Bye bye Delphine Batho and the end of government gender parity

Well wasn't that a brave decision by the French president François Hollande and his prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault?

Sacking the ecology and energy minister Delphine Batho, because she dared to criticise departmental cuts in next year's budget - seven per cent in a sector to which the governnment is supposedly politically committed.

Delphine Batho (screenshot from RTL interview)

Bravo M le President and M. le Prime Minister.

You've proven yourselves to be well in control of the situation

Just as you were when former budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac lied to you, parliament and the media about his financial holdings abroad and tax fraud allegations.

How long did it take you get rid of of him?

Weeks.

You were the masters of inaction.

Just as you were when the ever-effective and "maverick" minister for industrial renewal Arnaud Montebourg was quoted as having criticised Ayrault and accusing him of running the government as though it were a municipal council with that infamous, "Tu fais chier la terre entière avec ton aéroport de Notre-Dame-des-Landes, tu gères la France comme le conseil municipal de Nantes."

What happened?

Ayrault confirmed what had been said and then did...diddly squat.

Your interior minister Manuel Valls - not exactly reticent about his ambitions to replace Ayrault at some point - decided it was time to say what he thought, namely that if he had been prime minister he would have sacked Montebourg.

What was your reaction?

Silence.

And when housing minister (and leading Green party member) Cécile Duflot criticised Valls' treatment of the Roma, how did you react?

By doing nothing, apart from letting Ayrault call a meeting to smooth over differences.

Ah yes, but Montebourg and Valls both have some standing in the party don't they.?

And they were, M Hollande, your opponents in the first round of primaries to choose the Socialist party candidate in the 2012 presidential elections which you finally won.

Both men and Duflot are heavyweight "untouchables". You need them apparently.

Not so Batho, plucked from almost nowhere and with very few allies - not even her former mentor Ségolène Royal who had openly criticised her in recent weeks.

An easy target and one providing you with the opportunity to flex your presidential and prime ministerial muscles to show just how in charge you both are...NOT.

Oh yes and just to reinforce how unwavering you are to your professed principles, who did you appoint to replace Batho?

Philippe Martin - a man, just in case you needed reminding. Thereby ensuring there was no longer gender parity within the government.

But of course, there aren't enough women around to fill the post are there?

Bravo

Such consistent and firm leadership.


Delphine Batho : "Le budget 2014 est mauvais" par rtl-fr

The perks of working for EDF or "how heating a swimming pool is cheaper than boiling an egg"

"The real public service scandals" was a recent 40-page pullout in the weekly magazine Marianne, in which some light was shed on a number of issues usually under-reported (or largely ignored) by the mainstream media in France.

Schools, hospitals, the police, La Poste, SNCF and others were treated to a pretty thorough analysis, as was one of the nation's "international stars", the utility giant Électricité de France.

It makes fascinating reading.

Electricity prices for households in France are among the lowest in the European Union, but that could well change over the coming few years with a cumulative hike of around 30 per cent forecast by 2017.

Great!

While the rest of France will have to live with the increase, employees - past and present - of EDF, essentially a "public" company, will retain some level of protection.

Yes EDF is still a "public" company.

Although it pretty much operates to all intents and purposes as what might be perceived a "private" company or "limited liability corporation", the state still retains almost 85 per cent ownership.

Anyway, that's rather an aside.

Or is it?

Because wielding so much potential political influence, surely successive governments (and not just the current one) should at least have tried to put an end to a practice which no longer seems to be warranted but also seems downright illogical and not to say unreasonable: the perks enjoyed by the company and its employees.

Since 1946 the company's 300,000 current and retired employees have benefitted from privileges that might have been equitable when introduced but surely now lack credibility.

There is for example the 90 per cent reduction in the amount they pay for each kilowatt-hour of electricity.

Put another way, as it was in a report from the Cour des comptes or Court of auditors in February 2013, EDF employees pay a price per kilowatt-hour that's 16 times less than the average cost to the public.

Confusing figures perhaps but they all add up.

And there's more.

EDF employees don't just pay lower prices for electricity for their main residences.

Oh no.

If they're lucky enough to own a holiday home, the same benefits apply. And even apparently when they rent a house for a couple of weeks while on vacation.

That annual €74 subcription charge? Waived.

