Europe And More On Paris

More On Paris

I wrote my notes on Paris too quickly; I discover there was more I wanted to say.

One of the points was that Paris seemed to have kicked it's reputation as the rudest city in Europe. I had encountered rudeness there many times, when I was a student there and on subsequent visits. However, I never attributed it uniquely to Parisians. Rather I thought it was a function of a large city. People who work in large cities are usually in a hurry to get somewhere, having to deal with chaotic traffic, etc, and are often tense with no time for courtesy. That wasn't what I found this time.

About 15-20 years ago, when Paris' popularity as a tourist venue seemed to be fading, the relevant authorities at the time conducted a survey to find out what visitors did and didn't like about Paris; the results put rudeness at the top of the dislikes. What's more, a subsequent survey among the French themselves gave the same result. So an official charm offensive was launched. I've no idea whether it was a result of that, or a general change of attitude or simply that we got lucky but my friends and I encountered courtesy everywhere. The Chopin hotel staff were extremely helpful, the staff in the café we frequented were courteous, as were the staff in the restaurants, the one taxi driver we used and, particularly, travellers in the metro. Every time we stepped into a metro car someone got up to offer a seat to friend Ed. I found that moving. Well done Paris.

I noticed too, in the taxi we took from the Ile St Louis back to the hotel, that the driver immediately switched on his Satnav. The hotel wasn't listed but its location, the Passage Jouffroi, was and the route to it was shown, which the driver duly followed. This sprung two thoughts in my mind, although I've no idea whether all Paris taxis are so equipped. Firstly, there was no danger of being taken on a joy ride around Paris at our expense because the designated route was clearly shown. Secondly, the driver must have needed much less detailed knowledge of Paris than he would otherwise have had to have since the Satnav, obviously with a great deal of local data added, obviated this need.

But............Paris is expensive, particularly to a country bumpkin like me. Drinks and meals cost 2-3 times what they cost in Mollans and were notably more expensive than, for instance, in London. That said, getting around by public transport cost about the same; a metro/bus ticket cost about the same as in London with an Oyster card.

European Elections

Having been one of the minority in all major European countries who voted in the elections this weekend I was interested to get the reactions of my French friends here. The gains of the extreme right-wing parties were indisputable but what did they amount to and signify? Friend Patrick was anxious to discount them as being of only short-term significance but did add in our discussion, somewhat alarmingly form my point of view, that the processes in Brussels were opaque and this didn't seem to worry him. Friend Rene was more worried by what he saw as a general move towards populist parties, saying that there was a danger that simplistic approaches to complex problems could gain general support in a generally poorly educated public. Neither saw any imminent threat from extreme right-wing groups except to the extent that their recent success could adversely influence the policies of other political parties.

My own view is that Brussels got the kick up the are that it deserved and, in that respect, the results were good news. I didn't like the trend to the right but saw it as primarily a protest vote. The EU clearly has to change if all the very valuable contributions it has made are not to be lost. That, to me, is a very clear message from the results which should have been conveyed to the elite in Brussels who seem to believe they are above all accountability. If they cannot see this message at least they will have to deal with a bolshie parliament rather than a spineless one.

Three things Rene and I both agreed on. Brussels processes should not be opaque, the European parliament has to become the master of the commission and not its servant and due fiscal (primarily banking) and accountability measures have to be put in place. The European parliament rather than the commission having ultimate power could effect both of these things. That also should resolve the problem of the tiny election turn-out. It's difficult to criticise people who do not bother to vote for a body that has little effective power; currently, voting can easily be viewed as a cosmetic exercise to provide a semblance of democracy. If the European parliament had real power, the commission autocrats would no longer control policy and could be made accountable for their effectiveness. In my view, that would be a giant step forward for Europe.

An Apology

I have to apologise to all grasshoppers, on steroids or not, for a gross calumny. They were not the bandits plundering my balcony plants. The culprit was a family of rats. Returning from a pizza evening I saw a rat performing acrobatics on the vine above my balcony. In thinking about what could possibly raid my balcony from one end to the other, high and low, in a single night the possibility of a rat had not occurred to me. Yet, in a country village, rats must necessarily abound. This was clearly a vegetarian rat and something of a gourmet, since its chosen fodder was plants' new shoots. Happily, a week if rat poison attached to the vine has resolved the problem and the vine and all the plants are now recovering. In fact, the rat poison was doubly effective in that the rats seemed to prefer it to new shoots and so left them alone while consuming the poison before it had its final effect. Maybe the rats weren't such gourmets after all. Again, my humble apology to grasshoppers; may the summer be long and hot for you and may rubbing your legs together be tuneful and not give you blisters.

