Hey! Over here…Yeah… F-r-a-n-c-e.

[tag]Johnny Hallyday[/tag], the french rocker and Gallic institution, the one with Elvis sideburns and shovelhead Hog, has rattled the political elite here by announcing that he is moving to Switzerland to escape the crushing french tax burden. He is the third in a recent spate of french ’stars’ who have gone elsewhere in the hope of keeping a little more of what they earn.

Johnny is an old pal of Sarkozy, which has given the Left elite a made-for-primetime excuse to express its numbing existential shock at this stab-in-the-back perfidy.

François Hollande, head of the Socialist party and Ségolene Royal’s partner (some would say her ‘insignificant other’) declared, “Sarkozy should be careful of who he counts as his friends.” Wow. This is powerful stuff, worthy of the very best french political punditry.

Sarko’s people of the right elite are expressing all the usual hand-wringing regrets but are fond of pointing out that rocknroll is a left-wing cultural phenomenon which proves that their main man embraces all sides of the spectrum.

Jean-François Copé, the center-right press secretary, came up with “ah oui, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, until one discovers that it’s artificial grass”. Wow!. These guys are good!

The Budget minister remarked that “it is hard to compete with certain countries on tax matters”.

And the minister for Employment and Social Cohesion was very very sad. Johnny has been one of his favs for a long time.

Everyone else in France, especially those small businesspersonnes who give 70% of their revenue to the state and submit to regular tax audits to make sure they understand the dynamics and moral worthiness of the [tag]French economic model[/tag], are wondering how Johnny lasted this long before deciding to go to where the artificial turf is greener.

In this morning’s NY Times there is a cute little article entitled “Talking the Yanks Under the Table” which is about how much cleverer the British are perceived to be than we Americans when it comes to conversation. At least, that’s how us Americans tend to see it.

I for one, dutifully admit that conversation over dinner with a bunch of Brits or French is usually more fun than with Americans (happily, there are notable exceptions) because the conversation will almost certainly be more daring, the range of admissible ideas much broader, and hey, the food will be better than meat loaf or pizza with ‘everything on it’. The French have the art de vivre down pat while the Brits I know living in the south of France are usually foodies, so sitting down à table will usually be a treat.

But back to the NYT article. One American living in London who was interviewed says

People are more relaxed here and they’re not thinking, ‘I’ve got to get home because I’ve got to get up to work.’ It’s looser here; there isn’t that grind.

This quote was fascinating to me in light of an article I came across just yesterday on the BBC website that analyzes the current state of the British diaspora. (For conversationally-challenged Americans, a diaspora is the migratory spread of a people out from their homeland into what we Americans affectionately call the Rest of World). It is always astonishing to discover how many Brits feel that Life is probably better on the other end of an Easyjet flight.

Many British expats are interviewed by the BBC, and when asked why they left Britain, the responses are breathtaking:

I don’t miss the rushed pace of life and I definitely don’t miss the British government.

or

I lived in London for 12 years and spoke to my neighbours three times. Fed up with the stress of my job, long days and expensive cost of living, I left the UK to see the world.

A first conclusion is that dumbed-down Americans can reasonably look to Great Britain’s dinner parties for the intellectual stimulation that is missing from American life. And that alienated Brits can reasonably look to anywhere to the south to flee alienation, dysfunctional healthcare, and long periods of bad weather.

II.
In the BBC article, we learn that 2 million Brits are living permanently in Australia, 700,000 live in Spain, but only 200,000 have settled down in France.

(This last factoid is surprising. Here in southern France, it often seems that every third person is British. What can it be like in Spain? Is every third person Spanish?)

Just after reading the BBC article, I happened to speak with a knowledgeable English friend living down here and learned yet another astonishing fact: apparently, there are more Frenchpersonnes living in Britain than there are Brits in France!

