First They Came for the Foie Gras….
Might France ban ketchup and hamburgers since the state of California has now outlawed foie gras? It’s an issue of more than just tit-for-tat when Food Police muscle in on citizen’s choice. As the Godfather Politics blog reminds us “Back in 2004, the Food Police twisted (California) Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s arm to sign the foie gras [...]
Read French News Online on Kindle
Now you can access French News Online via your Kindle reader and take us with you on holiday or when travelling. The Kindle version can be found here and updates automatically to your Kindle device every time we publish new articles and features online. As we move to develop French News Online to meet growing demand for access [...]
Some Red with your Grilled Water Scorpions?
Coming soon to a Kindle near you the definitive wine lovers guide to the French region producing the best red or white wine for entomophagans. (Read more French News here) For if some reports are to be believed the food of the future lies with the cheap, low fat and healthy diet favoured by those [...]
Paris is for People with Passions
Earlier generations raised with typewriters rather than ‘input devices’, will delight in this nostalgia trip around Paris with Toronto writer Norman Ball on a hunt for traces of François Lambert who spent 17 years developing the eponymous typewriter. Republished from here by kind permission of the writer who is joint publisher of the Parisian Fields [...]
Pyrénées – No Barrier to a Cultural Cauldron
With Basques to the west and Catalans to the east the Pyrénées are a physical but not a cultural barrier to centuries of Franco-Spanish intermingling. This vast mountain range – Pirineos or Pirineo in Spanish, Pyrénées in French, Pirineus in Catalan, Pirenèus in Occitan, Perinés in Aragonese and Pirinioak in Basque – is a daunting [...]
Cafe for just a Euro in Paris? Click the Cup
Like any capital Paris can be a costly coffee break but its not all bad news. City Hall has launched an interactive map showing more than 60 spots where a cup of cafe costs just one euro or less! Coffee for a euro? … Yes, but understandably not here: Café “les deux magots” Paris 6ème. [...]
‘Clik’ ‘Clik’ – Screw Caps on Wine Offensive
Luc Charlier, a Flemish winemaker who since 2005 has been producing Coume Majou in the Languedoc, claims corks will disappear from the French wine industry within five years. (This post has been updated — see end of story — to include a response from Amorim, the cork stopper manufacturers.) In their place — proudly and [...]
Standby to Repel Socialist Boarders
France’s freshly-minted Socialist administration plans to make “adjustments” to the impressive sole trading (Auto-Entrepreneur) scheme introduced by its conservative predecessors, because professional artisans and trades complain of “distorted competition”. According to professional bodies there are currently some 1 million auto-entrepreneurs and one million crafts and trades firms registered with the authorities. Sylvia Pinal, the new minister [...]
Fears for Europe’s Democratic Future
Its not done to make much mention of the point in the politically-correct corridors of Brussels, the EU HQ, but several post-presidential voting analyses suggest a large Muslim vote was pivotal to the victory of France’s new Socialist president. As Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, and New York writer focusing on [...]
A Dash of La Cicciolina in the Election
Expect much breast beating if the far left candidate for a constituency in the Arriege département is elected June 10. For Céline Bara is a busty ex-porno star who says she intends to use her “big mouth” to demand better services for her fellow citizens. Trouble is she and her husband appear to have rather singular ideas about how to set [...]
UK Lawyers Meddle in French Burqa Affair
The UK civil rights organisation Liberty– invoking ‘freedom of religion and freedom of expression’ — has intervened in a burqa case pending before the European Court of Human Rights in a move likely to exasperate French lawmakers. Liberty legal officer Corinna Ferguson told a British legal website “Wearing the full veil may be considered demeaning [...]
Outrage and the Islamic Winter
Stonings, beheadings, body mutilations– the fire and brimstone of an earlier era — were largely overcome as enlightened society evolved. A Muslim raises his hands in Takbir, the beginning of his prayers (Photo credit: Wikipedia) That they are today ongoing is, in our view, a condemnable outrage, worsened when captured in horrifyingly graphic YouTube video [...]
Thieves Took Your Bike? Lamp-pole It
Urban bike riders know the hazards, leave it for a minute unlocked, unchained or with any removable part not super-glued to the frame and your beloved keep-fit free transport provider will be gone for ever. In Paris according to a Le Figaro report 4000-6000 bikes were stolen in 2011 an increase of 37.41% over the [...]
Will Socialists end all Shale Fracking?
France’s Green Euro MEP José Bové, one of the leaders of the grass roots movement against fracking in France, says he believes the recently elected Socialist president will, in time, revoke all onshore shale gas drilling licenses. He told La Dépêche du Midi he had worked very closely with Ecology Minister Nicole Bricq, then [...]
Deep Australian Link to Villers-Bretonneux
Just outside Villers-Bretonneux stands the National Memorial in remembrance of all Australian soldiers who fought in France and Belgium during the 1914-1918 World War and especially those of the dead whose graves are unknown. Here Wendy Hollands, an Australian writer living in France, records the powerful impression on her of a recent visit to the war cemetery– [...]
