Last night Nicolas Sarkozy attempted his great come-back. Since January he has slipped in the opinion polls to a low ebb of around 35%. Some 70% of Frenchmen asked say they think he has done nothing to help them during his year in office. This is considerable, given that as a candidate he promised to do everything in his very full programme. Last night was his chance to fight back: in a live 90 minute broadcast he was to face one after the other three reputable journalists who would try to pin him down with searching questions, while two venerable TV news readers chaired the discussion and added questions of their own.

In many ways the President gave a bravura performance, sometimes leaping from subject to subject without notes (while two of the journalists were shown referring to their written questions), sometimes taking a second to reflect, to draw up from within the necessary arguments and statistics to justify his policies. In some ways it was the Sarkozy of a year ago, battling presidential candidate full of promises, dreams, hard determination, bursting with belief in himself. In some ways it was the new Sarkozy, contrite, modest, admitting mistakes but still determined to do what he promised, still convinced that he will. His people clearly believe that this was the way to convince – since it worked a dream 12 months ago, surely it will work now?

Perhaps. It is too early to tell, I haven’t seen or heard what his compatriots made of it. For me, as an outsider, it was a mistake: a big communication marathon, at the finish two hours grilling the President under the spotlight as if it were the fabled ENA oral entrance examination, the toughest obstacle-course for the mind the French have invented and in which they firmly believe; the setting was wrong – a huge gilt room at the Elysée Palace, 19th century bling bling, where outside in the garden the light remained eerily constant (whereas chez nous during those 2 hours the light dropped from dusk to night); the two stooges chairing the discussion were a mistake, reminders of the bad old days when Presidents Mitterrand and Chirac wrote their own questions. Despite their stoney faces, it all felt like a prolonged party political broadcast.

Which of course it was. Sarkozy was allowed full flow. He spoke eloquently and at length, hammering us with figures and arguments to back his truths. None of which were contested though all were at the least debatable. There seems to a tradition in France that one does not ask supplementary questions (not authorised presumably by the Elysée) to pick up on something the President has said: for example when he admitted he would not have the majority to allow foreigners to vote in local elections even though he himself thinks it’s a good idea. Surely that’s the cue for a journalist to dig deeper? The president has a very comfortable majority, so does he mean the party is split? Why? Neither is it in les moeurs françaises to interrupt the President, even if what he is saying is patent rubbish. For example, on pensions, he said brazenly “There are three ways to deal with the pension crisis: lower the pension, increase contributions or work longer.” That is pure Sarkozy economics – simplistic to the point of absurdity. Yet none of the experts present dared say that, nor even correct that very dangerous statement. If the pension crisis were that simple, if there were really only three solutions, it could be solved by intelligent 12 year olds and wouldn’t need commissions and nobel-prize-winning economists to advise on it. Yet if the President says it, uncontested, millions of French people are going to believe that is the case, that private contributions or an increased labour force to bolster national contributions are non-starters. True they may be politically incorrect in today’s France but that does not mean they are not perfectly respectable solutions. After a year watching Sarkozy in office, we all know his arguments, methods and solutions are thin: why did no one confront him with that? Why let him get away with yet more hot air?

Only once did he look discomfited: on the conflict between China and Tibet he said “Yes, well, when I saw him I told the Chinese President plainly about Human Rights.” The interviewer looked surprised and the President looked down at the desk like a little boy telling a lie. But again nobody pushed the advantage to ask when, how exactly did he phrase his disapproval, what did the Chinese premier reply?

Several times when referring to recent events, striking 6th formers or sans papiers for example, he said “Yes, I’ve seen them saying things like…..” or “I saw in the paper that….” As if he, just like the viewer at home, gets his information from the press. If true, that would explain why his views are so simplistic, but surely no one believes for a minute that it is.

I’ve now done a cursory glance through the main papers and the headlines concentrate on Sarkozy’s apologies. The press seems most impressed by his admission that he has made mistakes, as if again that were something a President does not do. Or once again they have been deflected by a smokescreen. The truth is that 20% of Sarkozy’s time has gone, much of it wasted in divorce and re-marriage. Some reforms have been achieved, some considerable, but nothing like 20% of those promised. Having 12 months ago defined his presidency as one in which everyone’s purchasing power would be increased, he has not only not delivered, but purchasing power has decreased. It is not enough to admit he has made mistakes (we all know that), what the French deserve is to be told how he is going to correct those mistakes, be given proof that the “mistaken” ideas have been dumped and a new raft of ideas that will work have replaced them. But that did not seem to be in the order of the day.

