Extracts from the Evening News of France 2
Page 2
August, and we have riots all over the UK. I am not going to comment, except to say that the reporting from France Télévisions is, as always, excellent. Here is an extract from the evening news of 10/08/2011
Laurent Delahousse has been standing in for David Pujadas on France 2's evening news recently, and he's given us some interesting items. Here were two little stories, once after the other, to which I gave the filename DeuxTraditions, because they seemed to me to evoke first an unhappy British tradition, and then a French one. Both of them are regarded as shocking by the politically correct today, but each relate, I think, to deeply rooted traditions in our different countries.
The first story was from Britain, and was about boys aged less than ten being encouraged to fight in a cage, before adult spectators, in what they call 'free fight'. The second dealt with the fact that French men find it difficult to accept orders from women managers. The first did not shock me unduly, because I am English, and of a generation that watched boxing before it was tamed down into a 'safe' sport. The second, on male chauvinists, I found quite horrifying. I have a French friend of my age who had exactly the opposite reaction...
The 11 November is the day of commemoration in France of the First World War. Last May the last veteran of that conflict died, and Nicolas Sarkozy has decided to devote the day to all French soldiers who have given their lives for their country.. as other countries have done. And as one old soldier says in this piece Quand ils tombent, ils tombent. And my goodness, a very effective ceremony. Easy to be cynical about this sort of thing, but I found it moving
