In France, Le Life Style is Spelt 2CV
If there is one image above all others that sums up life as it should be lived in France, it’s La Citroën 2CV, praised by those who love it as a model that deserves to be classified as world heritage. This certainly is the view of Richard, a passionate 2CV owner in Charente Maritime whose [...]
Duck Fat or Live and Let Liver
Is France’s gastronomically feted foie gras justly one of the world’s 10 great table flavours, alongside caviar and truffles, or is it an animal rights abomination? Do ordinary folk out for a meal at the weekend, really regard the world’s great gourmet chefs as a band of barbaric bird abusers? This certainly is how their [...]
Powered Off the Ocean Floor
The state-owned French naval defence firm DCNS (Direction des Constructions Navales) says it plans to install small scale nuclear reactors in submarines, anchored off the French coast each of which can provide power to about 85,000 homes connected by submarine cable. The number of submarine plants to be deployed has not been revealed but each [...]
Is a World Without Bees Possible?
The figures are devastating: In France some 400 000 bee hives a year from a total 1.35 million, were lost between 1995 and 2005 according to a report by Arte TV. Around 1500 beekeepers have abandoned this vital activity as scientists and others ask starkly: Is a world without bees possible? The Cite-Sciences website notes [...]
A Stain on the Planes of the Canal du Midi
A virulent incurable canker stain disease is killing magnificent plane trees shading the banks of the 240km-long Canal du Midi and threatening the survival of this extraordinary 17th century feat of French engineering. According to a report in Le Petit Jornal January 23, the canal authority VNF-Voies Navigables de France (Inland Waterways of France), is [...]
Activists Tarnish and Tarp Billboards
Much of France’s lush landscape remains an unspoiled scenic delight but some urban areas are suffocating from billboard blight, urban sprawl and growing planning chaos. Now Fourth Friday activists and others are fighting to change this. The latest focal point for urban guerrilla protest is Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne) where a group opposed to the carpet of [...]
US cables on French Africa Policy- Wikileaks
Wikileaks has published classified US diplomatic cables detailing France’s New Africa Policy and its regional and global impacts. Here’s an extract from the US’s Paris Embassy summary – FRANCE’S CHANGING AFRICA POLICY: (C) SUMMARY: France’s new Africa policy may have its most immediate impact on France’s military presence in Africa. The French are planning to [...]
France Plans To Win THIS World Cup
Forget that World Cup — everyone agrees it was a national disgrace — this time round the French Team, up before sunrise daily and cloistered in its exclusive Aurillac training camp, is committed to gruelling hours in perfecting technical skills at the hands of the world’s best coaches. These are professionals with but one goal [...]
Marine Le Pen – the “True French Resistance”
As the European dream dissolves into Euromess, French domestic discontent is fuelling a resurgence on the right where a blonde knight riding the charger of the “true French Resistance” has entered the election race. The party’s choice of Marine Le Pen (42) to succeed her 82-year-old father as leader of the FN-Front National paves the [...]
Before You Restock the Cellar Listen to This
About to restock your cellars but having trouble remembering the full range of French grape varieties? Here’s a little ditty that may help you:
How Monoprix Herbal Tea Got Into Hot Water
Monoprix (owned by Galeries Lafayette group) is in a spot of boiling water over a new-look pack of Verbena teabags which appears to gloat about the chain’s allegedly less-than-generous wage policies. Staff at one Paris branch are reportedly spluttering into their herbal infusions over an insensitive packaging slogan dreamed up by leading French advertising agency [...]
Socialist’s Off to War Over Grammargate
Nothing France likes better than a bit of cultural controversy especially when it involves the love-him or hate-him figure of conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, now preparing the ground for a 2012 re-election bid. So when the Socialist opposition launched Grammargate the country paused to watch and listen. Here was an interesting bit of viande saignante [...]
Le Minitel Still France’s Preferred “Internet”
Remember videotext? Well probably not if you’re a World Wide Web addict. For the telematics miracle of the 80s has all but been eclipsed by a Web that rides Worldwide on its Internet. However today, 33 years after the first French trials of videotex begin in Velizy, Versailles and Val de Bievre (and shortly [...]
Hadopi Navy Goes to War on “Pirates”
On the high seas of the Internet piracy is rife but France has launched the Hadopi navy to seek redress and, its admirals claim, 100,000 e-mail warheads, sorry warnings, have crossed the bows of swashbuckling pirate offenders since October 2010. In an article in Le Monde on December 18, Eric Walter, general – secretary of [...]
The Chef and his Stinger of a Christmas Gift
Guillaume Larive, a chef from Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle (southwest of Bordeaux) thought he had a great idea for a family Christmas present, carefully trimming and wrapping an “empty” hive of Asian hornets he set it before the tree and waited for Christmas Day. He had, he told Le Post newspaper, removed the nest from a tree cut [...]
Swiss Highwayman Story Spreads
The Swiss Highwayman story we covered in mid-November is now gaining much wider traction in the European media. The video below — a reconstruction by France’s TV1 station — carries interviews with some of his victims. The Swiss German-language website 20 minutes carries a report in which it links to our Swiss Highwayman story although its headline, [...]
Have IPhone, Want IPhone Cookie
Want an iPhone cookie only 2,730 yen (US$33), including tax. Japan Probe notes: “The Asahi Shimbun reports how a cafe in Tokushima prefecture became famous across Japan after Twitter users discovered its iPhone cookies. IPhone for (costly) morning coffee anyone?
Crisis 2011: TIME’s Historic Black List
Welcome to 2011 – and despite what some may feel, very many French men-and-women-on-Le Métro believe we’re not out of the financial woods yet. The Europe and Euro-battering hurricane now hitting our Western shores is of course directly related to this critical little bit of North Atlantic history. The annotated TIME magazine piece from December [...]
