office Hits 2008
1 Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks)
2 Astérix et les Jeux Olympiques
3 Madagascar 2 (USA)
4 Indiana Jones and the kingdom...(USA)
5 Quantum of Solace (USA)
6 Kung Fu Panda (USA)
7 Wall-E (USA)
8 The World of Narnia 2 (USA)
9 Hancock (USA)
10 Batman, the Dark Knight (USA)
[Below: Enfin Veuve (A widow at last) , one of the big French hits of 2008. Dogs seem to be popular these days]
This little jingle from 1986 has been used almost unchanged for the past 22 years to announce the commercials on France 2, the main public television network. At 8pm tonight it disappears, as President Sarkozy's reform in state TV takes effect. [see TV Sarko post]
All advertising is to be halted in the evening and commercials will be dropped entirely from 2011. As we've seen, it's part of Sarkozy's attempt -- decreed without warning or consultation last January -- to create a quality state broadcaster modelled on the BBC. His idea is that the public channels will no longer have to chase ratings with low-grade fare.
Sarko's most questionable act was to anoint himself the effective chief of state broadcasting. He did this by scrapping the procedure in which public TV and radio bosses are appointed by the supposedly neutral broadcasting authority. He has also amalgamated all the state TV channels into a single company.
All this has created an upheaval for the broadcasting world and the row shows no sign of subsiding. News staff at France 2 and France 3 are striking today and tomorrow over what they see as a threat to their editorial independence and incomes. The opposition is accusing Sarko of shovelling advertising money towards his friends who own TF1, the main commercial network... and so on.
The story today is the little revolution in French habits that may be wrought by the monarch's decree. Since the beginning of time, or so it seems, the main networks have opened their prime time entertainment at the same moment at 8.50 pm. This comes after a long "tunnel" of commercials following the ritual 35-minute 8pm news. Forty percent of the French still eat dinner while watching the 8pm Journal Télévisé on one of the main channels. The 15 minutes of advertising and programme trailers are used for clearing the table, going to the lavatory and so on. Now France 2 gets the jump on the others and is starting its entertainment at 8.35. It has even been advertising the change with jokey spots warning people to relieve themselves before 8.35.
For the moment, the main rivals are sticking to their later slot in the belief that France will resist changing an ancient habit. Nonce Paolini, the chairman of TF1, says the French do not want their 'biorhythms' disrupted. The media are full of arguments in both directions today. The behaviour of over 20 million viewers is at stake.
The fuss is obviously overdone. People are much less set in their television ways than they were a decade or two ago, before cable, satellite, digital TV and the internet. It will be interesting to see if commercial-free public television becomes any better than its mediocre predecessor. They are making an attempt to go up market tonight. France 2's new prime time opens with a documentary on the fascinating world of the Dogon people in the African nation of Mali. That will please Sarkozy, but I have a feeling that many people will wait for Avalanche, the sentimental thriller that is being offered by TF1.
For nostalgists, here is a medley of more recent versions of the quirky France 2 commercial jingle:
Before getting onto the usual subject, let me wish everyone a Happy New Year and thank you for the messages by way of the blog and e-mail.
Nicolas Sarkozy has launched 2009 true to energetic form. In his traditional address to the nation (video below), he opened by saying that "2008 has been a rough year". He promised blood, sweat and tears to get France through a new year in which "the difficulties will be great". Under Sarko's guidance, France will emerge from the crisis stronger and a new world will be born, he said. "We have to prepare ourselves by working more."
It was no surprise to learn that Sarko plans to continue as de facto leader of Europe although at midnight France ended its six-month turn in the Union's rotating presidency and handed over to the Czech Republic. He announced that his latest mission is to bring peace to the Middle East. He is off to trouble-shoot in Jerusalem and the West Bank on Monday, with no mandate beyond his enthusiasm for crisis management and France's historic weight in the Arab world.
Sarkozy's intervention over the Gaza strip confirms that he has no intention of taking a back seat after what he sees as the most dynamic turn by any leader in the Union's rotating chair. With his usual chutzpah -- and contorted syntax -- he boasted that he has shaped not just France but the whole world since he has been "President of Europe".
"The initiatives which I have undertaken in the name of the French Presidency of the Union -- coordinating the action of all the Europeans and bringing the heads of state of the 20 biggest world powers to Washington -- have enabled the world to avoid sliding down the slope of 'everyone for themselves', which would have been fatal." That's quite a claim.
