French Politics

So Macron finally spoke on the subject (the fact that he had remained silent about the whole affair since its beginning had not gone unnoticed). Basically he assumed full responsibility on the subject (which does not cost him much, since given that the President is more or less immune to prosecution during his term, there is little to no chances of him being brought to court, even as a witness), then went on to criticise the press, justice system and the Parliament. Quite in line with his behaviour so far.

Full responsibility for what exactly? For the behaviour of his employee, for the ongoing employment of his employee, for being the president and this is his staff?

All three I think ...

• looks it up*...so he apparently says that he is to blame because he put his trust in this guy and because he was the one who approved his punishment.

Honestly...this affair will be forgotten by the end of the year.

then went on to criticise the press, justice system and the Parliament. Quite in line with his behaviour so far.

What is Macron criticizing there ... legit misbehaviour on their part or just Trump-esque "Never My Fault, it's always someone else who's wrong" criticism?

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Jul 25th 2018 at 8:49:01 PM

A quick and dirty translation of the part of his speech about the press I found on the Web (I have not yet seen the actual speech) :

More when I manage to come home.

Edited by C105 on Jul 25th 2018 at 8:41:10 PM

Yeah, poor him, no sitting world leader should have the public media scrutinize their behaviour!

Translating a few other extracts I found (any language mistakes being due to my hasty translation and not present in the original):

About justice and Parliament:

This evening, the Chief-Whip of the Republican caucus in the National Assembly has officially published the text of a motion of non-confidence which if approved by more than half of the M Ps would force the resignation of the whole Government and the Prime Minister. Absolutely no suspense however, since the ruling coalition of Republic on the Move and of the Democratic Movement holds 359 seats out of 577.

To pass the motion of non-confidence must gather 289 votes : even if all the legislative caucuses of all stripes were to vote in favour of it with each and everyone of its members without any defection they would gather only 218 votes . Therefore there has to be at least 70 M Ps of the ruling coalition to break away from the majority and join the opposition in favour of the motion .

70 = 19,499 % of 359

That means that at least a fifth of the majority has to rebel against the Government to prop up the motion of non-confidence to 289, so you can see it's a bit too far. ^^

Break-up of the National Assembly :

Democratic and Republican Left : 16

Unbowing France : 17

New Left : 31

Republic on the Move : 312

Democratic Movement : 47

UDI-Agir and Independents : 32

The Republicans : 102

Unaffiliated : 18

Vacant seats : 2

Ruling coalition : 359 [Republic on the Move + Democratic Movement]

Left-wing opposition : 64

Right-wing opposition : 134 [including the UDI-Agir caucus]

Unaffiliated M Ps : 18 [including the RN (former National Front)]

Thus this motion is just for pure show : for the opposition parties it only serves to whip up the motivation of their supporters to protest against Macron .

Edited by Nuup-Kangerlua on Jul 26th 2018 at 8:33:46 PM

Breaking News : There is chaos right now at the Montparnasse railways station in Paris because a key substation transformer of the electricity-network of RTE at Issy les Moulineaux burnt this morning, plunging not only vast urban areas in the dark but also paralysing Montparnasse since the station almost totally depends on that nod alone for its electrical needs .

The SNCF has announced they will reroute the TG Vs to Austerlitz Station and all of the other trains to the Versailles-Chantiers station . They repeat that the problem isn't their fault since it began with a fire in buildings that belong to the national electricity transmission system operator.

It looks like problems haunts the Montparnasse station : almost a year ago, on the 29th of July 2017, there already has been a problem with the infrastructure in the outskirt of Paris that paralysed Montparnasse station for several days !

As if the SNCF needed that again ... Today, a similar, albeit slightly different, problem comes to ruin the key weekend that any French transportation company, public or private, must not screw up : the one that forms a bridge between the months of July and August .

Therefore thousands of travelers are going to wait or they will have to cross the city eastward or westward to reach their new destination right in the middle of a heat wave that plague the Ile-de-France : not a good start to the weekend for the SNCF ! They better be spotless with their crisis-communication to the clients or I can tell you there's going to be thunder.

Edited by Nuup-Kangerlua on Jul 27th 2018 at 2:42:08 PM

Do you know what is the cause of said fire/burn? Infrastructure problems aside, could there be human influence at hand?

Edited by Quag15 on Jul 27th 2018 at 4:37:40 PM

Sorry, but I have absolutely no knowledge about it ...

By the way, they say on BFMTV, Channel 15, that because of this incident there are about 16'000 households that are without electricity right as we speak across three municipalities in the Southwestern suburbs of Paris that are Malakoff, Issy-les-Moulineaux and Vanves ...

The SNCF confirms that the network will not reach its normal state back again until at the very least Sunday morning, considering that the firefighters are still working this evening to cool down what remains of the substation transformer.

France has been suffering for several days now from an enormous heatwave that comes from Northern Africa with unbearable and long-lasting temperatures ...

Where I live on the French Riviera the heat reaches 34 C (93,2 F) in the shadow but when factoring in the dampness that rises from the sea (the beach is literally less than a mile away from my apartment) it can reaches up to 44 C (111,2 F) so it really can gets painful ! Even more so considering that the air doesn't cool down during the night : just to give you another example here where I live the temperature only dips to 24 C at its lowest point !

The Government is (at least that is what they say) on duty, in order to avoid a mess like what happened in 2003 when more than seventeen thousands elderly/young/weak persons died because of the heatwave : it absolutely traumatised not only the French people but also the authorities who didn't believe until then that a heatwave could do so much damages !

