Author: madeoforleans

The building of the EU and the establishment of peace in Europe for all time is an exciting project full of crises, disagreements and ultimately progress.
Those that, with the Maastricht treaty, established the euro knew that they were advancing us down the track to a federal Europe. For the euro will only stand if there is an EU wide economic govt to coordinate tax and to redisitribute income between nations. That is ultimately what the Greek affair has been over and for which three people have sadly sacrificed their lives.
France as always has been the lead nation, with others notably Germany not wishing to advance too far. But the process was ineviable. The hedge funds based in London and new York would bet against the euro if they saw a chance of making money. And they have, massively. The only way to counter this speculative movement beyond our borders is by coordinated govt action in the Eurozone.
So this weekend France and Brussels announce a 750 million euros Eurozone fund to assist nations to resist speculation of their govt bonds. A fund that, if the annoucement is correct will be a major step forward towards federal Europe. But let us be cautious, so often what has been announced by the dynamic French president has been watered down by subsequent announcements from Berlin.
But if it is true we can finally thank the hedge funds based in US and the UK for making this historic step possible. Irony there is.

The EU’s monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, said the agreement “proves that we shall defend the euro whatever it takes.”

As I have always said, test us, the European union is stronger than you think.

I first met Guy in London . He was a friend of a friend. He loved parties, he drank, restaurants. We stormed around london in his car. Turned left at no left turns went 60 in 30 mph areas. Up one way streets the wrong way . I loved it. He was my idea of a Frenchman. Irreverant, small slim, smoking Gauloises , well dressed, living life at both ends. In those dreary days, no money , shabby flat, drizzling weather, train strikes, he was the shining light in my daily routine. A hope a gaity that I found nowhere else.

He left, back to France. His gay bachelor days were over. He married, and settled down lived near avenue Kleber in Paris.

I missed him, I’d go and live in Paris, why not. I hunted around for some jobs. What do they offer ? Little French, little education, little experience. Well we’ll just have to do this on BS. If all else fails tell the truth. I love your country, I love French people, I want to work and live here and I’ll do anything.

Continue reading “Guy”

So Sarkozy calls politicians hypocrites. Lamented by some.
One thing I like about the man is that he is not into politically correct and spin.

Inevitably your election time brings back memories of youth. When you are a kid prime ministers seem to go on forever and the very idea that the man in 10 Downing Street will change is a difficult concept to grasp.
I well remember sitting up all night watching all the results, first Labour were way ahead, but that didn’t mean anything as the country constituencies came in the next day. I the returning officer tra lla traa llee, cheers here cheers there. And Mr Machin is duly ellected. Oh how many times did I hear that. I wonder if it still goes on. Yes I liked elections.

But I did have an existential problem. There was all this forecasting of who would win how many seats and who would be prime minister. But thought I the deed is already done, the votes are in the box the decision is already taken, if only somebody could count the ballots. Stop forecasting start counting the blasted things. How long can it take to count 50,000 votes? A couple of hours?

Anyway life moves on and no Prime Minister could reatain me in theire land. iIwas off, off to France. And the fun of other elections.

My first election was after the death of Pompidou. There was I with my bottle of rouge sat in front of the tele with the expectation of an exciting night. Moi l’officier electoral de jenesaispasoù dit que etc etc.

I knew the voting booths closed at eight o’clock.Tther’d be nothing for a while but I wanted in at the beginning, I was going to see the whole process. 19:40 we were told what the abstentions were and then at 20:00 we were ahem ahem ahem ahem ahem told the result. WHAT, where are the swingometers where are the recounts this CAN’T be, my night is ruined, how can there be no suspense. How can they know at the minute that the polls shut the result?
Magic?
No just good organisation.
So it will be nice watching from afar your old fashioned way of doing things, I’ll be a kid again.

What’s it like, strong sensations, each minute is counted, how much longer.The banal becomes a focus of attention. Sensory perceptions are stronger. Is that the last birdsong that I will hear. The smell of coffee, the crackle of the croissant, home made jam, Normandy butter. Ah and a new mown lawn.
Solidarity yes now I know how they suffered before me. The aborigines of the stolenwealth. Transhipped for a pat of butter, the punishment well laid on. Sleeping in small pox blankets and unwittingly catching the deadly disease.
Inspiration? Joan of course, courageous, blessed Joan.

There are endless reasons why I like France like no other country in which I have lived and worked. My wife is certainly high on the list. But in truth it is a spirit a love an emotion. Let me simply recount an incident that I will never forget and which encapsulates a lot about the country.

I was in a meeting on economic development of the Loiret. Many top people were there. The prefet, the mayor, senior offices from the army base, senior business people etc. etc.