In Sarko's view, the leadership of Europe cannot be left to the Czechs, a small, recent member state with a Eurosceptic Government. The Union needs a powerful figure from a founder state to steer the Union through dangerous times, he believes. "Of course I will be taking initiatives," he told the European Parliament the other day after a triumphant review of his management of the financial turmoil and his peace-brokering in the Caucasus war.
To bolster his claim to senior statesmanship, Sarkozy has invited Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, to chair a grand two-day conference from next Thursday on the theme of "A new world, new capitalism". Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who does not get on with Sarkozy, has agreed to attend the closing speeches. The star speakers include a batch of American Nobel economics prize winners and Francis Fukuyama, the economist who is remembered for predicting the end of history in 1989.
Super Sarko is reported to be telling colleagues that he is worried that France will feel small after he has been commander of Europe. "He has one fear -- becoming again the President of an average country, disarmed in the face of recession and confronted by soaring unemployment," said Le Monde.
Sarkozy was reported yesterday to be persisting in a plan -- rejected by Germany -- to appoint himself leader of a new governing council of the single currency states for 2009. The justification is that the Union is chaired by two non-euro nations this year -- the Czechs and Sweden.
According to le Canard Enchaîné, Sarkozy has persuaded Jose Luis Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, to co-chair the new group with him. Spain takes the EU presidency in January 2010. Sarkozy argues that the euro needs an economic government at a time of upheaval and that the existing "euro-group" of finance ministers does not have the power for the job.
Sarkozy is banking on the support of Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, with whom he has good relations. The pair share a common scorn for the European Commission, which Sarkozy believes he has cut down to size by asserting the power of the council of national leaders.
Despite his boasting, it should be recorded that quite a few of Sarkozy's political foes have admired his energetic tour of European duty. Michel Rocard, a former Socialist Prime Minister, praised his courage today. Europe, said Rocard, had weathered the financial crisis because it had the luck to be chaired by Nicolas Sarkozy, "who is impulsive, courageous and has culot". That last word translates as nerve or chutzpah.
Others have tried to cut Sarko down to size. Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far right National Front, dismissed his Euro-Presidency with a typical sneer. "The half-year of Mr Sarkozy will be forgotten in two weeks time," he predicted. For all his poisonous side, Le Pen is often a sharp observer of the political scene. In this case I think he's wrong. Sarko is going to do his best to make Europe -- and President Obama -- think that he is still in charge of the continent.
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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Autre célèbre citation : "La France, ton café f.. le camp", attribuée à la comtesse du Barry, maîtresse de Louis XV.
Mme du Barry avait surnommé son royal amant « La France ». Un jour, le roi, qui s'amusait parfois à préparer son café lui-même, le laissa bouillir et déborder. Mme du Barry aurait commenté : « Hé, La France ! Ton café fout le camp ! », ce qui pouvait être, accessoirement, une allusion perfide à la perte des colonies françaises après la guerre de Sept Ans (1763).
La citation est apocryphe. Elle a été forgée au XIXe siècle.
Posted by: Gilles | 1 Dec 2009 08:55:28
Romain - "1. There is no Freedom of conscience if religious groups are not allowed to display symbols of their faith.
2. It is not up to any government or Parliament to judge if a religion is intrinsically right or wrong."
On the first point, where does that leave France with the ban on headscarves etc in public buildings or even the proposed ban on the burka... why are these any different?
Your second point would leave religion above the law which can't be right.
Posted by: FC | 1 Dec 2009 08:42:08
Rick,
Marseille is the first jewish town in France, I have not checked the statistics (I doubt they exist), it was the words of Jean-Claude Gaudin, the Mayor.
It is obvious the votation was politically motivated, this is not about architecture, environment or anything. Switzerland has ratified the European Convention for Human Rights and the UN Charter.
Both work along the same lines :
1. There is no Freedom of conscience if religious groups are not allowed to display symbols of their faith.
2. It is not up to any government or Parliament to judge if a religion is intrinsically right or wrong.
This group will probably apply for a building permit, if it is rejected on the ground of minarets they will be able to challenge the decision before the European Court.
Then Switzerland would have to decide if it wants to opt out of the international conventions it ratified.
If the motivations were to counter radical islamism, if find it quite silly and counterproductive.
Posted by: Romain | 1 Dec 2009 07:03:43
One could argue, perhaps, that 'Minarets' are the symbol of a religion, Islam.