However, it is a sad reality that explains this fact. The French who go to England do so because they can’t find work in France. They are generally young, dynamic, and definitely not part of the 75% of French youth recently polled by Le Monde whose priority is finding a job for life in the civil service with a solid pension at 60. The French in Britain are generally involved in the finance and IT sectors, parts of the modern economy that are not joyously recognized in France. They are part of what is called the fuite de cerveaux (’Brain Drain’) that is a common subject of conversation at french dinner parties.

The Brits in France on the other hand, are generally pensioners, coming down here to live the good Life. Few attempt to become part of French economic activity, because the difficulties of doing so are starting to be well-known. I suppose that those wanting to continue working account for the larger expat populations of Spain or Australia, places where work is not frowned upon..

Every morning, over coffee and computer, taking care not to spill one on the other, I read the Guardian, the IHT, Le Monde and then I turn to Reddit.com, aka, “What’s new online?”. At Reddit, the ‘community’ posts web pages that they like and other visitors vote on these articles if they are interesting or well-received. With enough votes, a website can make it to the very first page of Reddit, which lists the most popular 25 URLs (out of I don’t know how many candidates. Hundreds? Thousands?).

The first page of Reddit is presumably the best of the best and getting your content on it is supposed to be what Web 2.0 marketing is all about.

I was meditating on all this on day before yesterday, Friday afternoon, when I had a wonderful idea. For laughs, I would post one of my own blog entries to Reddit, see what happens. I mean, I get 20-30 visits a day, mostly from curious (and/or loyal) friends, but wouldn’t it be better for the world if more people read my bons mots? What if Reddit really works???

I chose The Official French Business Calender, which I had written in August, to nominate. As the holiday seasons approaches, I had had the thought that the Calendar was On Topic again for a few weeks. If you read it, I think you’ll understand. (And anyway. I didn’t have anything totally up to date to propose )

Anyhow, I post the Calendar at around 15h Central European Time and an hour and a half later my son, who manages the server where this blog lives, calls me to ask me “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”. He says it with a twinkle in his voice, laughing even, but the undertone of server administrator panic was there too. Turns out my article had made it to the first page of Reddit with extreme rapidity, and the result was that the MySQL database that this blog uses was getting 150 requests a second, which is about 400 million times more than it had ever received before.

150 requests a second is not a lot for MySQL, but there must have been something wrong with the way I had installed WordPress, because, for the first time ever, the Reddit rush brought our web server to its knees.

At 17h, we were obliged to a) take my blog offline and b) take off my posting on Reddit, which fortunately is possible. About 1 hour later, the rush slowed down, (3200 visits were logged in that first hour) but we kept my blog offline overnight, just in case. We all had better things to do on a Friday night than sit up with a sick web server.

Saturday morning, I looked around the web and found the excellent Wordpress Cache plugin, which I promptly installed. WP-cache creates static versions of popular blog entries, bypassing MySQL, so that it doesn’t overheat when the Reddit Effect hits. It seems to have solved the problem.

Today is Sunday, all is well, and I find myself wondering if I should repost the Calendar to Reddit. Nah, I think I’ll wait.

According to an article in this morning’s Le Monde, autumn 2006 (defined as September, October, November) has been the warmest fall in 500 years throughout Europe.

The average temperature over and above the daily average during the period was 2.9° C. in France, which beats the former warmest autumn record of 1.4° daily (which was in 2005, for those of you who love surprising factoids). Similar conclusions can be drawn from examining British and Scandanavian climate records.

Climatologists Elena Xoplaki and Juerg Luterbacher of the University of Berne (Switzerland) have created an historical climate model for Europe going back to the year 1500, using diverse historical references such as harvest dates, flowering periods, etc. which I suppose is how monks spent their time recording back then.

They point out that

Autumn 2006 was warmer even than 1772 and 1938, 2 particularly warm autumns, historically.

I for one am very excited about living in such momentous times, so full of world records.

