Quelle connerie

I love France. I love the countryside. I love Paris. I love the food, the wine, the literature. I occasionally love the music (who can resist having a little bop to Joe le Taxi?). But I have to admit that the French can be dodgy. Well I say the French, but of course I don’t mean the entire populate of La Belle France. I suppose I am directing my accusations at the French establishment.

Only in France could they claim that the expulsion of Roma people (which has by the way been going on for over a year – sometimes as many as 1000 a month being deported to Romania and Bulgaria) was to preserve public order. President Sarkozy and his chums would have us believe that Roma camps were seething with all manner of criminal activity from prostitution and drug trafficking to organised begging and street crime and that there was nothing wrong with rounding up hundreds of people at a time, bunging them each €300 (€100 for a child) and bungling them on to a plane to Eastern Europe. And for over a year, they got away with it. The protests of human rights organisations which accused the French of deliberately targeting Roma people and breaching European freedom of movement legislation in order to shore up Nicolas’ falling poll ratings went largely unheard.

But, finally, they have been busted. We now have the evidence of a leaked a memo from the Minister of the Interior effectively confirming that Roma camps should be the target of police activity. This has finally prompted one of the angriest responses from an EU Commissioner that I have ever seen. Yesterday, Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding gave France the full hairdryer treatment to France. Condemning the expulsions as a “disgrace ”, she declared that her “ This is a situation, I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the second world war.” She is threatening the French with legal action which could result not just in very large fines but, especially for a country so enamored with the European project, the huge embarrassment that would go with it. Génial.

Burqa banning bonkerness

So the French are moving towards banning the wearing of the burqa in public. last week the French National Assembly passed a bill prohibiting the wearing of full faced veils in public. The legislation will have to be approved by the Senate before becoming law - there is a vote scheduled in September. Apparently there is a large degree of public support for the ban in France where it is being positioned almost as feminist measure, empowering Muslim women to throw off the shackles of their oppressive male relatives. While I am sympathetic to that view, the ban in my view is bonkers. French law makers assume that this form of dress is being adopted as a result of coercion when the evidence would suggest that in France at least the few women who do wear full veils are choosing to do so on their own volition. It may be inexplicable to many of us, but that doesn't stop it being true. The fact is that lots of people wear lots of thigns which we find inexplicable. The pre-pubescent teens wearing micro-minis, the men who are old enough to know better trying to get away with low slung jeans, clogs - I don't get any of these but there is no justification for banning them. Just as there is none for banning the burqa.

Où est La Place Jane Austen?

Just back from France (Provence, wine, the air heady with the scent of lavender and thyme - very Jean de Florette) where I was once again struck by the French penchant for naming streets after individuals. In most French towns you will find places, cours, boulevards, rues and avenues named after Jean Jaures, Victor Hugo and Balzac. And in spite of their reputation, the French warmly embrace foreigners with Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Churchill all finding their way into French A to Zs. This desire to commemorate the lives and work of great politicians, poets and polyglots has even led to the renaming of metro stations hence stops in memory of Simon Bolivar, Raymond Queneau and Pierre & Marie Curie. The French are not alone in this, in South Africa there has been a huge amount of renaming in honour of the heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle (although if I were Albertina Sisulu I might be a tad annoyed that my contribution to the freedom of my nation was marked by the naming a highway after me). In Britain on the other hand we tend to shy away from this kind of adulation. Yes there may be a few Churchill Avenues and Mandela Places scattered about the country but in general we don't like naming things after people (except monarchs) and certainly would avoid renaming somewhere after someone however great. We don't go in for hero worship. So sadly we won't be seeing Oxford Street renamed Darwin Street (although anyone familiar with that thoroughfare knows it is an excellent spot to witness the survival of the fittest first hand), Jane Austen will not be immortalised as a square nor Charles Dickens as a train station - but check out Simon Patterson's the Great Bear to see how the tube map might look if we were prepared to be a bit more imaginative in how we acknowledge the accomplishments of the great and the good.