Salut!

Coup de Tête pour Nice en fête

Get the idea?
Picture: cjwooduk

We hate Man United. Well I don't as it happens, but this isn't really a football posting so I'll come back to that in a minute. Where I should start is not at the Nice carnival either, but on the Corniche, which I have just been able to enjoy for the first time since I saw Edward Fox whizzing round its perilous cliffside bends in The Day of the Jackal. That was a long time ago and I have naturally travelled along the same coastline, from Cannes to Nice, many times since. But enjoyment of the spellbinding scenery is, on the whole, impaired when you have to take care not to drive into the sea. So I insisted on leaving the car at Saint Raphaël and continuing to Nice by train. Rail is easily my preferred means of transport and I know there are several spectacular train journeys in the world. But this was a real treat, from the exhilaration of racing along parallel to the Mediterranean shore to the pleasure of trundling through cuttings ablaze with mimosas. One carnival goes rather a long way for my tastes, and I had been in Bormes-les-Mimosas only a week earlier when Bernadette Chirac opened the corso there. But the current Nice festival does boast a number of outstanding floats representing the efforts of people from each quarter of the city, and was well worth half a day. We also found an excellent stop for lunch, the Indian lounge, run by a family from Pondichéry and now added to my short list of good French Indian restaurants. When the procession got under way, the giant caricatures of Chirac (and Bernadette), Ségo and Sarko and the other presidential contenders were especially impressive. And then there was Zinedine Zidane. Which brings me back to Manchester United. That statement of hatred in my opening line is also the opening line of a refrain heard, with varying force depending on which club's supporters you are listening to, at most English football grounds. In France, just now, they hate Man Utd, too. The French naturally prefer Arsenal in any case, given the stronger links that make them seem almost part of Ligue 1. But in normal circumstances, they also respect Man Utd for the mighty club that it is. The new antipathy follows last week's match against Lille. Everyone by now has a view of the events involving Man Utd fans and French police, and also of Giggs's quickly taken free kick that won the game; there has been comment here as elsewhere. But limiting myself to the free kick controversy and Lille's petulant walk-off, I couldn't help feeling, as I watched the Zidane character in the Nice carnival parade, that double standards were at play in the French reaction. Man Utd's sense of fair play has been put in question and the referee has been pilloried. Yet all Giggs did, apparently without breaking any rule of the game, was to make the most of an advantage awarded because of some unfair play by Lille. Why on earth should a free kick on the edge of the penalty area be delayed to the convenience of the offending team? Even if that view is open to debate, surely we can at least agree that no verbal provocation justified Zidane's actions in the World Cup final, much as some have charitably expressed understanding of them. Yet in Nice here was further evidence that far from being a matter of personal disgrace that also tarnished the image of an admirable French national side, Zidane's show of yobbish aggression can be seen as a source of pride. The carnival caricature had the great man's head thrusting forward as it had towards the chest of Italy's Marco Materrazzi last July.

And the city authorities treated the crowds to repeated bursts over the sound system of that cuddly French hit, Dance of the Headbutt,
glorifying the footballer's moment of madness. Without wishing to rain
on the carnival, I cannot help thinking that this sends out a
depressingly wrong message to youngsters who idolise great sportsmen.

Labels: Arsenal, Bernadette Chirac, carnival, football, Indian food, Jacques Chirac, Ligue 1, Manchester United, Nice, Nicolas Sarkozy, Segolene Royal, Zinedine Zidane

Sign language

Will this sign in the disabled parking spaces at the Champion supermarket in Le Lavandou be respected than the one way markings in the Intermarché car park less than a mile away? As for the invitation to go and get drowned, I am reliably informed that this is not official council policy. They're just taking a while to erase the graffiti.

Meanwhile, let's not be too hard on the civic leaders of
Menton, along the coast next to Italy, for supposing that dogs could
read.

Labels: beach, disabled, dogs, drown, signs, supermarket

Over the top? C'est la totale

News reports in France sometimes recount allegations, usually but not always from outside, that the French are "champions" at this (taking time off, consumption of pills, being prone to complain) or mauvaises élèves at that (learning languages, courtesy on the road and so on).