An important piece of news in Rue 89: a bill will come before parliament at the end of this month to lengthen the time national archive material remains inaccessible to the public. Very quietly, back in January with a minimum of publicity, the bill was debated and voted through by the Senate. If, as looks likely, it now passes through the lower chamber, research into fully two-thirds of the last century’s history will be seriously hampered if not, in some places, completely stopped.

At the moment archives which relate to somebody’s personal life become accessible after 60 years (already twice as long as in the UK). A quick bit of mental arithmetic makes that 1948. The bill proposes to include administrative and police archives, while adding on 15 years of secrecy, making the current release year 1933. Some people, of course, will breathe a huge sigh of relief: for those with something to hide the new law could not have come at a better time, for it doesn’t take deep knowledge of French history to know why the years following 1948 are sensitive: the war in Indochina (1946-54) followed inexorably by the war in Algeria (1954-62). 16 years of controversial war as France lost its empire coming hard on the heels of 4 years of German occupation. Les 20 tout-sauf-glorieuses. All that period and more disappears again under wraps. Once the bill is passed it will be 2037 before researchers can look at administrative and police archives about the deeply unpleasant end of the Algerian War.

But it also means that the murky Vichy period will disappear once again into the fog of unknowing. I am doing research into the administration of a French colony in the late 30’s and early 40’s, and already the doors are closing at les archives de l’histoire coloniale française at Aix en Provence, unless I get down there within the next couple of weeks I will have to wait until 2017 before I can look at papers relating to the end of my story – mind you if I publish in, say, 2010 the book would have 7 years’ life before anyone could disprove any mad theories I decide to invent. But imagine a biographer of De Gaulle: his period in power was, in archival terms, just coming into the public domain, yet with the new law it will go out of bounds again for another 15 to 20 years.

Why are the French doing this? As many historians have said, it can only be because there are enough people with enough things to hide from this supremely delicate period of recent French history – not information about themselves so much as about their parents. But the bill, and the perceived need for it to be rushed through parliament at a time when we all thought we were reforming far more important things, also shows something deeper: this insistence on the State being guardian of everything, controlling everything, allowing to be portrayed only what it considers correct. For the umpteenth time since I have been writing about France, the State is decreeing what history we shall know.

At the moment France is covering itself with glory that a group of French commandos managed in spectacular manner to save the lives of the crew of a private yacht, the Ponant, hijacked by pirates. Without wishing to dampen the glory, I cannot help wondering whether this is this yet another Sarkozy Spectacular, designed to divert our attention from weightier matters? I am always sceptical when a government’s much-contested decision on some important question is rapidly followed, by pure coincidence, by a major success in that same area, as if to convince the public that the much-contested decision is therefore justified. For example, Sarkozy has faced much criticism over his decision to send troops to Afghanistan to help in the difficult guerrilla against the Taliban. What luck, then, that while that acrimonious debate was still raging an opportunity for the same French commandos to shine should spontaneously present itself in a well-organised operation personally directed by Nicolas Sarkozy. For a week all French eyes have been on the yacht (owned, again by pure chance, by a friend of Sarkozy’s), imaginations captivated by the idea that pirates still operate in those far-flung waters.

Every day, probably 7 or 8 times a day, for the past three years at least there has been showing, in the Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth, a truly excellent film made by the Royal Navy about exactly this sort of operation. A British family are captured by pirates off an unknown coast-line and held ransom. After monitoring the hijack for a while, the gallant tars of the Royal Navy swoop in a superbly orchestrated rescue operation to free them all. The film is a no-holds barred recruiting film - designed to attract customers. It is beautifully made, to the highest Hollywood standards, and very expensive - all entirely convincing: the latest and best military hard-ware is on display – evil-looking guided missiles are launched, explode in a very impressive display of pyrotechnics, bodies flung high, a beautiful house blown apart. Quite amazing for a recruiting film. It is also, as a semi-documentary with a serious purpose, rooted in some sort of reality and authenticity. You do not spend that amount of public money without their Lordships having their say. This sort of thing happens – in various parts of the world pirates still operate, demanding ransoms. Armed forces are trained to deal with them – as the French commandos proved, since you cannot perform that sort of highly-skilled military operation without enormous training and full-scale rehearsals – and, in a circular argument, the military would not take all that trouble to train in a very specialised field if the demand was not there.

