Posts Tagged "Alpes-Maritimes"

It’s not just the Left who raise taxes

There is a stigma that it is always the Left who will increase your taxes, as if the Right are completely incapable of doing it.

In fact, right-wing UMP Mayor Christian Estrosi has made Nice the champion of all of France… for local tax increases!

See the map for runners up:

The tax rises he has decided on this year will mean that a family in Nice will have to pay an extra 200 euros on average.

For certain property owners, the increase of 17% of the taxe d’habitation (living in a building) and 16.5% in the taxe foncière (owning a building) could be up to 900.

However, this money won’t be going towards neighbourhood improvement, or education, or social help for the elderly, or to create jobs. It will instead serve the financial requirements of the Mayor’s whims and pet projects. The failed candidacy to host the Olympic Games, the Balcons du Mercantour (the creation of a hiking route costing 20 millions euros) and cable cars to the Observatory…

Remember, it’s not just the Left who want to tax and spend, the Right are equally audacious. The difference is what they want to spend it on!

(French Speakers may wish to watch the report from France 2:)

My Very French By-Election: Round 1 Results

On Sunday night, I received the results to Round 1 of the by-election. They make for interesting reading!

I had to deal with it in an Excel spreadsheet and figure out who was who, but YOU get this nice handy chart:

So, there are a number of interesting conclusions I draw from this. (Note the French use a comma instead of a decimal point. Even punctuation translates.)

1. Unsurprisingly, the UMP candidate is way ahead with 40.54% compared to us in second place with 15.38%. This means that we go to the second round on Sunday, but it doesn’t look likely that we will win.

2. The Greens failed miserably. There score is way below what they should have expected considering their performance at the EU Parliament Elections. They have also (once again) refused to enter an alliance with us. In fact, in an interview a Green (not important who) said “The principles of the PS are not compatible with Europe Ecologie” – A barely veiled call to vote Right, I think.

3. The “Left” put together about 35%. I don’t know about “Modem” (Lib Dems!) but I think the Communists are willing to help.

4. Participation was 20%. Not surprising for a by-election taking place during the summer and just after the return to school, yet still despicable.

5. The Extreme Right is the really interesting one, in which I eat my own words. I had said not to worry too much about the FN because they had collapsed in 2007. You can’t argue that 8% isn’t a good performance, add it to his other fascist-friend (Nissa Identitaire) and you have a total of 16%. It seems they’re getting their act together once again.

Nevertheless, nothing is lost. Into the breach, camarades!

If you have any questions, I’ll answer them in the comments.

My Very French By-Election: Round 1

As voters in Pasteur, Cimiez and Libération vote in the first round of the by-election for Nice 6, I’ll take you through the choice they face. There are 11 candidates in total from the extreme left all the way to the extreme right. The two winners from today will go through to round 2 next Sunday. Meaning there’s still a week to go before we definitely definitely win.

The Heavyweights

The local press has framed the election mainly as a “duel between left and right” with the two main parties in France likely to go through.

Xavier Garica: Parti Socialiste

My team! Xavier Garcia is the press spokesman for the Parti Socialiste and grew up in the constituency. He seems to be the only candidate with a consistent slogan “Pour mieux vivre dans notre quartier” (To improve life in our neighbourhood”) and a very good poster designer (not me). His website is also first rate.

We put out a questionnaire at the beginning of the campaign and had over 500 responses. Guess whose task it was to put the answers in a spreadsheet? Yo. At least now I know this section of town better than most residents of Nice.

His only potential weaknesses are the image of the PS at a national level (a mess) and the fact that he has never run for anything before. However, this could of course work in his favour compared to our adversary.

Lauriano Azinheirinha: Union pour un Mouvement Populaire

The “favourite” in that the UMP won the election first time round but were disqualified (The PS did not field a candidate; see the Greens). They have glossy leaflets and incumbency on their side.

However, the candidate is not particularly well known despite already being a Deputy Mayor. He is relying on the charisma and name recognition of Christian Estrosi. As you can see in the picture “Estrosi avec Lauriano!” and on all his literature the name Estrosi has been in bold. Dirty Tricks abundant, Estrosi even wrote a letter to the residents of the canton telling them who to vote for. TSK.

The problem with riding on Estrosi’s coattails is that they are plenty of anti-Estrosi people out there!

The Lightweights

Though there are other minor characters we’ve seen out and about:

Vincent Péchenot: Les Verts (Greens)

When the elections were officially taking place, the PS decided not to field their own candidate but make an agreement with the Greens, as they work together in the group Changer D’ère in the Mayoralty.

From what I gather, this gent is not really a viable candidate to go against the UMP war machine so the PS decided to take it upon themselves.

I’ve seen them out leafletting fairly frequently, though it was off to a slow start. One particular occasion they were riding around Pasteur on bicycles with green flags. That might work in Cimiez (lots of richy-ecologist types) but not so much in Pasteur. D’oh!

Then we have this not very interesting assortment of right-wingers, most of whom pitch them selves as “UMP without the UMP part” or just plain “No to Estrosi”. (Spot the Lib Dem)

The Loonies

And you can’t have 11 candidates without finding a few comedy gems and plain old nightmares!

Communists

Though the Parti Communiste is typically considered mainstream, I just haven’t quite got used tot eh idea that Communists still exist. The PCF campaign hasn’t been great at all, and their literature has been AWFUL. It’s a nice poster though, if a little cluttered by logos.

We haven’t seen much of this guy apart from posters, but he’s definitely my favourite after Xavier (for a different reason); I don’t know why, but everytime I pass his poster I die from laughing, perhaps you can figure it out:

Hahaha. It’s just brilliant. First, contrast it with the others and you notice a certain rough-and-ready quality.