Enough to make anyone mad?
Picture: So Cal Metro

You don't need to be excessively francophile to doubt the accuracy of the claims in the first place. But can I raise another possible contender? Are people of other countries as given to hyperbole, in everyday conversation, as the French? When I first arrived in Paris as a new resident back in July 2004, I described my wife's way of combining comprehensive knowledge of English swearwords with a total failure to moderate their use according to strength of curse each situation warranted. This is not just to do with the occasional domestic dispute that would arise in any household a chic, vivacious and tidy-minded Frenchwoman shares with a dishevelled, football-supporting folkie. It is simply the case that whenever she swears in English, she starts pretty high up the range. Her sister is one of the most mild-mannered people I know, but was a nightmare to be with when she first started driving, berating just about every other road user with a non-stop flow of shouts and insults from the inside of her Citroën 2CV. I suppose encounters on the road don't count so much, and I am certainly not sure that French road rage is worse than the British version. But I have witnessed countless examples of the phenomenon, from the fonctionnaire's utter exasperation at the omission of some piddling detail from a form to the platform attendant's unrestrained abuse aimed at some late-arriving passenger. A slight nip in the air and it's inevitably "freezing". A minor lapse in manners at the table and papa launches into a tirade, with or without accompanying claques, as if a line of cocaine had tumbled from his child's pocket. On today's lunchtime news, a little girl on a school ski-ing holiday was interviewed as she lay in bed while her friends enjoyed the snow. She seemed a long way from death's door, but complained of stomach ache, headache and nausea before adding gravely: "C'est la totale." Her phrase enriched my knowledge of French - a function, I suppose, of not having children living at home to keep me in touch with their everyday use of the language. But was her reaction to minor ailments just another isolated instance, no more characteristic of the French than the stiff upper lip is of the English? Or does experience lead others to believe the French are les champions of exaggeration?

Labels: Britain, English, France, French, swearing

Driving a Renaud to London

However many records and concert tickets Renaud shifts in his native country, he is never likely to be mobbed in Oxford Steet.

Picture: buzfoto

The guarantee that he can go about his daily business unhindered when in London has a lot to do with his decision, which Richard of Orléans will think makes him positively certifiable, to plan his future there. We have talked quite a bit here, and in that Other Place, about the two-way flow of people between France and the UK. Truly reliable figures seem elusive, but I think there are supposed to be around 500,000 Britons with homes in France - which many undoubtedly use for only part of the year - and perhaps 300,000 French people resident on the other side of the Channel. Renaud's explanation, in a Paris Match interview, for deciding to move to London involves a list of qualities that some of my readers will consider as unrecognisable as he is to the average London cabbie. "It is true that Romane (his wife and mother of their baby son Malone) adore London," he began, uncontroversially enough. "Romane, above all since she is an artiste, finds the attention of people in the street hard to take - their curiosity and fanaticism, and the amateur paparazzi with their mobile phones. Ten times more peaceful in London." Avert your eyes, Richard. Our hero goes on to describe his love for the capital, the good citizenship of its people, their humour, the pubs. "I love English football, English rock, English culture, English literature, the galleries, exhibitions, architecture. You don't see cops on the streets of London. Why? Because there is more civisme and more brotherliness than in Paris!" And no, Renaud is not thinking - Johnny Hallyday style - of a more agreeable tax regime. As a good socialist - and not even what the French like to call a caviar socialist - he insists that the more tax he pays, the happier he is, and that France's wealth tax, the ISF, is to him a gesture of solidarity. He and Romane plan to devote most of their time, when not working, to living in London, maybe eight months a year. They already own a small house there - "not a mansion, not a palace, honest!" - and want Malone to grow up bilingual, attending school in London (by which they may, of course, mean the Lycée Français in the Little France manor of South Ken rather than a bog standard comprehensive). Adopting his most Ségo-like posture, Renaud adds: "I will go on paying my taxes in France even if I regret that they go on building aircraft carriers instead of crèche, schools....." Who was it, apart from me now and again, that said French pop music doesn't travel?

Labels: Britain, culture, football, France, French pop music, Johnny Hallyday, London, Paris, Renaud, Romane, Segolene Royal, socialism, tax

Ségo: it's tough being a woman

However you look at it, Ségolène Royal's television audience - a peak of just under 10.6 million viewers, an average of 8.9 million - proves she is a remarkable draw.

