There's nothing like good neighbours

And if the case of the recent discovery of the body of a 70-year-old man in his apartment in the town of Aix-les-Bains in southeastern France is anything to go by, he had anything but "good neighbours."

While there's nothing too unusual perhaps in the report of an elderly person's death going unnoticed, especially when he or she lives alone, there must be more than a little cause for concern in cases such as this one.

That's because investigators believe that the man's body, found mummified in his apartment on the 14th floor of a social housing block of flats last week, had been there for anything up to three years.

Media reports confirm that the man did indeed live alone and had no close family in the region.

But where were the neighbours?

Well one of them - living on the same floor - told reporters that he apparently crossed the 70-year-old on the landing occasionally, and the last time the two had spoken was after his dog had died. That was FOUR years ago.

The caretaker of the building - yes unbelievably there is one - but obviously not taking a great deal "care" of its occupants, noticed just last week that the old man's letter box was full to overflowing - clearly an astute woman - and alerted the authorities.

The police arrived, forced open the door and discovered the body. The official explanation of death was through "natural causes" and there won't be any inquiry launched.

Perhaps though there should be one opened on the morality and intellect of the neighbours who you would think might just have noticed that something wasn't quite right.

One of them, when questioned by reporters said,

"I didn't know that someone had died in the building. There are 14 floors and people are moving in and out all the time."

Not surprisingly perhaps, the neighbour - a woman - wanted to remain anonymous.

To put this sad story into context, there are a couple of other elements that need to be included.

A few years ago in Europe - August 2003 to be precise - there was a heat wave across much of the continent. In France alone around 15,000 people, mainly elderly, died as a consequence and there was a public outcry.

There have been subsequent calls each summer (and winter) from the authorities for people to keep a watchful but not-too-obtrusive eye on elderly neigbours.

There was even a half-hearted, but bungled attempt by the government to launch a "day of Solidarity" whereby people would give up one of the public holidays in May and instead work "free" with all money earned being put in a special fund to help the elderly.

Surprise, surprise (given the evidence of this case) the idea didn't work for one reason or another and was finally shelved this year.

As long ago as 1999, the campaign to promote good neighbourliness was launched here in France. From humble beginnings with just 10,000 participants taking part in 80 buildings dotted around the capital, La Fête des voisins (neighbours day) has grown to more than 5 million people in 600 local authorities throughout the country, according to organisers' figures for 2007.

And even since 2004 the concept has been exported to many other parts of Europe with Journée européenne des voisins (European neighbours' day) in around 150 towns and cities.

Sadly, the idea and the news do not seem to have reached Aix-les-Bains.

How could parents forget?

It's a question that has preoccupied many here in France over the past month, and sadly made the headlines far too often. It's also one to which it's difficult to provide an answer.

Over the past four weeks there have been three separate incidents of young children or babies - being left alone in locked cars. In two of the cases, the infants died, in the third a passerby was able to intervene, break a window and save the child from probable death.

Yannis

On July 15, two-and-a-half-year-old Yannis died in the town of Pont-de-Chéruy near Lyon. The 38-year-old father was reportedly supposed to drop his son off for the day with relatives while he went to work.

Arriving at the car park just a few metres from the pharmacy where he worked, he was the witness of a road traffic accident, and his attention was apparently distracted enough for him to be able to offer the licence number of a vehicle involved, but not to remember that his son was still in the back of his own car.

It was several hours later that a passerby noticed the child alone in the car, and immediately contacted the emergency services. But it was too late for Yannis, who died of dehydration.

The outside temperature that day had been 25 degrees centigrade. Experts estimated that inside the car it had been more than 45 degrees.

Zoé

Just a week later on July 22 in the town of Saint-Marcel in the departement of Saône-et-Loire, three-year-old Zoé suffered the same fate.

She died after being left alone in the vehicle at the company car park while her 38-year-old father went to work.

Every morning the father would drive his five-year-old son to the creche and then leave his daughter with a child minder.

For some reason on this particular day he forgot about Zoé.

When he returned to the car in mid afternoon he apparently still didn't realise that his daughter was in the back and drove to collect his five-year-old son from the creche. It was only when returning to the car with his son that the father realised Zoé was in the back, and he immediately drove to the emergency department. But it was already too late by then.

Third case

On Wednesday there was yet another case, but this time with a happier ending.

A two-and-a-half year old girl was left in a car on the car park of a supermarket in the town of Brézet, near Clermont-Ferrand, while her mother was doing some last-minute shopping.

