The mayor of Poitiers, Léonore Moncond’huy
Poitiers, peaceful little Poitiers, has been in the news, and it’s all thanks to our mayor, Mme Léonore Moncond’huy.
Regular readers may remember that at the end of last year, Mme Moncond’huy, a Green, got into a bit of bother when she announced that there would be no traditional Christmas tree in the main square. Some people felt that her stated reason for this – building work on the theatre in the corner of the square had left insufficient space for a tree – was merely a cover. They accused her of banning the tree on ideological grounds, and thus following the example of the mayor of Bordeaux, Pierre Hurmic, also a Green, who had stated that ‘a dead Christmas tree’ did not fit with his party’s green strategy and his planned Charter of Tree Rights. One of those to object was Marine Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right-wing Rassemblement National (RN), who said that talk of a ‘dead tree’ showed that the Greens have ‘a visceral rejection of everything that makes up our country, our traditions, our culture’.
Christmas came and went. In the main square, there were lots of pretty lights, and even a small (artificial) tree; the story was forgotten. Mme Moncond’huy was off the hook. Until last week. Suddenly, what at first glance might appear as a minor matter of town hall book-keeping has become national, and indeed international, news.
It started with the announcement that, as part of a review of funding for local sporting clubs, Poitiers would be phasing out its subsidy to two flying clubs, cutting it from €8,800 to €4,400 this year, before withdrawing it completely in 2022. Given that the overall budget of the council is over €90 million, this would not seem particularly significant, unless you were a member of either club. The decision was defended on the grounds that public money ‘is not intended to finance activities based on the use of exhaustible resources’, a stated policy of the Green party.
However, when defending the decision at the next Municipal Council meeting after the announcement, the mayor used the phrase ‘L’aérien ne doit plus faire partie des rêves d’enfants’ (‘Air travel must no longer be part of children’s dreams’). It was at this point that la merde a frappé le ventilateur (French homework: translate this yourselves).
A Twitter storm swiftly broke out. From the right, Marine Le Pen was immediately on the attack again: ‘Wanting to destroy sectors of industrial excellence such as nuclear and aeronautics, attacking children’s dreams: this is the true face of these “greens”’.
For the government, Jean-Baptiste Djebarri, Minister Delegate for Transport, denounced the views of Mme Moncond’huy as ‘authoritarian and moribund rantings’. He was one of many people to quote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (author of The Little Prince and himself a pioneering aviator): ‘Make your life a dream, and a dream a reality.’
From the left. Stéphane Le Foll, Parti Socialiste mayor of Le Mans and former minister, stated, ‘It was at Le Mans that Saint-Exupéry dreamed of flying, and that the Wright brothers made their first flights. Rather than preventing dreaming, we must invest and innovate so that our children continue to fly and dream.’ From the far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise, chimed in with a more enigmatic, ‘Hi Poitiers, Dreams should always stay free, signed Icarus.’
Louder and louder it got, and more and more strident. Pierre Lescure, president of the Cannes Film Festival, felt duty-bound to chip in: ‘We would save a lot of time, if this elected official … admitted that it was bullshit.’ Daniel Cohn-Bendit (AKA ‘Danny the Red’, veteran of the Paris ’68 demonstrations and later a Green MEP) was more direct: ‘I cried when the first man walked on the moon, and now there’s an environmentalist who tells me to stop dreaming, she should go fuck herself.’ In the UK, the story even got as far as The Times.
It’s fair to say there was a considerable amount of support for the mayor and her decision, but this has tended to get drowned out by the hostile comments. One can’t help thinking that there is a strong whiff of political opportunism about all of this – we are, after all, warming up for a presidential election year. This can sometimes teeter over into farce. It was rumoured last week that the Minister Delegate for Transport had nominated the presidents of the two flying clubs for France’s highest decoration, la Légion d’honneur. This was quickly clarified – he had only nominated them for la Médaille de l’Aéronautique, which is awarded for ‘outstanding accomplishments related to the field of aeronautics’. So that’s alright, then.
Alain Martin, president of l’Aéroclub ASPTT (on the left), François Chargelegue & Jean-Marie Arnault, respectively treasurer and president of l’Aéroclub du Poitou (on the right).
Mme Moncond’huy has herself now broadcast a video on Twitter defending her actions, and I think she makes a very good job of it. She admits her words were unfortunate, but says they were taken out of context. She makes the point that the flying club decision was part of a general plan to support those clubs that have been most affected by Covid and to target deprived neighbourhoods. She also points out that in the council meeting itself when the matter was discussed, ‘the atmosphere was serene’, and that there has been far less negative reaction in Poitiers itself than there has been on social media.
The flying clubs themselves have received numerous offers of financial help to compensate for the withdrawn subsidy, so I suspect they will survive. As, I hope, will Mme Moncond’huy.
***
I had my first AstraZeneca jab yesterday. When I turned up at Dr L’s surgery, there was a reporter there from the radio station France Bleu doing a piece on the vaccine. We chatted for a while, and then he asked if it would be OK to come in and watch me getting injected. Dr L and I agreed, and the reporter did a sort of joint interview with both of us while I was getting vaccinated. You can read a bit of it here on the France Bleu website. In my view, the extract gives rather more prominence to Dr L than is really justified, and for some strange reason, my opinions on various matters of public interest appear to have been cut. I accept that this may be a technical error, but I feel a little hurt nevertheless.
***
Things I’ve learnt this week:
In 1915, the lock millionaire Cecil Chubb bought his wife Stonehenge. She didn’t like it, so in 1918 he gave it to the nation.
Bricklehampton is the longest place name in the UK with no repeated letters.
More than one-third of men using dating sites are already married.
Postcards from Poitiers 