les Davey de France

As the UK swings to the left, many countries in Europe have swung to the right. In the recent European Parliament Elections in France the far-right Rassemblement National (erstwhile Front National)did exceptionally well. Following that M Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called elections for the National Assembly on 30 June and 7 July. France has several levels of election. 1) Presidential elections. The President is directly elected and it is he who puts forward a programme of legislation. He has immense power and prestige. 2) Legislative elections. Députés are elected to the Assemblée Nationale. These represent their constituencies or circonscriptions. I have no idea who our député is, and I can't imagine a situation where I might write to them. French friends don't know, either. The National Assemblée is a control on the president's power. The French Parliament has a second chamber, the Sénat. Senators are elected by an electoral college made up of députés, memb...

In France it's really important to join groups to do things. They're called "associations", registered with the government, some which are of public utility qualify for tax relief on gifts, and they fulfil lots of different functions. Local churches are associations, as are the denominations to which they belong. Some associations are there to play games or do sport. Others run cafés or cultural activities. Some support humanitarian projects in the majority world. Others help immigrants and asylum seekers to navigate the winding paths of settling in France. One we saw in Strasbourg runs a cooperative restaurant, where people sign up to cook and eat lunch together. This is a great idea for students living on knackipâtes (hot dog sausages cut up into pasta shapes - it's a thing...) Others are concerned with recycling and the "circular economy" - that is repairing, reusing and reselling things as well as producing things locally. Just up the road from us we...

 One reason that the blog is so much more infrequently updated is that France doesn't really surprise us much any more. I was thinking about this this morning as I wondered whether Pat and I should get a picture taken of us on our bikes, buying baguettes etc... (we draw the line at the stripes jumpers, gauloises and berets...) But France can still surprise us. For example, our towns have now imposed a 30kph limit. Bègles was the first. Bordeaux soon followed suit. So in town, unless indicated otherwise (on particularly wide roads, or urban expressways etc.) the speed limit is 30kph. This is about 18 mph. And there was no outcry, no petitions, no scoffing, no real comment at all. Contrast this with the reaction to the Welsh Government's recent decision to do the same. This morning we read that the Parisians have voted to multiply parking fees threefold for large SUVs. I knew they were voting on it, and I know that almost everyone I know thinks that the proliferation of Chelsea T...

The political process in France includes marching in the street. It's what you do. Nobody writes to their MP. Everyone marches in the street.  In the past few days there's been a pro-palestinian march, and one to protest at the new immigration law. At the moment it's the farmers. The current economic model puts huge pressure on farmers - supermarkets demand uniform produce of high quality for low prices and with minimal use of chemical products. It makes it very hard for farmers to stay in business. So they've taken to the streets and, this morning, to the motorway ring-road around Bordeaux. The government meanwhile is proposing talks and promising to take any reasonable measures.

 Flocks of feral parrots.

M. Macron spoke to all the French yesterday evening. Last week he reshuffled the government, appointing Gabriel Attal as Prime Minister. Attal is the youngest person to hold the role, at 34, and he appointed his cabinet of ministers gradually over the course of the week. In France the government is presidential, that is the people elect deputies to the National Assembly, Senators to the Senate*, and the President. So the President is not guaranteed a majority in the National Assembly.  The President then appoints a Prime Minister and the Prime Minister appoints his government ministers. They can choose anyone. They don't have to be from the same political party or even from the National Assembly. However the Prime Minister is expected to do all he can to enact the promises that the President made during his election campaign. Yesterday evening M. Macron made a direct broadcast to the nation. One newspaper said "to counter the rise of the far right". Another said "to ...

Can it be Five Years Already? Has time passed So Quickly? So today was the fifth anniversary of the start of the Gilets Jaunes protests, which started off as an online petition against rising fuel costs, but became a more diffuse, and more violent protest against poverty, precarity, capitalism, the lot. Essentially anti-Macron. So yesterday a couple of hundred people marched from the Place de la Bourse up to the cathedral square to commemorate the protests. There was no violence as far as I know.

 With our old flat when you announce that you're leaving they arrange a "visite conseil" to tell you what you have to do to get your deposit back. (yeah, right) The lady came this morning and was disarmingly reasonable. She said, "You can tell that you've looked after the flat" and pointed out a couple of areas where we'd need to paint the wall - in the bathroom where some of the paint came off, and by the door where the orange engineer drilled holes before fixing the alarm with adhesive strips instead. She asked why we were moving and I said that we wanted somewhere where the place was better looked after and more secure. She was surprised that we had been burgled. I also explained that with various issues we'd had we'd ended up being bounced from one company to another. We have three buttons for entering the building. One has never worked, despite our attempts to get it sorted out. "Again, we've paid for 5 years for a parking space to ...

So this house move has brought and is bringing many changes.  Firstly it has enabled me to get rid of my long-hated pink tilt and swivel "Lazyboy" armchair. Made in America. Brought from thence by a dear old friend in Chester and given to us with two humungous sofas which accompanied it faithfully over the years. The sofas were eventually donated to a students' furnishing charity. The armchair has gone to family. It was loved by all as profoundly as I hated it. The problem was that whenever I sat in it it tilted and swivelled. It felt that this was its duty. But I wanted a solid, stable armchair in which to read, listen to music, have my being. Anyway, the last laugh's on me. At present I am sitting in a green plastic garden chair. Still, at least it doesn't swivel. And I have the hope set before me of soon acquiring a good, old-fashioned armchair, such as my soul loveth. The chair was given to us, as I said, by a dear old friend who lived in a barn conversion jus...