She had apparently only been alone for about 20 minutes when a passerby noticed her, broke the window and alerted the emergency services. The child was dashed off to hospital for tests and her mother taken into custody and investigated for putting her daughter's life in danger. The temperature in the car was again estimated to be about 45 degrees centigrade.

A look at the wheels of French justice in each of these cases reveals some astonishing differences in the way and speed with which they have been handled by the authorities.

The father of Yannis is not being prosecuted for the moment, although the police insist that it doesn't mean the case is closed and charges could still be brought.

Zoé's father was immediately investigated for involuntary homicide, and the maximum penalty for that in France is three years imprisonment and a €45,000 fine.

It's bad enough reading or hearing reports in the media of animals left in cars, their owners thinking perhaps that leaving the windows open for just a little air would not present any danger.

But as any animal lover will know, and even those who don't own a pet would probably realise, the temperatures inside a vehicle can rise quickly, even when it's not high summer. And the outcome is inevitable.

That it could happen once to a child is surely the saddest of news. But on the back of previous reports, for it to happen three times in quick succession!

An explanation

One prominent paediatrician, Jean-Michel Muller, president of the Association of Paediatricians of Nice Côte d'Azur, has tried to come up with some sort of explanation as to how parents could forget. He is quoted in the French press as saying that such things could happen to anybody.

"If you ask those to whom this has happened, they know that children shouldn't be left alone in the car, but at that particular moment their minds are elsewhere, they have some other problem," he says.

"It's not intentional by any means. It's like knowing that you shouldn't leave a child alone at the side of a swimming pool but in spite of that it happens.

"When it comes to leaving a child in a car these people have obviously had difficulties, or are preoccupied by other things, had other things to do during several hours and at the last moment forget that there is a child still in the car."

Whether that would be a convincing argument in a court of law would only become apparent if charges in any of the cases were brought.

But still there remains the question for many people here in France as to how parents could forget?

Sarkozy takes a holiday

By anyone's reckoning it has been a topsy-turvy first full year for the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his government ministers.

Now as they've all shut shop for the summer and headed off on their holidays, what better time to reflect on a year of French politics - Sarkozy style?

So sit back, relax and take a deep breath as we race through a non-too exhaustive (you'll probably be pleased to read) look back at some of the highs and lows.

"Work more to earn more"

When Sarkozy came to power in May last year, everyone knew there would be a change in style and substance.

He had the reputation for being in a hurry to get things done and was full of promises to modernise France's perceived archaic institutions, boost a flagging economy, put the country back to work and that all-important electoral pledge to increase the purchasing power of the average man and woman.

Sarkozy quickly set about business and by the end of June 2007, after parliamentary elections, had a government in place which broadly signalled the kind of changes he had promised.

Not only were there members of his ruling centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) but there were Socialists and centre politicians too. There were also more women - almost complete parity in fact - and a couple of them from ethnic groups which better reflected the true character of French society.

This man clearly meant business, and he only gave his ministers the shortest of breaks before they were expected to begin the process of round table "consultations" with all those interested groups to come up with a whole raft of education, labour, environmental and economic reforms.

So what was one his very first measures that totally confused many and left some jaws heading to the floor? Remember that electoral pledge to increase purchasing power?

Well Sarkozy's answer was a fiscal package that included huge tax breaks for the wealthy by changing the inheritance laws. How that would help increase purchasing power was something of a mystery.

It would only be many months later after his ratings had plummeted and constant reports in the media had focussed on his inability to deliver on that pledge that Sarkozy would admit there had been an "error in communication."

The policy, he insisted in a 90-minute television interview in April, had not just increased the personal wealth of a few, but had allowed those with modest incomes to pass on more of their lifetime’s savings to their children by easing inheritance tax. Furthermore the fiscal “package” had been just that - a package.

It would, he explained, help put the country back to work by addressing the crippling economic restrictions of the 35-hour working week. Employees would now free to choose between claiming the days off to which they were entitled or being paid for the overtime they worked. It was the very essence of his much repeated mantra "work more to earn more."

Bling Bling

Almost from the day he entered the Elysée palace - the president's official residence - it was impossible to separate politics or policy from Sarkozy's personal life. Indeed the overriding preoccupation in France and abroad, became not so much what reforms he had planned or what he had in mind for the country, but instead his so-called Bling Bling style of presidency and more importantly his love life.

The signs that something was not quite right had been there for a long time. His former wife, Cécilia only made a re-appearance on the French political scene in the run-up to the presidential election - and she didn't even vote for her husband.

By the autumn of course the marriage was officially over, and their quickie divorce was announced just as the country was being brought to a standstill by a series of transportation strikes.