A religion which to a 'Euorpean' observer might seem mysogynist, homophobic and deeply intolerant of other religions. Maybe it is unfair to consider the attitudes of say, Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Iran, Pakistan as indicative of how Islamic nations view say, Christianity or Judaism, but it is difficult to resist doing so.
So why should the Swiss be pilloried for voting against the outward signs of a religion that is viewed this way?
And it is not enough to say, 'Ah yes, but the majority of Muslims are not like this, it is only a minority that promotes extremism.' Because that minority is quite prepared to used violence to achieve its ends. Violence against anybody or anything that is non-Muslim.
Now, maybe I am unreasonable about this, but I say to Muslims 'Get rid of these extremists, turn away from the view of the world that sees everybody else as an 'infidel' and maybe people will feel different.
(Bummer! Now my application to live in Somalia will get turned down. I'll have to stay in France)
Posted by: David Powell | 1 Dec 2009 06:09:09
If I had read such a headline a decade ago ("Swiss to ban minarets") I would have thought it was caricature. Now, my only surprise is that the political elite are "shocked" at the result.
What's even stranger is that the polls were a full 20 percentage points off! Clearly one-fifth of the electorate were too polite (or too embarrassed) to say it out loud.
More seriously, one of the more broader implications I think is for Turkey's entry into the EU. I don't think any government would dare put the issue to referendum. If France, Greece, or heaven forbid, Austria put it to the people, I'm sure the answer would be a very loud "no".
Posted by: Guy | 1 Dec 2009 05:09:43
[Now, the Swiss have decided; and their decision cannot be filibustered or wished away] Rick
Yeah, Rick, I know how you feel. That's how I felt after Bush was elected, then re-elected.
And the world groaned.
On a personal note, would you tell me again your connection to Switzerland, if any. I believe you mentioned something awhile back but I can't recall what.
Posted by: azloon | 1 Dec 2009 03:18:06
thumbs up for the "azloon" post.
made me laugh out loud.
and that made my day.
Posted by: WILHELM | 1 Dec 2009 00:10:41
http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2009/11/30/01016-20091130QCMWWW00619-faut-il-interdire-la-construction-de-nouveaux-minarets-en-france-.php
Indeed in france most if not all decisions are taken by the "elites" without consideration for the will of the people, it's been so for a while and when you hear the public reactions of the politicians today, it's not gonna stop any time soon.
Speaking of Switzerland and the disdain of the french ruling class for the rest of us, according to the us press sarkozy is behind the release of polanski.
Posted by: razatork | 30 Nov 2009 23:39:04
hon y sois qui mal y pense?
Posted by: Baz | 30 Nov 2009 23:34:31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyQ86iDJeA
Posted by: dada | 30 Nov 2009 22:11:29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojZB0TqbHZE
Posted by: dada | 30 Nov 2009 21:50:10
STEPHEN BULL, you wrote about ‘the peaceable Swiss’. Swiss neutrality is ‘armed neutrality’ and they don’t mess around.
Something tells me that Marseille’s Jewish population is closer to 80,000 (10%) than 200,000 (25%), ROMAIN. On the other ‘thread’ you wrote: ‘I am quite sure this is a blunt violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the Freedom of conscience and the Freedom to practice religions’
In what way does a ban on minarets contravene freedom of conscience, religion, or assembly? Human Rights in their applied form, usually work in more than one direction at once. In this instance the democratic wish of the population has been expressed on an issue they consider important. Is this going to be like Ireland all over again, telling the poor souls to keep on voting till they come up with the (politically) correct answer? Not for the first time, I sense that some people struggle with the whole idea of democratic decision-making. And it’s not Muslims.
The trouble is French understanding of election results was fatally warped – ironically enough, this – by a Swiss called Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He came up with an ingenious alternative to nasty old election results; he called it ‘la volonté générale’. The phrase is as catchy as it is un-informative. Anyway, ever since then our cross-Channel neighbours have found voting awfully difficult or, rather, accepting the finality of the decision, once made. Instead, they want to have their cake and eat it: to vote for Sarko and then spend the following five years blackguarding the blighter – rarely pausing long enough to ponder the simple fact that he’s their own fault, their own choice.
