A vast green wave is covering France

Anyway it's not my fault. I don't have a vote.

Well M. Juppé was in Bordeaux yesterday evening to see how things went for the elections to the municipal council and therefore for the post of mayor. I wasn't sure M. Juppé had handled things as well as he could - he was asked in an interview whether there were any possible successors to him in his team, and he said none that he could see. Some short months later he had the call-up to the consitutional council and Nicolas Florian from his team became his successor.

One of the first things M. Florian did was to put his photo on lots of billboards in the city, so we would know what he looked like. France does accord glory to its more illustrious citizens, but it has issues with citizens assuming glory, so these posters were not terribly popular. But things went basically OK.

Then came coronavirus, bringing a deliciously quiet city. Once shops reopened the town hall arranged free parking at Quinconces to encourage trade. They also put on an open air drive-in cinema session. Recent developments to the road system notoriously neglect bicycles, but we're encouraged to walk or cycle in order to take pressure off the public transport system.

Meanwhile France is taking global warming seriously. Locavore food, produced nearby, is very popular. Vegetarian and vegan cafés spring up everywhere. 

So it was that after 72 years, the right has lost control of Bordeaux's town hall, passing control to the greens. We have a new mayor, who's a 65-year-old lawyer who lives in the Saint-Genès area, works near the town hall and gets round the city mostly by walking. It will be interesting to see what changes this brings to the city.

M. Juppé, shod in rather funky trainers, expressed his sadness. "That's politics. A vast green wave is covering France."


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