French Letters

by Jonathan Miller

  TERRORISME

  French speciality

  It is hard to pin the invention of terrorism exclusively on the French but the French have been innovative terrorists since at least the 13th century, when Pope Innocent III launched a 20-year military campaign to eliminate the Cathar heresy from the Languedoc, leaving the province soaked in blood. The papal armies employed dramatic techniques to exterminate the gnostic Cathars, laying siege to their castles, catapulting the dead bodies of captives over their walls, burning prisoners alive and finally herding the entire population of Béziers into the cathedral and setting it on fire in 1209. I have looked carefully around the gloomy, fortress-like cathedral at Béziers rebuilt at the site of this massacre, but have found no memorial or recognition of this draconic history. The Catholic Encyclopaedia does concede the campaign may have been excessive.

  Subsequent French wars of religion built on the idea of terrorism as not merely violence but violence as a form of popular entertainment. Notable is the celebrated massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572 resulting in between 5,000 and 30,000 deaths and provoking the exile of the protestant Huguenots to England and Holland. It was only natural that the French revolution would build on the established foundation of terrorism, although substituting revolutionary for religious ideology and the technology of the guillotine for the cruder methods of the past. The reign of terror from 1793-94 was the first modernist terrorism in which the spectacle of terror was itself central to the project, the heads of aristocrats and priests being paraded on stakes and vast crowds gathering to watch the executions. The Islamic State still has some catching up to do.

  TGV

  Perk for the rich

  Although the TGV is hailed by the French as an emblematic achievement, it’s really transport for quite wealthy people, paid for by the taxes of people who do not use it. The high-speed lines bypass many cities (if they stopped along the way they would no longer be high-speed) and the economic benefits are hard to discern. It is certainly far less costly to transport people over medium distances by air than by trains (as long as this is done by Easyjet, not Air France). The union grip on railways in France makes costs high and efficiencies low. TGV drivers who work in air-conditioned cabs still get a retirement prime (bonus) for exposure to coal. Exports of TGV technology have been slow. Certainly, many other nations have now mastered it, including the Chinese.

  TOILETTES

  Who steals French toilet seats?

  Nobody who has travelled the Hexagon can fail to have noticed the absence of toilet seats in many bars, restaurants and public conveniences (that is, when there is an actual toilet, since the un-ornamented hole in the ground of the so-called Turkish toilet is by no means extinct). To be fair, there are more clean loos in France than there used to be. But to say standards are mixed is to be generous. The English get the word loo from the French word, l’eau (water). Perhaps to avoid the foul, malodorous chiottes (slang, equivalent to the English ‘bog’), French men are uninhibited in peeing by the side of the road, and I have seen women doing this, too.

  TOUR DE FRANCE

  Corruption on wheels

  The first tour was run in 1903 and by 1904 riders were being disqualified for taking the train. In 1937, rider Roger Lapébie was caught being towed uphill by a car. There have been bombings by Basque separatists, the hurling of stink bombs by demonstrating firemen, blockades by farmers, numerous deaths of riders, spectators, officials and journalists and physical assaults by riders against one another. Since 1998 the race has been completely corrupted by doping, with disqualifications and expulsions in 1998, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012, when Lance Armstrong was stripped of all seven of his titles. In 2015, British cyclist Chris Froome was spat at and had urine thrown on him as French spectators accused him of being a doper, without a shred of evidence. The Tour often passes near my village and every summer we all go to watch it, scooping up the tchotchkes (Yiddish: trinkets) hurled from the publicity caravan then heartily cheering the magnificent men on their carbon-fibre racing machines as they whizz past. If they are doped to the gills, tant pis (so what). A magnificent spectacle - what could be more French? The tour has not been won by a French rider in 30 years.

  TOURISTES

  Paris pro toto

  In 2015 the government launched a campaign to persuade the French to be polite to visitors. The government is to train the border police to say thank-you when tourists hand them their passports and offer sweets to well-behaved children. This quickly ran aground when the police union objected. ‘We are not confectioners,’ they said. Other measures include a plan to introduce announcements in English on inter-city trains and to set up a phone line to help Chinese people. To be fair, in most of France, people are already polite. The problem is Paris. Even many French people dislike Parisians. Parisians have been urged before to be polite to tourists, without apparent effect. Einstein said doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

  TRAVAIL DOMINICAL

  Holy Sunday

  The French are not necessarily work-shy although many are out of the habit. But even when they want to work, they are not allowed to. A recent reform pushed by industry minister Emmanuel Macron may allow French superstores to open on Sundays up to 12 times per year. The unions are strongly opposed although many of the members are happy to work on Sunday and be compensated at premium rates.