The time has come for PC opinion-shapers to be silent on the minaret issue, simply accepting that –like it or lump it – the electorate has made its will known. What I detect instead is scant respect among our opinion-shapers for the Swiss electorate. They are not politically naive and have voted many more times than the rest of us can hope to do. They read more newspapers than other nations do. Now, the Swiss have decided; and their decision cannot be filibustered or wished away. The result was clear and overwhelmingly expressed. The vote was on a clear, a severely focused issue – minarets, nothing more. Those who opt to read the tea-leaves – be they Muslims or the incurably sanctimonious – have only themselves to blame if the next warning is apropos something less anodyne.
A religion which – in its day-to-day practice – treats women, writers, free-thinkers, recusants, the heterodox, homosexuals, doubters etc so very strangely has sacrificed the moral high ground... and ‘look at me’ minarets, along with the moral high ground.
Posted by: Rick | 30 Nov 2009 21:27:37
Dites, vous croyez qu'il y a un lien entre les minarets suisses et la crise à Dubaï ?
Posted by: DODO | 30 Nov 2009 20:19:26
Presumably in democratic Saudi Arabia they will now feel free to have a democratic vote on allowing Catholic and christian churches on their soil, or the right for their people to change from Muslim to other religions, without fear of being imprisoned.
While nearer home in Britain a vote on to continue the ban on sending Christmas cards in certain town councils.
Posted by: johny | 30 Nov 2009 20:09:44
Some say the Netherlands will turn Islamic the earliest and that this can no longer be stopped. France, these sources say, will be the second country.
Posted by: Heinz Koenig | 30 Nov 2009 18:46:17
: )
The source I have say different : France, these sources say, never will be.
You see, we have the same source, but different.
Posted by: DODO | 30 Nov 2009 19:51:37
Could it be that the Swiss did not vote against minarets, but the underlying fear of a very active if not aggressive Islamic parallel culture?
In most cities you have a cluster of Islamic citizens in certain parts of town. The percentage of national citizens approaches zero. The national pupils in schools likewise. The schooling language can no longer be the national language as nobody understands it. The third generation is said to be more Islam oriented than the second.
In discussions about integration you hear little about the efforts of Islamic citizens to integrate. In the extreme you hear that the national people have to adopt to the cultural specialities of the immigrated Moslem.
They actively fight for their style of living while the "well meaning" (Gutmenschen) will go a long way to allow them their differences.
After getting the voting right, with the much higher birthrate, they eventually, in the not too far distant future,will be able to vote a Muslim party which might easily get 25 to 30 %, the easier when the out come at elections continues to drop. With that percentage there will be no escape from having them in a coalition government. From there on we might have the final round of Islamisation.
Some say the Netherlands will turn Islamic the earliest and that this can no longer be stopped. France, these sources say, will be the second country.
The UK with her special majority voting system might catch up with the other two very swiftly.
Having said all of this, I should add that there are many, but not enough, Islamic citizens who have perfectly integrated life in our societies. I am afraid though, they will suffer from the Islamic ,masses as much as the national citizens.
Posted by: Heinz Koenig | 30 Nov 2009 18:46:17
Dot
Nice story.
Azloon
I forgot that if you write it can be read back to you. Should have used a different example.
“suggest rolling over and having your stomach scratched.”
Lol
Posted by: do-re-mi | 30 Nov 2009 18:21:34
"France only has a handful of minarets, but if voters were asked whether they wanted to ban new ones, it is fairly likely that they would give the same answer as the Swiss"(CHARLES).
This is also my opinion. More important :): one may arrive to the same conclusion if one interprets broadly the answers to the somewhat Jesuistic on-line questions of todays's Le Monde to their readers. Obviously this august paper does not want to frighten away ("effaroucher") their mostly left conservative readers with too direct
questions :).
Herafter the questions:
"In your opinion, is the organisation of a referendum in the fashion it was made in Switzerland where it was rejected by 57% of the population
- a sign of democracy ? : 62 %
- a sign of irresponsability ? : 32.7%
5.3 % of the 11,282 "Mondistes" :) who answered the poll have no opinion. The figures were those on the site at 6 pm.
http://www.lemonde.fr/a-la-une/sondages/3208.html
PS:
The answers to the poll and their percentages may be interpreted in various ways. My interpretation is that quite a few of Le Monde readers would ("dans le secret de l'isoloir" :) duplicate the Swiss vote. However, this would not be PC - d'où les questions un petit peu alambiquées du Monde :).