In his latest column in the NY Times, concerning the mounting number of indicators pointing to an upcoming economic recession, Paul Krugman finishes off:

Luckily, we’ve got good leadership for the coming economic storm: the White House is occupied by a man who’s ideologically flexible, listens to a wide variety of views, and understands that policy has to be based on careful analysis, not gut instincts. Oh, wait.

Wait, indeed.

Doing nothing in France is the one activity that does not require filling out endless forms. Doing anything in France usually gets so complicated that it is little wonder that so many people get worn out, decide to ‘do nothing’ as their life’s work.

I used to live in southwest Colorado: Durango, Bayfield, Cortez, the Four Corners.
Marlboro country (cough, cough).

Before the US of A was taken over by religious fundamentalists, this was God’s country.

When you’re there, you can feel the wind in your hair, watch the last of the bald eagles fly around like they still own the place. Trek through canyons that are as close to the primal rush as anything I’ve ever experienced. Your neighbors are Navajos, Mesa Verde is just up the road. You can even stand in four states at once, if you like that sort of thing and don’t mind feeling foolish.

So it is with great consternation that I just read that a woman in Pagosa Springs CO, a small town just up the road a piece from where I used to live, has been severely sanctioned by her neighbors for putting a Christmas sign on her lawn that had a peace symbol on it. You know, ‘Merry Xmas, Peace on Earth, good will towards men’ (and women, I imagine).

Unbelievably, 4 of her neighbors complained that such a sign was unseemly, unpatriotic, anti-war, satanic. Yeah, the devil’s own work. The president of the homeowner’s association has imposed a 25$ a day fine on her until she removes the sign. The advisory council (whatever that is) refused to support the president’s fiat and were summarily fired.

Our heroine is refusing to take down the sign, saying “Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing”.

This is democracy at work. What we wanted to bring to Iraq. If you’re curious, there’s more information here.

Just tripped across a long screen of social hints and tips for people (especially business types) who must interact with the French in France and not put their foot in it.

Some of the tips made me smile, some made me laugh out loud, some sounded like so-o-o 19th century (to be fair, much social interaction in France is so-o-o 19th century) but on the whole, for those who need to become a little more elegant while dealing in the Hexagon, this is a good starting point.

Link to list

In this morning’s Guardian, talking about the damage that has been done, and the good, in spite of 6 years neglect, that still needs doing…

That long political hurricane has now at last blown itself out for a while, but not before leaving America with a terrible legacy that includes climate-change denial, the end of biological stem-cell research, an aid programme tied to abortion bans, a shockingly permissive gun culture, an embrace of capital punishment equalled only by some of the world’s worst tyrannies, the impeachment of Bill Clinton and his replacement by a president who does not believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution.

A friend of mine, who works at the European Commission, explained to me her theory about Iran and it’s president’s intentions. It has the ring of truth.

Ahmoud Ahmadinejad is not particularly evil, (no more so than any number of world leaders, certainly not in a class of evil with Cheney or Rove). Also, he is rather more intelligent than most american pols.

And yes, he is frightened of the Ruff Tuff Cream Puff (aka Bush’s America) which seems to love using its shiny new war toys and its love of warfare to create chaos Here and There. Ahmadinejad justifies this exotic view by looking over his border to Iraq. He is determined to defend himself and country.

So what he’s doing is generating just the credible minimum amount of signal to noise that would make it look like he is preparing a belligerent, nuclear Iran. This is the perfect country image to impress and perturb the imbeciles that create US foreign policy.

He is playing that image for all its worth. It is a very effective strategy.

Email sent this morning, after the results of the American elections were known, from a friend of a friend to a friend (both French):

Since yesterday, I love Americans…

Buried deep in a BBC article appearing today:

A recent poll found 53% of Americans opposed the launch of the channel [Al-Jazeera's newly launched english version] and two-thirds of Americans thought the US government should not allow it entry to the US market.

Voila, the values of liberty, democracy, freedom of speech that America wants for the world. Truly noble, and for 67% of Americans, they only need apply to others.

