Lyon's Musée des Confluences - update

The future Confluences Museum here in Lyon is a colossal structure in the making. Designed by architectural design company Coop Himmelb(l)au, it is destined to house a science museum and a library among other things and it is under construction just down the road from where I live. I posted photos of an earlier construction stage back in December, and here is how things are looking today.

It looks even more like a massive mother station space ship today than it did before. And it's big and impressive, as the above photo shows.

As you get closer it begins to tower above you;

Here are two views of the front of the other side, which show the mother ship's cockpit area;

This is a close-up of the building's cladding, which reminds me of the heat-resistant tiles on the NASA shuttle;

Here's the left-side power plant and tail stabiliser;

The rear landing gear;

Hope you enjoyed the pix, have a good weekend, and be good. Well, at least try to.

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(You can visit the museum's site here, and you can see more of Coop Himmelb(l)au's work here.)

Why it always pays to know a foreign language

A bus in Lyon. No traffic jam.

Oh god, that was all I needed. There I was this evening, on the way home after working downtown all day, and my bus ran into a traffic jam. A big one. I'm used to traffic during rush hours but this was obviously due to an accident or something. Patience Frip, patience.

I text a girlfriend and she's available to text back so we text for ten minutes and that helps the time go by. 45 minutes on a stretch that only takes 2 normally. Boredom? Tell me about it.

Then the bus leaves that road as part of its route and takes another one, where there is no traffic. Yay! When we finally get to the bottom of that road however, another traffic jam awaits us at the intersection where the bus turns next. Nothing was moving for hundreds of yards and we were obviously in for a long wait.

But my stop was only 30 yards away. I wait 2 minutes, and then, just as pissed as everyone else at being sardined in a traffic-jammed bus (is that even English?) for almost an hour, I politely ask the driver if he can open the doors for those of us who want to alight at that stop.

Me: Est-ce que vous pourriez ouvrir les portes s'il vous plait pour laisser descendre les gens pour cet arrêt ? (Could you open the doors so that people who want this stop can get off please?)

Driver: Non, désole. Je n’ai pas le droit de laisser descendre les passagers ailleurs qu’à un arrêt. (No, sorry. I'm not authorised to let people off anywhere else than at a bus stop.)

Me: Mais il n'est qu’a trente mètres et rien ne bouge ! (But it's only thirty meters away and nothing's moving!)

Driver: Non. Désole. (No, sorry.)

His persnickety and punctiliously excessive sticking-to-the-rulebook attitude annoyed me. A lot. So I said, mostly to myself, and IN ENGLISH - because English 'gets it out of my system' better than French when I'm annoyed;

Me: Oh that's total fucking bullshit. The traffic is at a standstill and we've been in this thing for an hour for fuck's sake!

Driver: Well fuck you. I'm not opening the doors until the bus stop.

I WAS DUMFOUNDED!! THE GUY SPEAKS ENGLISH!!! AND WELL!! AND WITH A LOVELY ACCENT!!! So I looked him right between the eyes, smiled, and said;

Me: Fuck you too. But you have a super accent I must say.

Driver (smiling):  Thanks, I lived in England for years.

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Then he opened the doors, I thanked him, he said no problem, I got off the bus, and we waved goodbye....

Languages are good for you.

Air France: one of the world's safest airlines? Far from it (Part 1 of 2)

I was discussing civil aviation safety with a friend recently, and he said that Air France was one of the safest airlines in the world. But it seemed to me that his knowledge of these issues was limited - none of us are experts at everything after all - because I happen to be a keen follower of air safety issues and his words just didn't ring true somehow. I had the impression that he was just trotting out an 'ism' that everyone knee-jerkingly believes. So I went and dug up some stats, and this is what I came up with.

The first thing I did was to see if Air France is in the top ten list of safest airlines in the world over the last 30 years. It isn't. 

That prompted me to dig deeper, and I then discovered that Air France has had 22 major accidents resulting in over over 1,250 fatalities since the 1950s. What does that mean in relative terms? That is a difficult question to answer because stats can be twisted as we know, but as an illustration of my good faith and an honest attempt to be objective I can relate comparative stats for British Airways - which is the 10th safest airline in the world - and state that they have had just 3 major accidents and 140 victims in the same 60-year period, that is to say since the 1950s. That is a massive difference by any yardstick.

Worse, the last 15 years of Air France's safety record have been particularly appalling. Fatal crashes during this period include;

2000 - Paris. 113 dead in the crash of an air France Concord shortly after takeoff. American airline Continental Airways was blamed for that disaster. It was alleged by French aviation authorities that faulty maintenance on a Continental plane led to a piece of metal falling off it as it took off just before the Concord, leading to the tyre burst on the Concord that resulted in the accident. Continental is currently appealing that decision.