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 30 Nov 2009 17:46:55
Scotian
"In a way, they should have done like the French - or other countries as well. Don't prohibit anything de jure, but de facto. Say it's officially OK but never issue the building permit. Same result but less public damage."
Sorry scotian but some countries just don't use the kind of smokescreen they do in France. Some countries don't systematically say one thing and do another. (let's see how France's threats against Iran play out when push comes to shove and that undecider Obama, let's see what he won't do) Plus other countries have a justice system which will allow a challenge to a law in the case you mention. So I guess its kind of oui, mais, non, mais, attend. Non?
PS - I saw the above maxim used in a French commerical on tv the other day. I wonder if they were even aware of it.
Posted by: rocket | 30 Nov 2009 16:26:47
"The vote has probably helped Muslim fundamentalists and hindered the cause of a moderate, European Islam of the kind desired by Sarkozy and other leaders."
Open the papers and you will see that it has nothing to do with moderate vs extremists Muslim groups. The extremists are ou to kill, maim, blow up, slit the throats of, whatever the consequences for the peaceful element of the Moslem population. The extremists have their own agenda and that is to eradicate any Muslim people cohabitating with non Muslims. This fits the extremist plans and they are more than happy to see it. When can we build a church or a synagogue in Saudi Arabia?
Posted by: rocket | 30 Nov 2009 16:19:18
"France only has a handful of minarets, but if voters were asked whether they wanted to ban new ones, it is fairly likely that they would give the same answer as the Swiss."
Not necessarily so : Jean-Claude Gaudin (aka Gaude1), has just approved the construction of a big mosque in Marseille(s), where 25% of the population is muslim, and 25% jewish.
[Yes, I agree that it's debatable, but I was hearing a lot of café de commerce talk over the weekend about how the French would make it more like 70 percent for the ban, compared with the meagre 57 percent by the Swiss. CB]
Posted by: Romain | 30 Nov 2009 16:05:33
Maybe the peaceable Swiss were reacting to Col Gaddafi's proposal to abolish Switzerland itself. "Time" reported that Geneva did not want to be united with France as he had suggested but rather with Quebec.
Posted by: stephen Bull | 30 Nov 2009 15:18:49
"... and hindered the cause of a moderate, European Islam of the kind desired by Sarkozy and other leaders."
There is no moderate Islam.
It is a fallacy to suppose so, and moreover a calumny (courtesy to today's Times leader) to the people.
Muslims may be moderate, but as we have seen to our detriment one thing leads to another....
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 30 Nov 2009 15:10:55
"The vote was inspired by fear, fantasies and ignorance."
Correction: Islam is based on fear, fantasies and ignorance. I want a world where peace, love and freedom can prosper, and this religion leads only to enslavement, suffering and warfare. This is not a reactionary opinion or a prejudice on my part. Do some research on the historical facts of Islam - it's a method of conquest, and an effective one. Read the Qu'ran, and you may notice that its teachings are incompatible with a civilised 21st century democracy.
Religion has caused this planet untold damage, and enough is enough. I support this vote.
Posted by: DAVEJ | 30 Nov 2009 14:59:09
Bravo la Swisse, le peuple a parlé!
" Swiss Muslims, who come mainly from the Balkans and Turkey,..."
There is another relevant aspect to this which may have had an indirect affect on the vote, and that concerns the status of asylum seekers.
Most of the muslims in Switzerland came to western europe seeking refuge from the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Since NATO and the EU intervened to bring these conflicts to an end, created a new country Kosovo, instituted war crimes trials and provided aid; shouldnt it be safe for these asylum seekers to return home?
Perhaps I'm being naïve here, in failing to recognize the overt chicanery behind the "asylum industry"!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Switzerland
The other two referendums went:-
NO to "l'interdiction des exportations de matériel de guerre", and
YES to "au financement spécial des tâches.....,"
Bravo to referendums of the people!
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 30 Nov 2009 14:51:55
I am afraid it's the end of erections in Switzerland, at least for the time being.
Posted by: Romain | 30 Nov 2009 14:37:05
the Italians say something like: "si non e vero e ben trovato", and that is the essence of all quotes.
Posted by: Ruben | 30 Nov 2009 14:24:15
In a way, they should have done like the French - or other countries as well. Don't prohibit anything de jure, but de facto. Say it's officially OK but never issue the building permit. Same result but less public damage.
