Vive la présidente!

On Sunday, we French will be going to the first round of the polls of the presidential election.  As many of my readers will be aware, the candidate Bilal and I view most favourably (remembering that none of them are a perfect match to us) is Marine Le Pen.

Bilal thinks her niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (Marine's niece) is a "well buff wifey", though he views her as being less attractive than me and therefore doesn't look at her with lust, MDR.  He and I agree it is nice that we French have relatively nice-looking female politicians than the frumpy and dowdy ones on the other side of the English Channel.  Theresa May isn't the worst, but she was at best plain in her youth, as she is today.  Bilal notes that Marine Le Pen was reasonably "buff" in her youth, even if she is overweight (by French standards, but not by British standards, MDR).  Though there are many things Bilal and I like about the United Kingdom (its rich Reformation history), the physical appearances of its female politicians (and women in general) leave a lot to be desired.  However, with Marine Le Pen being the only major female presidential candidate, there is not much to be said regarding comparisons of candidates' physical appearances.

Moving on to the less important issue of what their policies are, Bilal and I view Marine Le Pen's policies most favourably.  In the past 24 hours, there has been yet another terrorist attack in France, which seems to have had Islamic motivations.  Let us be clear, being a believer is never easy in any part of France: - very few sectors of French society are in favour of biblical teaching, given how much our nation regrettably did to persecute the Huguenots over the centuries.  However, La Savine has large numbers of Muslim migrants who tend to be very actively hostile to the faith: - Bilal struggled to deal with this and enjoys the less close-knit lifestyle that my penthouse apartment offers him, though he tries to keep up his work in the community of La Savine as much as possible.  Both of us would welcome the reduction in Islamic migration that Marine Le Pen promises, given the hostility our faith already suffers.

Marine Le Pen's economic policies are actually quite leftie.  She seems to be appealing to the stick-in-the-mud Luddite French workers who want to continue doing their jobs the way they have always done them and continue to enjoy ever-rising wages.  As Margaret Thatcher said, "No!  No!  No!": - constantly rising wages require constant innovation.  This means a constant search for efficiency and better products: - as a fashion magazine editor, I very much understand the importance of keeping ahead of the game.

I don't think Anglo-Saxon economic policies are necessarily good, as they centre around the principle of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing, as highlighted by a recent Financial Times article regarding Alstom's Belfort plant.  Continental European economies seem to work on providing long-term value, whereas Anglo-Saxon economics seems to be "slash-and-burn".  Given that France doesn't have the same silliness with shareholders demanding short-term cash flow, it is possible to focus on solutions providing long-term value.  The Financial Times article doesn't mention the fact that the order will enable SNCF to retire some fleets early and drastically reduce the number of different fleets in service.  In his work for "Le Trom de Marseille", Bilal only has to deal with one fleet (the MPM 76), but his railway industry acquaintances elsewhere tell him how annoying it is when you have to do an enormous amount of work to account for local fleet variations.  However, given their extreme ignorance about how a train operating company and rolling stock engineers work, it is easy for morons working at the Financial Times to criticise the TGV order.  I am generally supportive of Marine Le Pen's desire to avoid slash-and-burn economics.

France is actually doing very well with per-hour-productivity and I don't think increasing the working week would necessarily result in higher output (as Emmanuel Macron proposes), but its working practices are very staid.  Bilal often quotes the famous Neville Shute saying that says "an engineer is a man who can do for five shillings what any damned fool could do for a pound": - if we want to be richer, we need to be constantly on the lookout for improvements and unfortunately, Marine Le Pen's economic policies do very little to encourage this.  They seem to encourage the I-farm-cattle-because-my-father-did-and-his-father-before-him-did-and-his-father-before-him-did mentality.  In summary, I would prefer a candidate combining the best economic policies of both sides, but our presidential candidates are what they are.

All that said, I hope that next month, we will be chanting "Vive la présidente!"

Brexit

Given my connections to the UK and business interests, many readers have been asking me what I think about Brexit.  If I were a smoker, what I would do is just light up another Gauloise and say, "bof", because there are plenty of reasons why it is unlikely to have an effect on me, or at the very least, not worth worrying about.

I normally view Britain with derision, but sometimes, business expediency takes over.  My mother gave up her British citizenship, but I took it out prior to moving to the UK to start my career in the fashion industry.  The requirements are spelled out at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/483729/MN1_Guide_December_2015.pdf and there is an example that matches my case almost exactly in section 3(2).  As I had lived in Britain for just over three years, I am able to register my son as a British citizen (the paperwork is going through at present).  There are lots of things I hate about Britain (fat women, rubbish food, lack of TGVs etc), but with Brexit on the cards, I want to keep doors open for any children I have, should they need to live in the UK to start a career: - pretty much the only advantage the UK has is a vibrant jobs market compared with France.  Maybe a reversal of fortunes will have taken place when my children reach adulthood though?

That said, Brexit is unlikely to have much of an effect on me.  I expect there may be some additional admin if the UK leaves the single market: - many buyers of my magazine are English women looking to stylish French women for inspiration.  However, I am sure this will be surmountable with the right advice and legal representation.  The UK never looked set to join the Schengen zone anyway, so there is no reason to think travel arrangements will be affected, certainly with my British passport.

The narrow-minded approach of the EU and the requirement to form trade deals collectively means there may be more opportunities for me if Brexit takes place.  I am loathed to open an office in Britain, but it can be done if there is business expediency involved, tee hee!  One possible location for a London office is the vicinity of Old Street station, just two stops from St. Pancras International, as this area contains lots of silly bobo (bourgeois bohemian) trendy companies and is a magnet for silly bobo creative types.  Granted, I am creative, but I am down-to-earth as well as fashionable: - as I have repeatedly stated, though Frenchwomen follow fashion closely, their preference is still for timeless elegance over fads.  Poking fun at Zoë Williams, such an elegant and simple philosophy, it could almost be a French dessert: - la moitié, s'il vous plaît!  Anyway, jokes aside, if the UK can quickly conclude trade deals with other nations, it could make it much easier to enter new markets.

France has been famous in Europe for abusing the Common Agricultural Policy, with the end result being that British taxpayers subsidise French farmers who just don't want to modernise.  On one hand, I think there is some merit in that, given that they produce high-quality food, whose production processes cannot always be short-cutted, but on the other hand, I have to run my business efficiently like most people besides farmers and I don't enjoy much if any protection from market forces like the farmers do.  It was a nice arrangement, the British paying to subsidise our farmers so that we could eat properly for less and obviously, there will be some readjustment, but we will see how that goes.

I am aware of the political turmoil in the UK.  Jeremy Corbyn has lost the confidence of his MPs, David Cameron is resigning and I find it "bbbbbbbaffling!!!" that Nigel Farage is resigning, having won his victory at the referendum.  I am aware that Theresa May is the frontrunner at present to be David Cameron's replacement.  Not surprisingly, there is no talk about "girl power" this time around.  Some people would ask me if I think the next UK prime minister should be female in order to set an example for gender equality.  I would unequivocally say, "No!  No!  No!"

Foreseeing a likely question, Ségolène Royal and Marine Le Pen are two ladies with the opposite offerings.  Ségolène Royal is a lady with a fabulous appearance, but awful policies (socialism that has kept France in an economic quagmire for so long), Marine Le Pen is a lady who does herself a huge injustice by carrying large amounts of surplus pounds, but she has some policy ideas that may bring France out the doldrums.

All sorts of things could happen with Brexit and we will see how events transpire.