I am not of course suggesting for a moment that the French operation off Somalia was a fabricated scenario – merely suggesting that it could have been. It was spectacular and pain-free: no one was killed, the hostages were released, the President’s friend’s yacht was returned to its owner unharmed, a single, perfectly-placed shot from a helicopter managed to smash the engine of the fast moving 4×4 (one has to assume that since the helicopter was able to get in close enough to do that, the pirates (a cast of local fishermen apparently) were not returning the fire). The whole thing, as I say, directed by the President (well-known for personally taking charge of every aspect of French life).

It will be interesting to see what effect this military triumph has on the French public – the homecoming is today, the director of operations going with full media to meet the crew as they climb down the steps of the plane bringing them home. Will it have the same desired effect as the RN’s recruiting film and turn public opinion towards the usefulness of the military? As Charles Bremner points out, nobody is howling about the cost of it all.

M. Sarkozy needs a moment of triumph: having risen slightly last month, his ratings have fallen again, and this time he is accompanied by his Prime Minister. Lycéens are on the street protesting at an attempt to cut education costs, more important reforms seem to have stalled (or at least no one can see tangible results, and the pace seems to have slowed down) as we approach the much-anticipated first anniversary of his election and nothing more is heard of the big gestures on the environment, labour laws, government. Meanwhile at an everyday level prices continue to rise, articles about the failure of this or that piece of government legislation abound. Any head of state in Sarkozy’s position would look round desperately for a quick fix. I just wonder for how long rescuing people from different parts of the globe is going to do the job for him. While there is an endless list of people who need rescuing, there are slightly more important things to attend to at home.

Before all the fuss about the Olympic flame is extinguished and we move on, it’s worth sparing a thought for Rama Yade, who, in her role as Minister for Human Rights, caused mild mayhem here by allegedly telling a journalist that Nicolas Sarkozy would only go to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games if China respected fundamental human rights in Tibet - and then being forced to deny she had ever said such obvious nonsense.

I suspect she’s a very bright young woman – I’ve never met her, the film Al Jazeera want me to make about her is still pending approval, but her book “Noirs de France” has some refreshingly different things to say about people like herself who have suffered discrimination. But she is in a closed cubby-hole of a ministry, with no way out. Think about it. The ministry of human rights isn’t really a ministry – it has no mission, no agenda, no crack team to back up the otherwise empty words which is all she can offer. As Azouz Begag found in the previous government, working as a coloured face in a meaningless ministry like “Equal Opportunities” or “Human Rights” is a one-way ticket in the wrong direction.

Rama Yade has learnt the hard way that she can’t mention human rights abuses in “le pays des droits de l’homme” itself (in the overcrowded prisons, or the repatriation of sans papiers): when she tried, going to see some immigrant squatters faced with eviction in a Paris suburb, she was keenly and patronisingly reprimanded by her seniors. If she can’t mention France, she can only pass judgement on other countries. But the countries with human rights abuses are the very countries where the market for French goods is still strong, or with which France needs to remain on good terms (the USA for example with Guantanamo Bay). Twice now she has put into words what most of us think: first about Colonel Gaddafi being a dictator and more recently about the Olympic Games. But both times she has been made to look ridiculous by her senior colleagues. When the President went with a huge entourage and much pomp to China last November, he made the last minute decision to leave Rama Yade ignominiously twiddling her thumbs at home.

Now she knows she has the choice of either speaking out and having her wrists slapped, thus being made to look a fool in public, or saying nothing and being forgotten. Either way she is side-lined for the next job. For apart from the fact that she clearly has very definite thoughts about human rights, it is probable she accepted the job as a stepping stone, and so she needs to shine. Her contemporary and white male equivalent, Laurent Wauquiez, has just been promoted from spokesman (where the job-definition is to shine) to junior minister in charge of employment – a real job with targets and measurable success (or failure). She is stuck, losing out whether she acts or does nothing. The Ministry for Human Rights is an empty shop window.