Bad Science And Paris

Bad Science

Some while ago I read a book called “Bad Science” which put the boot into alternative medicine and the cosmetics industry; and loved it. There's an associated website. Now, by chance, I've found another website I love which is dedicated to bad science or, more specifically, to the dangers inherent in coming to any conclusions based purely on mathematical correlations. It's TylerVigen.com.

Did you know, for instance, that there is a very close correlation (0.94) over a decade between cheese consumption per capita in the USA and the number of people who die each year by becoming entangled in their bed sheets? If you're going to the USA (or already there) better not eat cheese before going to bed unless you remove the covers. Even worse, margarine lovers who marry in the US state of Maine are virtually certainly doomed to misery; there's a 0.99 correlation between margarine consumption and the divorce rate in the state. As you might guess, the site simply looks for graphs which match over a significant period of time on any subject and calculates the correlation coefficient; you can draw conclusions if you want to but probably only a politician would.

I loved this site particularly because it reminded me of a tongue-in-cheek article by Michael Frayn in his Miscellany column in The Guardian, decades ago. At the time, the populist newspapers were making a scandal out of a fashion among some schoolgirls to advertise the fact that they had lost their virginity by wearing a golliwog broach. The broach was obtained by sending some labels off jars of a popular brand of marmalade, which had a golliwog as its brand symbol, to the manufacturer. Frayn found a graph of sales of the brand of marmalade and also a graph of schoolgirl pregnancies and saw that they matched. The conclusion the article came to (tongue in cheek) was obvious. If schoolgirl pregnancies were to be reduced, contraception and sex education were irrelevant; what was needed was to reduce consumption of that brand of marmalade.

Paris

I'm just back from two days seeing old American friends Ed and Jeanne in Paris. I hadn't seen them for a decade and, in the meantime, Ed had contracted Alzheimer's. There were obvious problems but we were able to reminisce happily over drinks and meals. Ed did occasional seminars in London over a period of years and had obtained consultancy assignments for me at the State of Oregon and Nike.

An item on Jeanne's agenda was getting an ice cream at Berthollin's on the Ile St Louis, which we did, and both also wanted to visit the Musee Rodin again. That was a disappointment as there were few of Rodin's works on display. I understand that some of them are probably on loan from time to time but too much was missing. The Kiss and The Thinker were there, inevitably, but the bronzes of The Burgers of Calais that I had seen previously there in the grounds were missing as also were all the dancers and two of my particular favourites, The Cathedral and She Who Was Once The Beautiful Wife Of The Helmet-maker. The Cathedral, for me, is both a beautiful piece of sculpture and a beautiful concept: two hand in concave shapes with the fingers just touching. The whole museum had had a make-over since I was there before and the pieces of sculpture that were there were displayed in acres of space, which I suppose was to their benefit. However, English translations of the French titles had been added and obviously not checked by any native English speaker. Millions must have been spent on the refurbishment; wasn't there enough left to check the translations? Why do the French persist in doing this? I'm beginning to think it must be some kind of revenge for Waterloo.

If the Musee Rodin was a disappointment our hotel wasn't. The Hotel Chopin is at the end of a quiet passage right in the heart of Paris, off the Boulevard Montmartre. It's a small old-fashioned hotel with tastefully decorated rooms, excellent service and very modest prices. This last applies to the train journey also; the 500kms from Avignon to Paris (in 2 hours 40 minutes) cost me about the same as the 30 miles from Reading to London would have in England.

The Way Of The World

Paranoia

I'm getting paranoid about a cricket that is using my balcony as a lunch table. This is not a small insect like its English equivalent but a locust-like monster. I have previously seen it winging its way from somewhere down by the river across to my side of the road and thought nothing about it. Now it is making its presence felt by consuming three clematis, an entire geranium and attacking the shoots on my vine and jasmine. Whist I am quite happy to let insects and animals have a share of my plants I don't count what this insect is doing as sharing; it's total destruction and therefore war. My feelings are much the same as those Americans must have had after Pearl Harbour about unprovoked aggression.

Birds come all the time to the feeders on my balcony so there is fairly constant fluttering there. But now I find myself looking each time I detect movement to see if it is a bird or something else. I've even been out on the balcony with a torch at night when I thought I saw something move. It's getting to me. I saw this grasshopper on steroids on my balcony railings a few week ago before it started its feast and stupidly just shooed it away. If I catch it again I shall scrunch it or blast it with fly killer, much as I dislike killing wild life.