Sarkozy was everywhere all the time - taking on the role of prime minister, making promises many felt he couldn't really keep and dominating the news in a way his predecessor, Jacques Chirac hadn't.

His personal life, his style and his seeming love of celebrity status had become the main talking point, and his approval ratings plummeted.

And then of course came the icing on the cake - rumours of a romance. And at the end of the year came the stage managed photo op at EuroDisneyland which revealed that yes indeed, there was a new love in his life, Carla Bruni.

More photos followed of the couple together on a New Year pre-honeymoon in Jordan and then the first press conference in January at which there was only one question on everybody's lips.

So when Sarkozy actually announced a policy decision which seemed to come from nowhere - to scrap advertising from public television - everyone was taken by surprise. None more so than the poor man who heads French television, Patrick de Carolis, who had no idea what was coming.

The Carla effect

The high point - or low point depending on your perspective - of Sarkozy's presidency so far perhaps came at the annual agricultural fair in February, when he insulted a visitor who refused to shake his hand with the by now infamous "Casse toi, pauvre con."

What a contrast to the enthusiastic back-slapping, hand-pumping and nostalgic welcome afforded to the visit of Chirac, just a few days later to the same show. It left many yearning for the "good old, not so bad old days" when a president was...well "presidential.

There has been a lot written - an awful lot - about what effect Sarkozy's marriage in February has had to his style of presidency. And to a certain extent at least it seems that ever since Carla said she "did", there has been difference.

Coupled with the setback his UMP party had in the local elections in March, marriage seems to have encouraged Sarkozy to adopt a more "presidential" style, staying out of the frontline (although it's hard to ignore his presence) of domestic politics and allowing his ministers to get on with their jobs.

Of course old habits die hard and Sarkozy has still managed to annoy. He took what many consider too long to decide whether to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics games, sending out mixed messages along the way and allowing his junior minister for human rights, Rama Yade, to claim and then retract, that he had "set conditions" for his attendance.

More recently there were off-the-cuff remarks that the Irish should be made to vote again on the issue of European Union reform after they rejected the Lisbon treaty - hardly a comment guaranteed to have enamoured him to other EU members states.

Reform

Whether you love him or loathe him, it's certainly hard to ignore Sarkozy. And when the French come back from their summer holidays - La Rentrée - they can expect to see changes.

Because in spite of everything that might or might not have happened over the past year, there are in fact a number of reforms due to come into effect.

Sarkozy has managed to deliver on his promise to drag the country kicking and screaming into the 21st century in terms of institutional reform, and although it might take a while to implement, his behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing ensured that it scraped through parliament earlier this month.

Then of course there is the recent parliamentary approval of a reform to the country's labour laws which most agree will signal the beginning of the end for the 35-hour working week and make it easier for small and medium sized businesses in particular to be more flexible with overtime. That's the theory at least.

Most immediately though there will be the shake up to universities, due to come into effect in the next academic year and allowing them more autonomy and the right to manage their own finances, hire and fire staff as well as getting backing from private business.

Reforms to the judiciary have also been passed - although not without the protests from the profession, cuts in the civil service and changes in the school syllabus have also been rubber stamped despite similar strikes and protests.

And there are a whole raft of measures awaiting parliamentary approval such as defence cuts, and prison reform, and of course the government still has to do something about reducing the country's deficit and reviving an economy whose growth has recently yet again been forecast downwards.

Holiday listening

Until the end of the year, Sarkozy's attention will not just be focussed on domestic matters. France currently holds the six-month rotating presidency to the 27-nation EU and Sarkozy is eager to get cracking with agricultural and immigration reform - as well as sorting out the institutional gridlock of course.

One personal success since taking over the EU presidency already has been the launch of the Mediterranean Union even in the face of opposition.

And so as Sarkozy and his government go their separate ways for their three week break, "politics" should also be out of the French headlines for a while. And ministers will be able to kick back their heels and enjoy their parting present - Bruni-Sarkozy's latest album - given to each of them by her husband.

At the same time last year, when Sarkozy wafted over on cloud nine to the United States for his summer hols with his then wife, Cécilia, the weekly French glossies had a field day slapping airbrushed photos of him all over their pages.

This year promises to be a much more low key affair, although with Carla on his arm at her family's property in the south of France and the might of the long lens camera, it probably won't be too long before we're all treated to some more of the same. Unless that is, this master of stage management gives the assembled hacks the photo ops they and the rest of us are (not) craving.

And then towards the end of August it'll be back to business (not-quite-so) as usual.

Bonne vacances.