Jonathan Miller, who lives near Montpellier, is the author of Shock of the News: Confessions of a Troublemaker, Gibson Square. He is on X @lefoudubaron.
‘Autonomous machine operating here,’ says the sign. ‘Stay away.’ And instead of the chatter of the vendangeuses, there’s the hum of a robot. Welcome to southern France, 2024, just down the lane from my house, where, walking the dogs among the vines, I stumble upon Ted, a compact, green and white, battery-powered cultivator, guided by GPS satellites.
Left-wing journalists have won a huge battle in France against CNews, the country’s most popular news channel. France’s Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, has given the media regulator Arcom six months to investigate the channel to determine whether or not it is keeping to strict rules on balanced and independent journalism. CNews is one
Every Thursday morning at Washington Dulles Airport, a French government Airbus disgorges a metal freight container under diplomatic seal. Bypassing US customs inspection, it is transported directly to the French Embassy compound in Georgetown. At midday, elite French diplomats gather to watch as the precious content is unsealed. Spain thrashed France at the 2023 World Cheese
Having breakfast at a hotel in the chouette Eighth Arrondisement of Paris last weekend, and employing what I imagine to be my faultless French, I asked for a boiled egg, ‘un oeuf à la coque.’ The waitress asked, did I want glaçons (ice) with that? Err, no, I replied, bemused. The waitress then brought me a bottle of Coca-Cola.
The toll station on the A9 motorway near the French-Spanish border is closed with cones and guarded by the local gendarmes. A few dozen trucks are parked on the grass verges, waiting for the farmers’ barricades to open. The farmers themselves have gone, heading north to barricade Montpellier. The autoroute is utterly, weirdly silent. A thundering
Senior management was recently walking down the street and took a funny turn. With her habitual stoicism she ignored the swelling in her foot for two weeks until I finally persuaded her to go to the urgences (emergency room) at the local Polyclinique Pasteur, a mini-hospital in Pézenas, the town four miles from our village.
I watched Emmanuel Macron’s prime time press conference last night but I wish I hadn’t. It was meant to be Macron’s relaunch of his presidency after a tough period of soaring prices, international and civil disorder, Europe in turmoil and awful polls. I should have known better than to stay up past my usual bedtime.
As we celebrate 120 years of aviation with a plug door and several iPhones tumbling from an in-flight spanking-new Boeing 737 Max, and a new Airbus A350 burning to a cinder in Tokyo, it is fair to note that not a single passenger was killed in either incident (although four Japanese coast guards perished on
The English director Ridley Scott has certainly produced a massive irritation to French amour-propre. Over the weekend, he said that criticism of his film Napoleon proved that the French ‘don’t even like themselves’. Whether Napoleon is a masterpiece is yet to be determined (it isn’t released until Wednesday) but opinion is already divided. As if the
It is now four years since I bought my first electric car. At the time, I wished I hadn’t. The car, though solid, swift and fun, had the slight problem that it could explode at any time. In 2019, a tranche of electric cars were sold to ingenues such as myself, only to be recalled
On Saturday, I went to the synagogue in Béziers. I was motivated by defiance, sentiment, and an urge to demonstrate solidarity, but hardly from any rekindled religiosity. I’ve never had any to be rekindled. Like my namesake, the late Dr Jonathan Miller, said in Beyond the Fringe, ‘I’m not really a Jew… but I’m Jew-ish;
It’s not surprising that much mainstream French journalism is complacent, incurious and stenographic. The elite French media is lavishly subsidised and the torrent of handouts makes tenuous any claim that mainstream French journalism is independent. The most compromised are the broadcasters. Indeed there’s little pretence that they offer more than token auditing of the government. Three
The campaign to destroy GB News in Britain is precisely mirrored by a campaign to eliminate CNEWS, its French equivalent. The French political and media establishment would dearly like to shut down CNEWS which has overtaken #BFMTV (ipso facto BF Macron TV) as the most watched news station here. The campaign against CNEWS is intensifying
After months of inbound slings and arrows, Emmanuel Macron, powdered by the star dust of the royal visit, relaunched himself on Sunday night. His presidential address from the Elysée Palace was officially described as an interview but the French journalists who were on set posing the questions were purely props. The star of the show
‘Vous êtes anglais, je suppose?’ A question frequently posed to me in France. To which I reply: ‘C’est compliqué.’ To be honest, I’m not sure. If one passport is good, two are better. I have three. Crise d’identité. In France, I am Irish, thanks to my grandmother, born in County Antrim. In Canada, I am
One small trip on the Eurostar for Keir Starmer is one giant kick in the teeth for Rishi Sunak. The Labour leader’s Grand Tour today descended on Paris, after his trips last week to Canada, where he was received by Justin Trudeau, and the Hague, where the prime minister in waiting consulted Europol, the
French healthcare has its problems but it makes the NHS look like Bedlam. Recently my GP here thought it would be a good idea for me to visit the radiologist to take a look at my non-performing thyroid gland. I made the booking online using an app called Doctolib. An appointment was available in a
Ladies and gentlemen, please make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Richard Branson will this week once again blast his Virgin rocket ship into space. Although not really, because at best his sub-orbital ship will only get to the edge of
Team Putin has this week gained a new and vaguely prominent supporter: Nicolas Sarkozy, the disgraced former President of France. French politicians do not have a reputation for ethical probity but Sarkozy takes the gateau Most sensible people here are on vacation and political news is thin so a pro-Moscow declaration of Sarko, in an
Barbara Amiel was right that one private jet isn’t enough. One jet is always in the wrong place, or undergoing maintenance, or perhaps these days being attacked by eco-activists. So two is the absolute minimum. Needless to say, the very idea of private jets sends environmentalists insane. Just last week, Just Stop Oil types attacked private jets