2003 - Brest. 1 dead and a total plane write-off in a crash-landing. This accident was imputed by French aviation authorities to pilot error.

2005 - Toronto. Total plane write-off upon landing and - "miraculously" as was said at the time - no victims. Pilot error. Again.

2007 - Pau. 1 victim in a total plane write-off during takeoff. Pilot error. Well well well.

2009 - Rio Paris flight 447. 228 dead after it went down in the Atlantic. Primarily pilot error. This simplistic conclusion by authorities was and remains a disgrace.

That's a total of  343 victims in just 13 years. In other words, if you spread that death rate out over the last 60 years, Air France's mortality record is actually getting worse over time.

But why is that the case?

I'll be explaining the reasons in Part 2, but in the meantime suffice it to say that those reasons are contained in clues in this blogpost for those who know how to look for them.
 

J'ACCUSE! France's 'Slow Drinking' advice to Jack Daniel's drinkers :)

Keith Richards' favourite tipple

I bought a bottle of Jack Daniel's yesterday evening. Hard alcohol is rarely to be found at my home but I only bought that bottle because I liked the presentation box to be honest. I took it home and promptly forgot about it.

Still, I decided to have a small nip earlier this evening, and it was then that I discovered and read the enclosed leaflet. I nearly dropped dead on the spot. Here are a few excerpts from this scurrilous propaganda.

'Slow Drinking - the art of savouring.'

'Slow Drinking is a new way of tasting alcoholic drinks in which one takes one's time to savour each instant. The Slow Drinking philosophy valorises the visual, olfactive and gustatory senses and offers new rituals and modes of tasting in order to better savour the moment whilst also drinking moderately.'

'When I don't have a doser, I use the bottle cap and that makes sure I limit my consumption.'

WHAT??!! JD is a drink for rock musicians (I was one for years), alcoholics-or-nearly (I almost became one), rebels (always been one), motorbikers (never ridden one), and various other categories of us, the marginals who make this otherwise sad world go round, and I want it to stay that way!!

This 'Slow Drinking' gimmick may be okay for soft drink drinkers of girly drinks like Martini and Bacardi - the campaign is the initiative of Martini-Bacardi France - but it has no place in a presentation box of Jack Daniel's. Worse, the French distinguish themselves once again as the world's most incompetent English users by mistakenly labelling Jack Daniel's as 'Jack Daniel'. How would they like it if Anglophones labelled champagne as 'shampain'? Roquefort as 'Rock Fort'?

Good lord, this civilised 'culturalisation' of JD is an absolute abomination. JD drinkers don't need to 'taste', or 'savour', or - worst of all - 'dose' JD. We need to drink it, lots of it, and without moderation. That's what it was invented for.

But now that the French have started drinking it they are setting a bad precedent for the future.

I swear that if ever they succeed in making people put ice in JD I'll stop drinking it.

After all, it's a strong drink, for rebels like me. So I'll have to find something even stronger if they make it socially acceptable.

Hmmm, now where's the number of the guy I know who makes Moonshine.....

(All that said, at almost 60 years old now I stopped at one drink.)

Excellent weekend to all...

Barroso is wrong to claim that France's 'exception culturelle' is "reactionary"

This man has appalling taste in ties

Francois Hollande, his socialist government and a sizeable chunk of press and public opinion are currently up in arms about inflammatory remarks made yesterday by European Commission president José Manuel Barroso. His comments expressed his displeasure at France's refusal to ratify a trans-Atlantic trade agreement between Europe and the United States unless its film, television and music industries were excluded from it. Barroso said;

"[The French stance is] part of this anti-globalization agenda that I consider completely reactionary. [...] Some say they belong to the left, but in fact they are culturally extremely reactionary."

He went on to argue that he believed in protecting cultural diversity but not in "sealing off Europe".

French government negotiating officials had insisted upon this exemption in the name of France's 'exception culturelle' - a protective measure for French cultural production that was introduced partially in an effort to stem what was and still is seen by French governments as being an unacceptably high percentage of foreign (read 'Anglophone') films, music and television series being shown and broadcast in France. Installing limit quotas on them in order to protect home-grown and European product was the method chosen, and this principle is backed up by legislation. The major clauses of the law stipulate that;

a) TV stations must pay a 3.2% tax upon their annual turnover of which three-quarters helps to finance French films.
b) TV stations must reserve 60% of their airtime to films for European films, 40% of which must be French.
c) Music radio stations must reserve 40% of their airtime for French-language songs.

