As coda to the last blog, there’s an interesting piece in this week’s Canard Enchainé about Maud Fontenoy, an indefatigable sailor, best known for rowing alone across the Atlantic from West to East in 2003 and her disputed single-handed sail round the world against the currents in 2006. She’s another personality from outside politics who Nicolas Sarkozy wants to bring into the government - perhaps for her penchant for doing everything alone. However much to everyone’s surprise, she declined his offer to become junior minister for youth for the beautifully simple and disarmingly honest reason that “accepting this job would mean giving up her television programme and the royalties due to it. It would mean giving up the book-signing sessions for her two new publications [most authors would give anything, perhaps even work in government, to get out of that], giving up her contract “appréciable” with Oreal.” Nothing high-minded you understand: before she can look after others she needs to look after herself. “I don’t have time in my diary to fit in working for the government. It’s already full with the publication of my two books, a documentary about my round-the-world trip…..”

Most people asked to become a minister talk piously about “public duty” and “selflessly serving la patrie”. I find such honesty refreshing. It may also be that as an experienced sailor she senses which way the wind is blowing. The two items she mentions filling her diary will be over by Christmas – perhaps she doesn’t see the present government lasting much longer.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 8:06 am and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.