Second, compare it with the official Communist Party candidate: The Black-and-White photo, OLD-SCHOOL! For all those who feel that the Communist Party is just too damn right wing these days! We need a PROPER communist around here.

I think it’s the Hammer and Sickle that gets me.

The Fascists

So we have the extreme Left, now take a look at the extreme Right:

Jean-Louis Faudi: Front National

The bigger brother of the BNP, the FN has been the subject of many questions posed to me.

First, it has to be said that the FN has not got a huge presence in Nice any more. It just to be very strong, but due to local internal fighting the organisation all but collapsed. You tend to find pockets of FN activity, but I haven’t seen any obvious activism as I think they only come out at night. I have seen areas with “Le Pen: President” stickers on lamp posts, and they have covered a fair bit of ground in terms of paper, but nothing slick.

Click on the poster above though, and you’ll notice a few things: One, he just looks plain evil, what with the squinting. Two, some have asked about  whether, like the BNP they have tried to “reinvent themselves.” I’ll point you to the black shirt. I’ll also point you to the mini picture of the Muslim women. The slogan reads “meme emballée, l’immigration n’est pas un cadeau” which means “Even wrapped up, Immigration is not a gift.”

Benoit Loeuillet: Nissa Rebelda

But for those of you out there who think the FN is for softy pinkos, there exists an even further right candidate for you!

This is, to my knowledge, the NiceIndependence  movement. You can see that some enterprising individual decided reveal his little Hiter ‘stache. The funny thing is he gave the kiss of death to Xavier in an interview where he said (roughly):

The only good surprise about this campaign has been that Garcia. At last! A lefty who is not afraid to talk about security. 2nd round, we vote for him.

Round 2

At the moment, I (like everyone else) am assuming that it is the UMP and the PS who will qualify, though the results will be announced officially tonight. Then it’s a straight head to head until the winner is decided next Sunday.

If all goes well, the Greens and Communists will come rallying to us. Conversely, it’s unlikely that the UMP guy, on such an overly pro-Estrosi platform, is going to win the support of the Far-Right or even the Centre-Right minor parties.

Hadleigh Roberts, as featured in "Nice-Matin" newspaper

Less than a month in France and I have already been making news! Today I was featured in the local newspaper, Nice-Matin, on page 4.

See below the article and below that, my translation:

Un jeune travailliste au stage au PS

La fédération socialiste des A.-M. accueille, pour un stage de six mois, Hadleigh, un jeune Anglais responsable des étudiants travaillistes dans la ville de Bath. << Il arrive avec des méthodes de communication nouvelles, développées par Tony Blair >>, explique Xavier Garcia, port-parole du PS 06 et auteur d’une thèse sur le parti travailliste. A son retour au pays, Hadleigh pourra peut-être donner un coup de main à Gordon Brown dont la cote de popularité est au plus bas.

A Labour student joins the PS

The Socialist Federation of the Alpes-Maritimes welcomes, for a placement of six months, Hadleigh, an English student responsible from Labour students in the city of Bath. “He arrives with new methods of communication, developped by Tony Blair”, explains Xavier Garcia, spokesman for the Parti Socialiste and author of a thesis on the Labour Party. At his return to the country, Hadleigh will perhaps be able to give Gordon Brown, whose popularity ratings are at their lowest, a push in the right direction.

Facing the French public, and joining in

Today I embarked on the first of the international political practice of leafleting and petition signing.

I’ve thus been getting involved in the campaign against the construction of line 2 for trams on the Promenade des Anglais, which is the long walkway and road that goes along the front of the sea and, of course, the beach. I’ve only been there briefly so far (where I saw that, like English beaches, it is in fact mainly stones, but, unlike English beaches, the sea is blue and appealing) but all you need to know is that the site is very beautiful, and that’s what everyone comes to see. (Evidence of this to follow in the post).

A group of us went to the Palais de Justice (the courthouse) where there is a square outside at 1000h to get started. Approach someone with the clipboard: “Bonjour Monsieur/Madame, dites non au tram sur la prom?”

The majority of the time I just got a simple but polite “non merci” though in two hours I managed to get about 20 signatures. My main cultural question is at what point a Mademoiselle becomes a Madame, so I had to restrict my efforts to old women in that sense to remove all doubt. A few people where busy, a few poilte, a few in favour of the tramway there and a few people with questions.

I managed to develop a few arguments in case I had some inquisitive people (and some took AGES to make their point, so I smile and nod and make affirmations like “Really?” “You’re right” until they stop and sign), though they were more akin to 1970s Soviet Rockets that an American Stealth Bomber in their sophistication, but it is day 3 after all.

If there are any French speakers who read this, I suggest you head over to the campaign website.

Still, all good fun for cultural learning.

In a similar vein, I’m delighted to say that I have already been asked directions by tourists who speak French badly worse than I do. It seems like I’m joining it quite well.

On a slightly more fun point, if any one you are going to France soon, see how many stereotypes cultural experiences you can find (I’ve done all these ones so far):

• People walking around with more than one baguette under their arm
• Someone throwing a cigarette not at you directly, but just where you are about to walk
• A French flag
• A French flag flying next to a European Union Flag
• A French flag flying next to a European Union Flag flying next to ANOTHER French Flag
• The words Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité inscribed somewhere
• Seeing someone almost get hit by a car even though they were at a crossing when the green man was shining
• A woman on a bicycle with a basket full of vegetables (I assume there were onions)
• Someone almost getting their toes cut off my a cyclist
• A man playing an accordian!