If the results of the first round of the municipal elections created a great deal of soul searching in France and little interest outside France, just wait until the elections for the European Parliament in less than two months time!The results were as grey as the current weather.
Friends of mine were in a non-polluted part of France last week when the temperature was up to 22 degrees Centigrade,high enough for a little sunburn. Yet just across the border, in Switzerland, which enjoyed its third warmest winter since 1864, temperatures have now plunged. That country, as well as others in Europe, such as Ireland, is now in the grip of a bitterly cold spell.
France has just over 36,000 local councils and the Front National put up candidates in just 600 of those councils. Yet nationally, it got seven per cent of the vote. A typical comment, although most forthright than most, came from Le Parisien newspaper in Paris, which said that the first round voting represented a monumental rout for the established political parties, a deep rejection and a bloody disavowal of President Hollande.
Last year, an American research centre said that no country in Europe was becoming more disappointed and disillusioned faster than France. The Front National is playing to the gallery on this one, with an audience only too willing to listen. While much has been made in recent days of the party’s stance on immigration, little or nothing has been said of one of its other ambitions, for France to leave the euro. It’s expecting a landslide in the European elections and could well end up as the party with the most French MEPs. Similar right-wing parties are having a field day in other European countries, such as the Netherlands, and just the other day, in a vote that actually has no legal standing, an overwhelming proportion of voters in the Venice region wanted to split away from Italy and go back to what Venice once was, an independent republic.
Given the present state of France, it’s hardly surprising that so many French people who want to make a go of their lives are choosing to leave. They say that it’s almost impossible to start up a new business in France, given the bureacratic smothering they have to endure from the very start. In London alone, 350,000 French people are now resident, so many that some people are calling it “Paris sur Thames”.
Even in the sacred field of wine, France is being overtaken, which shows that in addition to human shortcomings, the power of nature can also play a major part. Last year, the weather in many French wine regions was bad, while in Spain, it was good. The end result is that last year, Spain produced 50 million hectolitres of wine, making it the world’s top wine producer, ahead of Italy (47million h/litres) and France, which came in a lowly third, at 42 million h/litres. The only problem with producing so much wine is that it has to be sold, not only in the face of a continuing recession, but against the sheer lack of interest in wine by many young consumers.
But at least, I spotted one interesting trend that can benefit holidaymakers. A new hotel in Le Havre in northern France has a basic room rate of just €24 a night. For that, guests get a room that’s nine square metres in size, as well as a tiny bathroom. For an extra €2 a night they can get either wi-fi or TV, while breakfast is priced at €3.50. The Eklo hotel in Le Havre is just 10 minutes by tram from the centre of the city and further similar budget hotels are planned for Le Mans and Strasbourg.
Meanwhile, in Paris, it’s business as usual for the robbers. Just the other day, two armed men raided a luxury boutique just off the place Vendome and stole goods worth €600,000. These raids on luxury shops, in Paris, Cannes and elsewhere are now becoming so commonplace that they hardly merit any media coverage any more.
One interesting anniversary is being marked in Paris. It’s 45 years since the wholesale food markets at Les Halles in the centre of Paris closed down and were moved to a brand new site at Rungis, close to Orly airport on the southern outskirts of Paris. Les Halles used to be a chaotic jumble of merchants and traffic,although very atmospheric. Rungis on the other hand is very efficient and totally lacking in any kind of atmosphere. A permanent exhibition about Les Halles is to be staged at the Petit Palais in Paris, while if you want to go further afield, Les Halles will feature in an upcoming exhibition at the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec.
It’s strange at the moment, that when everyone in France seems so downbeat about the country’s prospects, North America seems to be rediscovering the joys of France. I noticed the other day, just as a very small example of this,that at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, you can now buy an authentic black French beret or even a glass ornament shaped like a hot air balloon!
The life story of L’Wrenn Scott, the model turned fashion designer, who killed herself recently in New York, made sad reading. She had everything, it seems, including Sir Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, as her long term partner, but she had nothing. Among her shared possessions was an apartment in the rue de Bellechasse in the seventh in Paris. It’s a street I know well, almost better than any other street in Paris, and to me, being able to live there would be a wholly delightful yet unobtainable experience, something that would be far beyond the reach of mere mortals without millions to spend.
I also see this week that the story of the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a house in a remote village in the Belgian Ardennes called Jalhay, which I’ve mentioned before, turns out to have a humdrum scientific explanation. Since January, hundreds of people have been turning up at the house at night to see this statue which seemingly self-illuminated. Now, thanks to scientists at Liege university in Belgium, it turns out that the material from which the statue is made is very high in phosphorescence, while the paint on the statue is full of sulphur and zinc. The combination of all these made the statue glow in the dark, so rather sadly, rather than any out-of-the-world religious explanation, it’s all been explained away in downbeat scientific fashion!
While lassitude and ennui seems to envelope France, the feeling is spreading across Europe, in the wake of the Russian takeover of the Ukraine. Putin, it seems, sweeps all before him, at least in Russia and the Russian takeover of the Crimea was well planned and executed. All that the rest of Europe can do is wring its hands and take few if any steps that are going to deter further conquests by Russia. It seems hardly likely that Putin is going to stop at the Crimea; there are plenty of other places, including the Baltic states, that have sizeable Russian populations, enough to help Putin in his self-appointed task of restoring the old USSR to its former glory. I must say I smiled when I heard how The Sun newspaper (not normally on my reading list) said that the sanctions proposed against Russia by the G7 leaders made Neville Chamberlain look like a swivel-eyed warmonger!David Cameron and the leaders of the other G7 countries seem to talk plenty on the subject, yet do little. It all seems a little like Cameron’s pledge, if the Tories win the 2015 general election,of a referendum in 2017 on whether people in the UK want to stay in the EU. Believe it when it happens!