Watch this space

It has been a few weeks now since Nicolas Sarkozy has made it to the Presidential Palace.

The Unions immediately made the predictable early warning shots across the bow like ‘touch anything like our super early retirement or gold pensions and you’ll be for it’, but he didn’t bite. This guy is going to be one to watch. Whereas Margaret Thatcher took the way too powerful British Coal Miners unions head-on in a ‘we’re gonna to see who runs this country’ fight to the death, N.S. I feel is using a different tack and is going to out-manoeuvre them. He’s cute and I feel he’s going to leave them flat-footed.

This guy is like the Energizer bunny with a computer for a brain. He’s already got his ministry lined up including strategic centrist placements to defuse the Socialists whose pitiful rallying cry is now reduced to ‘join us - not because we have any real policies, but just because we want to try to block this person (who quite convincingly beat us) out of spite’.

I think the French people realise that the Socialists were still offering more of the same tired old formula which hadn’t worked in the past (and they had many years to prove it did), and that something new is needed. The GDP has slipped in ten years from 7th in the world to 17th! Clearly something is wrong and more ‘regulations’ (there are already volumes as thick as telephone books full of them) are not the answer!

There’s talk of lowering corporate taxes to encourage corporate investment and stop the transfer of head-offices (and profits) to European tax havens (Luxembourg, Switzerland, etc.). There’s talk of loosening the labour laws so bosses can hire people without being forced by the state to be ‘married’ to them ‘til death do us part’. There’s talk of laws to provide a minimum service level for all state utilities and stop the endless annual public service strikes. (It is a common joke in Europe that May and school holidays is when the Airlines/Trains/Air-traffic controllers/Students etc., go on strike). It's an annual event that you can set your watch by. Each airline has it's own nickname in the industry - British Airways or 'B.A'. is known as 'bloody awful' and the national carrier here it's 'Air France - take a chance'. There are a lot of good things in France, but the Unions are not one of them and have held this country to ransom for far too long.

As for Franco/U.S. relations, I think both sides need to pull their heads in on that one and get past the silly ' Freedom Fries' era slinging match and work together on what they do agree about.

There’s talk about all the right issues and all the right ideas to do something about them. Let’s just hope that unlike his predecessor, he won't be the first one to blink. It’s going to get interesting…