The maire de Lyon, Gérard Collomb, was pied yesterday. A nebulous group calling itself "Al Qaïtarte" (presumably a play on words linking tarte and a certain notorious terrorist group) claimed responsibility and condemned the "policies more than right-wing of a man who claims to be left-wing." The entarteurs also count the president of the Rhône-Alpes region and the artist Ben among their victims, claim the "greatest pieing ever in Lyon", that of the MoDem mayoral candidate, but regret failing several times to entarte the former minster and UMP mayoral candidate Dominic Perben. Ho hum. I suppose it's more fun than attending a city council meeting.
On the wider political stage the government is still struggling against the adverse headlines created by the new "security policy", with several government ministers breaking ranks to admit to unease about the expulsion of Roma and the proposed stripping of citizenship. And waves continue to be made by the Bettencourt affair. Sarko and Fillon are still backing Eric Woerth after he was forced to admit that he had indeed written a letter recommending Patrice de Maistre for a Legion d'Honneur. He claims that ministers and MPs routinely put forward people for honours, which may be true, but not all of them would dare to recommend the man they've persuaded to give their wife a highly paid job…
Interestingly, there's a view that the government are happy to take the flak about the security policy, safe in the knowledge that it's deflecting attention from other problems and that the majority of the French population support the Roma pogrom. One problem comes up on Tuesday, when a journée d'action to protest against retirement reforms has been called by some of the main unions. The union hand is strengthened by the fact that it's a distracted Minister of Labour, one Eric Woerth, who is handling the reform bill in parliament. The main strikes are likely to be on the railways, so perhaps I shouldn't be too nervous about the fact that we're flying to the UK that day…
