La Confluence, Lyon: marvel or monstrosity?

La Confluence is an area just south of the city centre of Lyon where the city's two rivers, the Saône and the Rhône, meet. It used to be an industrial centre but the end of the 1900s witnessed its decline, to the point where it was decided to completely redevelop the area in order to double the size of the city centre's shopping, office and residential capacity.

The result is the resolutely modern and spacious urban development scheme you see below. It comprises dozens of shops, restaurants, cinemas and other amenities both inside and around a sprawling commercial complex, the Regional Council now has a rather swish home there, and there are many colourful apartment buildings as well as a marina which will be fully operational next Summer.

Condemned as a monstrosity by some, worshipped as a view into the future of cities by others, it now attracts thousands of visitors weekly and the m² price of apartments there is very high although some of the housing capacity has been reserved for social housing, as the law stipulates must be the case for all new urban developments in France. Construction in this part of the city is set to continue for a few more years and it even has its own website.

For those interested in learning more about how it was designed and built and its eco-friendly aspects (low energy consumption, materials used etc) here's a fairly informative video (in French..)

The marina is overlooked by apartment buildings on one side...

...and access to the commercial centre on the other.

Apartments on the fashionable theme of shipping containers

I hope nobody was in when it hit!

I built a building just like this when I was a kid. Using Lego.

The Regional Council building

Updated Sixties-style colours and design

Not an architect's artist's impression

So, monstrosity or marvel?

Towards the quiet life life in the countryside

After fifteen wonderful years spent here in Lyon I have decided to move out to the countryside. I still very much enjoy living here, but as I'm nearing my sixties some aspects of what the city has to offer - bars, clubs, rock concerts etc - have witnessed a steady decline in my presence over the years and I have been spending more and more time in the country at friends' places because I appreciate the serenity of being out of the city.

And so it is that I am buying a house just outside a small village not far from the Alps with a very good friend I have known for many years. In fact it's not really 'a house', but two houses and several outhouses on a fair-sized chunk of land. 5,250m² to be exact. Neither is very big but we will be able to live our own lives whilst both looking after the animals we intend to have as well as tending to the land. There is a lot of renovation to do but we both know enough tradesman to get most of the work done at a reasonable price. Scheduled move-in date is next August.

Here are some photos of it all taken on two separate occasions, starting with a couple of views from the lane outside.

My place, with hers to the left in the background

Both houses under a beautiful cerulean sky

A view of the mountains with the houses behind me

Here they are again, this time taken from within the garden.

Hers, complete with balcony, and..

..his. No balcony this time, but a lot of weed-clearing to do!

The views from the windows are great. There are almost no other houses in sight and the only thing which breaks the silence is the birds chirping away and someone's donkey braying. That is going to make a change from Lyon, where as I type these words I am looking at an apartment block just over the street from my apartment. The road is busy all day long.

Once cleaned up there's going to be a table and chairs in the shade out there

From a bedroom window

This view takes in some of the extent of the land, which goes down to the trees, although there is more to the left with a couple of ponds and a henhouse. It's separated into a garden, then what will be a vegetable garden, and then a field for two ponies and, when needed for grass-cutting purposes, the neighbour's sheep.

Oh, and there's a functioning well too, on the left. That'll need building up

 My place is going to be a three-room affair basically, with a salon-american kitchen and a large walk-in-shower-cum-WC-cum-dressing room downstairs. There may eventually be a bedroom in the loft. It used to be the farmer's abbatoir and as such will need a fair bit of work, but although it looks in a hell of  mess right now the work won't take that long.

Half of the living room

Half of the bathroom

The surrounding area has several nature trails and bicycle tracks. Not surprising really because it is very pretty indeed. Here are a few views from within a two-kilometre radius.

A tributary of the river Rhône, looking upstream...

...and downstream

Looking over the fields towards the nearby village

Finally, I found a lovely wild rose growing on top of a wall where it meets my house during my last visit. I hope to be able to leave it untouched during the renovation work in the hope it will come back next year.