Picture: François Lafite

The average was comfortably higher than the ratings for her rival Nicolas Sarkozy's similar broadcast, itself described as a record for a political programme in France, two weeks ago. Many people will have tuned in expecting, a lot of them hoping, to see Ségo stumble and fall. But she will take huge comfort from the figures, believing the massive penetration will help her rise above media, opposition and even Left Bank intellectual disdain. Some will remember mention here of her steeliness and ambition being seen as faults, whereas in a man they'd be hailed as virtues. This notion surfaced again the other day when she reacted sharply to questions about the abrupt resignation, allegedly over funding of her programme, of an economic adviser. It was certainly an eyebrow-raising moment, and poor PR, but the writer of one column I saw couldn't resist adding that she was too quick to reveal herself as hard. Sarko seems to get off much more lightly when he makes ill-considered ripostes. Last night, she argued that running for the presidency was harder for a woman, that no man would have had his competence questioned as constantly as has happened to her. It was a long programme but I felt Royal did reasonably well after a ponderous start (not her fault; the first questioner was allowed to ramble for ever). She made the right noises (for the left, so to speak) on youth unemployment, pensions, small businesses and the disabled. And she refused to be wrong-footed by questions about the Parti Socialiste "elephants", not least what role if any she would hand as President Royal to her partner François Hollande, the general secretary. The moment when she walked over to console a wheelchair-bound man, in tears as he described living with MS, could have been embarrassing but wasn't. It looked a genuine gesture, but I suspect it will also have done her no harm. I found her a little less assured on the presidency itself - "I think I am ready" hardly had the ring of confidence - and on that thorny issue of how she will pay for her programme. But Sarko has unanswered questions in that area, too. François Bayrou, the centrist candidate who has been steadily improving his showing in the polls, is an interesting sideshow. I simply do not believe the poll that found he would beat either Ségo or Sarko if he made it through to the second round, but he is capable of inflicting damage, especially on her. Royal's best bet, provided she can finally sort out her unimpressive campaign team, is that those 10.59 million viewers - isn't that 10,589,000 more than are canvassed in the average poll? - liked not only what they saw, which is usually the case, but what they heard, too.

Labels: election, Elysée, France, François Bayrou, françois Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy, Parti Socialiste, polls, president, Ségolène Royal, television, voters

Pride, prejudice and the press

Reading about the life and times of Maurice Papon, the Vichy collaborator who signed French Jews' death warrants, I felt the glow of distantly reflected pride.

Where Papon's deportees ended up
Picture: Danielzolli

Here, and over at Roy Greenslade's Guardian blog,
there has lately been talk of how ritualistic prejudice againt the
press leads to grotesque libel awards that (should) bring shame to the
countries and courts in which they are made.
Not everyone agrees with me or the similar, though hardly identical,
views expressed by my fellow blogger.
But turning to Papon, let us start with the proposition that his
exposure as a war criminal was no bad thing.
That will not seem too controversial a point to most of those who stray
into Salut!.
But how did that exposure come about, given that Papon proceeded from
being the second most senior French official in wartime Bordeaux to a
very prominent post-war career in public life (though that career was
scarcely without disgrace)?

It came about because the press (newspapers) did what it is - they are -
best at.
In May 1981, France's satirical weekly, Le Canard Enchainé, revealed
documents establishing Papon's culpability in the deportation of nearly
1,700 Jews from Bordeaux to the Drancy internment camp on the outskirts
of Paris between 1942 and 1944. Many of these unfortunates went from
Drancy to Auschwitz. Very, very few came home. As the Allied victory
neared, Papon saw what was coming and switched sides, reinventing
himself as a Resistance informer and later collecting an honour from
General de Gaulle for his pains.
Ultimately, he was jailed for 10 years for crimes against humanity. He
fled to Switzerland but was returned to serve all of three years of his
sentence.
As a self-confessed liberal on penal issues, I have no real complaint
about his release in 2002 on health grounds. But Papon goes to his
grave having never found the courage or humility to admit to his
wrongdoing.
He insisted to the end that he was the blameless victim, as (with
variations to the theme) is so often the case among those who dislike
how they portrayed in newspapers, of "unprecedented media pillorying
made up of lies, insults and infamy".
Great stuff, Le Canard Enchainé! I have said the French press is more
decent but also more dull than the British variety, but here it managed
to be both immensely decent and a long way from dull.
And so it is on the other side of the Channel. The press, from ruthless
proprietors to individual journalists, makes plenty of mistakes.
Sometimes the mistakes are serious and, much more rarely, they have
serious consequences.
But often, the press is punished disproportionately for its mistakes;
the rich, powerful and merely fortunate would be horrified at how low
I'd cap libel awards, while insisting on due - OK, French-style -
prominence for apologies or corrections.
And almost always, the press attracts far less praise than it deserves
when it acts in its own loftier traditions.
Leave aside the unmasking of war criminals or the spotlights trained on
government and corporate injustices.
For every unfairly criticised politician, pop star and supermodel,
there are scores of ordinary people who have been assisted, by local
and national newspapers alike, towards some semblance of fair treatment
in their David vs Goliath battles with gas boards, insurance companies,
banks and other private or public bodies.
Unfashionable, especially on a blog, and probably unnecessary since I
no longer have a newspaper job, but true.

