Stormy times indeed in France, both for its deceitful president and the Cote d’Azur.
The scandal with the president’s dalliance with Julie Gayet, 20 years his junior, shows no sign of abating, while the president, characteristically, seems unable to make up his mind about his partner since 2007, Valérie Trierweiler.
However, the whole sorry episode has been good for Closer magazine, which made the first revelations, and which has been selling like petit pain. As for the mainstream French media, its response has been typically lame (can you imagine how the American papers would treat a similar story in their backyard?). One of the funniest reactions to the whole affair has come from Charlie Hebdo, a satiricial publication, which the other day, published a cartoon showing President Hollande with his flies open and his zizi hanging out. The word balloon coming from the tip of his zizi was “Moi,President”. At least, the president has a new nickname, taking over from M. Flanby, a wibbly-wobbly figure. Hollande is now a lapin chaud or a hot bunny. He may be good in the bedroom, but people in France aren’t really bothered by that - they want action on the stalling French economy and the deplorable state into which the country has fallen; the current president seems the last person capable of providing any solutions.
It’s hardly surprising that a new book that has just been published in France is called Jusqu’ici Tout Va Mal or So Far, So Bad, a typical comment on the Hollande presidency.
No wonder that Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National is in such ebullient mood, anticipating the municipal elections in March and those to the European parliament in May, stating that her declared aim is to blow up what she calls the Soviet Union of Europe, and give back individual states much more of their own powers.
Now that the president is being subject to so much ridicule, can he survive in office much longer?Even his much vaunted revamp last week of his economic plans for France, taking a much more pro-business stance, seems to have been so much water under the bridge.
Talking of which,the Cote d’Azur has had a most unseasonal downpour, which started on Thursday of last week and lasted for days. On Saturday alone, up to 80mm of rain fell on the region, causing widespread flooding in the Var, on its western edges, and much destruction in the Alpes Maritime. The Var floods were devastating, causing loss of life as well as widespread destruction. In many other places in the region, such as Menton, all the rain started numerous landslides which blocked many roads. Even in Nice itself, cliffs collapsed onto roads and brought down mansions.
It’s no wonder that given the state that France is in, last week, a political activist arrived in a large truck outside the National Assembly in the 7th arrondissement and dumped tonnes of steaming manure outside the august building. It was his comment on the political class that runs France.
Another strange commentary on the state of France came from Charles de Gaulle airport at Roissy, where a homeless man, Ismael Nohou, has been living for the past 26 years. All this came to light when he was jailed for a month for stealing an Ipod from a passenger’s car parked at the airport. But surely to goodness, some bureaucrat could have long ago sorted all this out and given the man a way out of Roissy?
But at least there were some positive news stories this week. At the Paccard bell foundry in Annency in the south-east of France,a marvellous gleaming nine tonne bell was completed for dispatch to the US, where it’s going to hang outside a new public security building in San Francisco. And on the BBC website, a French journalist living in London, Agnes Poirier, pointed out that the French actually work harder than the British.
She said that French labour productivity worked out at €45.40 an hour, well above the EU average of €32.10 an hour. Despite the 35 hour week in France, workers there work an average of 38 hours a week compared to 36.4 in the UK and 35.5 in Germany. Many managers in France work at least 44 hours a week, if not longer, and the overall result is that French productivity is 15 per cent higher than in the UK. Just to emphasise her point, Agnes Poirier pointed out that workers in the private sector in France rarely go on strike - it’s the unionised public sector workers who do that, as long suffering passengers on SNCFG are all too aware!
There were also plans announced within the last few days to pedestrianise the Champs-Elysées, which has turned into a really grotty, lowlife thoroughfare, a real dump full of fast food outlets. No-one who wants to see the real Paris would dream of going anywhere near the place these days, so if the authorities can do a big cleanup and revamp, who knows, this broad thoroughfare may regain a little of its ancient glamour and prestige.
However, not everything works to plan in France. In the Haute Vienne department, there’s a tiny hamlet called Bussy,so remote that its inhabitants have no possibility of satellite connections or access to the Internet. In best French tradition, they are going on strike, and are going to stop paying local import taxes until they can get online like everyone else.
But very often, the people in power in France can get things right. Despite the current austerity regime, the determined effort to reduce fatalities on French roads is producing considerable results, with the implemenation of many new laws for drivers. Last year saw between 3,200 and 3,300 people killed on French roads, which was a 10 per cent drop on the previous year. The long time aim now, over the next 10 years, is to reduce that much further, to 2,000 a year. The golden rule now for anyone driving in France is: don’t take any chances.
While French drivers face much more stringest checks on their performance, the opposite is happening in Ireland, where there’s been a dramatic spike in road casualties. The reason is simple: the government in Dublin, in its infinite wisdom, has cut spending on the gardai (police) so much that the public now thinks there are far fewer road checks on their driving than there used to be. As a result, a lot of people think they can drive a lot more recklessly these days and get away with it, so of course, the casualty figures are climbing accordingly.
In Ireland, it’s not always possible to count on the people in power to do the right thing. At the moment, there’s much indignation over the three month jail term being served by Margaretta D’Arcy, a noted left wing activist and playwright, who lives in Galway. She was recently convicted of trespassing on the runways at Shannon airport in protest against its continuing and constant use by the US military in violation of Ireland’s neutrality, now largely a sham. She refused to sign an undertaking that she wouldn’t do similar protests in future, so as a result, this 79 year old woman, who is seriously ill with cancer, is languishing in prison. A decade ago, members of the Irish Labour Party would have been up in arms over the case. Today, all they can do is stay silent, because they’ve all got their snouts so deep in the trough of government goodies.
And talking about incompetence, some international companies in Ireland still think they can ride roughshod over their workers. Surprisingly, Marks & Spencer, which used to have the reputation of being an enlightened employer, has managed to demonstrate what appears to be the exact opposite in its large Irish operation over the past few years. In a recent case, a section manager in one of its stores gave a customer €30 too much in change. She promptly admitted her mistake, offered to pay back the money straight away and even be demoted to a lesser job. Marks & Spencer’s reply? They immediately sacked the woman for gross misconduct. She took the company to the employment appeals tribunal and was awarded €17,500 in damages; Marks & Spencer didn’t even bother appealing the verdict. Sheer commonsense seems to have flown out the window - this particular case could have been so easily solved without losing a valuable employee - and companies like Marks & Spencer operating in Ireland seem happy to behave just like the absentee landlords of old.