  TRENTE-CINQ HEURES

  France’s war against jobs

  The idea of the 35 heures (35-hour week), implemented in 2000 by prime minister Lionel Jospin during the presidency of Jacques Chirac, was that with everyone working less, there would be more work to be shared around, hence unemployment would fall. The author of the legislation was Martine Aubry, then minister of social affairs. The idea was originally proposed by President François Mitterrand as part of his 110propositions pour la France (110 proposals for France) which also included retail price controls on books. It may be his greatest toxic legacy. The law was passed during a French period of cohabitation in which a supposedly conservative president (Chirac) had to govern with a socialist parliament. Chirac was too economically ignorant or (probably) lazy to see the danger. The Anglo-Saxon ultraliberals who gasped at this folly were ignored. The 35-hour week is straight out of the Marxist economic playbook, specifically the lump of labour fallacy, which holds that there is a finite amount of work, and this can be distributed among the available workers. This insane fantasy has been one of the principal destroyers of prosperity for the French. I debated with a French advocate of the trente-cinq heures on the BBC World Service while the law was going through in 2000, who accused me of French-bashing.

  What followed was an approximate 11 per cent fall in economic activity concentrated in the public and unionised sectors of the economy and a reorganisation in France’s tiny private sector to automate or delocalise production. There was very little replacement hiring, with the exception of the public sector. In short, it meant taxpayers paying more to hire more people to do the same amount of work. The services sector was more or less burned to the ground as whatever surplus value an employer might have found by hiring someone had been summarily confiscated. It was the beginning of the exodus of talented French people.

  The project has been comprehensively demolished by Thierry Desjardins, the former deputy editor of Le Figaro, in his book Laissez-nous travailler! (Let Us Work, 2004) which is replete with case historie, economic analysis and facts proving every element of the scheme to have been nonsense. His book concludes with an interview with the president of an enterprise with 620 employees who concludes, ‘Ce pays est foutu’ (this country is fucked). The most influential union, the CGT, knows a steal when it sees one and is demanding a 32-hour week. What is not to like?

  TRENTE GLORIEUSES

  Lucky years

  It all seems long ago but once upon a time, the French economy sizzled. The 30 glorious years of the French economic miracle are said to have started soo
n after the Second World War and continued until 1974 when the choc pétrolier (oil crisis) hit the country, after OPEC raised prices and the era of cheap energy came to an end. To be born in France from the late 1940s to mid-1950s was to come of age at a time of full employment and deep and broad prosperity and optimism. The years of deficit, slow growth, unemployment and sclerosis that ensued were supposed to have ended with the introduction of the euro in 1999 but the sunlit uplands of European prosperity have yet to be gained and so it has really been 35 years of going nowhere for the French economy.

  TRIERWEILER, VALÉRIE

  France’s interest in private lives

  Briefly first lady of France. Claims she was sedated to stop her from making a fuss after she discovered that President François Hollande was being conducted on the back on a motor scooter to an affair with an actress. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold and she retaliated with Merci pour ce moment (2014), a highly readable book albeit not literature, that became a bestseller in France despite attacks on it from all quarters. It claimed that the president was a habitual liar and hypocrite and had behaved contemptuously towards her humble family. The commentariat considered Merci pour ce moment to be a betrayal of private life. In Britain, she was condemned in the Guardian, on France Inter and in Le Monde, and some high-minded Paris bookshops refused to sell her book. The issue of Paris Match with extracts from her book was a bestseller.

  TUNNEL SOUS LA MANCHE

  The Channel tunnel

  The noblest prospect that an enterprising Frenchman ever sees is the submarine tunnel to England. A French dream since the 18th century, it was resisted by the English who feared continental invasion. This has turned out to be true in the end as it has become the conduit for thousands of migrants who break into the lorries that use it daily. The tunnel is supposed to be one of the most secure sites in France but is like anything else proclaimed by officials nothing of the kind. The security is repeatedly breached by a handful of port workers from Calais, causing chaos on both sides of the channel and by migrants, seeking passage to the promised land of England. If a French union can invade the perimeter, one wonders what the feeble French police might do in the event it was attacked by terrorists. The first serious Channel tunnelling effort in 1874 quickly ground to a halt as did several subsequent attempts. The modern 50km/33 mile triple-bore tunnel was finally started in 1988 and completed in 1994, late and over-budget. Opened by the Queen and President François Mitterrand in May 1994, Le Figaro pronounced the tunnel to be the end of British insularity, but perhaps the opposite was also true. At the opening ceremony, the Queen noted that although it was a Frenchman who first flew over the channel, it was an Englishman who had first swum it. The French and the English cannot even agree what to call the strait separating us. For the French it is La Manche (the sleeve). See Calais.