Posted by: Scotian | 30 Nov 2009 14:07:38
"Vengeance, boycotts, retaliation ... this clash with Islam could cost dearly"
Here the fearmongers are overplaying their extremely thin hand with the electorate.
The different European Governments have been pussyfooting around for half a century so as not to upset both the muslim communities in their midst nor the Islamic Countries without. They have shown themselves to be spineless and the message goes round: "just shout "allah akbar', and wave a scimitar, and they'll cave in".
The Islamic Countries (why can't we call Europe 'the Christian Countries'?) know very well that if Europe has good products or services to sell, they will buy them. If the Chinese or Indians manufacture a better product, then they won't hesitate to go there, however much the European Chambers of Commerce might beg.
To show THEIR goodwill, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Afghanistan together with all the other Islamic States should allow churches and Cathedrals to be built, with freedom of religion without fear of apostacy. Only then will the European Electorate really believe they want reciprocity.
Without this, this vote (which I wholeheartedly support) is only 'shades of things to come'.
Posted by: The West forever. | 30 Nov 2009 14:05:37
@ MICHEL B
Vous dites "Bravo les Suisses ! Les français vous aiment à nouveau !"
Malheureusement pour vous les Suisses n'aiment pas trop la racaille d'Annemasse.
Posted by: John O'D | 30 Nov 2009 13:37:41
«They blame lazy journalists and historians for popularising dodgy quotes and making them up because they sound right.»
I guess of the same kind that those giving a king attribute to a president elected to the universal suffrage... Pitiful at every era.
p.s. popularizing with a z, like in lazy...
[Yes, spell it like that if you're an American. On calling Sarkozy a monarch, that's a metaphor, nothing to do with quotations. CB]
Posted by: Sensi | 30 Nov 2009 13:31:24
If she reads the news, she is not so smart tho. News readers is losers. Because they don't have their own news.
Posted by: naked celebrities | 30 Nov 2009 13:16:21
Being able to change the Constitution with a simply majority vote is probably a bad idea.
Fifty percent is surprisingly easy to achieve with passions of the moment running high and a low voter turnout, both of which seems to have been at work this case.
The U.S. Constitution can't be amended without a daunting process that requires approval by 2/3rds of each legislative branch, then ratificationl by 2/3rds of the states. In other words, almost impossible, and probably, on balance, a good thing.
Can the Swiss constitution be changed back just as easily?
Posted by: azloon | 30 Nov 2009 13:12:30
Bravo les Suisses ! Les français vous aiment à nouveau ! Magnifique exemple de liberté de pensée vraiment digne de la patrie de Calvin, de Rousseau et de Henri Dunant!
Posted by: Michel B | 30 Nov 2009 12:43:09
Was(n't) it Le Courbousier who said on seeing St Pancras Station: "C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la gare"?
Posted by: Peter Elstob | 30 Nov 2009 12:40:33
Only goes to show the truth of Polsby's law 'famous sayings migrate to famous mouths'
Posted by: Michael | 30 Nov 2009 12:18:24
Says who? Nobody’s human rights are being trampled on. Rick
I am quite sure this is a blunt violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the Freedom of conscience and the Freedom to practice religions. Switzerland is also a member of the European Council (Conseil de l'Europe) where the same principles apply. It is most predictable that procedures will be engaged.
Posted by: Romain | 30 Nov 2009 11:33:02
‘I wonder why the Swiss passed that decision, knowing that it cannot hold before an international court of justice.’ [ROMAIN]
Says who? Nobody’s human rights are being trampled on. This is about minarets. Like it or loathe it, the Swiss elector has exercised his and her democratic right. But, as seems to happen in these cases, the self-righteous, middle-class intelligentsia presumes to understand the issue and therefore pass judgement on both issue and voters alike... from the safety of their own ivory minarets in lofty suburbs. Well away from the action.
Happily Swiss women aren’t so daft as to fall for politically correct exhortations. They have first-hand experience of intolerance and discrimination at the hands of enfranchised (and often inadequate!) males. The predictable cries of outrage today will prove the ladies’ case. And it will be a brave court of appeal which denies the citizen her right to decide.
Posted by: Rick | 30 Nov 2009 11:04:32
I think you’ll find, DOT, that J-P S and S de B had an open relationship avant l’heure.
RICK
So, like many writers he used his own experience as inspiration - so what does that change concerning my comment on the lack of nuance in the explanation of the quotation?
