Yet his speeches on Tuesday, on Armistice Day, at both the tomb of the unknown soldier in the Arc de Triomphe and at the new Anneau de la mémoire war memorial in north-eastern France, near the national war cemetery are Notre Dame des Lorettes, were impressive, and showed a good grasp of the historical dimensions involved.
But he continues to make political gaffes. When he was in Canada last week, attending the Canadian parliament building in Ottawa, he forgot to salute the Sergeant at Arms who saved the parliamentarians inside from being attacked towards the end of October. Neither did Hollande do himself any favours in his big presidential TV address last Thursday, which left most viewers and political commentators numb with boredom. The common consensus was that Hollande came over as a tedious technocrat, totally out of touch with ordinary folk.
Meanwhile, back in Paris, the squabbling continues inside the UMP party and the Socialist party, with a big dispute between Francois Fillon, a former UMP prime minister, and Jean-Pierre Jouyet, Hollande’s chief of staff, over the funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2012 presidential election campaign.
All this disputation between the two mainstream political parties in France is music to the ears of one other politician, Marine Le Pen. As the Républicain Lorraine newspaper said the other day, all this infighting means that for her, Christmas comes every day.
France being France, a constant stream of scandal is ensured and this time, it comes from the largest trade union in France, the CGT, which is left leaning. This didn’t stop the union spending vast amounts of money on the apartment it rents in Vincennes, for €2,000 a month for its leader, Thierry Lepaon. Someone in the union blew the gaffe on all the spending for Le Canard Enchainé, the weekly satirical publication. The cost of renovating the apartment was a staggering €130,000 and included €1,400 for a new loo seat and €700 for a new toilet roll holder and towel rack. All very embarrassing the powerful union that is so opposed to current government and EU austerity programmes for France.
Meanwhile, Jay Z, the American hip-hop star, has snapped up his favourite brand of champagne, Arnaud de Brignac. The brand was only established in 2006, but it has been very successful; previously, it was owned by a New York based wine and spirit company. Jay Z himself is said to be worth $520 million, according to Forbes magazine.
Someone who hasn’t been so lucky on the business front is the English designer John Galliano, who was sacked by Dior three years ago after a drunken rant. He brought an unfair dismissal case, which itself has just been dismissed.
The death of a famous musician has also attracted much attention in France, Manitas de Plata, the gypsy guitarist, who died last week in a retirement home in Montpellier at the age of 93. He was born in 1921, in a caravan at Sete, on the southern coast of France. His real name was Ricardo Baliardo. As a child, he taught himself to play the guitar, even though he couldn’t read music. He came to fame by playing at the annual gypsy gathering at Saintes-Maries-de-la-mer in the Camargue.When Picasso heard him playing in Arles in 1964, he declared that the guitarist was a man of greater worth than himself and promptly drew on de Plata’s guitar. The musician hung out with many famous names on the Riviera in the 1960s, such as Brigitte Bardot and gradually made a name for himself. He ended up by selling 93 million records, not only in France but around the world. In France itself, no artist has ever sold more discs.
Apart from his music, he also declared that he loved women and had at least 28 children by many different women, although he only acknowledged 14 of them as his own offspring. He didn’t say anything about loving wine as well!
Bad weather continues not only in southern and south-eastern France, but in Switzerland and Italy. Earlier this week, in eastern Corsica, a woman was saved by helicopter when her car was washed away by floods. In the Lugano region of southern Switzerland last weekend, a mother and her three year old son were killed when during ferocious storms, many trees fell on top of their remote house. Then in Liguria in north-eastern Italy this week, many floods have done much damage and two pensioners in their 70s were killed when a landslide engulfed their house.
The French winner of the St Malo to Guadeloupe Route du Rhum race, Loick Peyron, said that when the race was leaving St Malo 10 days ago, the seas were “Dantesque”. Yet despite this weather, he managed to trim more than two days off the previous record, completing the 6,560 km course in seven days, 15 hours and eight minutes, an astonishing achievement.
There’s even been a certain amount of positive business news from the south of France. The troubled Nice Matin media group has long been on the rocks, but despite the fact that half a dozen other media companies had been trying to buy it out, the staff of the Nice based group, helped by extensive crowdfunding,have been successful in their bid to take over the company. Also on the Riviera, the Vista Palace Hotel, a luxury hotel at Roqubrune-cap-Martin, which went into administration earlier this year, has been sold, against much competition, to the Emir of Qatar, who also happens to own the Printemps department store in Paris. But a condition of the sale is that all the existing staff have to be kept in their jobs.
Pleasing news for France came from a Google survey, which found that when it comes to romance, everyone, or almost everyone in the world, thinks that French is the ideal language for whispering sweet nothings. Spanish came second, followed by German, while poor old English came in last place, as the least likely romantic language. News has also come that the city of Paris is deciding whether to apply to stage the 2024 Olympics.
Paris has staged them before, but these days, it’s bit of a poisoned chalice. The London 2012 Olympics cost a vast amount to stage and were generally considered a big success, but whether they have provided any long term value for the UK is very much a moot point. And looks what happened to Greece after the Olympics were staged in Athens a decade ago!
On the international front, the war by any other name in eastern Europe is being stepped up. Despite the deepening trouble the Russian economy is in, this seems no deterrent to Putin, who now risks a lot more sanctions.
Some of the Russian actions border on the reckless. This year has seen a big increase over last year in incursions by Russian military aircraft into western airspace. The scariest incident was a couple of months ago, when an SAS flight was leaving Copenhagen for Rome with 132 people on board. About 50 km south of Malmo in south-eastern Sweden, a Russian spy plane with no means of communicating with the aircraft around it, just missed the SAS plane by some 50 metres. It’s said that thanks to the clear visibility and the sharpness of the SAS pilots, a collision was avoided.
In Moscow itself, there’s currently a pervasive smell of rotten eggs - I won’t make any obvious jokes. It’s actually hydrogen sulphide; no-one is quite sure of the source, but it produces a foul smell akin to rotten eggs and can be extremely dangerous.
I must end this week with a couple of superb typos. The other day, an English language website about France ran a feature on hearty winter dishes in France and pointed out the negative effect these could have on one’s wasteline. Quite so!
Then an Irish newspaper website the other day came up with a new spelling for Facebook, which it called Faecebook. You know the old joke about many a true word being spoken in jest. This seems one perfect example! No wonder that a recent survey in Ireland found that most people would rather forego a shower in the morning or food on the table rather than go offline. You never know what you’ll find on the Internet and on social media!