Simple, and beautiful

 Meanwhile, off I pop to get on a crowded metro network for a meeting. Ah well, not for much longer...

La Place Jean Macé, Lyon

La Place Jean Macé is one of my favourite places in Lyon, which is just as well as I see it most days whilst out and about. Just outside the city centre, It is situated on the site of what used to be a military barracks-fort back in the 1800's before it was demolished.

When I moved to Lyon 15 years ago it was a rather quiet and nondescript place with just a couple of run-down bars and old shops, but it has since been transformed into the city's third-biggest transport hub after the Part Dieu and Perrache centres. Buses, trains, trams and the metro all run through it today, as do major roads, and the Place Jean Macé is now a thriving and bustling area which welcomes many thousands of people each day.

The resulting increase in the number of shops, bars, restaurants, transport options and services means that I regularly eat, drink, shop, bank and travel through the Place Jean Macé, so I thought I'd share a few photos I took of it in the evening, as it was preparing to bed down for the night...

Blue is the predominant colour at and around the new overhead railway station.

Yup, that's blue. Unless I'm colourblind, that is blue...

 

The 19th century arches leading to the station have had a facelift

 

Lyon as it was at the time of the revolution

There's a tramway too, and a bar, both conveniently situated just next to the railway station.

Trams, trains, food and drinks. Blue too.

A tram and a trainline. Blue. Again.

And the bar's neon is also...BLUE!

...as is, of course, the lighting in my favourite bar

But it's not all blue of course. Here's the elegant Avenue Jean Jaures, which runs through the square, here on green..

Heading home by car, at the end of the day

Yellow, anyone?

If I was any good at Photoshop I'd get rid of that car-thingy

And here's some yellow, blue, and red all at once.

This would look completely different without the trees...

The Place Jean Macé gets ready to sleep at the end of the day. The streets and bars below beautiful building facades are now emptying...

Bonne soirée messieurs et mesdames

....and the children, sleeping now, will be back tomorrow to play on the slide in the playground in front of the Mairie..

Kids here are tough. They slide down elephant's tusks!

Have a good evening everyone....

France's 'race' and 'terrorist' issues highlight the failure of laïcité and social policy

A group of laïcists brush off social issues with a smile

Here are the headlines of the eight articles which were to be found, one after the other, at the top of the Figaro website homepage at 11:30 this morning;

Prasquier: a warmongering Islam is developing
Terrorism: Manuel Valls promises more arrests
Do you fear an increase in terrorist acts by Islamists in France? (poll, with over 80% of 'yes' votes as I type)
Valls: these terrorist networks are within our communities
Bruguière: Muslim proselytes are the most dangerous
Twelve apprentice Jihadists ready to die as martyrs
The Jews of Sarcelles refuse to give in to fear
CRIF: Radical Islamism is Nazism (CRIF = Representative Council of Jewish organisations in France.)

These articles and more were posted over the last 24 hours and they all concern issues related to weekend raids on alleged jihadists in various cities by anti-terrorist police which resulted in twelve arrests and the death of one suspect, who was shot after he opened fire on police officers who wanted to arrest him. Those arrested are suspected of being implicated in a grenade attack on a kosher grocery store which took place in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles on September 19.

Although the other French papers did not put quite as much emphasis on the story as Le Figaro did they all ran prominent coverage and analysis by various experts and former terrorist police chiefs. In what is being interpreted as a riposte to the arrests, drive-by shooters fired blanks at a synagogue, also in Paris, on Saturday evening which prompted President Hollande to meet urgently with CRIF representatives to reassure them and promise increased police protection for "religious sites".

The fact that France is preoccupied with these events to this exaggerated degree may surprise some but this situation has been brewing for months, as anyone who follows race and terrorist issues in France will attest, with each week bringing its lot of race and terrorist-related articles and pronouncements by politicians.