The Chicago Tribune cites a University of Illinois study that estimates that the average American

• has gained an average of 24 pounds per person over the last 40 years
• has spent a good portion of that time driving back and forth from the mall in the world’s premier gas guzzlers

and that this means that he/she has consumed approximately 938 million more gallons of gasoline annually than if they had all stayed circa-1966 svelte. The nearly one billion gallons can be attributed to the excess work that car motors, especially the inefficient ones that Americans love, need to provide to drag the extra tire around.

Is America obesity the principle factor causing climate change? The study does not say.

From the Miami Herald:

Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

…

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it’s not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot — essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

So, the Florida voting authorities have the situation under control. I am so reassured. And since the people who make voting machines generally make banking ATMs too, I wonder how often cash machines go out of sync and what it looks like when they do?

From this morning’s Guardian. Someone must be very angry with British Rail.

Transport police are hunting for an “exceptionally antisocial” man who has been defecating on trains across the country, causing tens of thousands of pounds-worth of damage.

link to article

(first published on the web, 20 Oct, 1996)
Part 2: Oh-la-la, an Entrepreneur!

Back in 1789, the French overthrew their monarchy and aristocrats and became the first country in Europe to implement democratic government.

Vive le peuple!

Two centuries later, it appears they have had second thoughts, albeit subliminally. Without going so far as to ask the Bourbons to come back to royal power, they have done the next best thing, creating and carefully feeding the concept of “l’Administration”, which is now plump and juicy, but unfortunately for France and frenchpersonnes everywhere, completely inedible. (Continued)

France is the world’s #2 consumer of antidepressant drugs, eg Prozac or Deroxat (AKA Paxil). Japan is the world #1. Does that help explain this morning’s story from this Reuters news release?

Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

“A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses,” Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche.

(Continued)

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

In general, the French do not like change. So it is safe to assume that the French wine industry, pummeled as it has been of late, will not like the late breaking news about a looming change of major proportions, which in agricultural circles is affectionately called ‘climate change’.

Agence France Presse reports today, in an article in Seed, that because “a rise of one degree Celsius by 2035—as predicted by one United Nations model—would see winegrowing regions shift, on average, 180 kilometres (110 miles) northwards“, it looks like the best French wines will be cultivated, in 2025 at least, in lands that are 180 km x number of degrees C. of climate change toward the north.

According to my calculations, this puts New Burgundy somewhere near Manchester and New Bordeaux in London’s West End. (Continued)

From this morning’s Le Monde:

[tag]Laurence Parisot[/tag], head of the French (Big Bad) Bosses association, the [tag]MEDEF[/tag], recently proposed a novel new way for French bosses and employees to terminate a working relationship when the circumstances seem to call for it.

Her idea is that contract termination could be done by “friendly negociation pursued in the best interest of both parties, followed by indemnisation.” Friendly negociation is not really an option under [tag]French labor law[/tag] which long ago decreed that all modification of working relationships must be preceeded by conflict, agitation, strikes, and if required, violence.

“Amicable divorce between married man and woman has existed in France since 1975. Isn’t it time that we do the same for employer-employee relationships?”, Mme. Parisot said.

Predictably this proposal set off violent reactions from the syndicats. [tag]Jean-Claude Mailly[/tag], the big boss of the [tag]Force Ouvrière[/tag] union replied that the Civil Code (which applies to marriage) is not at all like the Work Code. In the former, the partners are regarded as equals, in the latter, there is a role of subordination. Speaking of the boss-worker relationship, he said, “To divorce one first has to married. And, the worker is not married to his employer.”

Haha.

Hahahaha.

Anyone who has ever hired someone in France quickly discovers that the simple act of hiring someone, ie, creating an employer/employee relationship, is far more constraining and convoluted than a simple marriage contract. Or in other words, the employer is indeed married to the employee. Says so right there on page 14,437 of the Code du Travail.

Hahahaha. I think I’m gonna cry.