François Hollande, back from hols and time for work - finally

The French president François Hollande is back from his summer break all bronzed and ready to get cracking with affairs of state.

Er. Hello? Isn't there something wrong with that?

François Hollande and Valérie Trierweiler  - end of summer hols. Nice tan (screenshot Var Matin)

Unemployment, economic recession, the problems in the Eurozone, Syria - all trifling concerns of government which could be put on hold, it would appear, while Hollande, sunned himself in the south of France for three weeks.

Oops, 18 days to be precise. Mustn't exaggerate now.

Those are points driven home not only in Tuesday's edition of Libération with a headline that reads as though it's taken straight from Le Figaro "L'été très moyen de françois Hollande", but also by a piece in this week's Le Point by Hervé Gattegno.

"Where else would a 'normal' employee begin a job at the beginning of May and be automatically entitled to three weeks holiday in August," asks Gattegno in his piece entitled "Hollande was on holiday for too long."

Gattegno surely has a point.

Sure he's now calling his ministers in and having detailed head-to-heads with them about how to tackle the recession (what recession?), economic hardship at home and throughout Europe, what to do about Syria, the Roma, violence and security in France and the list goes on.

But shouldn't he have been doing exactly that - or at have least given the appearance of doing so - already?

In an interview with Le Journal de Dimanche last weekend, Jean-Luc Mélenchon characterised (or rather caricatured) Hollande's first 100 days in office as "100 days of almost nothing."

Gattegno says Mélenchon was, in his usual style, exaggerating but there's also the uncomfortable feeling - even among those to the Left - that there might be some substance in what he says, and a potential sign of things not to come.

The article in Libération, a paper that is not shy in its support of the Socialist party, is surely evidence in itself that some on the Left are questioning Hollande's tactics - or lack thereof.

Hollande might want to be demonstrating that he's not as omnipresent as his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, but isn't he taking delegation perhaps a little too far and appearing almost absent?

If he carries on at this rate his five year mandate will come to resemble those of Jacques Chirac's second term in office - a time when French politics stood still while the world moved on.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's Bling Bling Porsche photo

Oh yes that saying that a "picture is worth a thousand words."

How unfortunate for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and (still undeclared) frontrunner for the Socialist party's primary to choose its candidate for next year's presidential election.

DSK, as he's more commonly known to the French, has been snapped climbing into a modest little Porsche with his wife Anne Sinclair.

That photograph (screenshot from BFM TV report)

It was shot by a photographer from Agence France Presse while the couple were in Paris on April 28 making one of their oh-so-regular flying visits that seem to be part of preparing the ground for DSK's eventual declaration that he's going to run in the Socialist party's primary later this year.

Since it appeared in the national daily Le Parisien on Tuesday and had a radio commentary dedicated to it a day later from Hervé Gattegno, the editor of the weekly news and current affairs magazine, Le Point, the photograph and its implications seem to have taken on a life of their own.

Gattegno said it had been DSK's first "big mistake" and there were plenty who seemed to agree.

The Net has been abuzz with comments as the French website Le Post points out.

Bloggers and Twitterers have been ironically welcoming a new ear of potential Bling Bling - this time from the Socialist party.

And political opponents - ever eager - have also been getting in on the act.

"The Socialist Party is evolving in a curious way, the former interior minister Brice Hortefeux said when asked about the photograph on BFM TV.

"In 1981, the symbol was the fist and rose. Today it's driving a Porsche."

And it wasn't just any old Porsche - it was one worth $100,000 according to Le Figaro.

What does indeed seem to have been a monumental image faux pas for DSK is also being seen as giving French president Nicolas Sarkozy's governing centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) a potential angle of attack for the 2012 campaign in the form of the DSK-Sinclair lifestyle.

It doesn't matter that the car wasn't actually his but belonged to an IMF colleague who was with the couple in Paris, as DSK supporters have been quick to point out.

He should have known better and realise that his every word and gesture is being scrutinised.

DSK and his wife may well be privileged and far removed from the traditional base of support for the Socialist party - the so-called working class.

But there really is no need to appear to be flaunting the differences between his lifestyle and that of the ordinary French citizen.

Already some are using that neologism "Prolophobia" to describe the behaviour of the Socialist party.

The apparent rejection of the values of those people to whom it has traditionally appealed - the country's working class - has been offered up as an explanation to the rise in support of the far-right Front National and its leader Marine Le Pen.

And now after years of la gauche caviar, it now seems as though DSK is prepared to take things one step further by redefining it as la gauche Porsche.

Woe betide the Socialist party if it falls into that trap - and heaven help the French.