Claude Guéant's unsurprising appeal to far right voters in French presidential election

It can hardly have been anything more than a coincidence of course.

Just a day after the leader of the far right Front National (FN), Marine Le Pen, announced that she only needed 48 more signatures to be guaranteed being able to stand in the first round of the presidential elections, up pipes interior minister Claude Guéant.

Claude Guéant (screenshot from France 3 report)

He can always be relied on to appeal to voters who might be considering switching allegiances from the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, Union for a Popular Movement,UMP) party of Nicolas Sarkozy for Le Pen's FN.

He has done it in the past during interviews in which he has said the French don't feel at home in their own country, or France doesn't need foreign bricklayers and the number of Moslems in this country causes problems.

And on Friday he took up a theme recently introduced by La Pen who claimed there was a cover-up over the quantity of halal meat being distributed in the Paris region without consumers being aware.

Guéant gave the subject his own special but equally xenophobic touch by linking it to one of the policies put forward by the Socialist party's candidate François Hollande - giving foreigners (ie non-EU citizens resident in France) the right to vote.

"Giving foreigners the vote is a way of opening the door to communalism (the idea of there being a stronger loyalty to an ethnic group rather than society as a whole)," he said during a speech in the eastern French city of Nancy.

"We don't want foreigners becoming elected local councillors and then making halal meat obligatory in workplace canteens or public swimming pools being segregated according to sex," he continued.

"Foreigners must accept our rules, it's up to them to adapt. Everyone knows if we have fewer immigrants, things will be better."

Yes, it was a government minister speaking!



Little wonder that in the past Le Pen has, not-so jokingly perhaps, offered him honorary membership of her party.

Guéant was of course laying out a policy direction clearly designed to appeal to Le Pen voters and just as importantly he was preparing the ground for extreme views to become more acceptably mainstream to members of his own party.

Because guess what?

On Saturday during a campaign rally in Bordeaux, some of those very themes were taken up as part of a speech given by Nicolas Sarkozy, especially the fear of the power (non EU) foreigners would wield if given the vote

And his words fairly echoed those of the interior minister.

"It would amount to an attack on the Republic by opening the door to communalism (there's that word again)," he said.

"And it would put mayors under the threat of blackmail of communalism."



Do you think the UMP campaign agenda is being defined by Le Pen?

Just a thought.

Lesbian couple beat France's same-sex marriage ban

Same-sex marriage isn't allowed in France but a lesbian couple managed to tie the knot on Saturday all the same.

Newlyweds Stéphanie (left) and Elise (screenshot from BFM TV)

The two women were allowed to say "I do" in a civil ceremony at the Town Hall in the eastern city of Nancy because, legally, one of them is still a man.

As the free daily 20 minutes reports Stéphanie Nicot was actually born Stéphane and although the 59-year-old has undergone a sex change she has refused to provide the documentation to the French authorities to have her gender changed on the register of births, marriages and deaths.

That meant Nancy's deputy mayor, Olivier Husson, was able to perform a ceremony between Stéphanie and her 27-year-old partner Elise that was in his words "both respectful and legal".

"As required by law we checked the status of both partners," he told the all-news channel i>Télé.

"The records showed that the application to marry had been made by a man and a woman," he continued.

"The procureur de la Republique (district attorney's office or public prosecutor) - whose permission was needed - didn't object and so the marriage was allowed to go ahead."

The apparent contradiction of a law which doesn't recognise same-sex marriages but which allowed Saturday's marriage to take place wasn't lost on Nicot, as she told a press conference afterwards.

"Paradoxically in discriminating against us the system has also granted us the most beautiful of gifts," she said.

"The situation is a little crazy but it also serves as a symbol for all the millions of gays and lesbians in France who would like to have the same right (to marry)."

In January France's constitutional council upheld a ban on same-sex marriage ruling that it was "in keeping with the constitution" and that decision means that only parliament can change the law.

Later this week the opposition Socialist party will take advantage of parliamentary time reserved for private members' bills to debate same-sex marriage in the National Assembly.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No...it's a boar - loose in a shopping centre

Imagine you mosey on down to the local shopping centre for a spot of retail therapy, and while you're there, casually minding your own business, all hell breaks loose as an unexpected and certainly uninvited visitor puts in an appearance - a boar.

The boar in the hairdressers (screenshot from France 2 television report)

For shoppers at a mall in the eastern French town of Frouard near the city of Nancy last week, that was exactly what happened.

Mid-afternoon last Tuesday the animal - reportedly weighing in at around 60 kilogrammes - caused panic among shoppers as it made its way along the aisles of a supermarket for several minutes.

"We were about to evacuate the store but the animal thankfully left without harming anyone," Grégory Gobin, the head of security, told TF1 news.

It then made its way to a nearby hairdressers whose clientele quickly fled allowing security guards to close the doors and lock the animal inside.

"It ripped apart the salon, climbed into the basins and was clearly distressed," Gobin said.

And an amateur video shows how the boar panicked in a scene that was surely as pathetic - in the true sense of the word - as much as it was comical of a wild animal trapped and terrified.

A vet was able to tranquilise the animal before it caused any more damage and it was removed and later destroyed.

France's boar population has risen rapidly in recent years. Statistics released in 2008 put their number at more than one million, compared with 250,000 in 1998.

A nationwide scheme was launched in 2009 to try to keep their numbers in check by increasing the number of hunting licences issued.