Labels: Auschwitz, Drancy, Jews, Le Canard Enchaine, newspapers, Papon, press

Pottering about in the Guardian

First a few words of reassurance. My appearances elsewhere in cyberspace do not mean that Salut!'s days are numbered, or not yet at any rate. Especially since I now see that my advertising earnings have crept up to an average of 17 cents a day.

Picture: Si1very

But regulars around these parts may be interested to learn that I have found one or two other journalistic outlets to satisfy myself that, all that "garden leave" now over, there is indeed life beyond the Telegraph.

The First Post,
a newsy site which already appears to be a home for other former
colleagues, has already run a few articles.
There have been two or three on the presidential elections, naturally,
but also one apiece on the French smoking ban and a couple of villas
that Saddam Hussein's regime bought in the south of France with money
that, arguably, could have been better spent in Iraq.
As of tonight, I am also a contributor to CommentIsFree,
a talkative and animated corner of the Guardian's website. Ségolène's
continuing struggles preoccupied me today, but my hope is to broaden
the range of topics much as I try to do here. That link now seems to
work.
At my leaving party - sorry, one of my leaving parties, this one in the
Cheshire Cheese pub off Fleet Street - I began by condemning my former
employers for their cruel and vindictive decision to give me more time
to spend with Sunderland football club.
Those with my best interests at heart will be relieved to hear that I
have found something more thoughtful than Salut!'s football offshoot to help occupy my time.

Labels: Daily Telegraph, elections, football, France, Guardian, journalism, Saddam Hussein, Salut Sunderland, Ségolène Royal, The First post

Fine mess

Freedom of the press and all that - a great subject, and all the traffic coming this way in recent days implies that others think the same. One to return to, but perhaps it's time to move on.

Salut! goes Munch
thanks Gigi

Heavy, dark skies greeted me as I flew into Stansted the other afternoon. It felt three or four hours later than it was, and you got very wet walking from aircraft to terminal building. If the south of France needed something to make it seem more attractive, that Essex welcome would have done the trick. The welcome was to become bleaker. Awaiting me in London - one of my daughters had collected a stack of mail sent to our old home since the Post Office redirection time limit expired - were three letters from bailiffs. A parking fine I never knew a thing about had naturally gone unpaid. The bailiffs were making bailiff-like threatening noises about what was likely to happen as a consequence.

You sense it means trouble
Picture: Alex Segre

Worse, these letters began in August, 2006 and ended in October. In that time, a parking fine that may have been - and this is a guess - £30 or £40 had turned itself into a debt of £235. And the figure was still growing. When I was finally able to speak to the bailiffs next morning, I was informed that the sum outstanding now stood at just under £320. What happens next is unclear. I have lodged an appeal on the grounds that no ticket was left on my car windscreen on the day back in February last year when, in a grim part of Birmingham, I had parked while attending Birmingham City vs Sunderland. I also had no idea I was illegally parked, but that is another issue. A good case could be made out for penalising someone daft enough to spend good money travelling from France to spend an afternoon in the West Midlands, endure the worst food he can remember eating in a decade and then watch his hopeless, relegation-bound team produce a typically inept performance. But I still reckon the cost of that day out, now racing past £500 (taking the cost of match tickets and travel into account) unless the appeal melts hearts, was steep. And the burden is unlikely to be offset by the revenue Salut! enjoys from the Google click-and-earn ads (I think the income currently averages 11 US cents a day). Thanks for the bright ideas on how to illustrate this post - and to Alex Segre, a professional photographer, for allowing me to use his work.

Labels: fines, football, France, parking, Salut Sunderland, Stansted

No offence (4)

Confirmation has appeared here over the past two days, if I needed it, that lots of people do not really believe in free speech.