In the end, says Marianne, "at such prices, heating a swimming pool (for EDF employees of course) works out less expensive than boiling an egg (would do for everyone else).

But for justification as to why such advantages have remained at current levels since 1951 for electricity and 1962 for gas (yes, for historical reasons employees at GDF-Suez are also treated as a special case) union bigwig at Confédération française démocratique du travail (French Democratic Confederation of Labour, CFDT) Dominique Bousquebaud,  has the following explanation.

Try not to choke as you read.

"The system compensates for the fact that the salaries in the public sector are lower than those in the private and it helps attract better qualified workers," he says.

"It's a way today to compensate for the lack of profit-sharing that can be found at a high level in all major private companies."

Except, once again as Marianne points out, the Cour des comptes says that in fact salaries at EDF are slightly higher than in the equivalent private sector.

There again what does the country's body for auditing public institutions know?

If you want to read more about the tax breaks, the money lost to social security and how successive government have done little or nothing to alter the privileged status of EDF and its employees, try getting your mitts on the May 11-17 copy of Marianne.

Happy reading.

Now does anyone know of an opening at EDF?

A French melon-powered power plant

Do you like melons? Tasty aren't they?

Sweet when ripe, and refreshing.

North American "cantaloupes" (from Wikipedia, USDA photo by Scott Bauer. Image Number K7355-11.)

You've got to be careful about storing them though because apparently their pungent pong can permeate other food and you've probably also noticed how their remains can stink out a kitchen when left in the bin.

Something to do with the amount of methane melons produce when they decompose - just like all fruit really.

The company Boyer S.A Philibon in the southwestern département of Tarn et Garonne knows all about that.

It's one of France's biggest producers and packers of melons and its processing station is in the town of Moissac.

But Boyer S.A also has a huge waste problem in the shape of rotten melons - 1,800 tonnes of them annually.

So earlier this year it called in the experts, turning to the Belgian-based company GreenWatt, a specialist in building, designing and maintaining biogas plants and the fruits (ouch) of the two companies collaboration will be unveiled on Friday.

That's when France's first biogas plant or anaerobic digester will open.

And it'll apparently be able to produce enough hot water for the whole of the Boyer S.A site as well as the equivalent of electricity for 150 homes which it'll sell back to the country's largest utility company Électricité de France.

Not bad going for a load of mouldy fruit, and very green to boot.

So forget nuclear, coal, hydro-electric, thermal, wind and solar power.

The future is melon - well at least as far as Boyer S.A is concerned.

EDF's final demand for zero euros - "pay up or risk being cut off"

Électricité de France, or EDF as it seems to prefer being called, might well be the world's largest utility company and its British subsidiary truly proud to be "powering the London 2012 Games" but that doesn't prevent it from making a complete arse of itself back home in France.

(screenshot from EDF commercial)

Yes, no matter how international it might be hiding behind those initials, EDF is, at its core, French.

And that means adding a totally new dimension to the way in which client relations are defined and conducted.

After all in France the customer is only sometimes king.

Consider the case of Jérémy Chassagne.

He lives with his girlfriend in the southwest of France, not far from the village of Roaillan in a house which the regional daily Sud Ouest describes as being "lost in the middle of vineyards."

It's in an area famous for its Graves Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) wines and well worth a visit, but that's another matter entirely.

Chassagne pays his bills regularly but when the most recent one from EDF plopped through his letterbox he and his girlfriend were away and, as he told the paper, he was a little late in sending the cheque.

That meant of course that EDF sent him a reminder with the standard "request to disregard this letter if payment has already been made."

As it was obvious to Chassagne that the two letters had crossed in the post, that's exactly what he did.

All well and good, except last week he received a final demand from EDF telling him to pay his bill or risk being cut off.

How exactly he is supposed to pay though, has left him in something of a quandary.

You see, it's obvious from the amount at the end of the letter that EDF has already received his cheque, because the final demand is for precisely €0.

That's right, nothing, nada, niente or rien if you like.

"It's crazy and we're not sure what to do," he told the paper.

"We could wait and see whether EDF actually follows through with its threat to cut us off but that would probably mean we would have to pay a charge to be reconnected," he continued.

"Or we could send a cheque for €0 which is what my father (a retired EDF employee who obviously knows what he's talking about) advised us to do."

He's still waiting to hear again from EDF.