So now every year, anytime that Meteofrance projects a heatwave the Government immediately activates its heatwave management plan : better be grilled for overreacting than for doing nothing they think !

Edited by Nuup-Kangerlua on Aug 1st 2018 at 6:42:39 PM

Yeah, Switzerland isn't any better off. We've been running for any cold nook or cranny available for months.

Same for Germany. This is a rather humbling experience if you ask me. All our technology and knowledge helps us only so much if the sun decides to go all out. Of course no one has to starve because of this (at least in Europe) but I guess we really should start searchibg for ways how to deal with this. Because I doubt that this is the last record summer we will see this century thanks to global warming.

If I recall correctly, this heatwave is apparently global. :/

The UK’s portion of the heatwave seems to currently have abated, but who knows how long that will last.

For a while the North American jetstream had all but vanished...it was pretty creepy.

Ours is about to start, after what was one of the coldest Julys in about 30 years. 41º C tomorrow at its peak here in my city, for example.

Edited by Quag15 on Aug 1st 2018 at 12:49:17 PM

And, by abated, that really means it's been raining. The temperature is still ranging between low-mid-20s (which is still quite warm for the UK) and now, because of the rain, it's incredibly muggy. So, cold wet air and rain plus high temperatures and humidity make for a very weird situation of feeling both hot and cold depending on when the wet wind is blowing.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 1st 2018 at 1:03:53 PM

It's gettin' hot in here...and by here I mean planet Earth.

Meanwhile here in France in other news ...

There has been a violent clash at the Orly International Airport (Southern suburbs of Paris) inbetween the clans of rappers Booba and Kaaris . The incident happened yersteday, in and around a duty-free shop, when the two rappers and their posses came face to face in the same boarding area because they were about to take planes that were both going to Barcelona where they were supposed to have separate events to do .

Those two hate each other's guts and the feud has been brewing for years already, so much so that a few minutes before the incident happened there were frightening posts on social media by people who recognised them at the airport and predicted beforehand that things could potentially get messy real quick which it got ...

As we speak twelve people are still held in custody, including Booba and Kaaris themselves while two other persons of their posses have been freed after it has been determined that they didn't take part in the incident ...

Both the state-owned corporation that manages the Orly Airport and the duty-free shop that has been ransacked during the clash have already confirmed they will file a lawsuit against them for "endangering innocent lives" and "disturbance of public order", so as to obtain financial compensations and public excuses from Booba and Kaaris .

In more dramatic news two tragedies must also be reported :

1) Five persons including a mother and her daughter have been killed yersteday by a ten feet tall wave as they were canyoning in Southern Corsica . Their guide was a licensed professional with fine equipment but in those mountains a thunderstorm can brew quickly, without warning, literally out of a clear blue sky in just an hour, and one just happened to form as this group of seven persons were enjoying the canyon ... The water level began to rise and trapped them in a very difficult section of the canyon then a treacherous wave tumbled down the canyon and drowned them all : only a father and his son managed to survive ... Apparently, they only found the body of the last missing person just this afternoon after hours of research !

2) Three persons have also been killed this morning during a mountain-climbing session in the Mont-Blanc massif, in the Rhône-Alpes/Auvergne region . They were in the Dômes de Miage area when one of them slipped then sank down a crevasse dragging in it behind him his two other teammates . They were from a band of four amateurs without a licensed professional guide to accompany them : one of them was already in a refuge waiting for them to arrive while the three others were finishing their line ... They were Frenchmen aged 49, 55 and 56 years old . Even though they are no witness alive to tell the story, according to the alpine hunters who climbed up there to bring their bodies down the valley, they weren't enough mindful of safety rules and lacked fail-safe devices designed precisely to mitigate the risks of making a fall of about six hundred feet like they did !

Edited by Nuup-Kangerlua on Aug 2nd 2018 at 8:46:42 PM

The Def Jam Series wasn't supposed to be a documentary.

Edited by Ramidel on Aug 2nd 2018 at 2:25:48 AM

Being way too lighthearted and lenient for my own good, I’d have Booba and Kaaris condemned to community service through going on a world tour together that’d have to include them singing Un Amour Un Cœur and French kissing on stage, all profits going to all those harmed by their shenanigans as well as ADP’s workers and their pensions.

Edited by AlityrosThePhilosopher on Aug 3rd 2018 at 7:31:15 PM

Completely agree !

Update on the scandal : Another person has been excluded from judicial proceedings after it was determined there was no reason to prosecute him ... Meanwhile the eleven other persons including Booba and Kaaris themselves are currently waiting for the judge to decide whether or not it is necessary to put them provisionally in jail as both of their lawyers have asked for the "real" trial to be postponed to September.

The tribunal is still in session right as I type this at 11:57 PM ... The chief-prosecutor of Créteil has already proclaimed he would ask the judge to jail them all until the trial in September.

Meanwhile the first official report from the Police inquiry team that investigates the case claims that the combined footage of the CCTV cameras in the area and of the duty-free shop tends to confirm the theory that Booba and his posse are the ones who sparked the fistfight but it remains undetermined whether they came upfront to crush their opponents or if Kaaris and his posse first taunted Booba and Cie to bait them into it ...

Let's see what comes out of this : it will soon be over.

Edited by Nuup-Kangerlua on Aug 3rd 2018 at 11:57:09 AM