The next presidential election isn’t due until 2017, but it looks as if the government will soon lose its majority in both houses of the French parliament. Hollande’s previous government collapsed on Monday morning after strong criticism last weekend by the then economic minister, Arnaud Montebourg. He was harshly critical of the German government’s continued adherence to austerity politics and measures and said that France should no longer be pushed around by Europe’s power house.
One commentator writing in The Times in London the other day said that France has a logjam of woes, just waiting to break. Hollande has the lowest approval ratings,17 per cent, of any president since the Fifth Republic came into being in 1958. Meanwhile, in an interview with Paris Match, Brigitte Bardot, just coming up to her 80th birthday, said that she was a proud Frenchwoman, yet in every possible aspect, France has declined. She declared that Marine le Pen, leader of the Front National, would be the 21st century equivalent of Joan of Arc.
Last Monday, Parisians celebrated the 70th anniversary of the city’s liberation from the Nazis. The joy on that occasion in 1944 was unconfined, yet fast forward 70 years and the present mood in Paris is nothing less than gloom and despair, with little light relief or sunshine.
I’ve just been reading what many say is the best account of the years between 1940 and 1944, when Paris was under the German jackboot. Jean Guéhenno, a Breton, managed to survive those years in Paris as a teacher. In his own personal protest, he refused to publish anything during those bleak years, but instead, kept a detailed diary, something that could have cost him his life. He himself lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1978 when he was 88.
The diary was first published in book form in 1947 and now a new English language edition has just been published by Oxford University Press. It’s a chilling account of daily life in Paris in the Nazi era, when execution were normal for anyone caught with the slightest hint of resistance tendencies, yet many other writers and cultural artists were only too willing to grovel under Nazi patronage.
Another anniversary came and went the other day, the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911. It had been stolen from the Louvre by an Italian man and the painting was only discovered two years later when he tried to sell it in Florence. Ironically, before the theft, few people had heard of the painting and it was all the publicity surrounding the theft that generated the hype surrounding the work that still lasts to this day.
Meanwhile, the future of Paris itself is a matter of much debate. A recent survey showed that it was still one of the most influential cities in the world, along with London and New York, but that its many shortcomings will ensure it loses that influence in future. Another recent survey, of the best places to live in France, put the Ile de France, which includes Paris, in 6th position. The best region to live is the Midi-Pyrenees, followed by Limousin and the Pays de la Loire and Bretagne. Hardly surprisingly, with its atrocious murder rate, Corsica came in last, with a zero rating for public safety.
Yet another survey-this must be the month for them!-rated the various cities of Europe in terms of how good they are to live in. Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland, not surprisingly, came top of the pile, despite the huge drugs problem in Zurich. Dublin came way down the list, one of the worst cities in Europe to live in, because of the severe deficiencies in public services, like transport and public healthcare.
But back to France and one piece of good news about the media, from Nice. There, the Nice-Matin group is in much financial trouble, so very recently, its journalists set about crowdfunding to save the group and their jobs. They set a target of €300,000,which amazingly, they’ve very nearly reached. Even more amazingly, one donor gave €50,000.Also in Nice, the city’s mayor is campaigning vigorously to ensure that the Promenade des Anglais gets UNESCO World Heritage status. It certainly deserves it, even though most of the buildings along its route are singularly lacking in architectural heritage, apart from the Hotel Negresco, with its great dome shaped like a woman’s breast. Typical French!
But on the downside, a survey of 20,000 people by a website, hotel.info, showed that Nice has some of the worst maintained hotels in France. Out of the top 10 cities in France, Nice has the worst hotels.
This summer has also been disastrous on the Cote d’Azur, with bad weather in July. More tourists than expected turned up in August, but they were spending much less than predicted. On the beaches and in the mountains, the bad weather is taking most of the blame for the bad season, but people in the industry are now rather forlornly hoping that September will be a late saviour.
There was even another piece of good news the other day, the wine crop this year in France is going to be excellent, due to favourable weather conditions earlier in the year. It will certainly be much better than the vintages of 2013 and 2012. This year’s production is likely to be over six million bottles. One wine related sports event that’s about to take place is the Marathon de Médoc, which attracts about 8,000 runners. The publicity surrounding the event says they will be able to enjoy the time honoured produce of the region, presumably including its renowned wines, but I presume that all this won’t happen until after the race!
Just the other day, one of the big names of the French wine world died, Baroness Philipinne de Rothschild, aged 80. She owned and her children still do, the three grand crus classés at Pauillac; the Chateau Mouton Rothschild is renowned far and wide for the excellence of its wines. Before she went into the wine business, the baroness had a very successful career as a comedienne at the Comedie Francaise.
And while the 2014 wine harvest looks like being a bumper one, it’s not such good news on the wheat front. France is the largest grower of wheat in Europe, but such has been the effect of this summer’s bad weather that France is having to undergo the indignity of importing a lot of wheat this year from Britain.