The Mohammed Merah affair, in which a young French-Algerian man who described himself as an Islamic terrorist shot and killed seven people and seriously wounded several others during three attacks in March, shocked the country. Three of the victims were off-duty soldiers and most of the remaining victims were Jewish. He was killed after a 30-hour siege.

The story dominated the press for many weeks, but it has since been overtaken in importance by a slew of more recent race/terrorist-related incidents and statements.

Jean-François Copé, candidate for the presidency of the right-of-centre UMP, has been quite busy stoking the fires of racial tensions in France over the last few weeks. He caused outrage a while back with the assertion that "anti-white racism" existed in predominantly immigrant areas of cities and he was even rounded on by his own party.

Undeterred however, last week saw him back in the headlines with a statement in which he said that young thugs (read Muslim thugs) steal food from other children on the pretext that "you mustn't eat during Ramadan."

Other headlining stories over the last month or two include that of the Charlie Hebdo Mohamed cartoons, which led to outbreaks of vandalism and attacks on Jewish-owned or run property amid vain calls by Muslim community leaders asking people to remain calm. The Chief Rabbi in Lyon received death threats and elsewhere three Jewish men were attacked with a hammer and iron bars.

Front National leader Marine le Pen predictably joined in by foolishly falling into a cheap journalistc trap laid by a journalist from Le Monde and saying that kippas should be banned in public. This caused a furor for days. Also, October 4th marked the 10th anniversary of the murder of Sohane Benziane, a 17-year-old girl who was covered in petrol and burned alive in a storage room for rubbish bins in a high-rise building in Vitry-sur-Seine in affair involving family honour. This crime has become synonymous here with sexist attacks by men in immigrant communities and their perceived machism.

These and other stories have been given prominent press coverage for months and the culminating effect is very bad news for France, particularly given that the country has the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Europe. But what could possibly have led to this situation in a country which prides itself on its multiculturalism?

France's social fabric is defined and underpinned by its strong secular principles, called 'laïcité', the idea of which is to ensure that religion and religious considerations come second to the idea that, whatever one's origins, one is French first. The system arguably worked well while Catholicism was massively predominant, but that changed after the Algerian War when large-scale immigration from Algeria began and was increased in scope with the worldwide phenomena of increased immigration in general.

The result is that France now has a large and varied immigrant population, many of whom live in poorer areas on the outskirts of cities, where unemployment is rife. Racial tensions have been simmering for years and anti-immigrant racism has become commonplace. The post 9/11 era has exacerbated the situation, as have the Arab Spring conflicts, and Jews have become the scapegoat for the frustrations of a tiny minority of disaffected Muslims, more and more of whom have gone overseas for jihad training, inspired by terrorist attacks and a desire for revenge.

But the situation is much the same in Britain, which has its own problems with immigration and home-grown terrorists so the fact that France has these problems to deal with too does not in itself explain the country's current fever-pitch obsession with all things racial and terrorist.

This is because France is slowly waking up to the realisation that the principles of laïcité are becoming irrelevant, and fast. They were not designed with the current situation in mind, a situation which sees large populations of immigrants living together. They were designed as a colonialist 'we're all French together' sop to its overseas territories, including Algeria, and not as a means of social integration in France, which is why all efforts to apply it have ended in failure.

Nor was laïcité meant to help combat inequalities and societal problems, even more so given that it was precisely the idea of laïcité that contributed much to France's disastrous integration policies, which have led to the development of sprawling immigrant ghettos. These policies have led to the alienation of many young immigrants and the increase in what is erroneously termed 'Salafist' tendencies within their ranks. France now has 12,000 Salafists on its territory according to French intelligence agencies

Poverty, unemployment, a sentiment of abandon and a refusal based on the principle of laïcité to tackle head-on the problems facing individual immigrant communities ('we are all French so there is no racism and thus no problem to resolve') has created a major social crisis.

Those who commit Antisemitic acts and those intent on pursuing terrorism must be punished severely, but until France admits that it has serious social problems and begins to address them instead of hiding behind the fig-leaf of laïcité the situation will only get worse. France's problem is not one of racism and terrorism, it is the direct result of the country's failure to integrate its immigrants.

