"Confessions" of a former French minister Laurent Wauquiez - well hardly

It's all well and good trying to project an image of "normality" (whatever that might be) but do we really want or need to know the sexual appetites and/or preferences of our elected representatives?

Well former minister and (perhaps) a potentially wannabe - along with many other members of his party, the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) - presidential candidate Laurent Wauquiez, would seem to think so.

Laurent Wauquiez (screenshot "On n'est pas couché" France 2, November 16, 2013)

The 38-year-old member of the National Assembly and (clearly he's not a politician who has a problem with the French habit of holding more than one elected office at a time) mayor of Le Puy-en-Velay has revealed...wait for it...that SHOCK he "likes sex" and HORROR "just like everybody else" has watched YouPorn from time to time.


The "disclosure" - if that's what it can be called - came during his appearance on Thierry Ardisson's "Salut Les Terriens" on Canal + on Saturday evening.

It has to be admitted that Ardisson's question was rather a leading one and came during the far-from-serious segment "Psy" following Wauquiez's party political broadcast on behalf of himself and others belonging to his centre-right "club" La Droite Sociale" whose goal is to "defend the interests of the middle classes."

SALUT LES TERRIENS du 07/12/13 - Part. 2 Avec Jean-Luc Reichmann et Laurent Wauquiez

It was without doubt meant to be a moment of television light entertainment, and we all know how some politicians, especially those with populist ambitions, strive to appear just like Monsieur et Madame Tout le Monde.

Reactions (on Twitter of course) to Wauquiez's "admission" (apologies for all these inverted commas) were mixed with some praising him for his openness while others pompously accused him of "seeking to push the limits of demagogy so far as to ridicule politics" - as if those who practise the métier needed any help.

Still at least Wauquiez answered a question without trying to beat about the proverbial.

Florian Philippot (screenshot FranceTV info)

Look how slithery and almost begrudging another party vice president (Wauquiez is one of several at the UMP) over at the far-right Front National, the very, very bright Florian Philippot was, when asked to comment on  Flora Coquerel's - the newly-crowned Miss France, comments that with a mother who was from Benin, she was "proud to represent a cosmopolitan France".

Sexy "blow job" commercial - soft porn, fun or simply sexist?

Smutty probably isn't the right word to describe the latest advertising spot that went online just a week ago and is, according to the national daily Libération, under attack from some French feminists for being sexist.

(screenshot of 11footballclub commercial)

Soft porn would be nearer the mark as once again a company is creating a stir by using that age-old advertising tool to sell - sex.

It's for 11footballclub, a French online store specialising in football garb - mainly the sort you can wear - and which is planning to open its first retail outlet shortly in the western French city of Nantes.

Time then for a spot of publicity - anything will do, as long as it gets the company noticed and everyone talking about it.

And the commercial certainly does that.

It features a sexy (of course) red headed woman on her knees apparently - so the ambiguity of the camera angle would have you believe - about to give a man oral sex.

Of course that's what you're meant to think because as the camera pans out out you see that in fact she's helping a customer try on a pair of shoes.

There are the customary sexual groans and moans (because the shoes are too tight - naturally) , very little dialogue (after all who needs it in erotica) and mood-setting background music.

Highly creative - not.

It's meant to be amusing, as Benoît Defois, co-manager of the company told the free daily newspaper 20 minutes.

"The message of the ad isn't to denigrate women, but just to say we take care of our customers," he said.

"The next episode in the the series - which might run to four or five in total - could well see a man kneeling in front of a woman," he continued.

"We might release it just before the Euro 2012 (scheduled to take place in Poland and Ukraine from June 8 - July 1) to promote women's football."

Yes that would seem entirely logical.

The intended humour though isn't how one feminist group sees it.

For the Nantes-based "Collectif radical anti-sexisme et homophobie" (Crash) it's both sexist and offensive.

"We can't constantly laugh at sexism and machismo, when we know that a woman is raped every five hours in France," a member of the group told 20 minutes.

"If a black man were in the place of women, I don't think it would make many people laugh."

Judge for yourselves.

Rachida Dati's "pornographic" economic analysis

It happens to the best of us confusing a word or a simple slip of the tongue.

But when you're a politician such as Rachida Dati and still in the public eye (in spite of her claims that she has never sought the limelight - hide the guffaws please) a simple mistake can give everyone a jolly good belly laugh.

