France

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Why not use RBS as an experiment in narrowing the top-to-bottom pay gap?

Theresa May sent a strong message to the corporate world when she criticised the ‘irrational, unhealthy and growing gap’ between the pay of top executives and average workers. Yet what should be a vigorous debate on this topic — about the balance between fairness and the right incentives for optimum performance — never quite takes off. More evidence came to hand this week from the ‘independent non-party’ High Pay Centre: it reports that average pay for a FTSE 100 chief executive last year was £5.5 million, up by 10 per cent on 2014 and a third since 2010, and that the ratio between chiefs’ average total pay and that of

Thursday

Geoff Dyer

Diary – 4 August 2016

I was born in 1958 and turned 58 in June, so for the next five months my age coincides with the year of my birth. Does any significance attach to this pleasing symmetry? If you were born in 1904 then the numerological rhyme would be achieved at four years old, before you were in any position to appreciate it. If you were born in 1990 then the chances are you will never manage this brief docking of age and year; of course the odds are better than they would have been if you were born in 1890 but it’s unlikely you’ll feel some pivotal moment has been reached. Which is

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Top tips for UK-China trade: grab the cheque and sup with a long spoon

There are reasons why Theresa May might harbour doubts about the Hinkley Point nuclear project — chiefly its unproven French technology and the high probability of time and cost overruns — but the fear expressed by her aide Nick Timothy that ‘the Chinese could use their role to build weaknesses into computer systems which will allow them to shut down Britain’s energy production at will’ sounds — even to a Sino-cynic like me — far-fetched. As I wrote here during President Xi Jinping’s visit last year, ‘The least sinister thing about the Chinese is their money. A ten-digit cheque… even from China National Nuclear Corporation… does not carry a ‘backdoor’ listening

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 28 July 2016

We returned to the house early the next morning, on the way pleading special permission to pass through the police roadblocks. A strip of blackened hillside about one kilometre away showed the extent of the blaze before it was extinguished. The online local newspaper said that 500 firemen had tackled a blaze that had destroyed 400 hectares of forest — roughly speaking the two round Provençal hills between the house and the nearest village. It seemed a small result for so much smoke. And I wondered why the French state should have gone to so much trouble and expense to protect perhaps a dozen properties, including our breezeblock shack. (A

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 28 July 2016

At the beginning of his war memoirs, Charles de Gaulle famously wrote, ‘All my life I have had a certain idea of France’ and its ‘eminent and exceptional destiny’. It was not only an abstract concept: the picture in his mind was of ‘the Madonna in mural frescoes’. What is President Hollande’s certain idea of France? Presumably it cannot be the Madonna, since Hollande is the child of French laïcité, which creates an unbridgeable gulf between religion and the republic. But what happens when, in the name of one religion, men in France enter the temple of another and slit the throat of a priest, as happened this week near

Charles Moore Charles Moore

To beat Islamist terror, France must close the gulf between church and state

At the beginning of his war memoirs, Charles de Gaulle famously wrote, ‘All my life I have had a certain idea of France’ and its ‘eminent and exceptional destiny’. It was not only an abstract concept: the picture in his mind was of ‘the Madonna in mural frescoes’. Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq discuss Europe’s summer of terror: What is President Hollande’s certain idea of France? Presumably it cannot be the Madonna, since Hollande is the child of French laïcité, which creates an unbridgeable gulf between religion and the republic. But what happens when, in the name of one religion, men in France enter the temple of another and slit

Alexandra Coghlan

French connection | 28 July 2016

It takes a particularly wilful wit to alight on Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict as the perfect operatic nod to a Shakespeare anniversary. To walk past Verdi’s Otello, Falstaff and Macbeth, to pass over Purcell’s Fairy Queen, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi and instead opt for this curiously and idiomatically French piece of musical flummery, in which Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing finds itself stripped of any sour notes and whipped up into a sugary dramatic froth, is bold indeed. If it weren’t for the revival of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, opening at Glyndebourne later this season, it might even look a bit like

Tuesday

James Forsyth

French politicians have a major problem on their hands

Today’s attack was the 7th Islamist terrorist atrocity in France since January 2015. Two hundred and thirty six people have been killed by Islamist terrorism there in the last 18 months. This attack might only have killed one innocent person but it was a particularly brutal event: an 84-year-old priest had his throat slit while celebrating Mass. It was an attack that was designed to shock and to divide, to make it impossible to ignore the religious element of this act of terrorism. Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq discuss Europe’s summer of terror: The two terrorists were shot dead by police before they could kill their other hostages, two nuns and

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How tolerant are the French expected to be towards Islamic extremism?

In Saturday’s Guardian, Natalie Nougayrède, the former managing editor of Le Monde, wrote that in the days following the slaughter of 84 people in Nice by an Islamic terrorist ‘incidents of open, blatant, anti-Muslim hatred have sparked a new, worrying phase’ in France. She didn’t elaborate on what form this hatred took, nor come up with any examples, but Madame Nougayrède was adamant that intolerance among her compatriots was on the rise following four years of bloody religious mayhem that has left more than 200 dead in terrorist attacks on French soil. Then today comes a new attack, the brutal murder by two Islamic terrorists of an elderly priest as he conducted

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Will Europe finally face up to the threat of Islamism?

