Paris bulletin 2 2009

'Enfin Sarko fait marcher la France' (roughly translated as 'Sarko finally gets France moving') was à la une (front-page headline), on 28 January, the day before the general strike itself. In which paper? Le canard enchaînéof course, France's equivalent of Private Eye, but published in a broadsheet format and I suspect, read more widely than PE. Even if le canard doesn't have a bigger circulation it certainly has more of a profile in the mainstream media than PE. But it performs a similar function, exposing corruption and stupidity at all levels of government and business. They've not been short of copy since Sarkozy came to power and ditched the old Renault for the Italian coupé...... but Sarkozy is only the most recent in a regrettably long line of equally suspect politicos. Le Canard makes it its business to pop the balloons at the party and let the truth out.

I walked to yoga the day of the strike, although metro trains were trundling along the over-ground section of the track as I went. There were predictably lots more bikes than usual and all the vélibre stands were empty. But overall public transport continued to function. If you wanted to get to work you could. Judging by the size of the crowd out in Paris and the other big cities, an awful lot of people thought a public demonstration of anger/ dissatisfaction was a better option than a day in the office. When I came out of yoga a little boy of about eight was up on the back of a flat-bed helping his dad manhandle the beer kegs into the Moulin Rouge. I guess he was one of the lucky ones. I'd lay a bet there were lots of homes where the kids were on their own for some or all of the day.

The protests in France are not just about the use of public money to defray the debts of the big banks, the way the economy is still being starved of credit for business development, (except at the level of the main industries like the car industry), or the continued lack of public accountability of the banks even after they've pocketed or been promised massive public funds, it's about the whole tenor and trend of domestic policy under Sarkozy: the kind of language used (vulgar), the assault on all parts of the education system, the war being waged against the health system and particularly the hospitals, the control of key appointments to institutions like France Télévision, the planned privatisation of the la Poste (the post office), and making the railways ‘more competitive’... It reads like a manifesto Thatcher and her cohorts might have put together 30 years ago.

Hand in hand with this lust to modernise the elected politicians still hang onto a post-colonial, post-empire preoccupation with 'la grandeur' - having clout internationally and keeping a seat at the table with the big boys. But for an ordinary punter like me, living a little life in the interstices of the system a lot like most other people I pass every day, what makes France great is not seeing Sarkozy buzzing about the Middle East being a 'senior statesman' and cutting cunning deals, a role he delights in playing of course, but the vitality of its people, its diverse population, its cultural history- et 'ses tendances rouspeteuses, bagarreuses'.