Saturday, June 11, 2011

11 June 2011: News of the day

Reading Le Parisien...

Top story: the start of individual personal car rental. You can rent out your own car to other drivers.

Lagarde is still leading in the race to run the IMF, despite the fact that she is certain to be charged with abuse of power in the context of the Tapie case. I really wonder why the French (and Europeans) are pushing her. Two French heads having to resign for charges of illegal actions will be a bit much.

Her new rival, Agustin Cartens, is just too fat. A caricature of the fat cat banker. (There's a blog article making the rounds on this issue.) And I say this as an obese person.

The DSK affair has brought to light another embarrassment for the Socialists. One of their Senators, also mayor of a town near Paris, has been convicted for sexual assault, yet remains a member of the party. Why no action on this?

In a sidebar to an article about apartment concierges, we learn they don't want to be called "concierges", but rather "gardien(ne)s". "Concierge" has a connotation of a nosy gossip. In English, of course, it's much classier: the notion of high-quality individualized service, via the hotel business.


The Comédie Française will be closed for a retrofit for one year. So a temporary theater is being built between the colonnades of the Palais Royal. One might think that finding temporary host theaters for the troup would be a better solution, given how many public theaters are more often empty than not. And as it turns out, they will be performing some productsion at Le 104 and the Grand Palais.

The public inquiry into the renovation project for the place de la Répubique is open, and Le Parisien does a comparison between the city's project and a stupid counter project. The city's project is drastic, closing off one side of the square to cars, along with the adjoining access street, whereas the counter project doesn't change very much. The official project offers some interesting possibilities for using the place, which is pretty grim today, with lots of space for cars, and little space for pedestrians.

A big article on the first same-sex pairs DanceSport competition, part of our FSGL Tournoi international de Paris. This is just about the first time Le Parisien (or any mainstream paper) has shown an interest in the TIP. (The paper has done stories about the Gais Musette being refused accommodation for a workshop.)

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