A time-bomb of hate and resentment is ticking away in France, and it's time France began to try and defuse it before it's too late.

Hollande and the French government's U-turn on the 'cumul des mandats'

So I lied. Waddya gonna do about it huh?

The French political system is a complex mix of institutional relationships which tie local government to national government and one of the most important cogs in the wheel is that of the 'cumul des mandats' - or multiple-office holding by politicians.

This practice means that parliamentary politicians may also hold local office at the same time, with over 80% of them doing so. They may be both mayors and senators, députés and general council presidents, EU parliament members and mayors and other combinations. It is possible in some circumstances to hold up to four different paid mandates at once. The widespread use of the cumul des mandats makes France unique in Europe given that in other countries the average number of 'cumulards' - politicians holding dual or even more office - is less than 10%.

Unsurprisingly, polls have consistently shown over the years that the vast majority of French citizens would like to see the system abolished, claiming that it results in a concentration of power in the hands of a small elite of politicians who control both local and national policy decisions, with the result that local political opposition is stifled by national interests as well as the personal interests of those politicians concerned.

Voters have long complained that their députés, mayors or other elected representatives are too often absent from their posts, leading to inefficiency, and that the opportunities that the system offers to those who would be tempted into corruption are rife. France is run by a relatively small group of notables who use their local influence to help their national careers and vice-versa, thus becoming a sort of permanent caste. Those députés serving as mayors in major cities and towns are very powerful people as they are able to pressurise their governments into more funding for projects for their cities as well as offering the party in power on a national level an unprecedented amount of financial support during election campaigns, which means that opposing candidates are unable to compete on equal terms.

The increase in voter discontent with the cumul des mandats over the years has led to several leading politicians on both left and right promising to have it abolished if they are elected, but once in power their promises are quickly forgotten, with the inevitable result that opposing parties cry the usual crocodile tears in public whilst being secretly happy that their dual mandates - along with their dual salaries and political influence - are safe.

Hopes were high therefore when François Hollande, supported by many senior members of the Socialist party, loudly promised during his election campaign that things would be different under him and that he would abolish the practice. Rank-and-file members were happy and so must have been many undecided voters. The socialists even issued a statement saying that whilst waiting for a law to be drawn up and voted the socialists would unilaterally divest themselves of excess mandates, adding that its parliamentary members had until yesterday, October 1, to resign from other mandates.

But it was not to be. Howls of protest began to be heard in lower parliamentary ranks as soon as the elections had ended and some députés, now safe in their seats although silent before they were elected, went on TV to express their opposition to the plan. And the 'resign-by' date? The official line is now that it was just a simple "appeal" and not an injunction. There was no cut-off date. It never existed.

The result is that out of 234 socialist députés who had more than one mandate at the beginning of September, only 11 resigned from their excess mandate. Also, out of the 577 députés from all parties who were elected in June 439 hold at least a double mandate, and 33 of them hold four.

François Hollande has quite simply done a U-turn on a key election promise and his cynical exploitation of popular opinion means that French politics on both a national and local level remains in the hands of a few.

The cumul des mandats system means that most French politicians and ministers cannot fully represent those who elected them at either local or government level and absenteeism from the National Assembly and town halls is widespread. The fact that 439 députés hold more than one mandate means that they have reserved hundreds of local mandates for themselves, thus excluding younger politicians and more women. This is stifling the renewal of the polical class whilst leaving ever more ageing politicians in power, to the point where more than half of all députés are now of pensionable age.

But perhaps the most unfair aspect of this system is that it is those very politicians who hold several mandates and who have every reason - political, financial, business and others - to want to maintain the status quo are the only people who could ever change it.

François Hollande may have been on a hiding to nothing in promising to abolish the cumul des mandates, but he knew that full well when he uttered his election promise. He deliberately misled the French people, who now have yet another good reason to believe that their politicians, including himself, are a self-serving elite.

