of fiscal measures hit young people, the poor, the sick and the elderly, while the wealthy escaped scot-free.
One of the measures passed was the abolition of the €850 bereavement grant, which is entirely appropriate in one sense, as the Irish Labour Party, which is part of the current government coalition in Dublin, is in terminal decline. Come the next Irish general election and it’s quite likely that Labour candidates may win no seats at all. At that stage, the most sensible thing to do with this once proud political party would be to put it down. It’s no wonder that in an opinion poll done the other day, nearly one-third of the Irish electorate said that politicians of all parties were such clownish incompetents that they wouldn’t bother voting for
them in any upcoming election.
During August, when the Irish parliament was on holiday for the entire month, deputies still managed to trouser €500,000 in expenses! Then even more recently, the prime minister fast tracked the appointment of his sister-in-law to a plum State job. No wonder Irish politicians are in such disrepute!
Also in Dublin this week, I received a plaintive Twitter message sent out by a student in University College, Dublin, one of the city’s three universities. She said that she had been at a maths event in the college the other day and while there, had managed to lose her laptop. She added, plaintively, that it contained her PhD thesis. What a heartbreaking situation to be in, especially if she hadn’t backed up her work, so let's hope there’s a happy ending to this particular story.
Before I leave Dublin stories, I must mention something amusing I spotted in a local Tesco Express
store this week. I was looking for pepper, but it had neither salt nor pepper, but loads of Durex. Surely, they must have their priorities wrong!
Meanwhile, back in France, everyone’s gearing up for winter, with a big drop in temperatures, especially in northern France, caused by Arctic winds coming in from Iceland. Much more rain is forecast and already in the Pyrenees, snow is appearing above the 1,000 metre mark. Today, an Orange flood alert has been issued for two Départements in the east of the country, Vosges
and Meurthe-et-Moselle. Three rivers in these two regions are risen so much that they are in danger of bursting their banks.
It’s also being said in France at the moment that the electricity grid is under such strain that if
this coming winter is rigorous, one problem of maintenance in just one key location could throw the whole system into chaos. An energy specialist, Colette Lewiner, was quoted the other day as saying that to add to this sense of chaos, international gas and electricity markets are in a state of chaos
themselves. Meanwhile households in France are gearing themselves for a 0.5 per cent increase in gas prices in November.
A reminder that winter - and Christmas - are fast approaching came from SNCF the other day. From
tomorrow (October 17th), it starts taking seat reservations for the Christmas period. Tomorrow of course is also the deadline day in the US Congress for sorting out their finances, otherwise the US is at risk of defaulting on its national debt, with global economic repercussions. No wonder that the Chinese are now saying that the world should have a reserve currency other than the US dollar - sadly, the US is no longer the reliable economic barometer it once was and it’s amazing that the decline in American reliability and ratings is entirely home grown. It has nothing to do with outside influences. The long term historical view will probably show Obama to have been one of the worst US presidents in recent decades.
But at least there’s some good news from France. An annual list compiled by the Thomson Reuter group ranks countries by their most innovative businesses and organisations. This year’s list, just published, shows the US in top position, with 45 such listings, followed by Japan, with 28. France comes third with 12 listings. These include such companies as Alcatel-Lucent in telecommunications, L’Oréal (cosmetics), Michelin in tyres and Saint-Gobain (industrial) as well as the French National Centre for Scientific Research. One interesting fact about this list is that it doesn’t contain a single entry from the UK.
Another listing, this time from Crédit Suisse, has more good tidings for France. Its Global Wealth Databook 13 shows that people in Switzerland are the best off in the world, with an average worth per individual of $513,000. France comes in at Number 7, with $296,000 per person. Interestingly, neither Germany nor the UK figure in the top 10.
Talking about Switzerland reminds me of an excellent news website, that of the Tribune de Geneve: www.tdg.ch. It’s really fast and on the ball for international news, as well as for news from home and from next door neighbour France. It also does some fantastic photo galleries and one the other day had some really appealing advertising posters, done about 100 years ago, and all using Geneva and Lac Léman as the backdrop. These posters were full of nostalgia for a time long since past and a huge improvement on what passes for advertising art these days. Personally speaking, I just ignore advertising these days, so much of it is just plain downright bad and boring. And invariably, I find
that if any company or organisation spends heavily on advertising, the reality never lives up to the expectation created.
It’s not all good news, however, about France. Hugh Schofield, who’s the BBC correspondent in
Paris, wrote a damning piece for the BBC news website about the Champs-Elysées in Paris. It’s turned into a really grotty Main Street, as he says “crass, styleless, naff and expensive”. In the old days, Parisians would stroll beneath the plane trees, have a coffee, meet friends and window shop in the
luxury stores. Now, no Parisian worth his or her salt would dream of going near the place. All that the present day thoroughfare is missing is an Aldi or Lidl store. Schofield also said that the other Sunday morning at 7am, when he was going to work in the nearby BBC Paris office, that he saw a young woman urinating in the gutter in the Champs-Elysées. How the mighty have fallen, especially when you look back on all the triumphant photos taken there immediately after the liberation of Paris in 1944.
