Obesity

This continues on the topic of obesity in connexion with Covid 19, relevant almost equally to France and the UK. Covid 19 has revealed social inequalities: the less well-off and black and ethnic minority people are more likely to suffer more severe forms of the disease and even die of it.  Because obesity affects these groups …

The 17th October 1961

The 17 October 1961 is the date of a set of demonstrations of Algerians in Paris, against the imposition of a curfew. Police reaction was extremely violent, many Algerians were killed and injured, 14 000 were arrested and taken to internment centres where more deaths and injuries occurred.   The state news next morning only made …

Teaching morality in schools in France

Teaching morality in schools in France. The government is reintroducing the teaching of morality in schools, after it was abolished post 1968. Schools will teach morality to children from the age of 5. The official programme is on the Ministry of Education website, and, strangely, the second document in a short list of supporting literature …

Review of ‘The Riom Trial’ By Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Tissier

Review of ‘The Riom Trial’ By Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Tissier Maître des Requêtes au Conseil d’Etat Author of “The Government of Vichy” George Harrap and Co. London 1942. In February 1942 Vichy gave the world a strange spectacle, that of a country discussing in public the reasons for its occupation by a foreign power. And the …

Froggy : American bases back in France ?

American bases back in France? The French Cabinet of ministers has agreed to put forward a bill concerning NATO. It would authorise an agreement that France is part of the ‘Protocol on the Statute of NATO military headquarters.’ It seems that passing this bill would enable NATO bases to be present once more on French …

Froggy : The NHS (Reinstatement) Bill

The NHS (Reinstatement) Bill The dismantling of the NHS in Britain has advanced at such a rate that a bill, put forward by Allyson Pollock and Peter Roderick, will be discussed in Parliament on 11 March to ‘Reinstate the NHS’. One example of the NHS disappearing into the private sector without anyone noticing is the …

Simone Weil’s Rejection of the Enlightenment

Simone Weil’s rejection of the enlightenment  Simone Weil (1909-1943) is a French philosopher and mystic. At the Ecole Normale Supérieure she was the contemporary of Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre. She was a brilliant Hellenist, translating from the classics without the text, as she knew the text by heart, according to another contemporary of hers, …

Charlie Hebdo and the Euro

Charlie Hebdo and the Euro The book “Qui est Charlie?” by Emmanuel Todd has just been translated into English. Todd was librarian and is now research associate at the French National Institute for Demographic Research. His new book caused a great scandal when it came out in France in May 2015, after the huge demonstration …

Mitterrand and Vichy

Une Jeunesse Française François Mitterrand, 1934-1947 (A French Upbringing and Youth, François Mitterrand, 1934-1947) By Pierre Péan Fayard, 1994 What was Vichy? France was thrashed militarily in 1940 by Germany; at the end of May, Holland and Belgium had capitulated; the British had left the field of battle and repatriated their ten divisions. On 14 …