If Music be the Food of Life …
If you consider music as the food of life you’re in the most excellent company of l’orchestre de chambre de Toulouse which has a plat du jour just for you. As David Christoffel on his daily France Musique slot — Les oreilles sensibles notes, the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra offers classical buffs a gourmet music feast. [...]
Desperately Seeking the Next Prix Goncourt
French publishers — flourishing despite electronic challenges — are so determined not to miss the next prix Goncourt banker that editors heroically wade through 22,000 unsolicited MSS a year looking for gems buried in bulky envelopes that drop in daily. Even so, as Denis Gombert of the Robert Laffont publishing house recently told the [...]
Vegetarian you Said? In La France!
“And I ‘ope you will zoon be better”. This politely disdainful comment by the maitre d’ of a top Paris restaurant as he served up an omelette with sweeping aplomb but little enthusiasm, typified and still does, the fate of those asking for vegetarian in the hallowed halls of haute cuisine. (Read more French News here) Indeed [...]
Millionth Sole Trader draws Left-led Attack
As the millionth sole trader enterprise – a home service mobile beauty parlour — tricycles its way around Bordeaux, vested interests led by the Left strongly attack the innovative scheme, urging it be curtailed or abolished. Their call comes despite the fact that more than half France’s new firms — dubbed “autoentreprise” – are today established [...]
Let’s make Bankers Permanently Redundant
Five years of public anger over the 2007/8 global financial meltdown shows few signs of abating. Here a South African writer offers a view on how to make bankers permanently redundant. Alternative finance radicals Infusing rebellion with entrepreneurial creativity by Brett Scott, 16 March 2012 Republished with acknowledgement and thanks, under an openDemocracy.net Creative Commons licence. Several weeks ago I [...]
Crony Capitalism Corroding Democracy
As Greece signed the latest bailout deal, a relieved President Nicolas Sarkozy exclaimed the ‘crisis has turned the corner’. Wrong. The Merkozy couple clearly disregard trans-Atlantic crony capitalism now white-anting democracy. (Read more French News here) Listen as an ex-Republican and a disillusioned Democrat in the United States debate the “crony capitalism” rampant in Washington DC [...]
The Internet is Doing Fine, Leave It Alone
The Washington Times makes a powerful plea to European leaders to stop meddling with innovation and let business flourish. Very pertinent given the current dire state of the EU economy. Here at French-New-Online we fully concur. Indeed we foolishly imagined that Merkel et al had plenty to do to resolve the sovereign debt mess with which we [...]
Sarkozy Turns It Into an Halal-Kiri Election
France without gastronomy would be France diminished so no surprise that the presidential election campaign seems to be taking some meatier aspects of food seriously, even though voter concerns are elsewhere. (Read more French News here) Showing increasing relish for a spicy election menu the combative maitre’d, Nicolas Sarkozy has, in the process of making a campaign meal out of [...]
When Town Hall Mayors Become Imams
Some French Mayors are said to be taking the path of least resistance when marrying mixed Franco-Islamic couples by insisting on conversion to Islam before they will proceed, according to a Charlie Hebdo report. (Read more French News here) The French satirical weekly’s reporter Sylvie Coma writes: “When Frédéric Gilbert, a TV journalist, wanted to marry [...]
Biometrics – A Civil Liberties Time Bomb?
More than 45 million people could soon see fingerprints and digitized images stored in France’s largest biometric database ostensibly to fight fraud. But might it just possibly be because of pressure from the domestic biometrics industry? Existing French ID card – image via Wikipedia Reprinted by kind permission of the EFF-Electronic Freedom Foundation (under its Creative [...]
Var Mayors May Boycott Ballot over Schiste
Local Mayors in the Var département – angry at ongoing threats from shale gas concessions – warn they may not put up the physical wherewithall to enable voters to cast their ballots in the forthcoming presidential elections. (Read more French News here) Mayors organize the polling booths, supply the scrutineers, collect the ballot boxes and count the [...]
Thou shalt Honour Conjugal Duty
Elegant temptresses, and ‘femmes fatales’ are cliches as classic as berets and baguettes in a France where love reputedly “knows no rules” … yet when it comes to romance in the boudoir Virgil’s bon mots clearly predate the Code Civil. (Read more online here) For while alluring Gallic seduction, and a certain Coco Chanel-style elegance and [...]
Marine Le Pen a menace says Chief Rabbi
Gilles Bernheim the Chief Rabbi of France has told Europe 1 that Marine Le Pen the Front National candiate in the presidential elections is “a menace”. His remarks came as concerns over alleged wide distribution of unlabelled halal meat showed signs of becoming a key argument for President Sarkozy’s ruling UMP coalition and the Front National in their separate efforts [...]
Figaro and My Fer Lady
Le Figaro has this amusing headline over its recent report on the ‘inoxydable‘ lady in the Meryl Streep film now released Europe-wide and in cinemas near you. The conservative paper’s report on The Iron Lady is here: See our Oscars 2012 report here For a YouTube clip of the trailer, see here: and cinemas through [...]
