Don’t Just Sit There, Try a French Jelly
In the period generally known to many expatriates, as BmF ( Before Moving to France) work was an 8-7 affair probably with several hours of travel tacked on. AmF (After Moving to France), work for the many who uprooted before retirement anyway, tends to be kitchen-table-based … and sometimes rather lonely. But that was BJ (Before Jelly). [...]
“The Dis-Integration of Europe”
European leaders are attacking ‘multiculturalism’ in a transparent ploy to appeal to far-right voters. But they’re threatening decades of progress in reaching out to Muslim minorities claim two US academics writing in the latest Foreign Policy magazine. Jonathan Laurence, author of The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims and Justin Vaisse director of research of the Center [...]
The Real Disaster in Japan is the Earthquake
Global media reporting is still disproportionately focused on the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster rather than on the devastating aftermath, in human and social terms alone, of the recent Japan earthquake and tsunami. As a result the industry in France, one of the largest in the world, and in neighbouring Germany (where the ruling party has [...]
Cafés Wastefully ‘Warm Sparrows in Winter’
Some 6000 Parisian café owners are on a heated collision course with Paris City Hall over plans to ban (butane-fired) patio gas heaters. The patio heaters are used outdoors by sidewalk cafés to warm their winter customers – many of whom are hardened nicotine addicts who also claim the right to coffee and a newspaper [...]
Wall Street 2007/8 – Inside Job?
Inside Job – A film by Charles Ferguson “This film attempts to provide a comprehensive portrayal of an extremely important and timely subject: the worst financial crisis since the Depression, which continues to haunt us via Europe’s debt problems and global financial instability. It was a completely avoidable crisis; indeed for 40 years after the [...]
Oyez Oyez, Town Criers are Alive and Well
Oyez Oyez(*), braves gens… Oyez Oyez, good people … forgo texting, twittering and the Internet, in France the Town Crier is back on the streets in full voice or even song. [(*)Oyez derives from the Anglo-Norman word for listen] According to the Paris City Hall the profession is being revived with a dual purpose, at [...]
The 7-to-75 Orchestra in Concert
You’re never too old (or young) to learn and here’s a symphony orchestra of amateur musicians, aged 7 to 75, to prove it. The Grand Théâtre de Provence (GTP) Orchestra in Aix-en-Provence recently completed a residency under the watchful eye of Radio France’s Orchestre National de France. The Rue 89 website reports that there were [...]
Nuclear Fallout Hits French Parliament
In a Khrushchevan shoe-banging moment all of his own an expelled-communist French deputy has scandalised a parliamentary committee on nuclear safety at a time of national angst over the Japanese reactor disaster. As heroic Japanese engineers selflessly exposed themselves to dangerous radiation on Day 7 of the stabilisation struggle at Japan’s seriously damaged Fukushima nuclear [...]
Lavatory humour – Air France caves in on refit
AFKLM-Air France/KLM, has caved into Federal Aviation Administration fears and, alongside other European and American operators, is to refit its Airbus and Boeing fleets, to block hypothetical toilet terrorists. But meanwhile, under FAA pressure, AFKLM and the other operators have disconnected emergency oxygen generators in the toilets with immediate effect. Aircraft makers say it will [...]
De-Growth…Now — a Guest Blog
If you believe that unlimited economic growth is sustainable on a planet that has limited resources you are either an idiot – or an economist (writes guest blogger, Tony Smith). More and more people are beginning to wake up from a long consumerist nightmare. As the nuclear disaster was taking place in Japan, queues of [...]
Taking the Cornish out of the Pasty
The Cornish Pasty Association (CPA) may be pleased, but little corners of Cornwall around the globe seem dismayed and perplexed, and these include expats in Limoges and the Dordogne. Who would have thought that after nine years of campaigning, the apparently innocuous decision to award the Cornish Pasty a “Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status” might [...]
France’s Eurovision 2011 Hope: Vassili
France hopes Amaury Vassili, the youngest professional tenor in the world, will win this year’s Eurovision song contest. Here he is with Sognu, a Corsican tune. H/T Frogsmoke See our review of the official French entry to the 2011 Eurovision Song contest, in our Culture section – click here
Libya Fingers France – Toyota War Revenge?
Early in the current Libyan uprising France precipitously “recognised” the rag tag rebel army — now holed up in Benghazi ahead of annhilation — as ‘successors’ to the Gaddafi regime. It is a move it is surely now regretting. (Paris was not alone in this, Britain’s PM David Cameron made just as much of a [...]
French Greens have anti-Nuclear field day
Greens, climate-warmers, and assorted protest groups across France and indeed much of the globe, have rushed to use the terrible Japanese tsunami tragedy as a big radiated stick with which to beat up nuclear energy. Media reports, shriller than radiation warning sirens, filled airwaves and digital highways with trigger terror words like ‘Chernobyl’ while [...]
Internet freedom, France “under surveillance”
Reporters Without Borders, a press freedoms watchdog, has placed France on its watch list of countries “under surveillance” because of concerns over freedom of expression on the Internet. Lucie Morillon, head of New Media at Reporters Without Borders (RSF-Reporters sans frontières) told the French news agency AFP, as reported by Le Monde.fr :”It is important [...]
Philippe Jaroussky – His Angel’s Voix
Philippe Jaroussky denies that his is the liquid pure gold coloratura voice of an angel but that’s not how his vast army of devoted fans see it. Philippe Jaroussky looks like a Hollywood star and sings … well … celestially (though that’s not his favourite adjective). Nevertheless the army of adulatory fans that devotedly stalk the [...]
FrenchLeaks Site Seeks Whistle-blowers
The Paris-based investigative website Mediapart has set up a whistle-blowing operation called FrenchLeaks which it says, aims to become the French equivalent of Wikileaks. Mediapart a website produced by veteran journalists led by Edwy Plenel, a former editor of Le Monde, France’s paper of record, says: “Access to information, and the free circulation of information, [...]
France’s Luc Montagnier: Water has a Memory
France is moving to cutback its generous reimbursements for prescribed medicines, and the pharmaceutical lobby has stepped up pressure to hog what is left in the social security pot at the expense of alternative medicines. Part of this lobby’s traditional armoury is to label as voodoo science, quackery or at best a placebo, alternative therapies [...]
Sarkozy: ‘Regulate’ not ‘Restrain’ the Internet
Despite plunging popularity in the polls President Nicolas Sarkozy seems determined to pursue an increasingly authoritarian line on Internet regulation. The President now presiding over the G8 group of the world’s most powerful economies, has scheduled a special sideshow, the ‘G8 du Web’ to be held in Deauville on May 26-27 to deal with the [...]
Greens Destroy more Jobs than they Create
A study by consultants Verso Economics Green Sector Costs More Jobs Than It Creates says 3.7 jobs were lost for every one created in the UK as a whole and that “whatever the environmental merits, we have shown that the case for green jobs just doesn’t stack up.” While the report, released by The Global [...]
Shale Gas Drillers Create Mini Earthquakes
The New York Times has published a major expose of the eco-damage caused by hydrofracking, a controversial technique used to tap Shale Gas.. French opponents of the technique hope the bad news will spread faster than a gas gusher and help deter oil companies from deploying it in France. Citing mostly unpublished documentation held by [...]