Or are you just trying to help? :)
Posted by: dot king | 30 Nov 2009 10:48:26
"Paris vaut bien une messe".. your translation is not good... hahahaha
Posted by: caroline | 30 Nov 2009 10:46:36
"Waterloo - of course, I have heard of it. It is London's railway station" or words to that effect. Did Tiger Clemenceau really say it during the Versailles Treaty negotiations, in response to gibes from Wilson, Lloyd George and company ?
Posted by: Jay Bhattacharjee | 30 Nov 2009 09:22:12
I wonder why the Swiss passed that decision, knowing that it cannot hold before an international court of justice.
Posted by: Romain | 30 Nov 2009 09:13:46
Which 20th century King of France used the word "chienlit" and what does it mean?
Posted by: stephen Bull
You have to separate the word to understand i.e. "chie en lit". That is quite coarse in French.
Posted by: Romain | 30 Nov 2009 09:04:54
“Must be very hurtful for a former model to be out-dressed by former hospital administrator who additionally looks sturdily healthy and is not stick thin. “
Must be very hurtful for a former model to be out-dressed by a Harvard alumni, ex-lawyer, former hospital administrator who gets her clothes from one boutique in Chicago and catalogues. When you are a born with silver spoon in your mouth heiress – former model – who tactically slept with the right men to get a job as a singer when you don’t have a voice and has ended up as a Namaste princess to the President, in flat with all the best designers and editors at your beck in call, repeating “ I love my Chou-Chou and so should you” on cue it must really hurt. Exhale
I thought Carla was a boring dresser before, that obsession that French women have with looking decent and “tiré à quatre épingles at all hours, stifling, no wonder they ask English designer to head their fashion house.
Tom Anton
You didn’t mention monkey, so it’s not “ cause she is black” then.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 30 Nov 2009 08:59:35
My favourite quote is that of Louis XVI, at Rambouillet Royal farm : "laissez pisser le merinos".
That expression is still in use nowadays.
It is about sheep bladder, a popular topic on this blog. lol
Posted by: Romain | 30 Nov 2009 07:30:11
I'm thinking of a quote attributed to De Gaulle basically saying ,regarding nuclear strikes and their consequences with Russia ,
"The Russians can obliterate 60 M french , but we can obliterate 60 M russians as well , so I'm not sure they'll bother losing a third of their populations just to nuke France."
And if someone can "garanty" the true origin of the "ungovernable France and the 200/300/365 cheeses" quote , Kudos to you.
I tried but couldn't found any trace of such a "speech".
Posted by: Julio | 29 Nov 2009 22:40:05
Charles
thank you for this report. This weekend has seen "Après moi la déluge" quoted frequently as we watch the leader of our Opposition do his best to ensure the truth of this aphorism.
This book vividly shows that just because a statement has been around for many years does not necessarily make it true. This should be a reminder to people critical of some of the dubious content on the Internet. Whether the information is old or completely up-to-date we should always be assessing it against alternative sources to determine its validity.
Posted by: Judith | 29 Nov 2009 22:37:30
The only way to protect your culture is to practice it and pass it on to your children. Anything else is overcompensation in response to your fear that you are not doing enough to keep new media from influencing your children.
I could be the last non-Muslim in the world. I wouldn't lift a finger unless they came for my body or my property. Until, I would sleep with so many of their women.
Posted by: Matt C | 29 Nov 2009 21:35:57
Switzerland is indeed "the country which is most associated with tolerance, democracy and consensus" all things islamic culture violently apposes.
As to the comparison of church bells on Sunday (which I am less than fond of) to a cry for prays 5 times a day, every day, with a foghorn. Sorry - not at all the same thing - and totally unnecessary.
Muslims have a right to pray 5x daily, if it does not interfere with their work, but they should use a clock. The rest of us do not need to know about it.
Posted by: gsw | 29 Nov 2009 21:28:19
I think you’ll find, DOT, that J-P S and S de B had an open relationship avant l’heure. Big deal, you may shrug. Except that S de B cultivated intense friendships with sixth-formers of hers whom she subsequently produced for J-P S’s amusement and enjoyment, if not enlightenment.
Ah, but what if the procuress started getting jealous? Easy, all the master had to do was write a play showing how damnably ‘uncool’ Inès was being... and ‘Castor’, eager beaver that she was, could get back to doing what she did best – talent-scouting for more Estelles.
Posted by: Rick | 29 Nov 2009 20:37:36