A woman stood up and completely off subject she ranted about the way her boss had treated her and how she had received no redress from the employment tribunal. She was quite upset. She was a simple person who used very simple French. She went on for quite a long while. I expected somebody to ask her to be quiet, nobody did. She completed what she had to say. She sat down. She received a polite round of applause. The Prefet who was presiding the meeting said he thanked the lady for her contribution and asked his assistant to contact the lady for her name and address so he could assist her. The meeting moved on.
Call it savoir vivre, tolerance, sympathy, human decency or what you will.

The news today is that Greece will receive about 110 billion euros over the next three years from the IMF and the EU. Greece will introduce further austerity measures.

Is that the end to this long running saga? No doubt not, the German government has to get approvals and will probably be contested in both parliament and the constitutional court. Maybe other countries will have problems. Although there is no great enthusiasm here in France to support the spendthrift Greeks there will be no contestation either. Greece has to make their measures stick too, they have an awful lot of work to do in modernising their economy and getting some proper financial control.

Maybe with hindsight it was wrong to let Greece into the euro, they just were not ready and should have waited longer. Message for Eastern Europe there. But on the other hand there is no guarantee that waiting would have helped, it is not sure that without the IMF and EU pressure, Greece would have been able to stand up to its public sector unions. Again Greece is small enough for the EU to handle, maybe it was better that we perfect our bailout procedures on a smaller nation rather than Spain say.

Although these are tough times, and I must admit I have been a bit disappointed with the German intransigence. Yes be tough to get movement, but by being overly tough Germany just risked destroying the Greeks motivation, creating a worse problem and stirring up a lot of anti German resentment which is always close to the surface. They also discovered that they can’t walk away from their economic hinterland.

They have been exciting times too. Building the federal Europe was never going to be easy. For those that believe that all is sweetness and light on the Continent, this incident has proven that some fairly strong tensions remain. But, and that is the essential point, we are holding together, the desire to be a political union here in Europe is strong enough to overcome the severest of crises, and make further steps on the road of ever closer union. Our new President has also scored a few points making sure that he was in on the key decision making.

The AS always help, the Goldman Sachs suspect lending and the rating agencies lack of transparency and objectivity helps to keep us united.

I do believe that the people a country chooses as their leader says a lot about the country. The presentational Obama, the hard as nails Mother Merkel, the rather raffish Berlusconi, the unknown whoever down in Australia.(now identified as the big fish Kevin Rudd)
Chirac who lead our country for 12 years.
Continue reading “Judge countries by their leaders”

Today we kick off a week of celebrations for a certain victory, by a certain person, over a certain country.

Who was the person?

Which country was defeated?

When did it happen?

As a clue here is the poster advertising the celebrations and plastered all  over Orléans.

I find the process of civilisation fascinating. As far as we know modern man, homo sapiens arrived on the planet, 200, 000 years ago. He evolved out of homo erectus.

Then we have the old stone age for some 190,000 years of the 200,000 years that we have have existed. Yes for most of our time on this planet we have been chipping flints, not blogging. Every now and then we would come up with a better shaped flint and shout eureka. I guess we were like the tribes in the Amazon. Really advanced animals, not much more. Can you imagine, people like us put up with that type of existence for eons.

Then 10,000 years ago something extraordinary happened the neolithic age arrived. Maybe our latest flints were so good we killed off all the game, and maybe we were eating better and bred faster. Or maybe we just got clever. Anyway this was the tipping point. Mankind learnt farming, could keep sheep and grow wheat. Suddenly we are talking about the cradle of civilisation, Mesopotamia. Egypt and China followed shortly after.  Villages came along and then 5000 years ago came towns.We discovered metal working, bronze then iron. Writing was 7000 years ago, legal systems, architecture, urban planning, aqueducts and by the time you get to the Greeks 2500 years ago people were doing such abstract things as measuring the circumference of the earth and creating works of art that have never been bettered. Wow what a rush after all those years of stagnation in just 7500 years we had done civilisation. Then for 1500 years we stagnated again, even went backwards. Finally another 500 year rush and here we are blogging.

I just find it stupendous. Who could have ever predicted that on this planet with roaming dinosaurs, jumping insects suddenly human civilisation would crop up. I guess at the cosmic level we are just like a large ants’ nest, but it doesn’t feel like that.

What I can’t get out of my system is what the hell were we doing in that first 190, 000 years. Yes that is 95 times the time elapsed between the birth of christ and today.Why did we just sit back and chip stones and run after mamouths when we had the intellectual capacity to be an Einstein?  Or maybe we didn’t.