MAM voyage - a spoof on French foreign minister's "free" travels

Amid all the recent controversy surrounding the travel arrangements of the French foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, a spoof agency has gone online offering trips to dream destinations at truly unbelievable prices: in fact no price at all.

MAM-voyage.com apparently has some unreal bargains on its books.



Tabarka in Tunisia is knocked down from €1,299 to €0. And a similar great offer for Abou Simbel in Egypt sees prices slashed from €1,899 to €0.

Further bargains include Iran, Côte d'Ivoire and Burma - all at the ridiculously giveaway prices of...well you probably get the idea.

There's a testimonial from (among others) Michèle M. who says, "We had a fabulous time and thank you once again for the free upgrade during our stopover in Tunis."

And François F. (a nod to the French prime minister François Fillion who admitted having "accepted the hospitality" of former Eyptian president Hosni Mubarak while on holiday on the Nile at the New Year) writes, "Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, the magnificence of the Nile ... with MAM it's more than a trip. It's a state of mind"

The whole spoof is topped off with contact details which will put you in touch with the French foreign ministry.

The name MAM-voyage is, of course, a parody of the site of the French tour operator FRAM and at the same time a reference to Alliot-Marie, who is more commonly known in France as MAM.

And it perhaps comes as a welcome, light-hearted relief after the recent controversy surrounding one of France's most experienced and longest-serving government ministers.

MAM (the foreign minister that is) has faced opposition calls to resign ever since it was revealed that she used a private jet while on holiday with her partner Patrick Ollier, who is also a government minister, in Tunisia last December at the beginning of the country's uprising.

The 'plane the couple used was owned by a businessman, Aziz Miled who, it was alleged, had been close to the former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Although she has since admitted that she "regretted her decision to accept the free flight", MAM has also defended Miled saying he had been a longtime friend and a "victim rather than an ally of Ben Ali."

Calls for her resignation have been renewed this week ever since the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné revealed that MAM and Ollier weren't alone in Tunisia.

They were joined by Alliot-Marie's elderly parents who reportedly signed a property deal with Miled.

It was a deal which 92-year-old Bernard Marie, the foreign minister's father, told France 24 he had been advised to do because it "would be an investment in 2012."

Facing parliamentarians on Wednesday in the National Assembly, MAM hit back at those calling for her resignation and criticised the latest turn of events.

"You keep repeating lies in the hope that they'll turn into the truth," she said, stressing that the after trying to find something with which to tarnish her reputation, opponents had now decided to focus their attention on her parents.

"Have they done anything illegal? No. This campaign is shameful," she said.

"I just want to say quite simply how objectionable it is that you try to use my parents to attack me politically."

Sarkozy's government reshuffle and the Neuilly-sur-Seine "quintuplets"

Much has been made over the past couple of days of the government reshuffle here in France.

For some perhaps it was a case of "out with the old and in with the older" as familiar faces such as Alain Juppé and Xavier Bertrand made a return to the political front line and a whole heap of potential electoral threats in the 2012 presidential race were summarily dispatched to pastures new.

But while the instinct is perhaps to get bogged down in the minutiae of what it all means - or doesn't - politically speaking, there are of course some slightly more irreverent angles on the current line-up of ministers.

There's the fact that Michèle Alliot-Marie, a stalwart of the ruling centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) now takes over at the foreign ministry; her fourth consecutive top notch job (following defence, interior and justice) since she re-entered the government back in 2002.

And there's the appointment of her partner Patrick Ollier as the minister responsible for parliamentary relations, making the pair perhaps the most politically powerful couple in France, and the subject of a smile or two maybe as they attend their first cabinet meeting together on Wednesday.

If that were not enough, there's also the "bizarre" (as the French website Le Post puts it) coincidence that no fewer than five of the now 31-strong government (cabinet and junior ministers combined) were born in the same place.

Where?

Neuilly-sur-Seine, the swanky, wealthy suburb to the west of the French capital, and very much the former stomping ground of the French president himself.

Rue Berteaux-Dumas, Neuilly-sur-Seine, (from Wikipedia, author - Metropolitan)

Sarkozy was mayor of the town from 1983 to 2002.

He spent much of his childhood in Neuilly and his mother, Andrée, still lives there.

Sarkozy's second son, Jean, is currently a regional councillor representing the town in which he, of course, was born.

As France 2 television points out, the French sociologist Michel Pinçon doesn't find it so surprising that Sarkozy has turned to those whose roots are in a town which "embodies social excellence" even if it is a place which in no way reflects the rest of the country.

"It's the town which has the highest number of people paying wealth tax in France," he writes in the book he co-authored with his wife, Monique, "Le président des riches".

"Even being born in Neuilly and not necessarily living there is of social significance."

All right, so it might be stretching a point somewhat to imply that Neuilly has somehow become Sarkozy's preferred recruiting territory.

But perhaps it's something to mull over during Tuesday evening's hour-plus television broadcast (on three channels) when Sarkozy will doubtless deny the suggestion (should he be asked) that his reshuffle is nothing more than strengthening his position within the UMP to run for re-election in 2012.

Just for the record the Neuilly "quintuplets", as Le Post calls them, are Brice Hortefeux, Frédéric Lefebvre, Bruno Le Maire, Valérie Pécresse and Georges Tron.