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.

Update

Update

This is proving to be a wonderful time of the year here. Spring seems to have arrived a couple of weeks early. We've had a prolonged spell of good weather, locally produced asparagus and strawberries have been in the shops for a couple of weeks and the second round of flowers after bulbs are doing their thing. The coronilla in my back garden, which I cut back severely last autumn because it had grown so large, is covered in perfumed bloom with some of it already starting to die off. Several irises have bloomed and faded away already and the first blooms are out on my roses, one on the Dublin Bay in front of the house and one on the Shropshire Lad at the back.

I've been busy. All the plants I took inside to over-winter are outside now. Two of the three Dilapidenia I brought in survived and are now outside my bedroom window. The geraniums are also outside now in their pots, so the summer planting is coming together. A clematis I planted in one of the pots against the wash-house opposite has produced its first blooms and the climbing rose seems to have established itself. Also, my “front garden”, the plants I've put in the edge of the road opposite together with the move of the bench there seems to be attracting some regular customers, which is gratifying. People come and sit there in the afternoon so that initiative seems to be being appreciated. It's tempting to start the flowering baskets but I shall hold off until mid-May.

In the house I've started to improve the terrace room. It doesn't feel “lived in”, naturally enough since it's not lived in except during the summer but it should feel better than it does. One factor is the lack of anything on the expanse of white walls. I've hesitated to put photos in picture frames on the walls as any thing small will get lost. However, at the recent car boot sale in the village I managed to buy some relatively large frames for a couple of euros each so I went to the photography shop in Vaison and got some photos enlarged to A3 size, plus some others to A4. They are now in frames and, together, should break up the too sterile white space on the walls. I've also decided to use the terrace room more this summer. I tend to think of it as the overflow room for when I want to invite more than four people to eat, neglecting the possibility of having aperitifs there. So I shall do more aperitif invitations this summer; they are a lot less work than a meal.

Structure And Chaos

The good weather has meant that I have been able to spend time in the evenings sitting on my balcony with a Calvados to hand (or a Genever that friend Marjolaine kindly gave me) and muse about whatever comes to mind. Recently I seem to have found myself musing about the role of structure and chaos or randomness in the world and our lives. Having worked in IT for most of my life I understand quite well the significance of structure and the possibilities and limitations of various defined structures (hierarchies, networks, lattices, stacks, circles, hybrids, etc) but chaos, randomness and concepts such as infinity (Russell's paradox) and negative zero have also intrigued me. It was one reason I decided to take a brief course in chaos theory at Reading University before I left England. And, of course, given my linguistic background, I tend to relate these concepts to language.

Even a cursory perusal of the Internet demonstrates that very few people have any mastery of language. I could understand why, in England, the myth that one's native language was learned parrot fashion arose but never why the myth held sway for so long. Even 50 years ago the idea was demonstrably false. And I never understood either why knowledge of grammar should be deemed to curtail creativity; the implication is that creativity can come only from chaos or randomness which, again, is demonstrably false. Michaelangelo is the perfect counter example. Language, any living language, is always in a state of evolution and evolutionary changes can result from (random?) mistakes apart from other factors. But that happens only very occasionally and I don't regard that as a reason to neglect grammar. The result, in England, has been a couple of generations of people who haven't been taught grammar and who clearly don't understand how to use language (and a generation of teachers who can't teach grammar because they have never been taught it). I blame dogmatists, as always; will we ever be free of this scourge?

Scottish Independence

Scottish independence is making a lot of the news headlines but I really can't find it in myself to take an interest. A lot of the brouhaha seems to me to be the well known Westminster game of overgrown schoolboys throwing bread rolls at each other. An American, Bob McClure of the Southern Methodist university in Texas, taught me back in 1968 that Texas was really an independent state in America. At the NATO-sponsored IT think-tank in Garmisch, anyone who got up to speak had to announce their name and nationality. All the Americans there duly gave their names followed by USA or United States. Bob didn't; he was McClure, Texas. Maybe that is the way Scotland should be independent.

