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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: Storm damage, gender versus grammar and beer records

From an actual storm to a storm over French grammar, via a cheering beer statistic and some spooky topics, our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Inside France: Storm damage, gender versus grammar and beer records
France made an estimated €2 billion from the Rugby Word Cup. Photo: The Local

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Storm in a dictionary

This week a real storm – Storm Ciaran bringing 200km/h winds and leaving a trail of destruction in northern France – has somewhat overshadowed the political storm, in which a right-wing Senator opened the culture war playbook and tried to ban ‘inclusive writing’.

The motion has little chance of being passed by the Assemblée nationale – the parliamentary chamber with the real power – but has revived the debate about how French (and indeed all grammatically gendered languages) can become more gender-inclusive.

It’s true that the median point – writing les étudiant·es to include male and female students – is complicated and confusing, especially to French learners, but I see no reason not to have masculine and feminine versions of job titles, for example. And I’m not just saying that because my own feminine job title – rédactrice en chef – trips off the tongue so beautifully with its repeated rolling French ‘R’.

OPINION Making French fully inclusive is a grammatical and political nightmare

Pint power

The first accounts are in from the Rugby World Cup and it seems to have been a financial success, netting France an estimated profit of €2 billion.

From my experience it seemed like an organisational success too – a fabulous tournament with a great atmosphere at matches and in fan zones (although the steam did go out of things once France were knocked out).

Ireland might be disappointed at also being knocked out at the quarter final stage but at least they can take comfort in this stat – Irish and Scottish fans set a new record for beer sales at Stade de France during their pool stage game, with an impressive 137,000 pints sold. Santé !

Animal instinct

The Talking France podcast is taking a short break this week – you can catch up on previous episodes here – so instead I have some scary film French recommendations, courtesy of the lovely people at Lost in Frenchlation. I enjoyed Le Règne Animal which is not really scary in ‘make you jump’ way, despite involving a mysterious illness that makes humans mutate into terrifying creatures.

Instead it looks at the extremely pertinent (and terrifying in their own way) themes of how we deal with epidemics and how we co-exist with the animal kingdom. 

Widening horizons

And perhaps not strictly related to France, but I have been struck this week as I watched the UK’s Covid inquiry by how insular UK planning and emergency responses were. 

Former French health minister Olivier Véran recalls in his book Par-delà les vagues (beyond the waves) that, in February 2020, he was having meetings with fellow health ministers around Europe. In Downing Street, meanwhile, the only mention made so far of how other European countries were dealing with the crisis was Boris Johnson reportedly ‘laughing at the Italians for over-reacting’. Tragically, the Italians were not over-reacting. 

Véran’s book was, incidentally, my beach reading last summer – because obviously I know how to relax and enjoy myself . . . 

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: French lose the plot, sports stars speak out and Paris prices fall

From the latest on the increasingly crazy French elections to the powers of a president, the influence of sports stars and the lustre of the Olympics, our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Inside France: French lose the plot, sports stars speak out and Paris prices fall

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Losing the plot?

Welcome to another crazy week in French politics – I’m not saying that this election is getting to me, but the other night I dreamed I was having an argument with far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. I think I need a holiday.

France might need a holiday too – the political discourse is getting increasingly wild, leading to our columnist John Lichfield to declare that the country has “taken leave of its senses”

Latest polling suggests that Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party would take the biggest vote share at 33 percent, followed by the increasingly fragile leftist coalition Nouveau Front Populaire with 29 percent and then Emmanuel Macron’s centrist group with 22 percent. Those figures would give none of the blocks an overall majority, instead leading to a total parliamentary deadlock.

French election breakdown: All the latest from the campaign trail

Earlier this week ‘Article 16 of the constitution’ was trending on French Twitter; this is the one that lays out the powers afforded to the president versus the prime minister, as people tried to work out what – if any – decisions Macron would be able to take in the final three years of his mandate.

READ ALSO: What does a French prime minister actually do

The satirical magazine Le Canard Enchâiné perhaps sums it up best in its cartoon, showing a man about to shoot himself in the head with a gun labelled ‘Rassemblement National’ and saying “We never tried this before”.

The Canard Enchainé’s cartoon as posted on Instagram

Sports stars engaged

On a more positive note, it’s been nice to see France’s biggest sports stars use their platforms to encourage people to vote, and speaking out against hatred and intolerance and in favour of diversity and inclusion.

I could not disagree more with the Spain goalkeeper Unai Simon, who criticised Kylian Mbappé’s call for people to vote against the far right, saying that footballers should “leave politics to other people”.

The whole point of living in a democracy is that politics belongs to everybody. As Mbappé said: “The Euros are very important in our careers, but first and foremost we are citizens and I don’t think we can be disconnected from the world around us.”

And I admit I’m biased about this – I’ve been a fan ever since I saw him make his professional debut at the age of 18 in my then-hometown of Castres – but I was also pleased to see French rugby legend Antoine Dupont taking a stand on another social issue, appearing on the front cover of LGBTQ magazine Têtu to decry homophobia (although the cover photo did rather make him look like he had forgotten his shades and was squinting into bright sunlight).

Talking France

We of course discuss all the election latest with John Lichfield in the latest episode of the Talking France podcast – and in what was perhaps linked to my need for a holiday we’re also discussing places to visit in France this summer.

Amid warnings of over-tourism we’re taking a look at the places predicted to be most crowded this summer – and suggesting some alternatives. Listen here or on the link below.

Fun and Games

It was thought that people might avoid Paris this summer – but the combination of good deals on the Olympic ticket resale site plus travel and accommodation costs dropping back to seasonal norms has seen a flurry of people booking a last-minute trip to the Games.

Personally I always thought the ‘everyone fleeing the capital’ narrative was a little over-played, but it’s been interesting to see that attempted price-gouging has also largely failed – at the start of the year there were Airbnb listings for frankly insane prices (I saw one that was €7,000 for two weeks), while now costs are largely at the summer average.

Paris travel deals to take advantage of as prices fall ahead of Olympics

Wrestling 

If you’re a Games fan I highly recommend the temporary exhibition at Paris’ Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration (a strong contender for the capital’s best museum, in my opinion) on the history of Olympics and their politics.

It also includes this statue which we’re told depicts ‘wrestling’ at the Olympics in antiquity. If you say so . . .

Photo: The Local

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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