On the bright side, the elderly priest who was murdered during mass in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen, had pretty well a perfect ending in Christian terms: celebrating the eucharist and targeted precisely because he was a priest. Two men took him hostage during mass, along with a couple of nuns and a couple of members of the congregation and they slit his throat – not quite the decapitation favoured by Islamic State in its own territory, but not for want of trying. By one account, one of the men shouted Daesh during the attack, which is odd, because this is the euphemistic term used by those who wish to call IS

Thursday

Taki

High life | 21 July 2016

From my bedroom window I can see a little girl with blonde pigtails riding her bicycle round and round for hours on end. She’s German, looks ten years old and lives nearby. Next month I am finally moving to my new home, a beauty built from scratch amid farmland. Cows, deer, the odd donkey graze nearby, a far better bunch than the one Gstaad attracts nowadays. I am, however, king of the mountain. My place is the highest chalet on the Wispille, one of the three mountains that dominate the Mecca of the nouveaux-riche and the wannabee. Life is swell, as long as the old ticker keeps ticking. An approaching

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 21 July 2016

I sat down at the metal table on the shaded terrace to write a column. In front, ripening vines receding to oak-clad hills; barren mountain tops beyond. To the right, the spacious vista was abruptly curtailed by the diagonal outline of a steep hill of oak and pine which descended to a dried-up river bed at the foot of the hill on which our isolated shack was perched. Ten o’clock in the morning and it was already 34°C. The wall-of-sound crepitations of the cigales sounded louder than ever. A donkey half a mile away brayed dementedly, railing against his lot. I sipped my coffee and wondered what I should write

Melissa Kite

Real life | 21 July 2016

Market day in Bergerac and the streets are paved with chicken bones. As a spaniel, I am bound to say this is as near to paradise as one can get. From the doorway of every shop there wafts the aroma of happiness. I pull to go inside each doorway as we pass. She pulls me back out. But at the open-air market there is endless opportunity. While she looks at one wicker basket after another, I lick the ground for whatever may be there, which is always something utterly delicious. Tiny morsels of goat’s cheese, bits of salami, globs of duck pâté, and the gizzards — oh the gizzards! The

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Theresa May gets a warmer than expected reception in Paris, and a pledge on the border

Paris was meant to be the more difficult leg of Theresa May’s first European tour as Prime Minister. But May’s press conference with Francois Hollande was far more cordial than expected. The French President was at pains to stress all the forms of cooperation that would continue between the two countries after the UK  left the EU. He continued to back the Le Touquet agreement which keeps the UK border at Calais.  However, he still wants Article 50 served quickly; ‘the sooner, the better’ was how he put it. There was, though, a tiny bit of softening on the question of talking about things before then. May, for her part,

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer

France is fed up with terror – and bureaucracy

Living in France is a lottery. The chances of getting a losing ticket are very slim, but a chance it is all the same. Twenty four hours before the slaughter in Nice, I took my daughter to the Bastille celebrations in the southern suburb of Paris in which we live. The centrepiece of the celebration was a parade through the town centre finishing in the town square. On arrival the kids in the parade leapt up on stage and sang La Marseillaise before trooping off into the embrace of their parents. Next up on stage was a pop band, and as they launched into their first number my 11-year-old daughter

Friday

Alan Mendoza

It is easy to say there’s nothing we can do to prevent lone-wolf attacks. It is also wrong

For the third time in the last 18 months – twice in Paris and now in Nice – France has been left reeling from the effects of a mass casualty terrorist attack on its soil. With pictures of the dead and injured circulating freely on social media, an understandable reaction is to express solidarity with those who have suffered through well-meaning slogans like #JeSuisNice. But solidarity is no longer enough for it has not delivered security. We must face the fact that terrorists respect actions not words. If we do not rise to the challenge being brought to our shores in Europe, then the result can only be further death

Douglas Murray

We need to tackle attacks like the one in Nice from the root

The BBC headline says it all: ‘The killing of 84 people celebrating Bastille Day is the worst attack on France since the 13 November attacks.’ These day in Europe you don’t have to reach back many months to find carnage even exceeding that in Nice last night. We still don’t have many details about last night’s attacker. But we know that the man driving the truck was called Mohammed. Of course that doesn’t mean there is any connection to Mohammed Atta, Mohammed Merah, Mohammed Bouyeri, Mohammed Sadiq Khan, Mohammed Abrini or the most famous Mohammed of all – Mohammed. On the contrary, the striking prevalence of people called Mohammed going

Ed West Ed West

After the Nice attack, Michel Houllebecq’s nightmare vision edges closer

I only got around to reading Michel Houellebecq’s Submission last month, a darkly amusing book about how France destabilises as it is caught between Islamic and nativist violence. It is, even by French standards, extremely pessimistic, but then who can blame them? When I visited France last summer, I noted just how many heavily armed police there were, even in the obscure western region we were staying at; more than I’d seen in any European country apart from Northern Ireland. The owner of the campsite, who was also a local official, explained that they were expecting something terrible to happen. Which it has done, twice now, this latter atrocity worse in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nice attack: Quiet shock reigns on the city’s streets

Nice is quiet today, moving a little slower than it was yesterday, but it still moves. There is a strange disconnect between the way a city that has fallen victim to an horrific terror attack looks on television, and how it feels to those moving around it. Even somewhere that has seen such a terrible number of deaths in the middle of a lovely, gentle family event which had been filled with smiles and the oohs and ahhs of a firework display then looks surprisingly normal the following day. People were of course still going to work and buying coffee this morning, just with slightly blank expressions on their faces,

Philip Sime

‘Horror, once again’: French press reacts to Nice terror attack

Once again, France is waking up to a massacre on its streets. In Nice, as people gathered on the seafront promenade to celebrate their national holiday, Bastille Day, a terrorist drove a 25-ton lorry at high speed through the jubilant crowd, leaving at least 84 dead. ‘Once more horror has struck France’, said President Hollande, linking the killings to Islamist terrorism. Last night’s incident is the third major terrorist attack in France since the Charlie Hebdo assault in January 2015. As a result, the French press reacted with a sense of familiarity. Here’s what they said: Le Figaro: ‘Horror, once again’, reads the front page of Le Figaro. The newspaper