Jean-Pierre who?

Veteran journalist Jean-Pierre Elkabbach is pretty well known to the French.

He has been around for seemingly donkey's years and has held several high profile posts in the French media including president of France Télévisions (December 1993 - June 1996), president of the parliamentary TV channel Public Sénat (December 1999 - April 2009) and directeur général (April 2005) and later president (until June 2008) of Europe 1 radio.

At 75 years of age, Elkabbach is still going strong and shows no signs of losing his tenacity and combativity as a journalist.

He currently has two programmes on Europe 1.

Firstly there's the Sunday morning "Le Grand Rendez-vous" in which he heads a team of four journalists who grill (in the nicest possible manner of course because this, after all, is France) an invited guest (usually, but not always, a politician) on the most pressing matters of the day or the past week.

And then there's his daily 10-minute slot starting at around 8.20 am on the station's morning show when he gets to go head-to-head with a "mover and a shaker" - again most often a politician.

The list of his most recent guests reads like a who's who of the French political stage: Ségolène Royal (no introductions necessary), Laurence Parisot (the still-head, but not for much longer, of the French employers' union MEDEF), the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso (all right so he's not exactly French) and the interior minister Manuel Valls are just a few of those who've faced Elkabbach so far this month.

On Tuesday it was the turn of Delphine Batho, France's (deep breath please) minister of ecology, sustainable development, and energy.

Jean-Pierre Elkabbach and Delphine Batho (screenshot Europe 1 radio)

Now Batho doesn't have a huge amount of experience of politics at a national level. Well she wouldn't really, as she's still only 40.

And although she has been an elected member of parliament since 2007 (taking over incidentally the seat previously held by Royal) her current job is her first big one in government.

That's unless you count the couple of weeks she spent as a junior minister in the justice ministry before the prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault had a mini reshuffle shortly after June 2012 parliamentary elections.

Perhaps then, it was that lack of experience that had Batho flummoxed on Tuesday morning.

There again, maybe she had been out partying the previous working-non-working public holiday mess that is  lundi de Pentecôte.

Or it could just have been one of those moments that happens to all of us from time to time, because Batho didn't seem to be able to figure out who exactly was facing her in the studio.

As you can hear from the exchange in the accompanying video, she seemed convinced at times, that interviewing her was another Jean-Pierre - the Socialist party politician, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a former minister under both François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac and one year younger (as if it had anything to do with it) than his, on this occasion, apparently first-named mix-up, Elkabbach.

"Global warming is no longer speculation Jean-Pierre Chevènement, it's now a fact to be witnessed in several countries," said Batho.

"Who is Jean-Pierre Chevènement," asked Elkabbach, eliciting an immediate apology and correction from Batho.

Only for exactly the same thing to happen to her moments later.

Elkabbach gave as good as he got, deliberately borrowing names of ministers present (that of health, Marisol Touraine) and past (budget and higher education, Valérie Pécresse) to come up with two new "Delphines" during the course of the interview.

The pair seemed to enjoy the joshing around, but the initial confusion was most probably down to that irritating habit journalists and those being interviewed (in France) have of repeating the name of the person they're talking to several times throughout a conversation.

It's either a confrontational technique or one meant to play for time or avoid the pitfall of forgetting the other person's name (in which case, it doesn't always work), but how much easier and more entertaining it might be, if they just all called each other "darling" instead - well just for one day at least.


Delphine Batho confond Jean-Pierre Elkabbach et... par LeLab_E1

An alliance between the UMP and Front National - a sign of things to come?

Next year the French - and many foreign residents registered in France, mainly EU citizens - will have the chance to go to the polls here in the country's municipal elections.

They'll be choosing the composition of local councils and, as a consequence, who'll be their mayor for the next six years.

Even though turnout might not be as high as it traditionally is for presidential and parliamentary elections, the chances are that (going on past results) a fair number of people will be exercising their democratic right at the ballot boxes.

And that inevitably means the results will be perceived by many as a sort of mid-term test for the French president, François Hollande, the government and the Socialist party.

That's not all of course. The performance of the other parties will also be scrutinised.

Will the opposition centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a popular movement, UMP) finally be able to smooth over its internal differences and actually "win" an election?

How will the far-right Front National (FN) fare under its leader Marine Le Pen?

Will Jean-Luc Mélanchon's 180,000-strong (his figures - 30,000 according to the police) May 5 demonstration gather momentum to become a ballot box protest vote?

Questions, questions, questions.

Doubtless many will be asked and answered in different ways before, during and after the elections depending on the political spin.

One thing's for sure, with over 36,000 mayors to be elected up and down the country, party machines will have a tough job ensuring local activists toe the line.

That's already happening, with the UMP being forced to suspend one of its members for contravening party policy.

Arnaud Cléré
(screenshot France 3 television)

Arnaud Cléré is, or rather was until Monday, a member of the party in the town of Gamaches in the northern département of Somme.

He doesn't actually hold elected office, but wants to. And last week he announced he would be standing in next year's local elections on a list which also contained members of the FN.

It seems that for the 34-year-old, the proverbial "end justifies the means" - winning at any cost.

"It's all about strategy," he said.

"Gamaches has been in the hands of the communists or socialists for the past 30 years," he continued.

"There's no shame in an alliance with the FN...especially if it helps bring the right to power."

Not surprisingly perhaps Cléré's membership of the UMP has been suspended in line with party policy which the UMP leader Jean-François Copé reiterated in a recent speech in Nice insisting that the Front National was "an extremist party" and there would be "no alliance with that party".

But given the current political, economic and social climate in France, does anyone out there have the sense that Cléré's "political and tactical error" as it was decribed by UMP party officials, might be perceived as something else and instead mark a sign of things to come?

Your Tweet on Angelina Jolie was not funny Madame Boutin

Some people shouldn't be allowed anywhere near Twitter.

Or there again perhaps they should be encouraged as it shows just how insensitive and out of touch they can be.

Take the case of Christine Boutin for example.

Boutin was housing minister (for a while, until being unceremoniously fired) under Nicolas Sarkozy.

But she's perhaps better known for being the leader of centre-right Parti chrétien-démocrate (Christian democratic party, PCD) and a fervent opponent of same-sex marriage just as she was of the bill to allow civil union, the Pacte civil de solidarité or PACS, between two adults regardless of their sex when it was making its way through parliament in 1999).

Remember her "malaise" and indignation after she was one of the protesters sprayed with tear gas at a "Manif our tous" demonstration in Paris back in March?



Well as usual Boutin has been tweeting this week but one in particular has surely revealed her for what she truly is... Choose whatever word you wish to describe her.

Boutin's tweet came in a response to an article in Le Nouvel Observateur's Le Plus.
about Angelina Jolie's Op-Ed "My Medical Choice" in the New York Times in which the actress wrote about her double mastectomy to reduce her chances of getting breast cancer.

Le Plus tweeted its piece saying Jolie was sending out "a message of hope for women."

Unfortunately Boutin didn't quite seem to think along the same lines - or at least hadn't bothered to read either Le Plus or Jolie's original Op-Ed because she responded, clearly without engaging her brain.

And in a manner which displayed her real compassion and sensitivity Boutin wrote, "Pour ressembler aux hommes ? Rire ! Si ce n'était triste à pleurer".

screenshot Twitter

Bravo Madame Boutin. Congratulations on your "sense of humour".

Boutin deleted the tweet, but not before a fair number of Internet users had responded both on Twitter and her Facebook page, the latter becoming the target of a "poop" attack with appropriately-shaped smileys being left after every new post.

screenshot Facebook