[Andy McDandy]

A great many French/Francophone actors are - partly I'd suspect because the French film industry is healthy enough to make slumming it in Hollywood unnecessary. Yes, you get Depardieu or Jean Reno doing the occasional funny foreigner role, or Marion Cotillard or Ludivine Sagnier turning up as exotic totty, but nowhere near the levels that Brit actors do.

[Abernathy]

Didn’t Depardieu become a Russian citizen quite recently? He’s fucking bonkers.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Comme une boite de grenouilles.

[kreuzberger]

Didn’t Depardieu become a Russian citizen quite recently? He’s fucking bonkers.

That's a good point. He'll be sweating like a Pizza Express Woking guest if Vlad decides to go in to Ukraine. The EU will have a canary and his not inconsiderable assets will now be owned, presumably, by Russian or Russian-controlled vehicles.

"Oh what tangled web we weave..."

[Boiler]

I think I prefer fireworks...

French car-burning returns for New Years' Eve

[Nigredo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59873833

Macron showing some robust leadership.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I wish we had someone like that...

[Cyclist]

M Macron has a bigger pair of balls than Johnson and his entire cabinet combined.

I bet le flics wouldn't just stand around with their arms folded while the likes of Piers Corbyn got on with their shit, either.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Known for not knobbing about.

[Cyclist]

I think some people should grow up and at least think about getting a life. I don't think we're in the Seventeenth century any more Toto.

The academy charged with defending the French language is threatening to take the government to court over the use of English on the country's new identity card.



The latest versions of the laminated cards that were introduced last year have included English translations of the different data fields, with "surname", "date of birth" and "expiry date" appearing next to their French equivalent in a slightly smaller, italic font.

Every French citizen is required to have a national identity card which they can also use as their main travel document when heading to another European Union country.

The addition of the English translations, therefore, appears to be a move to facilitate passage across international borders for French citizens.

But the venerable Académie Française, founded in 1635 under King Louis XIII to guard "pure" French, has taken offence and is threatening to mount a constitutional challenge over it...


https://www.euronews.com/2022/01/07/fre ... tity-cards

"Who has decided to place French and English on an equal footing in this document?" asked Helene Carrere d'Encausse, the academy's permanent secretary.

"An essential principle is being jeopardised," she told the conservative newspaper Le Figaro, recalling that the modern French constitution provides in Article 2 that "The language of the Republic shall be French".

It's nice to know that even in these plague-fraught times some people are keeping their eye on the truly important stuff. I mean, as existential threats to the language go, this is pretty severe.

[Youngian]

Never heard anyone before try to boost their intellectual credibility by aspiring to be Boris Johnson. I can be a bigger cunt than Le Pen is the dogwhistle here; a French Boris Johnson.

The far-right French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour has said of all world leaders he is compared to he feels most like the British prime minister, Boris Johnson.

..”he is without doubt the leader I feel I am closest to, culturally, intellectually … and he’s obviously a European like me but English,” Zemmour said.

It is not the first time Zemmour has rejected comparisons to Trump and likened himself to the British PM. He has pointed out that both he and Johnson are former journalists, both have written history books – Zemmour on the history of France, De Gaulle and Napoleon, Johnson on Winston Churchill.

He said in November: “We do have a lot in common and above all he pulled off an electoral strategy that I propose to implement: an alliance of the working class and that part of the patriotic bourgeoisie who wish to restore French sovereignty and defend an identity tragically under threat.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... is-johnson

[mattomac]

They both wrote books…

As did Hitler.

[mattomac]

Probably worth mentioning the French election, mostly a slight shift to Le Pen (I have a feeling it might be the fact that she isn’t Zemmour), one poll which of course twitter jumped on showed her only 3 pts behind but the other 3 today showed 6-8.

I think once you enter a second round the focus on Le Pen and Putin won’t help her. It will be closer but Macron is the incumbent, I’d not expect anything less. Guess we will see but I hope Macron pushes through and I’d expect that, however trends are important so it will worth keeping an eye, Le Pen’s polling unlike Trump’s has always been overstated so.

Anything that pushes Macron’s vote to the polls is evidently a good thing.

[The Weeping Angel]

Oh that's why Le Pen is trending when's the date of the election?

[Arrowhead]

Oh that's why Le Pen is trending when's the date of the election?

This upcoming Sunday i.e. April 10th

[Tubby Isaacs]

Might be a bit complacent here, but I think Macron will be OK. Le Pen's to some extent been made to look sensible by Zemmour. When she's properly in the sites in the run off, he should crush her on Putin. Though I shudder at how many people everywhere lap up protectionism. It was a big factor in Brexit, though to some degree left unspoken.

This for instance sounds like very obvious tripe to me, but it might not to some. There's a word missing before "working-class" in this description.

Targeting a working-class core vote, nationalist-populist Rassemblement National (National Rally) leader Marine Le Pen has a more statist economic platform than her far-right rival. She wants to intervene to set prices, give out subsidies to prop up faltering sectors of the economy and set up a French sovereign wealth fund to invest in strategic sectors.

Le Pen also favours replacing the current property tax with a wealth tax directed at the rich, totally exempting primary residences. Keen to attract the youth vote, Le Pen wants to get rid of income tax for workers aged under 30 “so that they stay in France and start families here”.

[mattomac]

Or as it is called in Britain “levelling up”.

[kreuzberger]

Didn't Le Pen hoover up north of 10m€ or so in shady Russian loans for the FN?

Can't see that playing well in the current circumstances.

[Youngian]

Keen to attract the youth vote, Le Pen wants to get rid of income tax for workers aged under 30 “so that they stay in France and start families here”.

Le Pen has a strangely high youth vote for a far right candidate. I'm guessing long term provincial economic decline plays a large part but her appeal is beyond my periphery. From what I've heard of Le Pen, she's a bigger moron than Farage.

[Tubby Isaacs]

She has hammered away at the "economic left" message in eg the Pas de Calais, while keeping her father's base of right wing retirees in the South who are still mad at De Gaulle over Algeria.

The RN are much more of a professional full-time outfit than UKIP. They have local and regional politicians who've been around a while and got re-elected, plus the MEPs. UKIP never did that,. She also is capable of learning from mistakes- lots of unpopular stuff has been ditched. But horseshit that's still left suggest she isn't very bright.

The high young adult vote is terrifying.