Things change of course. This week saw the time honoured newspaper title, the International
Herald Tribune, change its name to the international edition of the New York Times. The paper, in its various guises, has been an integral part of the American expat scene in Paris since the last 19th century, but I’m not quite sure now how long the printed version distributed around the world is going to survive. The type of person who reads the paper is much more likely to read his
or her newspaper on a tablet or an app than any other type of consumer.
There’s reconciliation in the air, too. Sarkozy’s ex-wife, Cécilia Attias, has just published her book of revelations about her marriage to the former president. Despite the controversies these have
generated, the two are now said to be reconciled. Maybe one day, France itself will become reconciled to Sarkozy. To many French people, he now seems a model of positive, dynamic efficiency compared to the present incumbent, M. Hollande.
The insults go on however in the Assemblée Nationale. The other day, a Green party deputy, Véronique Massonneau, was making a point or two, when she was rudely interrupted by Philippe Le Ray, a deputy from the UMP centre-right party. He started making clucking noises; in French, poulet, the word for chicken is also used as a term of abuse for women. The deputy was promptly fined €1,300, so it was a rather expensive insult. There are also insults flying in France over Femen, the group of women from the Ukraine who stage political protests all over Europe by appearing
topless. Allegations have been made in the past few days that one of their spokespersons in France, Eloise Bouton, has also been doubling as a high class call girl.
And in case you’re wondering what OVNI means - it’s all over the French news websites at the moment-it stands for UFO. They are busy reporting UFOs from all over the place, but funnily enough, none of them has popped up in France recently! There was also an amusing news story from Paris the other day, about two Chinese tourists who had been staying at an hotel in Bagnolet in the eastern suburbs of Paris. When they tried to pay their hotel bill with a pile of one euro coins, suspicions were aroused. However, they were soon cleared of any forgery suspicions. It seems that they knew people in the scrap metal trade in China. When old or wrecked cars are sent there for
recycling, it seems that the object most often found is a one euro coin. As a result, the two Chinese tourists were discovered to have €3,700 stashed in their hotel room, all in one euro coins.
In other international news, it was very sad to read about the sudden demise of Maria De Villota, the former Formula 1 racing driver, who was found dead, apparently from natural causes, in her hotel room in Seville the other day. It was great to see a woman entering the ranks of Formula 1 racing drivers, but in a crash in Cambridgeshire last year, she lost an eye, which ended her racing career. And it seems that the injuries she sustained then finally finished her off.
Also on the international front, it now seems that Berlusconi is going to do community service in lieu of prison for his tax fraud convictions. What type of community service? The mind boggles.
I also see on the international front that the movement for changing the name of the Czech Republic is gaining ground. Before too long, it seems, we could be calling the country Czechia.
But back to France. Once again, the country has proved its good name in preserving its heritage by reopening the Eden theatre at La Ciotat, between Marseille and Toulon in the south of France. The restoration job cost €6.5 million and what is claimed to be the oldest surviving public cinema
in the world is now back in pristine condition. It was at the railway station in La Ciotat that the Lumiere brothers made one of their first films, the arrival of a train at La Ciotat. When it was first shown in Paris in 1895, the audiences were terrified as they thought the steam loco was coming straight at them. Soon after, the Lumiere brothers showed this and other of their early films made in
the area at the Eden. The brothers for long lived close by. But the theatre/cinema had been closed since 1995 but has now reopened in all its glory. We’ve been through La Ciotat station - it’s a perfectly ordinary rural station - but it’s amazing to think that the cinema industry really began
there.
I’d also like to mention some interesting places in Paris. If you’re in Paris and you have children to entertain, two places are strongly recommended. The Musée en Herbe was founded in 1975 by Sylvie Giradet and Claire Merleau as somewhere that young children could enjoy the world of art. These days, it can be found at Number 21 rue Hérold, which is in the Ist arrondissement, right in the centre of Paris. It advertises itself on its website as appealing to children aged 3 to 103. The other place where children can become absorbed in all kinds of absorbing activities is the refurbished
children’s section at the Cité des Sciences in the 18th. The restyled Cité des Enfants is meant for children aged five to 12. They can take part in about 100 activities in six themed zones, including the TV studio, the garden and the factory. The whole Cité is a marvellous show of everything scientific for all ages, but the new look children’s section has kept all the old favourites.
If you’re an adult and you are looking for a little fun playing boules, then go to the place Dauphine on the Ile de la Cité. It’s one of the oldest squares in Paris, although it is in fact triangular. It’s not a
particularly prepossessing square, although it’s lined with restaurants where you can sit on the terraces. It’s also used for boules and if you want to join in, then you can sign up for €25 to play for 90 minutes and learn some of the fundamentals.
Just to end this week on a couple of down-to-earth topics! In Cullompton in Devon, as in most villages, towns and cities, dog dirt is a big problem. So they’ve decided to spray dog mess on the streets a garish pink colour, in the hope that this will embarrass the owners of the offending dogs. All of which reminds me of what we saw in Belfast coming up to Christmas one year, a long time ago. A fine upstanding dog turd had been left on a pavement and someone had sprayed it with gold glitter!
And up popped a story about Winston Churchill that I’d never heard before. One day, he was in the
lavatory when one of his aides told him that the Lord Privy Seal was on the phone and wanted to speak with him. Churchill, noted for his one line put downs, said: "Tell him I can only deal with one shit at a time!”.