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French press review 18 August 2014

Editorials from papers on either side of the political spectrum are lambasting the Socialist government today. The tone is increasingly cynical towards France's ever impopular leader François Hollande and his wing-man Manuel Valls.

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Le Figaro mocks the prime minister for saying that the government will stay on course. This, despite clear evidence that they have been vastly unsuccessful in saving France's mired economy.

According to the paper, both the left and the right are exasperated with Hollande's lack of resolve - left-wingers say he isn't veering enough to the left, and right-wingers are furious at his liberal inadequacies.

The conservative paper says the government should stop digging its own grave and radically change tactics. This is also what rival papers have been calling for - except that some, like L'Humanité and Libération, think the solution is steering more to the left.

Communist L'Humanité darkly remarks that Manuel Valls is walking in the Iron Lady's footsteps: by stating that the government won't budge on its ineffective economic tactics, he's echoing former British PM Margaret Thatcher and her famous slogan: "There is no Alternative," meaning no alternative to economic liberalism - not a legacy you would expect from a so-called left-wing government.

Libération runs with a front-page portrait of Hollande, looking particularly hesitant underneath the headline: "And what if he was wrong?"

They also have a photograph of Hollande and Valls holding an emergency meeting at the end of last week, sitting stiff in suits across each other in a sunny summer garden. They have never looked so out of place.

Libé says Europe is the only region in the world that has managed to chalk up massive unemployment, dangerous financial instability and zero economic growth all at the same time. Who's to blame? The paper thinks it's the European Central Bank, and the oligarchs sitting in Brussels and London.

Many had hoped that Hollande would hold firm against austerity measures demanded by the EU. These hopes have been dashed, but Libé tries to look at the bright side. Data that revealed last week that France is currently in dire straights also shows that it was recovering remarkably well immadiately after the financial crash in 2008.

To translate literally, actually, Libé says France "pétait le feu," or was farting fire. Quite a vivid expression, especially for an explosive subject.

In any case, productivity ground to a halt with austerity measures introduced in 2011. And the paper thinks ignoring the causal link between poor growth and austerity would be foolish and fatal for Hollande.

And finally, a Mongolian tradition is catching on in the rest of the world, as well as in France: yurts...or circular lightly built tents, that traditionally housed nomads in the steppes of Central Asia.

These days, they also house French nature-lovers who want to get off the grid.

Le Monde says precise data is hard to come by, but it estimates current yurt-livers at a couple thousand in rural France.

The leading paper has a feature in the culture section about a couple who were part of the vanguard of ecological living back in the 1980s. Today, they can be found in an eco-village in central France, and they like to call themselves neo-rural: as in, people interested in "bringing back" the countryside.

Threatening as these barefoot yurt-livers are, Le Monde says French intelligence services are keeping close tabs on them. And being a nomad in modern-day France is not easy - though yurts are cheap to build and easily moved, current legislation is ambiguous. A new bill on the table would categorize yurts not as tents but as permanent dwellings, making electricity and a hook-up to the sewage system compulsory. This dashes dreams of rustic life.

In France, you might have to have a plug to be considered an upstanding citizen.

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