Monday
Our puppets. This role of head to service slaps, he cultivates it with an undeniable talent. When he pushed the door of the Palais Bourbon last June, the deputy LFI Louis Boyard, 22, had no intention of immersing himself in legislative work, only the ambition to get noticed. It succeeded. By throwing on TikTok a challenge encouraging young people to block high schools and universities, the youngest member of the Assembly pushes the cursor of provocation a little further. The cries of outrage that burst from all sides cause the expected effect: to talk regarding this retarded teenager whose only feat of arms had so far been to be insulted by Cyril Hanouna. In the casting error category, the young Boyard is not the only one at LFI. The elected Marseille Sébastien Delogu shouts his “disgust” for his function because of the “conflicts of interest” within the hemicycle. “It is quite possible that I resign from my functions,” he confides. Chick! The Assembly needs deputies, not puppets.
Mardi
Dupond-Moretti, the asset become ball and chain. It was the most spectacular take of the first Castex government. A star of the bar, charismatic and popular, propelled to the head of the Ministry of Justice. If he swapped from the first day his lawyer’s dress and his open shirts for the rigor suit and tie, abandoned the Harley for company cars with smoked windows, Éric Dupond-Moretti did not leave his freedom. tone in the Place Vendôme cloakroom.
His arms of honor in the hemicycle are those of a flayed alive who might not bear to see his probity called into question by the boss of the Republican deputies. It is, however, the game of politics, that of the great circus of the Assembly in which this type of skid has all the less its place that it comes from a minister. Wanting to clear his honor, Acquittator was put out of play. An asset of the government, darling of the president, become a ball and chain. For how much longer ?
Wednesday
Raid on the snuff. This is the scenario of a delirious TV series, halfway between Narcos and the Deschiens, broadcast in 2017 on OCS. In Holly Weed, the life of a French village is turned upside down by the arrival of bags of cannabis on its shores. A hoard that drives everyone crazy, from the grocer to the priest. In Réville, in Manche, the chief magistrate and the man of the Church have kept a cool head, but have been observing a strange ballet for a few days.
As in the series, kilos of cocaine wash up on the beaches, attracting the greed of professional traffickers in large sedans and amateur dealers in scooters. Some do not hesitate to knock on the doors of local residents, offering up to 20,000 euros per bundle of drugs. In this village now squared by the gendarmes, the white tide has already carried more than two tons of cocaine and given birth to a new category of visitors: drug tourists.
THURSDAY
France in the red. “The situation of our public finances is one of the worst in the European Union. This weakens us”. This alarmist statement does not come from a fierce opponent of Emmanuel Macron, but from the president of the very serious Court of Auditors. With a debt of around 111% of gross domestic product and a public deficit of 5% instead of the 3% required by Europe, France’s finances are in the red, a scarlet trend.
To reverse the situation, the government is counting, among other things, on the pension reform, the motivations of which are above all budgetary. The ministers hide it less and less: it is a question both of giving pledges to Europe, but also of reassuring the financial markets and the rating agencies. Given the turn of events, it is far from over.
Friday
Revenge of the Bookstores. On this day of “Quarter of an hour national reading” during which the French are invited to give themselves fifteen minutes to read, the news puts balm in the heart. Last year, bookstore creations reached a record level in France. According to the National Book Center, 142 new shops have opened in France.
It is on the Atlantic seaboard and in the south of the country that bookstores flourish the most. The trend is not limited to large cities, but also concerns towns with fewer than 15,000 inhabitants (one in two new bookstores) and even towns with fewer than 5,000 souls (one in four). For bookstores, wrongly considered as “non-essential businesses” during confinement, this is one hell of a revenge.
SATURDAY
The Canard ducked. Both investigative book and indictment, Dear Duck lands a hell of a blow in the wing of the most feared weekly in France. Originally, with two of his colleagues, revelations regarding François Fillon in 2017, Christophe Nobili delivers the fruit of his discoveries in his own journal. Champion of exemplary behavior and willing to give lessons, the Chained Duck also had her Penelope! The wife of a designer, paid for years without delivering any work, for a total of 3 million euros.
Christophe Nobili’s eloquent story also lifts the veil on the dark side of the Canard : opaque management, paternalistic management and cult of secrecy. An edifying picture (but without an ounce of contradiction) painted by a journalist still employed by the weekly. A lame duck now union representative who enjoys the status of whistleblower during the investigation launched by the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office on this “Pénélopegate” in the very enclosure of the palmipede.
> Dear Duck, by Christophe Nobili, JC Lattès, 252 pages, 20 euros.
