One tiny glimpse of the problems facing France and her president, which will have to be addressed very soon. In a previous blog I wrote about police officers who have accumulated 20 million hours of unpaid overtime. Now it’s the turn of hospital staff who have clocked up a total of 4 million hours RTT not taken, that is hours already worked which should be compensated by time off. But since in some parts of the country there is a chronic shortage of medical staff and elsewhere a mild shortage, it is simply not possible for these days-off to be honoured. In addition doctors, nurses and other hospital staff have accumulated a total of 23 million hours of overtime unpaid – the figure is particularly high because when staff did take their time off, colleagues had to work overtime to cover for them. A&E staff have been on strike for weeks, junior doctors also. The French health service deficit is already one of the highest in the world, and Sarkozy has said on television that the coffers are empty – so who is going to pay for these hours? Answers on a postcard, please, to N. Sarkozy, the Elysée Palace…….

As we leave the season of Goodwill behind there is once again a feeling of pessimism about France amongst political commentators. One after another their columns look ahead with a sense of foreboding to the coming crunch: in the next few months, even weeks, major reforms will at last be thrashed out, and while nobody doubts Sarkozy’s courage in facing them head on, few now feel he has the capacity to achieve them fully. This palpable hesitation amongst so many political writers is caused not just by the usual cliché’s about French resistance to reform and readiness to strike, but increasingly by the character of the president himself. The deeper implications of Sarkozy’s melodramatic revelation in Disneyland of his affair with Carla Bruni and his subsequent flaunting her before foreign heads of state are only now sinking in. At first political correctness ensured that everyone smile indulgently and say polite things about man-needing-woman, now people seem wonder about the president’s judgement. Le Canard Enchainé quotes him as saying to a friend: “For the past 12 years they’ve got used to seeing grandpa and grandma at the Elysée. I have a different style. Everybody is going to have to adapt. Now the French have a real man at the Elysée, who has one and who uses it.” While he may be right that some of his compatriots admire him, others must surely feel there is a time and place for everything but now is not the time for flaunting his manhood.

If his first 8 months in power had been crowned with a couple of real advances in terms of social reforms, or even shown in a sureness of touch that promised success in the future, probably the Bruni moment would have passed unnoticed, but that is not the case. The small-scale, minority reforms he has pushed through parliament since last June have been either elitist or unclear. In foreign affairs, traditionally the French president’s chasse gardé, he has also failed to impress, angering the Germans whom he hoped to woo, making a fool of himself with Gaddafi, showing his naivety with Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. The current delicate and difficult negotiations over his forthcoming trip to India are an illustration: Sarkozy wants to go for as short a time as possible (2 days) and sign as many commercial deals as possible: the Indian government says such a short visit is unseemly, he should stay long enough to show proper respect and interest. As for the commercial aspect they retorted angrily: “We Indians are not carpet salesmen. If there are contracts to be signed that is between private companies not states.” Then of course the French president wants to take Carla Bruni as his official consort, offending the Indian sense of propriety. In foreign affairs the only ally he has made is the most unpopular American president, seized upon by Sarkozy at the moment his influence is waning, once again showing up the French president’s lack of judgement. Meanwhile although no one expected Sarkozy to turn round France’s economic performance in so short a time, and although he obviously cannot help the chaotic wider picture, his cavalier attitude towards France’s deficit, his rather childish blaming the ECB for France’s ills do not inspire confidence. On the personal level he has failed to make any mark on his compatriots’ top concern – their purchasing power, or the cost of living - consequently and unsurprisingly his popularity sinks in all the polls. It does indeed look like a bleak year, particularly since just a year ago, as the election campaign got under way, there was so much hope that by now France would be surging forward…..