In the mean time she failed in her first bid for democratic election in the recent local elections and as of yesterday it looks as if her feisty denunciation of the operation by the Arche de Zoë, a humanitarian charity, to “save orphans” from the Sudan may rebound painfully on her, further damaging her credibility. The Arche de Zoë’s leader, now pardoned and released from prison, has said the Foreign Ministry gave his project their approval so he will sue Rama Yade for her defamatory remarks. Will those same senior colleagues who have been embarrassed by her before come to her aid this time?

The shame is that what she says about human rights is usually exactly what many people think.

Two quick comments on the very lively debate about whether or not “responsible” countries should boycott the Olympic Games this summer: first Bernard Kouchner seems to me to have adopted exactly the right tone in his interviews with the press. Kouchner, France’s foreign minister, is in the uncomfortable position of having made his name fighting for human rights and human dignity in the face of powerful, bullying or tyrannical regimes. Indeed in the 1970’s, with the issue of the Vietnamese boat-people, he helped create the concept of international intervention. Since he is now a senior minister chez Sarkozy, the French press not surprisingly questions his sincerity. The invigoratingly new element is the way Kouchner’s replies. He doesn’t become all mealy-mouthed and try to paper over cracks. When asked what he thinks of his life-long friend Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s attitude towards the boycott (that France, calling itself “le pays des Droits de l’homme”, is being hypocritical), or Robert Menard’s (head of Reporteurs sans frontières) activism against the Olympic torch, Kouchner replies “It’s great. They’re doing their job [raising awareness of China’s Human Rights abuses], I’m doing mine, helping to run a major country.” That seems to me an entirely adult way of looking at the diversity of people and what they can do in a democracy, pointing up the press’ rather simplistic views of what life is. When pushed further about his own position (”aren’t you being hypocritical?”) Kouchner, on France Inter yesterday, turned the hypocrisy tables on the interviewer by asking in a lively tone had he only just realised there is a world of difference between what NGO groups do and say (focussed on one particular problem, however large and important it may be and by definition advocating an ideal) and what those job is to steer a country for 5 years can do.

In my view Kouchner was right to point out the journalist’s hypocrisy. The French press, until a few years ago quiescent in the face of any member of government, has recently decided to become bolder, perhaps more Anglo-Saxon, by asking the searching questions that penetrate deep into the soul of our existence. But they seem to believe that to achieve this instant searing incisiveness, all they have to do is simply ask the questions a bright child might ask: how can you deal with a country which does not respect human rights?…… The job of a good interviewer is much harder, with hours of preparation and the back-up of a team of very good researchers.

The other point that jumps out at me with this torch which will today pass through Paris, is the multitude of French politicians (and sportsmen and women)  who say that politics and the Olympic Games should be kept apart (doubtless their British equivalents said the same, but I haven’t had time to read the reports). Do they not remember apartheid in South Africa and the boycotts of the 1970’s? Indeed South Africa was expelled from Olympic membership in 1970 because of its apartheid policy – a perfect example of where politics and the Olympic philosophy came together. With the perhaps over-publicised case of the white woman runner Zola Budd (at 17 she broke the women’s 5,000 metre world record, but because she did it in South Africa it was not recognised) who had to assume British nationality to run in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The whole boycott business was a running sore in cricket, rugby, tennis and other sports for many years, and not always successful, but it achieved its purpose which was to show the people of South Africa that the international community did not agree with their government’s policies. It has always seemed to me that the long-running boycotts, and all the fuss they engendered good and bad, worked away like water on a stone to help change fundamentally a deep-rooted evil system.

At last he is acting like a president of the French Fifth Republic – taking major decisions about foreign policy and France’s place in the world, leaving the merely domestic stuff to his government. Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to send troops into Afghanistan may turn out to be the single most important act of his five-year presidency, how ironic, then, that he has handled it so badly. A year ago we were all saying that Nicolas Sarkozy’s greatest strength was his consummate skill at communication. This latest business over sending troops to Afghanistan calls all that into question.

First of all he made the announcement in possibly the most inappropriate place – the Royal Gallery of the British House of Lords: Royal, British and, as far as many French people are concerned, full of irrelevant aristocrats (the Commons did not suspend their business to listen to the French President). Hemmed in and dwarfed by two huge murals, Nelson at Trafalgar towering above him on his left, Wellington at Waterloo dominating his right, the somewhat undersized Sarkozy chose to announce a U-turn in French foreign policy to the traditional enemy. Worse, he made his announcement in the heart of the very institution which, in French eyes, failed democracy by meekly allowing Tony Blair to send British troops into Iraq.