  TUTOYER, VOUVOYER

  An endless problem for anglophones

  To tutoyer someone is to address them with the familiar form of the pronoun for you: tu. To vouvoyer them is to use the more formal pronoun vous. This can be a minefield. Inadvertently addressing someone as tu can be considered to be taking a liberty or even an insult. Sometimes, however, even those very familiar with one another, including old married couples, will use vous, as a mark of respect or even affection. One of General de Gaulle’s closest colleagues is said to have asked him, after many years, whether it might be time to tutoyer. ‘Si vous voulez,’ (if you wish) replied the general. The safe rule for an anglophone is to stick with vous, except when addressing children, who are always tu. It is wise to wait before your French acquaintance or friend employs the familiar tu before using it yourself. There is evidence that the rigorous application of these protocols is falling out of favour with millennials.

  U

  ULTRA-LIBÉRALISME

  French taboo

  Margaret Thatcher remains the ur-example of an ultra-liberal, even if she has been dead since 2013. Ultra-liberals are blamed for exploitation, banksterism, debt, untrammelled free trade, destruction of public services, competition, deregulation and much else. ‘If a French person describes you as an ultra-liberal, they are not paying you a compliment,’ says E!Sharp, the Brussels blog, in its dictionary of EU jargon. ‘If you are ever branded an Anglo-Saxon ultra-liberal you really have upset someone.’ See langue de bois.

  URSSAF

  Giant feeding trough

  Unions de eecouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations Familiales(organisations for the payment of social security and family benefit contributions). The group of 100 organisations collects social security cotisations and two other taxes. Each organisation is responsible for a particular sector such as artists, farmers, taxi drivers, café owners, freelance writers, etc. The administrative overhead of these organisations, ostensibly private but in every respect acting as an agent of the state, is estimated to be 40 per cent of all the contributions received. Private suppliers of pensions are not permitted to compete. Cotisations almost double the cost of employing anyone in France.

  V

  VACHEMENT

  Emphasis

  A word implying cow-like but meaning decidedly, absolutely or without doubt. Oftenused to describe something particularly good to eat, e.g. vachement bon. Some claim this originates with an iconic TV commercial for Laughing Cow cheese (La vache qui rit), described as vachement bon. But this may be a false memory because YouTube has an old French TV commercial for milk, also using the phrase vachement bon. Vachement can also be employed if you think something is amazing (vachementsurprenant) or in any other context in which one might wish to lay a special emphasis.

  VALLS, MANUEL

  Socialist politician, mistrusted by socialists

  President François Hollande’s second prime minister, not at all the product of the golden circle, is the son of Catalan immigrants, has a Jewish wife, was formerly the interior minister. He is regarded by the French as hard-nosed and by the left as dangerously reformist. But I don’t think anyone need fear for their job. He is not so reformist as to eschew the trappings of political power, having commandeered an air force Falcon jet to take him to the Champions League final in Berlin in June 2015, to watch his favourite team, Barcelona, win the European Champions League against Juventus. He took his two sons along for the ride, which was estimated to have cost French taxpayers 25,000 euros. Rachida Dati, a spokesman for the opposition, posted the obvious tweet: ‘La reality, c’est que le vol familial Paris-Berlin a bien décollé. Mais l’emploi, toujours pas’ (the reality is that the family flight Paris-Berlin has taken off. But employment, not yet). One must suppose he will be discarded quickly if Hollande sees an advantage to himself. Valls has spoken plainly in ways that were previously inconceivable for a French prime minister (see ghettos, apartheid) and must certainly be a politician to watch but he lacks much of a constituency amongst Socialist party activists. Hollande plainly regards him as someone who can ultimately be forced to carry the can for the manifold failures of his presidency.

  VÉLIB’

  symbol of social division

  Paris has pioneered bike-sharing and the idea has been widely copied in France and beyond. But the scheme is troubled by widespread vandalism and theft. In 2013, 8,000 of the bikes were vandalised, 40 per cent of the fleet. In one night, 367 had their tyres slashed. The vandalism is concentrated in the deprived northeast of the city where the bikes are regarded as a manifestation of bobo culture. Vandalism of shared bikes in London is reported to be negligible. Paris is also pioneering electric scooter and electric car sharing schemes.