Salut!

If you can’t stand the heat, avoid southern France for now

 

 

Just now, down in the south of France, it feels impossible to go out without seeing an air conditioning installation van outside at least one house in every street. After the sleeplessly torrid nights of recent past, we'll soon enough be raiding the savings ourselves.

This is a piece I wrote about la canicule for The National.

 

The photograph of the monument below shows us things have been worse: it commemorates the Landes forest fires of 1949 that killed 82...

 

 

Image:  'Par moi'   

Macron all at sea in the South Pacific

The explorer James Cook was the first European to sight the archipelago he called New Caledonia in honour of his Scottish father's native land, which he thought it resembled. Nearly 250 years later, 170 years after France declared it its own, islanders are restless. Many want independence. A sham referendum says a majority don't. But Emmanuel Macron prides himself on a modern, apologetic outlook on colonialism. His visit to the South Pacific resolved nothing. My thoughts for The National ...

A 48-hour visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to the south-west Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia has highlighted rather than calmed stirrings of discontent among those who dream of bringing 170 years of colonial rule to an end.

As far as it is possible to travel from Paris and still be on French soil, this far-flung outpost of France’s historic empire is fiercely divided on its destiny. Up to half its 280,000 citizens, notably the poorer indigenous Kanaks, want the excitement and challenge of independence while the other half, including better-off islanders with roots in metropolitan France, clings to continuity and stability as a French dependency.

Successive referendums have produced votes against severing the colonial ties, but by majorities that were narrowing until a poll in December 2021 was boycotted by independence supporters. Their demands for a delay in holding the referendum because of the impact of Covid-19 on New Caledonia were rejected, rendering meaningless the subsequent near-unanimous vote, in a derisory turnout of under 44 per cent, to remain French.