French parliamentarians were mortified and deeply shocked. They complained to their Prime Minister, who mollified them by saying of course you can debate it – but then adding there will be no vote. An emasculated exercise in shop-window democracy. The Assemblée Nationale is now in no doubt as to its continuing lack of relevance within Nicolas Sarkozy’s Fifth Republic. The institutional reforms suggested by Edouard Balladur making it compulsory to consult Parliament before any troops are sent abroad for more than 6 months look less than convincing. But we did consult you, Nicolas Sarkozy might say: the reforms don’t say anything about voting. Anyway, there are 1,600 French troops there already (2,200 in the Stans region as a whole).

If he had set out to anger his compatriots deliberately he could not have done better. During his election campaign a year ago, Sarkozy promised to bring home the French troops already in Afghanistan (“What I promise I will do”), and even last summer the Minister of Defence said: “The President of the Republic has clearly established that the troops have no reason for remaining durablement in Afghanistan”. In a recent poll nearly two thirds said they were against sending more troops to Afghanistan. For many French people the Taliban have ceased to have any importance (part of this may be political correctness, not to be heard bashing Muslims, however extreme and unrepresentative they may be, to avoid angering the Muslims in France) and the information they receive is often contradictory – one report yesterday said the main area of violence was the east “where the Talibans and Al Quaida operate”, another said the south is where the action is, where “the Taliban have re-taken control”. Who cares? At best the war is seen as a lost cause, supported by the intolerable George Doubleyou, himself a lost cause, but for many the war anyway has been lost – on last night’s radio there were those saying France should negotiate with the Taliban and be done with it. In other words just as in 2003 they seemed willing to leave Saddam to continue his butchery, they have either forgotten quite who the Taliban are and what they represent or, like many in Britain, they believe the Taliban have changed their spots. French anger is less about Sarkozy sending French soldiers to a battle zone than his undoing 50 years of French independence, undoing De Gaulle’s great work: he is joining the abomination, the Anglo-Saxon alliance. Atlantism is still a dirty word in some quarters. But if Sarkozy’s wider ambition is nothing to do with Afghanistan, rather increased French power in the Mediterranean, how else can he achieve that than by giving a sop to the Americans? And what better sop than to send a few more troops (the original 1,000 has this morning been reduced to 800) to help out in a forgotten war?

French cinema. The jewel in the crown of an otherwise lacklustre post-war French culture. Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Resnais, Bresson, Malle – even early Lelouche – in the 1960’s and early 1970’s nothing else sold France as well as its cinema. As far as the rest of the world was concerned French painting died in 1954 with Matisse; exportable French fiction never recovered after the 1950’s; with too few notable exceptions French theatre never rivalled London or New York and no one beyond the hexagon was much interested in the music of Francoise Hardy or Johnny Halliday, let alone Messiaen or Boulez – but French cinema…..there was something we (meaning Western Europe and North America because in those days that was the World) could get truly excited over! One of its many qualities was that the best of the New Wave was a continuation of the Golden Age of French cinema of the 1930’s and ‘40’s: there was a thread that seemed to constitute a national culture. But now, according to the Club of 13 , a group of some of France’s best film professionals, French cinema is in deep danger of losing its identity and they have written a 190-page book to explain how to get it back to the forefront of world culture.

The book will be published in mid-April, I have not read it, but journalists on both Mediapart and Rue89 have. What these journalists say about it is fascinating because it seems to speak not only for the French cinema industry but for the recovery of France in general – and it fills me with despair.

I should perhaps explain that the root reason I am in France at all is probably because of its cinema. When I was 2 my father, a film director, came to Paris to work for a couple of years, so my earliest memories are an unformed jumble of France and its film business. Later I discovered and became passionate about the films of the directors quoted above and spent many happy years making films that sought, modestly, to emulate them – in particular their understanding of human nature. But by the end of the 1980’s I realised that kind of personal cinema was over and I should move on: film-making was already dominated by television accountants, not by individuals but by faceless committees, and the only thing worse than a committee was an international committee – that is an international co-production. So reading extracts of this 190-page liturgy of woes makes me wonder where the authors have been for the past 25-30 years. Are French film-makers really so totally cocooned from the winds that shape our world?

