Turning out his pockets
In the previous blog (given the chronological order of blogs that is the one you will find lower down the page after this one) I wrote that Nicolas Sarkozy’s TV interview last week was a non-event. In fact even as I wrote it I knew that wasn’t true, but decided the explanation was worthy of a separate piece. It was an extraordinary interview because the President made an extraordinary admission. Many commentators picked it up, but Jean-Michel Aphatie, a political journalist of considerable standing, is one of the few who recognised it for what it is, or will become: a cornerstone of all future analyses of France’s particular and peculiar situation. The statement came just two minutes before the end of the 45 minute interview, rather like a late own-goal: the President said “The coffers are empty”. Forget the fact that a few weeks ago the same President tore a strip off his Prime Minister for saying exactly the same thing, forget the fact that everyone has been saying it for months – much more important is that France’s president should, before 19 million of his compatriots, admit that France is flat broke. It seemed simply to slip out, his two interviewers, who had shown a commendable lack of courage or even interest in sticking the President during the entire interview, were so surprised that neither picked him up on it, questioned it as a statement or even said “What on earth do you mean, empty?”
Aphatie also tells us that two days after the President’s statement, the head of the police union told a daily newspaper that he wanted a round-table discussion to discuss over-time payments. He claims his members are waiting to be paid for 20 million hours of overtime. 20 million hours of overtime have been stock-piled by the state, 20 million hours accumulated night-work and Sunday duties, on the promise of payment at some unspecified time in the future. Surely only a “disciplined” force like the police or army would accept such a promise for so long - but now the coffers are empty…..
One might well ask what on earth was this state thinking to allow worked hours to be stock-piled in this way. To allow ten thousand hours to accumulate is irresponsible, but 20 million?
On the same subject of a state that now admits it has no cash, Aphatie, quoting an article in the Figaro of the 1st December, tells us that one quarter of French universities no longer satisfy French building norms. The same evening a television reporter interviewed a building expert who showed that in one university windows could not be opened and that the staircases, vital escape-routes in case of fire, were much too narrow for the number of people routinely in the building. In other words a disaster waiting to happen. In France any commercial or public building that does not satisfy building safety standards is closed – a café, cinema whatever. Yet these allegedly dangerous universities are still open. The Minister for Higher Education has already promised five billion to bring universities up to standard, Sarkozy said in the same interview last Thursday that he will sell off 3% of EDF the electricity group to pay for the rest. Selling the family silver to pay for what should have been routine maintenance carried out every year - for the universities aren’t old, most built within the last few years.
Sarkozy has long prided himself on being the one who talks straight, cuts to the quick and tells it like it is. Having told us there’s no money in the coffers to put things right, and the only way forward is to sell off bits of the nationalised industries, he now has to tell his compatriots that this year’s growth will be not as much as he initially thought, instead of the 2.5% he almost guaranteed us a few months ago OECD calculates it’ll be closer to 1.9% . Then he has to explain how, with slower growth and no cash, he’s going to get us out of this fix.
December 8th, 2007 at 10:35 am
This is potent stuff! Ghosts of history - the emperor unable to pay his legionnaires… The question is, is Sarko telling the whole truth, or is this just scare-mongering to help push through the privatisation agenda? He presents the financial picture to the public in very simplified terms (shades of Thatcher with her household budget analogies), yet his mates in big business and high finance increasingly deal in financial hocus-pocus, with complex ‘financial instruments’ turning debt into assets, seemingly producing money - or at least the ability to pay for things - where there was none. Hard to tell where the truth lies. But instructive perhaps to look at the UK, where Brown’s supposed ‘economic success’, based on essentially US-style neoliberal policies, can be seen to be nothing but an economy afloat on a sea of personal debt as well as government debt.