Plus ça change....

Copé's shabby "anti-white racism" jibe

Copé opts for an insincere 'I'm a serious person' pose for the camera.

France has been feverishly debating leading UMP member Jean-François Copé's declaration that "anti-white racism" is a reality in France and that it is to be condemned just as anti-anyone-else racism is to be condemned. His remark was widely believed to target Muslims and blacks as he alleged that anti-white racism was common in 'les cités' - large council housing estates, mostly on the outskirts of French cities, which are heavily populated by Muslims and blacks.

He is right on the face of it of course. Anti-white sentiment does exist within those communities, even if it only concerns a small minority of their members, and I have experienced it myself as have many other white-skinned people. But Copé's declaration is highly misleading as it deliberately implies that whites suffer from the same racism as those of immigrant origin do.

Copé has obviously taken a leaf out of the far-right Front National's official policy handbook, which tries to minimise anti-immigrant racism by saying that it has its equivalent in the form of anti-white racism.

But who has ever heard of a white person who was refused a job interview because of his name or colour? When was a white person ever refused entry to a night club because he was white? Whoever refused to rent an apartment to a white person on grounds of racial origin? And I have never heard of houseowners refusing to sell their property to white people either. How many white people get stopped and searched by the police?

France has a population of around 6 million  immigrant-origin inhabitants - both legal and illegal - representing just under 10% of the total population. But they are almost non-existent in the French parliament, in boardrooms and management, in banks and finance, and they are highly unlikely to be found in the upper ranks of the police, the legal profession and many more.

The plain fact is that these population groups are far more likely to be poor and unemployed, or in badly-paid jobs, and many of them live in poor quality housing. Yet successive governments of both the right and left have done little to tackle anti-immigrant sentiment, let alone the endemic anti-immigrant discrimination which exists in many sections of French society and bars immigrants from many jobs and opportunities.

Jean-François Copé is a highly experienced politician, having served as a government spokesman under Jean-Pierre Raffarin and others before going on to do a stint as Budget minister and being the UMP's parliamentary spokesman. As such, he must have known that his slanted statement would make the headlines.

Most senior members of the UMP have, however, been very circumspect when asked for comment, and none has given him a clear thumbs-up, indicating that they consider that supporting Copé would lose them support amongst rank-and-file UMP members who shall shortly be asked to vote for their next president. The candidates are François Fillon and Copé himself, but his ill-advised anti-white racism comment may well turn out to be the nail that closed the coffin on any hopes he may have had of winning.

I think Copé seriously miscalulated the effect that his words would have on his near-term political future. All his declaration has done is to move his wing of the UMP further towards the extreme right, inflame public sentiment and throw oil on the fire of France's racial tensions. He shall surely, and quite deservedly, be made to pay for it.

The Sarkozy comeback: not if it will happen, but when?

"Shall I kill myself politically?" "NOOO!!" screamed his adoring fans

They began as wishful thinking by disappointed political allies of Nicolas Sarkozy after his defeat before slowly and cautiously creeping into the the inside pages of the press, but there can be no doubt left today that the rumours which began three months ago have now turned into a plausible scenario - that in which Sarkozy returns to politics to lead the French right into battle at the next presidential election.

Nicolas Sarkozy's defeat at the hands of François Hollande coupled with his decision to abandon politics led to much anguished hand-wringing within the ranks of the UMP, and a couple of opportunists even expressed their pleasure at his departure before declaring themselves as early candidates for the UMP's upcoming leadership battle on a platform along the lines of 'I'll put right what Sarkozy got wrong.'

Sarkozy's name was barely mentioned for a while unless it was used to express a desire to move on from the Sarkozy era, but his former Chief of Staff Claude Guéant, faithful as ever to his boss' cause, soon began to float the idea of a possible return. He was followed by several others, including - and oddly enough given that he was a fierce opponent of Sarkozy during his presidency - Dominique de Villepin. He declared on French TV in August that he believed Sarkozy would be back, adding that "Today, both the right and the left are writing a plausible and absolutely extraordinary scenario for him which is just incredible. The French are very fond of these situations."