Now what's so 'reactionary' about that? Anglophones don't tend to consider these issues much because almost all their media broadcast uniquely Anglophone cultural products, but in smaller, non-Anglophone countries, there is obviously good reason to support home-grown product in order to protect their cultural identity. And it's not as if foreign culture isn't allowed onto the market in France, which, if you turn the figures round, reserves 40% of TV time and 60% of radio time to other than European - and that, again, essentially means Anglophone - films and music. That may not be as much as the Hollywood moguls would like, but France nevertheless represents a substantial market for them. Anglophone documentaries and other non-film products also get their fair share of the remaining airtime, thus further increasing the total amount of Anglophone product. Then add non-European and Anglophone product - even if there isn't much of it - and you have a situation in which about half of all product is non-French. Isn't that enough?

And there's another factor which should be taken into account when analysing just how much France protects it's own culture to the detriment of that of others, and that is the difference between what the law theoretically says should be done and what is actually being done in the real world. The fact is that TV stations, radio stations and cinemas regularly feature a substantially higher percentage of Anglophone product than they should, but the authorities turn a blind eye to it. In other words, it's a safe bet to say that over half of all product diffused by French TV, cinema and radio isn't French.

No, that is not reactionary and Barroso is wrong.

Nicolas Sarkozy: the Ladder of Lies goes right to the top

A glass and a microphone with a man sitting behind them

It all started out as a rather banal story of a media-attractive formerly convicted and jailed corrupt businessman and erstwhile minister in a French government - nothing new there - called Bernard Tapie who got into a spat with a bank about the sale of one of his companies. He said they had ripped him off, and they denied it. Nothing new there either.

It was finally decided by an arbitral body appointed by Nicolas Sarkozy's government that Tapie was right and that therefore he would be given €405 million of taxpayers' money in compensation. That caused a minor stir at the time but, as is usual in France where the rich and influential are involved, it came to nothing, the years passed, and the affair was forgotten.

Last year however it emerged that then Economy Minister Christine Lagarde, in Sarkozy's government, had successfully demanded that the government and presidency intervene in his favour, an intervention, it is said, which led to Tapie getting his hands on the money. She denied it under questioning and is currently an assisted witness before a Parisian court, which thinks she may be lying.

Events have moved quickly since then. One of Tapie's lawyers and a political adviser to Lagarde were arrested recently on suspicion that they, and Tapie himself, had participated in meetings at the Elysée designed to perfect the strategy which would give him the money.

But why, you may ask, were those meetings ever held? After all, Tapie had been a socialist minister and he was dealing here with Sarkozy, his right-of-centre political antithesis. So what was the common interest?

The common interest, it now transpires, was that Tapie had promised his support for Sarkozy in the latter's efforts to be elected president in 2007 in return for his favourable intervention in his fight against the bank. And, once the deal agreed, Tapie did indeed support him, and had thus turned his political vest for money.

Sarkozy, Tapie, Lagarde and all the others denied that any such arrangement was made. Well, almost all the others. Because Lagarde's political advisor, already in custody, told investigators two days ago that Tapie had actively participated in the deal. He asserted moreover that Claude Guéant, Sarkozy's Chief of Staff at the Elysée, had also known about this operation and had participated in it. Guéant too denies it but the case has become so strong that he too is now under investigation, and Tapie shall not be far behind.

But most importantly however, Guéant, as head of the Elysée's administration and second only to Sarkozy, could not have been able to do this without Sarkozy's permission.

Which leads us to the top of the ladder. The President. Sarkozy. It is as plain as white on rice that this scam occured and that Sarkozy approved it. Do I have the proof? No. Of course not, in a country where it is almost impossible to gain access to the communications - email, letters, meetings, other documentation - which would be needed to prove it.

And that means that even if this scandal reaches Sarkozy, which it looks set to do, neither he nor any of the others will be found guilty of any malpractice. They will be aquitted without trial. Except, possibly, for Tapie's lawyer and Lagarde's political advisor, who may soon find themselves cast in the role of sacrificial lambs, scapegoats, and a sop to the French people in a shabby effort to be able to say that the rich and powerful are not immune from justice.

But they are immune, and the French know it. French democracy is extremely fragile compared to that of other comparable countries precisely because of the sheer amount of abuse its leaders are able to indulge themselves in without being made accountable either to the justice system or the public.

No wonder the French detest their political classes more than is the case anywhere else in Europe. The French elites are liars, thieves, opportunists, a back-scratching mafia, and I for one would be more than pleased to see the French people take to the streets to shout;

CA SUFFIT MAINTENANT!!

But they won't, because their demonstration time is already full of demos against economic measures which are eating away at their salaries due to the financial crisis. So it shall be business as usual.