Politics

Mayoral Elections

Our local elections are now done and dusted and I have at last found out exactly how they work (and at least one version of how proportional representation works).

On the first round of voting a week ago, The list with which I had been asked to help came first with 38% of the vote, the others having around 30%, 20% and 8%. Horse trading between the 2^nd and 3^rd didn't work so the bottom two lists dropped out. That left the first two in a head-to-head for the second round of voting. I didn't realise there was any right/left wing aspect to the lists but Le Monde in its national coverage had the first list classified as left-wing, the second and third as right-wing and the third as unknown or independent. So it looked as though the overall apparently majority right-wing vote might swing the head-to-head in favour of the second list. In fact, the opposite happened and the first list got in with 60% of the vote. So it would appear that most voters were not voting along political lines but were voting for individuals on the lists irrespective of their supposed political allegiance.

This is how it works after that. Since the first list has to have a majority on the new council, it automatically gets 8 of the 15 new councillors. Then since it got 60% of the vote, it also gets 60% of the remaining seven seats. Since 60% doesn't go exactly into 7 and since fractions of councillors aren't allowed (one is left to wonder, if fractions were allowed, if the head would be included in any parts selected – maybe just the spleen) the first list gets 4 more seats on the council and the remainder go to the runner-up. So that is the composition of our new council.

Press headlines were made by the success of the extreme right-wing National Front over the nation as a whole. The NF claimed that their success proved they were not simply recipients of a protest vote but were being accepted as a mainstream political party. I couldn't agree with that analysis. Extremist parties will pick up majority votes in areas where there is a great deal of social unrest in minor elections, even sometimes in major elections. However, it was obvious that parties politically opposed had combined in several cases to keep out NF candidates. This is sure to happen again in major elections and perhaps to an even greater extent. In populous areas, voting was clearly political, in less populous areas much less so. This would seem natural and, indeed, perhaps as it should be.

Who's responsible?

I recently bought a rose bush to go in my back garden and noticed that there was a sign on the packaging warning that the bush was not to be eaten. Now I can honestly say that I've never seen a rose bush on a menu anywhere (and I've been in some 60 countries throughout the world) so I presume that the vast majority of people must already know that rose bushes are not to be eaten. However, I suppose that ever since some woman successfully prosecuted MacDonalds because, when she tipped a cup of their coffee over herself, it burned her, there must be some people who don't know that hot liquid can burn. So I suppose the notice on my rose bush packaging is justified. Should anyone eat a rose bush and get a thorn stuck in their throat, they won't be able to sue the supplier; they were warned.

It's A Funny Old World

It's Funny.............

It's funny how things turn out sometimes. My small and surreptitious efforts at growing flowering plants across the road from my kitchen were, I thought, never going to amount to a great deal. Despite my fond hope that a new mayor, if it was the one who might be persuaded he owed me something, would let me turn the parking space into a flower bed was really just that: a fond hope. Unbeknown to me, neighbours Jean-Pierre and Monique and some others who had gathered at their house one evening, were discussing my gradual extension of the flowers there and hit upon an idea.

There is a bench further along the road, placed so that promenaders can sit and take in the view across the river. What if they moved that to the space in front of my house? There wouldn't be any room to park a car then and I would be free to carry on planting. So that is what they propose to do. Then I shall plant some lavender and focus more on scent; with no need of any mayoral edict; the neighbours have done it for me.

More On Elections

I played boules this afternoon with Daniel, Marie and Mana. Mana took me to task as to why I hadn't attended any of the other open meetings with mayoral election candidates. I explained that one meeting clashed with an evening when I had invited Jo and Steve to eat and the other clashed with an important foot ball match I wanted to watch. Mana wasn't impressed with my second excuse and I had to explain my priorities. I told my children when they were young that, as far as I was concerned, they could choose their politics and, if they wanted a religion, choose that too. But I wasn't having any Arsenal supporters in my house. There was only one football team that could be supported and that was Chelsea. I felt, and still feel, that it is important to get priorities right on the really important things in life.