Poor weather has also had its effect on the fruit and vegetable market in France, where prices have been tumbling. Many fruit retail prices are down by about 12 per cent, while vegetables are down by about three per cent. Strangely, there has been much reticence in France as elsewhere in Europe about how the ban by Russia on imports of EU food is going to cause a glut of fruit and vegetables in the EU. It may be bad news for farmers but it will certainly be good news for consumers, if they ever get to hear about it.
I listened the other day to a most informative documentary on Radio 3 about that wonderful composer Ravel’s home at Montfort L’Amaury, about 30 km south-west of Paris. The documentary was accompanied by a video, so all in all, it was most enlightening about Ravel. He had tried to enlist during the first world war, but his short stature and poor health ruled him out and he had to make do with being a truck driver on the front. Just as well, as otherwise, the world could have missed out on some wonderful music.
He was a strange man, always well dressed, keen on the social life of Paris. He was often described as looking like a well dressed jockey. He never married, never had any personal relationships in his life and indeed his personal life remains a complete enigma.
On a more contemporary note, the first Christian refugees from Iraq arrived in France the other day and around 8,000 have applied to do the same. In all probablity, they can make a unique contribution to social, economic and cultural life in France, something that is impossible in present day Iraq.
An interesting news piece came from French-speaking Switzerland the other day. Anyone with an interest in radio will recognise the name on the dial of Sottens, the transmission centre for radio from the Suisse Romande. It opened in 1931, but such have been the advances in radio technology that it has been out of use for the past four years. The smaller125 metre high mast at Sottens has been kept in place, but the other day, the main,188 metre high mast was dynamited, watched by a large crowd. A dynamic end to a radio legend!
I also spotted an intriguing French news piece the other day, about an 89 year old pickpocket arrested after he had been spotted delving into fellow passengers’ bags on the TGV between Paris and Nantes. Pensioners are always being encouraged to follow active lifestyles, but this was surely a jump too far. Another pensioner hits the news the other day. He’s 68 and lives in the Vosges. He wrote to the state insurance fund requesting repayment of a prescription charge he’s paid recently, only to be told that according to their records, he had died four years ago.
Really bizarrely, the same letter also gave him the right of appeal. How one statement could be reconciled with the other is beyond me, but it was just an outlandish example of French bureacracy at its worst. But these days of course, bad bureacracy happens in most places. In this particular case, the pensioner from the Vosges had to get a letter from his doctor certifying he was still alive.
One anniversary that was almost entirely forgotten this year, except in the Czech Republic, but which should have been remembered because of the situation in Ukraine, was the Soviet-led invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia in August,1968.I was in Prague that August, just before the invasion, and I managed to get into the country again a year later. So I’ve seen plenty of first hand evidence of what Soviet/Russian aggression, domination and dictatorship is like and judging by present day evidence, Russia hasn’t changed its spots at all. The only thing that’s changed is that the West is even more somnolent today than it was in 1968, with the US becoming a powerless powerhouse.
Here at home in Dublin, the big news over the past few days has been the death of Albert Reynolds, a former Taoiseach (prime minister), who played a vital part in starting the whole peace process in Northern Ireland. At his funeral in Dublin, one of those who attended was Sir John Major, another under rated prime minister, who played an equally invaluable role in bringing peace. At the church in Dublin, he was given a sustained round of applause by the congregation, a reaction he found very moving.
I happened to know Albert Reynolds well and he often told me of his life and times as the owner of a weekly newspaper, the Longford News. When my first book of Irish newspaper history was launched in 1983, it was Albert who did the honours. In Dublin, there’s a saying that if someone is incompetent, they couldn’t organise a pissup in the Guiness brewery. The book was launched in the Guiness brewery and since Albert was involved, the pissup was brilliantly organised.
About 10 years later, I presented a series on RTÉ Radio about the newspaper business. One of the episodes was about the papers in Longford. As Albert Reynolds was then Taoiseach, the station sent a whole production crew down to Government Buildings. It all started off very formally and then Albert started telling some of his stories about the Longford News. Everyone just cracked up totally with laughter and we had to stop the recordings until everyone had regained their composure, which was the hard part.
Everyone’s sympathies go to Albert’s cherished wife, Kathleen, who survived a serious case of breast cancer, their seven children and 12 grandchildren. May his humour, warmth and decency as well as his many formidable achievements be long remembered. He was noted, during his time in politics, for actually doing what he said he was going to do, a complete contrast to today’s politicians who think that a glib soundbite promise is all they have to do.
After all the current doom and gloom, not to mention President Hollande, and his ‘On the Buses’ prime ministerial team, I must conclude this week’s blog with a delightful happening in New York and other big American cities last Sunday. Large numbers of women there have joined the GoTopless organisation, saying that men and women should have equal rights in going topless. To prove their point, lots of good looking women took to the streets in topless mode and they all looked as if they were having a lot of fun.
Perhaps European women should follow suit and inject a bit more life into a dreary, downbeat continent. The French, with their penchant for naughty mischief making, could lead the way and cheer themselves up into the bargain.