Indeed they are, and it is perhaps this penchant for unlikely comebacks and underdog situations that could lead them to consider voting for Sarkozy in a few years, because there is now a lot of circumstantial and real evidence that although he is staying away from active politics at the moment his troops have placed him at the centre of the party's affairs.

My first-coffee-of-the-day tour of French news sites this morning turned up some interesting poll results which reveal that 44% of those polled think that presidential action would have been better if Nicolas Sarkozy had been elected, with only 26% supporting the work of François Hollande. This poll is one of several which ask the same kind of questions and come up with the same answers, and they show without a doubt that there is still a lot of public support for Sarkozy.

Discussion of the rumours of a Sarkozy resurrection are now an everyday occurence in the French press, and much of it is centred upon whether or not he is somehow pulling the strings behind the scenes of the current UMP leadership battle being fought between favourites François Fillon and Jean-François Copé, both of whom are faithful Sarkozysts. There is no proof of his implication but there is no doubt either that he is now an omnipresent factor in the fight to win the UMP's presidency, which will be decided on November 18, and several of the early candidates explained their retirement from the race by saying that they were doing so to help Sarkozy by leaving two of his most influential supporters to fight it out.

It is telling too that neither candidate is campaigning on a platform to take the party away from Sarkozy's policies. On the contrary, both of them make almost daily declarations of faith to Sarkozy in order to please the many Sarkozysts within the voting militants' ranks, and UMP heavyweight Christian Estrosi recently announced his backing for Fillon whilst at the same time declaring that Sarkozy is still the "natural leader" of the UMP and that if a presidential election were to be held now Sarkozy would win it.

Guéant agrees with this of course, and he told reporters on Sunday that Sarkozy could represent a good option for France. He went on to say that if Sarkozy were to become the UMP's presidential candidate he would have to be elected as party leader too and he even exhorted him to contest November's election, although he left the door wide open for him to refuse by pointedly adding that the vote in November was not about electing a presidential candidate.

But perhaps the most pointed and obvious clue to date as to how UMP members are thinking came today from Nadine Morano, who was Sarkozy's Minister for Apprenticeship and Professional Formation. She has declared that she will support Copé in November because "...he has publicly asserted that if Nicolas Sarkozy decided to get back into politics he would support him." The message couldn't be more clear, particularly as she added that it was by no means certain that the next leader of the UMP would be its presidential candidate.

And what does Sarkozy himself have to say about all this? The answer, of course, is nothing. He cannot be seen to be actively influencing the vote, but his silence on the many stories concerning his possible return are a clear sign that he is not denying them in order to keep those within the UMP who may criticise him in check from a distance via their fear of reprisals should he return.

He is also aware that none of this speculation is good news for François Hollande or his government. He had the lowest poll ratings of any president in the 5th Republic after three months in office, and the French are becoming increasingly impatient with what they see as his lack of action, notably on the economy. Unemployment has hit 3 million for the first ever time and there are several major layoffs in the pipeline in major industries and companies. This means that he is hardly in a position, so far, to be able to dismiss the possibility of the eventual return of Sarkozy with an absent wave of the hand by citing progress made under himself, of which there has as yet been precious little.

Despite his physical absence from political life, it is as if Sarkozy never left politics in the first place. Almost all of his former ministers have openly backed him recently, the future party leader may turn out to be no more than a caretaker, and he is being openly touted as a future presidential option after being out of office for only a few months. If Sarkozy has in fact secretly decided to make a political comeback, and as Valentin Spitz put it for Nouvelobs, "..he knows that the most urgent thing to do is wait in order to allow Fillon and Copé to rip each other to pieces and Hollande to mess things up."

Nicolas Sarkozy once said that his decision to run for president in 2007 (and win) was taken while he was taking a shave two years earlier, and although there are relatively few recent photos of him my money says that he is still shaving.....