I shall deal with it (if I catch it!) much in the way I deal with slugs and snails. I don't mind these creatures having a few leaves out of my garden but when they come in an army and take out whole rows of plants I resort to chemical weapons (slug pellets). War has been declared!

Common Market?

Friend Steve, a convinced free-trader, is incandescent too. The latest manifestation of the French attitude towards the common market has been revealed by an attempt by US General Electric to take over Alstom, the French engineering firm. The French minister for industrial renewal, Arnaud Montebourg, has stepped in to halt the take-over. Alstom makes the very successful TGV trains but has been burdened by debt since a multi-billion bail-out a decade ago. There is a good fit between the businesses of the two companies. However, Montebourg would rather Alstom accepted a bid by Siemens, which has guaranteed French jobs for three years, and which would create “a great Franco-German alliance”. But......there is a large overlap between the businesses of the two companies, which means that Siemens would in three years time almost inevitably hold a dagger of extensive job cuts to the throat of the French government or demand a repeated similar scale of bail-out. But, there again, it might not be the same French government then so why should Montebourg care? There are numerous previous examples of the same kind of government intervention in French industry under such pretentious pretexts as patriotism, the national interest, etc. The reason given for intervention this time though has completely changed the game.

Montebourg declared that Alstom was part of France's heritage, which he naturally was concerned to protect. Who could object to protection of heritage? By so doing, though, he has removed Alstom completely from the commercial arena and placed it in the category of historical monuments. It may indeed be a fossilised company, I don't know, but the point is that it thereby becomes subject to the laws relating to conservation rather than commercial competition and these, of course, focus on preserving the status quo. Montebourg's action also raises the question as to whether Alstom should be under his jurisdiction at all or whether it fits better under the minister for culture.

Any Brits who still hold out hopes for a common market..........dream on!

Third World Aid

I've been reading a book by Paul Theroux, the travel writer, published in 2002 and recounting a trip he made by road, rail and boat from Cairo to Cape Town. The book is entitled Dark Star Safari. I found it generally fairly interesting if repetitive (but maybe the journey was like that); what shocked me were persuasive arguments Theroux put up to stop all international aid to the third world. Having worked for several years as a volunteer in an Oxfam bookshop after my retirement and before coming to France, I have always been in favour of aid to the third world. That I should have to question this assumption now shook me. I don't buy into the guilt trips that go along the lines of, given what we former colonial powers have done to these countries, we owe them. I simply think it inhumane to hear of people starving or dying from easily preventable diseases without wanting to do something about it.

However, Theroux argues as follows. The happiest and healthiest people he met on his travels lived primarily in rural areas engaged in subsistence farming. The most wretched were those in towns trying to make a (mostly dishonest) buck any way they could. In the towns were also the rich and powerful, many of whom were “managing” aid funds which had become a significant part of the countries' economy. I know from acquaintances on the aid front line that if 60% of an aid grant actually gets to the people and projects intended then that is a good result. We all know that corruption is rife in the third world but what actually happens to the residue? OK, a lot of it goes into individuals pockets (that we all know) but a lot also goes to buy weapons to keep the rich and powerful in power, thus preserving the status quo. Theroux argues that change is needed (who would dispute that?) but that aid programmes actually militate against change; they actually reinforce the reliance on repression and corruption.

We all also know of schools built that serve no purpose because there is no money to pay teachers or buy books and equipment or infrastructure that quickly becomes useless because it is not maintained. I am also aware that saving people with easily curable diseases may simply swell the numbers that die of starvation. It seems obvious (to me) that a great deal of coordination is required in aid projects, if for no other reason than to prevent this problem, but also that the only people who could do this are the very “elites” who have no interest in doing it. So what is the solution?

Theroux argues that Africa should be left alone for a while to find its own solution. The implication is that a whole lot more would have to be done manually, thereby creating employment, albeit of a subsistence variety. Locally obtainable materials would have to be used, helping sustainability. But there again, slave labour is not beyond the bounds of possibility. My awful conclusion is that Theroux may be right but that what would ensue might be unthinkable. I really don't know enough and I can' get my mind round it. The awful thought remains that aid might actually be a hindrance. I would like to help in some very small way but don't want to be a well-meaning, misguided fuddy-duddy.