The Club de 13 was created in February 2007 when a director, Pascale Ferran won several national awards for her film “Lady Chatterley”. Instead of the usual lovey-gush associated with these events she grabbed the microphone and, knowing she was on live TV, made an impassioned plea to save what she calls “les films du milieu” – films that try to combine a certain artistic integrity with popular appeal.

An ad-hoc group formed around her, not of film-buffs and theoreticians but experienced professionals including distributors, exhibitors and exporters. So far so good. But the result of their labour is disappointing: “We continue to live with the idea that cinema is both an art and an industry (the power of Malraux’s thinking) whereas it has become essentially a business. The present commercialisation of the cinema comes from….the substitution of the producer’s power by that of the broadcaster – television on one side and distribution conglomerates on the other.” But that was true 30 years ago, to repeat it today as if it were a blinding new insight is extraordinary.

According to Rue89 the report reveals “the terrible and perverse mechanism [mega-bucks and TV] which leads to uniformity [of ideas, scripts and casting]. Inevitable consequence: the quality of films being presented to the public has deteriorated….” According to the authors the evil TV is responsible for this uniformity and dumbing-down: on the one hand there are enormous budgets given to ultra-predictable films, on the other minimal finance for films which cannot break in to the main circuits and are thus “ghettoised”. In between, too few of the films Mme Ferran advocates – the very diverse middle films, ambitious but with popular appeal of which only 19 were made in 2006 against 49 in 2004.

None of that is wrong, but neither is it new. What the authors of the report do not seem to have understood is that times have changed, the world has moved on. In little more than a single life-time cinema has moved from silent black and white with piano accompaniment, to talkies, to wide-screen Technicolor with Dolby sound, back down to TV, through VHS to DVD and now the internet. From 35mm to 70mm, down to 16mm then on to beta tape and now silicon chip. It evolves constantly, as do the public’s tastes. And will continue to do so – just look how the internet has upset (destroyed) the “traditional” music business. Yet, Mediapart says, nowhere do the authors of the report address the future, nowhere do they even mention digital technology. From what is quoted it seems they are stuck in the glory of the New Wave of 40 years ago, of independent individuals making bold decisions rather like independent publishers or art galleries.

For that reason the report is perhaps an echo of the wider phenomenon of whether or not France as a whole can change. Evolution means letting some things go, however much nostalgia clings to them. As a generalisation it seems the French may find that particularly difficult. But what worked 50 years ago almost certainly will not work now, just as the capitalisme à la francaise which created the 30 glorieuses cannot work today. The important thing is to address now.

The Club de 13 appears to believe that the way out of this situation, the way back to the past so that the “descendants of Truffaut, Demy or Resnais can give birth to their projects”, is by more rules, regulations and increased government hand-outs. That may be simplifying, but it seems to be what is being suggested: doubling the government pre-production grant (currently about half a million euro per film) and providing support finance to the originator of the idea (with the demand that 7.5% of this finance go to the writer, 25% to any distributor who invests in the project without a TV company…..). In short the Club de 13 seem to want to lessen the risk in what has always been a high-risk business. Cinema is exciting at every level (including the audience level) precisely because it is a high-risk business. While seed money is certainly vital, give films too much protection and you are guaranteed boredom. Cinema is not about making the films you want to make but second-guessing what films you believe, you hope, you pray people will pay to see.

A word of explanation about my use of the words “extraordinary” and “exceptional” to describe Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday. A couple of French readers have asked how on earth I could call Sarkozy “extraordinary”, assuming I was praising him. In French I think “extraordinaire” usually does infer praise, so there is clearly confusion at the English use of the word. Certainly it can be an adjective of praise, but very often it isn’t. Think of the phrase “He used the most extraordinary behaviour/language.” That does not mean you condone the behaviour/language, usually quite the reverse. It means the behaviour/language took you by surprise (it was “out of the ordinary”). “It’s quite extraordinary how someone can park in the middle of a busy high street just because he’s too lazy to walk to the paper shop,” meaning “Bastard, if I were driving a pelle mechanique I’d make short shrift of  him” Maybe it’s just English understatement.

The same can be said of “exceptional character”  - in English it doesn’t necessarily confer praise, but is often used ironically, meaning “Thank God there aren’t many more like him!” To take exception to someone means to dislike them intensely, although calling a disliked person “exceptional” may be stretching the sense a little too far!