Rachida Dati, screenshot from Dimanche + clip

Such has been the case since Sunday afternoon when the former justice minister and now Member of the European Parliament was a guest on the afternoon current affairs programme Dimanche + on Canal +.

Sharp-eared viewers probably couldn't quite believe their ears as Dati turned an otherwise potentially rather dry subject "foreign investment funds" to one with sexual overtones as she inadvertently threw oral sex into her analysis.

"De plus en plus, ces fonds d'investissements étrangers n'ont pour seul objectif que la rentabilité financière à des taux excessifs," she said.

"Quand je vois certains qui réclament une rentabilité à 20-25%, avec une fellation quasi nulle..."

For those of you who might have missed it, or whose French is a bit ropey, the clue lies in the last five words, "avec un fellation quasi nulle..." and the French for inflation "inflation" and fellatio "fellation".

So what Dati actually said gave her response quite a different meaning from the one intended namely, "Increasingly, these foreign investment funds have only one objective, the financial return to excessive levels.

"When I see some of them looking for returns of 20 or 25 percent, at a time when fellatio is almost non-existent..."

Dati's oral blunder quickly made it on to the Net (you can see it here at 12-13 seconds) and raised more than just a smile in many quarters.


Lapsus: Dati confond "inflation" et... "fellation"
envoyé par LePostfr. - L'actualité du moment en vidéo.

But at least she has had the sense of humour to shrug off the incident with aplomb insisting that of course she hadn't confused the two words.

"I was just speaking a little too fast," she said on national radio on Monday morning.

"You can see that (when you look at the clip)", she added.

"But hey, if it makes everyone laugh..."

Supreme Court rules pornographic images at work aren't illegal

La Cour de Cassation in France, or the country's Supreme court, has overturned a decision made by an industrial tribunal and an appeals courts which had both upheld the dismissal of an employee who downloaded pornographic images at work.

The case dates back to 2002, when a worker at the carmaker Peugeot Citroën in the western city of Rennes was fired after pornographic images he had downloaded were discovered on computer at work.

He took his case to an industrial tribunal and to the Court of Appeal in Rennes, but in both instances the ruling went in favour of the employer.

His last chance was la Cour de Cassation which, it has been revealed, last month ruled in his favour.

It accepted his arguments that the employer had no right to access what were private and personal files and that saving images on his computer had in no way had an impact on his ability to do his job.

"The saving of three files containing pornographic pictures, which were not criminal in nature, did not constitute grounds that would justify dismissal," the Court ruled, adding that the outcome of the case would have been different had the images been "unlawful" such as ones of a paedophile nature.

In effect the ruling found that the employee had been unfairly fired and the case has been referred the matter back to the appeals court to determine how much compensation he is now entitled to.

French police in child porn swoop

Early Tuesday morning police arrested 90 people in a nationwide sweep to break up a suspected online child pornography ring in France.

More than 300 officers were dispatched throughout the country following an investigation that had lasted more than four years and had centred on the sharing of images and videos of children reportedly as young as one year old.

Police also seized computers in Tuesday's operation with one of them alone, according to James Juan, the public prosecutor of the northern city of Beauvais (Oise), containing more than 30,000 images.

"That was just the pictures," he told a news conference. "There were also around 1,000 videos on that single computer."

The roots of the operation go back to December 2004, when a site containing pornographic pictures and videos of children first came to the attention of the police.

The creator, from the northern town of Clermont (Oise), was just 17 years old at the time when he set up the site.

Even though he was arrested in May 2005, the pictures and videos were still on the Net and others were downloading and sharing material from his server; proof as far as the police were concerned, that there was an "organised network in place" for diffusing child pornography.

And so began "Némésis" - the code-name for the investigation - to trace and locate those involved in the suspected ring. It was carried out by a specialised police unit to monitor cyber crime.

It was a process which Robert Bouche, the commander in charge of one of the sections in the northern city of Amiens (Somme), admitted was long, but necessary under the circumstances.

"We were dealing with people who knew how to use the Internet and technology easily," he said

"Many for example were computer experts (data processors or computer scientists) more than capable of making the job of investigators all the more difficult and ensuring they couldn't easily be identified," he added.

The 90 men, whose identities have not been released as investigations are still ongoing, apparently come from all walks of life.

If charged and found guilty they could face prison sentences of up to 10 years.