Why trouble the courts?
Picture: mcdowell

Richard of Orléans will forgive the thought that he would not be everyone's choice to lecture on the importance of expressing opinions without the least hint of rudeness. No, I have not seen the Irish News article in full. I gave the flavour of it, as best I could from perusal of news reports (using sources I regard as usually dependable), and made it clear that the review contained further criticisms. I do not even know if the article can be viewed on any news databases, given that it led to a libel action and newspaper librarians tend to get jumpy in such circumstances. Added point: you can read more about this in Roy Greenslade's blog at the Guardian Media website. But my argument did not rest on the precise nature of the criticism. I was more concerned with the principle. Take away a critic's right to criticise and you may as well empty whole shelves of public libraries, forbid serious discussion of any artistic, sporting or other human endeavour and ban Simon Cowell from the air. Well, maybe the last reference wasn't my strongest point. The blogosphere seems, at first thought, an odd place for people to be applauding ferocious penalties for those who express views they find unpalatable. But when you study some of the more obscene libel awards made particularly but not always by juries, it is not so surprising after all. Since Britain, I am pleased to say, is still a newspaper reading country, many of the jurors taking part in the exercise are likely themselves to be avid consumers of the press. Bill Taylor refers to critics on major Canadian papers (this is an amended reference; see my comment) making repeat visits before a stridently critical restaurant view appears and this seems eminently sensible and fair. The fact that it would still not be enough for some, more concerned with clipping the wings of journalists, rather supports the opening lines of this post.

Labels: censorship, critics, free speech, juries, libel, press

No offence (3)

On a chilly evening in Le Lavandou, we dined alone at L'Auberge Provençale. There were no other customers, the empty tables making a mockery of the owners’ efforts to create a bright, welcoming ambiance.

Voltaire: Ulster needs you
Picture: Jaime2k6.

The meal – we both chose from a set menu, with rougets as starter followed by magret de canard –
was simple but excellent, with a pleasant bottle of Provençal red, from
the Domaine de l'Angueiroun just three miles away, to accompany it.
Every attempt was made to make us feel comfortable; the first question
when we booked was whether we’d like to sit by the log fire. The bill –
79 euros, which also included a bottle of Evian and a shared dessert –
was reasonable enough to send us away satisfied that we'd had value for
money.
The owners would be pleased with the above words. If this blog were
widely read in Le Lavandou, they might even print them out and stick
them on the wall, though it would mar the decor.
But what if our experience of L'Auberge Provençale hadn’t seemed so
good? What if the mullet had tasted rubbery and the duck slices been so
hard you could have bounced them on the table, unconcerned about the
risk of knocking over the wine bottle, so awful were its contents?
Would I be as entitled to say as much, in a newspaper or magazine or on
line, as I clearly was to report more favourably?
Does anyone seriously believe the answer to that question is other than
Yes? Sadly, a jury of good men (and women) and true in Northern Ireland
saw things a little differently. They have just awarded £25,000 in
damages, plus m’learned friends’ costs, against the Irish News after a
restaurateur complained that a review was defamatory, damaging and
hurtful.
The Irish News, in my experience, is a decent daily paper. It is
traditionally read by Ulster's nationalist population but is
unrecognisable from the days when death notices for terrorists would be
enclosed within thick black borders and few Protestants would think of
buying a copy.
Its food critic, Caroline Workman, sounds as if she is something of an
authority in her field, having had some training in London restaurants
and edited the Bridgestone restaurant guide.
She described her visit with friends to the west Belfast pizzeria as
"hugely disappointing". The pate did not have much flavour, the flesh
of her squid was a grey, translucent colour and her cola drink tasted
unchilled, watery and flat.
There was plenty more she did not like about the meal and her rating,
one mark out of five, was said to translate as "Stay at home". The
restaurateur considered the review a "hatchet job" and warmly greeted
the jury's verdict as evidence that justice had been done.
On the face of it, the verdict is no such thing.
For all I know, there may be no finer place to eat in Ulster than this
pizzeria, whatever the reviewer felt.
Nor do I especially blame people for taking advantage of libel laws
that are loaded so heavily against the press. Declaring what others
might see as an interest, I should add that another Ulster jury did
once award damages against my then employers over an article I had
written.
The story is told so as to demonstrate that the human desire to censor
is not restricted to Muslims who resort to French law in the hope of
punishing a magazine for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet
Mohammed.
That case should never have been allowed inside a courtroom. At least
it now stands a good chance of being thrown out, after the prosecutor
argued for the dismissal of criminal charges.
But what conclusion should we draw from the case of the pizzeria and
the scathing food critic?
If we accept that Ms Workman is telling the truth when she says the
review represented her honest opinion, the logic of the outcome is
plain: only a dishonest opinion or none at all would have been
acceptable in the eyes of Northern Irish justice. And that seems
unacceptable in any part of the world that regards itself as a
democracy.

Labels: Belfast, critic, democracy, football, France, Le Lavandou, libel, Mohammed, Muslims, Northern Ireland, Ulster