The French language: a subject about which I feel passionate about. Too late I caught the latest ministerial attempt to shore it up against foreign intervention (patriotisme linguistique), and the excellent Charles Bremner got there first. I strongly recommend a visit. Having read Charles’ well-argued reasons for wanting to keep foreign words out of France, do read the lengthy and fascinating comments which follow. Every shade of opinion is there, and it’s clearly a subject which many people (English as well as French) care about deeply: a woman signing herself “an angry teacher”(presumably French), who berates linguists such as the venerable Alain Rey for not giving “a dam shxxt about poor kids not being able to express themselves properly and who lack words”; a reader arguing that, far from being in decline, French is the growing language of Africa (proof, cynics might say, that it is doomed); a reader who rightly (and elegantly) says “To care about language is to care about thought….”

I have only two tiny contributions to this very rich argument: I have long wondered why the French abhor the comparatively simple word “email” and try (rather unsuccessfully) to replace it officially with the deeply ugly “courriel”. “Mail” has impeccably French credentials since it is quite possibly (OED) derived from the French word “malle”, the leather satchel in which the “mail” was carried (think of the Pony Express motto: the malle must get through). Second thing is that, as I understand it, Britain has some claim to fame and  thanks as the only country where French is taught as the first foreign language. Previous correspondents have replied to this claim by reminding me that French is taught in Canada as a second language, but since French is an official language in Canada (bi-lingual road-signs etc), I can’t see how it can be taught as a second language.

Finally, since I apparently cannot write a post without mentioning a certain NS, let me recommend a book about language. Well, a certain use of language. Written by two linguists, Louis-Jean Calvet and Jean Véronis, the book analyses in great, exhaustive and exhausting detail the French language as used and manipulated by the President: “Les Mots de Nicolas Sarkozy”. More about that later.

A friend of mine emailed me recently to criticise, gently, this blog for devoting so much space on Nicolas Sarkozy, who, my friend assured me, is simply not worth it. It’s a question I have asked before on this blog (although recent posts have been about emigration, working with the French tax system, le devoir de mémoire, Rachida Dati – as well as the French President). The answer is simple: if you are writing a blog about French politics (the sub-heading of this blog) you have to write about Nicolas Sarkozy. There is nobody else. For the past ten months he has monopolized not only the centre stage, but every square inch of the theatre, including the wings and front-of-house. He is a one-man show. Or rather he has been, because he promises things are going to change (see previous blog). But until now, when one expected a minister to announce a new bill or policy, Sarkozy hogged the spotlight and the microphone (in that he reminds me of the Socialist former mayor of Montpellier, Georges Frêche, who at public meetings would give a discours fleuve for an hour, then, as the opposition rose to its feet to reply, would simply disconnect the sound system). The French President even announces who will be the head of the (private) French TV channel TF1. Apart from all that he is an extraordinary man with a quite exceptional character: I have written before that Shakespeare would have been proud to have created him – and he would not have been flattering, although, being Shakespeare, he would have helped us understand the human threads that link us.

Sarkozy’s latest sortie has been to announce the appointment of Nicolas Princen, a 24-year old,  as the watch-dog of all and every web-blog which mentions – Nicolas Sarkozy. The appointment has caused a storm on the net, evoking recent mémoires of Francois Mitterrand’s telephone tapping of journalists or, going back further (to Sarkozy’s période de preference, the Occupation), worse. It is quite true that Sarkozy has received a hammering on the net, not by malicious rumour but by the posting of factual videos which show a side of his character he clearly would rather remained hidden. But what will young Princen do about that? How can anyone “watch the web”? How can anyone even attempt it seriously without a massive back-up of material and personnel? And if the President commits large sums of public money to an enterprise like that, he will suffer (justifiable) accusations of irredeemable paranoia. As the inestimable Versac says, Princen simply should not have accepted the job. What will he do to someone who records and then posts a video of the President saying something like “get stuffed you prick!”, or telling his press attaché, after an awkward interview with a foreign journalist, that he’s useless? Will the blogger be invited to the headmaster’s study for a pep-talk about “responsibility” and the need to “pull together”?

No, the key is at the beginning of this post: the Elysée has announced that this new job has been created. Unlike Mitterrand or others, this surveillance will not be secret. Now we all know that we are being recorded, read, perhaps archived. We all now know that our posts may be held against us. Fear, it is presumably hoped, will do its work. I repeat, and this not only for the benefit of M. Princen, Nicolas Sarkozy is an exceptional man.