The French - 'a revolutionary people'? - Laisse moi rire va.....

A law to limit the use of the term 'restaurant' to those which actually cook? Excellent idea!

My right ear and  left arm in a restaurant. The rest of me stayed at home

Just walk into any French restaurant and you will be amazed at the high quality of the delicious dishes being served. Succulent fresh fish, gorgeous desserts, delicious prawns, eating out in France is a genuine pleasu........

What!!?? Good grief, did I really write that rubbish?! I do beg your pardon, it must be the weather. Or my tax bill.

Unfortunately, the fact is that up to 50% of French restaurants don't actually prepare or cook all the food they serve. They just heat up frozen dishes such as pizza and serve vegetables straight from the tin, or, in the case of many desserts, serve mass-produced items such as tarts and chocolate cakes straight out of the box or, where applicable, the fridge or freezer. So how can it possibly be right that they are currently allowed to call themselves 'restaurants' in their names and on their facades and menus, just like those restaurants that can actually be bothered to cook fresh food?

This is bad news for tourists of course, because the outside of all restaurants in a given price range look roughly the same and I'll bet a pound to a penny that 90% of tourists wouldn't know a good average-priced restaurant which serves real food from a bad one which doesn't. Until they are served that is, by which time it's too late. Even locals and those of us foreigners who have lived here for years need to be very careful when choosing to go to a restaurant for the first time. The only sure way is to ask someone who has already visited the restaurant concerned, but this isn't always possible, and tourists, of course, can rarely benefit from knowing someone who will send them to a good restaurant.

Are restaurant guides of any help? Unfortunately not, unless you are looking at the high end of the market, or reading a specialist guide. They just list restaurants irrespective of the quality, unless they have a really bad reputation.

Which leads me to one man's laudable attempts to clean up the restaurant business and sort the wheat from the chaff.

The story begins with the scandal which saw horse meat being passed off as beef in mass-produced lasagnes and other products. Nobody was charged in this scandal, and the national outcry it caused prompted the government to do something about it. The job was given to Benoît Hamon, a Delegate Minister for the Social and Solidarity Economy. He has drawn up a law proposal which would drastically increase the controls carried out within the food business and multiply sanctions for frauders by a factor of eight. This law is almost certain to be voted.

Now though a UMP deputy, Daniel Fasquelle, has proposed an amendment to it which would reserve the right to use the term 'restaurant' uniquely for establishments which prepare and serve fresh food. There would be exceptions of course - after all, it would be unrealistic to expect all restaurants to make food items such as cheese, bread and ice cream from scratch, although I do know some restaurants which do make their own bread or ice cream. What an excellent idea!

Many tourists come here with the expectation that food will be good everywhere, but they are often sadly disappointed with the fare on offer. This is not good for the country's image as a temple of gastronomical excellence. This amendment however would make it easier for them - and locals - to better know what they are letting themselves in for when they go into a restaurant. It would also reduce fraudulent practices in some restaurants, which pass mass-produced ingredients off as the real thing.

Some restaurant owners and professional bodies which represent them are against this proposal, saying that it would lead to severe job losses in the industry. But they are wrong, as the boulangerie business will attest.

It was extremely difficult to find a good boulangerie in France until 1995, when a law was passed which reserved the right to use the appellation 'boulangerie' uniquely for those bakers who actually produce their own dough on the premises. This has made things somewhat easier, although tourists and even some locals still have trouble knowing what a good boulangerie is so there is room for improvement. More importantly, it has saved the livelihoods of many bakers who were facing unfair competition from establishments such as those which merely bake products which have been factory-prepared, and the move forced producers of finished baker's products and pre-formed products to improve the quality of their offer, as real boulangeries were regaining the public's confidence and thus market share. (Incidentally, for those interested in the subject of finding good bread in France I wrote a detailed entry on it which you can read here. It's a must-read for tourists.)

France relies on the reputation of its restaurants and all things culinary, but that reputation has taken a serious battering over the last 25 years due to complacency, a lack of imagination when it comes to change which would be better suited to new tastes, and fraudulent practices. And as if that weren't enough, even France's ability to win international awards for food-related products and wine has diminished sharply. There was a time when the French would win a large majority of these awards, but these days they are majoritarily won by people and products from other countries. Did you know, for example, that this year's world cheese championship was won by a japanese lady and her cheeses?

The reputation of France's food and drink industry needs all the legislation and changes in mentality it can get if it is to improve, and the adoption of Daniel Fasquelle's proposed amendment would help not only the restaurant business, it would help to bolster France's reputation for excellence when it comes to food and drink too.