"C'est pas trop logique, mais on le fait quand même." The cashier in our local supermarket was looking forward to a weekend on the sofa as everything closes down for Labour Day, the Fête du Travail. Literally everything closes. There are no trams or buses. Supermarkets are closed. Even our local pharmacy is closed. The city becomes beautifully quiet. Or it would, if there was not also a demonstration each year on 1 May. I don't think it's a demonstration about anything in particular. It's just the Manifestation de la Fête du Travail. This year it kicks off at 10:30 and will follow quite a long route around the centre of the city. The demonstration is one thing. It will be peaceful and orderly, if a little noisy. However the usual fans of anti-capitalists and anarchists will tag onto the end of the march and engage in pitched battles with the police. As for us Daveys, if the weather is clement we might take a little walk along the right bank.

 All of France has been holding her breath waiting for the decision of the Conseil Constitutionnel. This group of the great and the good of France meets to consider, among other things, whether a law proposed by the government and adopted by the parliament is nevertheless against the French constitution.  It is one of France's democratic checks and balances. The law to raise the retirement age in France from 62 to 64 has been controversial. It is unwelcome to many French people, who consider that the economic need to change the retirement law has not been sufficiently well proven. Many French people do in fact work beyond the age of 62, but they can retire at that age. The law was also unwelcome in the National Assembly, where M. Macron's party does not have a clear majority. After long discussions, Mme Borne, the Prime Minister, announced that the Assembly was not going to spend all this time in debate to in the end achieve nothing, so she announced that the law was being ado...

I spoke too soon when I said that the city had calmed down following the burning of the Town Hall gates. For one thing, on Wednesday one of the Unions cut off the power to a large sector of the city, including the main railway station. It was off for perhaps up to an hour. We were out so were not directly affected. They threaten to do it again, too. Then yesterday was the 11th day of demonstrations against the Pensions Reform Law. In Bordeaux there were about 60 000 marchers according to the Unions, 10 000 according to the police. The demonstration passed off peacefully, but was accompanied by the gangs of people in black, who in Bordeaux amassed piles of whatever they could find and set fire to them., while all the while attempting to engage the police in close combat. Photos in the free papers show clouds of tear gas in the side streets around Victoire as the police try to herd the gangs together and contain the violence. This morning I expected to see little piles of burnt rubbish o...

 Protests against the new retirement law continue, principally on Tuesdays and Saturdays, but numbers of marchers are falling. The law is being considered by the Constitutional Council to decide whether it is legal in France or not. They will announce their decision on 14 April. The black balaclava wearing or hoodie wearing gangs who turn out just to fight with the police keep coming. Everyone hopes that that aspect will die down.

 can not be repaired. A new gate will have to be made and fitted.

 For British people, the nearest equivalent of the 49.3 is the Parliament Act, where the government can push legislation through even if it is fiercely and strongly opposed.  Why does this matter?  Well successive governments in France have tried to reform the pensions system. The current retirement age is 62, for women and for men. Read and weep, British friend. Some people have special retirement arrangements that allow them to retire early, sometimes as early as 52. The government says that with a falling birth rate and an aging population profile, and healthier elderly people, France cannot continue with this retirement regime. They want to raise the age to 64. Read and weep, British friend. So there have been successive demonstrations and strikes, and strong opposition in Parliament. Macron does not want to be yet another President who tried and failed to seize the pensions nettle, so yesterday, unexpectedly, after saying repeatedly that they wanted to avoid using th...

 Today is a strike day, protesting against the government's plans to increase retirement age in France. At present men retire at 62 and women at 60. The plan is that everyone should retire at 64. The government argue that this is necessary to fund the pension system as people live longer. The unions argue that the pension system is not showing undue financial strain, and that a small increase in contributions would enable current retirement ages to be maintained. Between 16,000 and 100,000 people marched in Bordeaux. This huge range of possibilities is quite normal here - the police give a low estimate of how many people marched, while the unions give a high estimate, and there is always a lot of clear distance between the two figures.

 The other Saturday we decided to go up to one of our favourite coffee places in Bordeaux. They occasionally have made the unique croissant au chocolat - a croissant with cocoa powder in the pastry! Really good. I used to ask for it every time I went there, but they seldom made them. They combine being pastry chefs, selling to businesses in the area, coffee-roasters, selling to coffee shops around, and running the café. But running the café comes third in their plan. Sometimes it's been closed. Sometimes it only does espresso. At the moment they do most things but only for a few days a week, and with few tables. So it was that Saturday all the seats were taken. We caught the bus home. Yesterday we decided to go to our nearest chain coffee shop, Columbus coffee. It's not wonderful, but we feel it's a step up from Starbucks, and it's nearby and well placed for people watching. We chose hot chanlate. You can get big, enormous or colossal. They offered a muffin, baked on th...

 The agency that deals with driving licences is based in Nantes, and when you exchange a UK driving licence for a French one, as I now have to do, you first upload quite a number of documents to their website, including proof of address, proof of residency right, birth certificate, proof of right to drive from the UK government website, etc. etc. I did that at the beginning of November. Strangely, last night, I dreamt that I was driving in excess of the speed limit and passed a police car which registered my excessive speed. I wondered how they would send the notice of fine to me, then realised that I was just dreaming. Well I just received the call to send my original driving licence off to Nantes, so that my new French permit de conduire can be issued to me. Hurrah !

 Well we are being told to Lower, Switch off and Delay (je baisse, j’éteins, je décale) in order to help the national grid to cope through the winter, but the people most affected are the bakers, some of whom are really struggling to pay their energy bills.

 We have a transport workers' strike in Bordeaux today, so there's a reduced service on trams and buses. It's also really cold today. Just 1°C at present.