Anyway, as it turned out, Mana was greatly unimpressed by the meetings I missed. One was apparently very poorly attended and the candidates neglected to use the microphone so Mana couldn't hear what they had to say. For Very Important Elections, only in Mollans could this happen. At the other, the candidates had decided to offer no agenda but simply said “elect us and we will discuss it”. I didn't like to ask Mana whether she had tried to establish their position on the Ukraine crisis (or the national economy, immigration or unemployment) but presume she didn't even bother.

St Patrick's Day

I went down to the Bar du Pont this evening for the usual pizza but Roberto was also doing baby chickens, so I had one of those. Interestingly, in England we know these as the French word “poussins”, which the French don't appear to use. They call them “coquelets”. Anyway, it was St Patrick's day and so the bar owner, Patrique, was celebrating. The French celebrate not only their birthdays but also the saint's day of their first name. The assumption is that you are named after a saint and, Heaven knows, there are enough of those names to go round. However, I remember a job interview I was conducting while at ICL when I wanted to verify the candidates name. I just said something like “your Christian name is Norma and your surname is xxxxxx”. The young woman tersely responded: “it's not a Christian name”. OK, I should have said first name rather than Christian name, and I've no idea what all the Normas since creation could have been doing not to get at least one saint among them, but that defensive/aggressive response set the tone for the interview and, no, she didn't get the job. A simple, “yes it's Norma but it's not actually a Christian name” might have set a different tone.

Whatever. Patrique, a Mollanais from birth who has no Irish affiliations that I am ware of, duly celebrated by buying us all a verveine, a green liqueur. Good health to Patrique!

Election Meeting

Election Meeting

The list of village councillor candidates and proposed new mayor which I mentioned in my last posting had an open meeting this Sunday evening so I went along to hear what they had to say. I wasn't expecting much but the meeting did provide some interest and merriment.

The main thread of the presentation was that the candidates promised to be always available, to openly explain all decisions and listen to what villagers had to say. That much might be expected but it did at least show that some listening had been done. The current council clearly tried to say as little as possible about the recent change of community of communes until it was a fait accompli, a point that still rankles among many villagers.

In more detail, the presentation dealt with new school legislation which adds half a day to the school week, to be devoted to sport and cultural activities, but provides no budget for it. The candidates asserted that the cost would not be large and proposed that the village budget should absorb that, so that the activities would be free to the children. Another topic was the Haute Aire, the large patch of elevated waste ground on which we play boules in the centre of the village. It is admittedly a bit of an eyesore and the proposal was to redo it as a recreation square for the village, perhaps with flower beds, etc. As long as they leave enough space for boules that will be OK. It was also proposed to upgrade the water purification station. Mollans' water has always seemed OK to me but is officially classified as of only medium quality by WHO standards, probably because of potential contamination from agriculture. Anyway, I have spring water in the fountain just outside my house.

I thought questions might be interesting but was disappointed when the first two were about car parking and noise. A woman complained about cars being parked in front of her garage and another about car noise; I wondered where she could live because there is hardly any car noise even on the village by-pass. She should live in Reading. Then there was a question on the positioning of dustbins and a woman got up and, rather than simply ask a question, went forward to grab the microphone and address everybody. She said that of course the candidates were showing themselves in their best light now (I presumed everybody already knew that) but......and I couldn't catch her question. Anyway, she was immediately shouted down by the audience and retired to her seat in a huff. There was also a lady who said she would love to organise theatrical events and give acting classes but there was no theatre in the village. How many villages of 1000 inhabitants have theatres?

It was left to Mana, dear Mana, to save the day for me. She said: “The biggest problem in the village is unemployment; what are you going to about that?” The mayoral candidate, clearly a bit taken aback, said what he could; that the council, if elected, would look favourably on any enterprise that proposed to bring employment to the village; what else could he say? I was disappointed when Mana left it that. I fully expected her to follow up saying that the national economy was a mess and what was the village council going to do about that? And what was their position on immigration and what were they doing about the crisis in the Ukraine? Ah well, another time maybe.