Posts Tagged "Nice"

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:)

The Battle for PACA: the Left, the Right and Le Pen

PACA is one of the 23 regions of France, it stands for Provence-Alpes-Cote D’Azur. The capital is Marseilles, which holds the regional assembly where most of the elected Regional Councillors work. I visited there once when they had some sort of big session going on ; it’s rather like any other hemicycle based parliament, and it was also there that I ate my first snail.

Most of my office time is spent in a branch of the Conseil Regional in Nice, a section mainly for civil servants, and apart from the incredibly pleasant atmosphere and kind people, it’s also a good place to be because the Socialists are in power.

However, the Regional Elections are taking place in March.

The Parti Socialiste took power from the Right in 1998 and has held it ever since, though in the present political climate coming from Paris, 2010 could be a difficult one.

Sarkozy is making it his business to reclaim a lot of regions lost to the Left in 2004, but PACA is on the top of his list along with Ile-de-France (No inside information from me on that one).

The pressure therefore rests on the Mayor of Toulon (and minister for veterans), Hubert Falco who is preparing himself to head the UMP list, though he has yet to officially declare it. PACA is fairly naturally right-wing, with Sarkozy himself winning 62% in 2007.

So on paper the region looks like it could fall to the Right in 2010, just as it looked in 1998. Normally, it would be a straight duel between the PS and the UMP, were it not for the far-right Front National.

Avoiding a Three-Way

The UMP’s biggest fear is that the Front gets more than 10% and thus qualifies to the second round, creating a PS vs. UMP vs. FN triangle. In 2004, the results were 45.18% vs. 33.82% vs. 21.00% respectively.

Clearly the FN is successful at sapping the support of the UMP, allowing the Left to jump ahead. It seems odd that the far-right would allow such a thing to happen. The explanation mainly comes from the FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, for whom PACA is his old stomping ground as an MEP for the South East, and so it comes from pride more than ambition.

Note here the stark lack of principle in Sarkozy compared to Chirac. Chirac would never do any deals with the FN and fired anyone who did (Not a No Platform, just a No Bargaining policy). Sarko, on the other hand, is determined to grab as much as he can, and the UMP have been in discussion with Philippe de Villiers and his far-right but not quite the Front team (MPF party, for you experts).

Hubert Falco, UMP, keeps his cards close to his chest

The regional level of the UMP is under a strict keep-quiet policy under Sarkozy’s orders. The line from HQ is nothing else than “We’re getting on with the task at hand.” Dealing with the recession and all that kind of thing; there’s an economic crisis going on, people aren’t bothered with silly things like elections that happen every six years.

Falco, set to be the local boss, will of course have to leave his city of Toulon, and the department, to which he claimed he was dearly attached. Much like how Estrosi said his only loyalty was to Nice before he became Minister for Industry.

Michel Vauzelle, Parti Socialiste, wants to keep the Left united

This gent is going for a third mandate as Monsieur Le Président de la Région PACA which is coincidentally how many times I have spoken to him. (We get on well.)

His plan is a coalition of the Left (if it worked before…) however, this typically does not include Communists who have their own group. This time, it probably won’t include the Greens, as they’ve gained a bit of confidence since the EU elections and want to go it alone. (Morons) Vauzelle’s response was “What do they think they’re playing at?” He’s a very good bloke.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Front National, wants to exact his revenge

As he’s past 80, these will be without doubt Le Pen’s last elections (Mark my words!), but he sees them as going to be triumphant. He didn’t run in 2004 because he was ineligible and left someone else at the top of the FN list, but with the big boss in town, the party might do surprisingly well. Last time when his part got about 20% he said the results were less than they were hoping for.

Le Pen’s strategy will be to go after those right-wingers taken in but then disappointed by Sarkozy, in addition to winning about 10% in the three “heaviest” departments. If they get past 10% in the regional, I won’t be the only one not surprised.

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.