DE VILLEPIN ALMOST GETS TOUGH

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin reveals his solutions to the violence sweeping France:

• Continuing large-scale police deployments, including 1,500 extra reserve officers, in troubled areas

• Swift and effective justice for all law-breakers

• A judicial inquiry into the deaths of two teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois, Paris, which sparked the riots

• New powers for the mayors of French cities and municipalities, to impose curfews and maintain order

• A restoration of spending programmes (recently cut back) on community associations of all kinds, to promote social solidarity

• A tripling of state scholarships in poor areas, and increased spending on training schemes for under-achieving young people. Some 150,000 children, mainly from immigrant families, are leaving school without any qualifications

• A lowering to 14 of the age when children wanting to quit school can begin an apprenticeship; this idea was at once criticised by some teachers' leaders

• More company job training schemes in problem areas. Immigrants with a college degree complain they rarely even get job interviews because of blatant discrimination

• An urban renewal programme, re-building districts damaged by the riots and building more humane living environments

• More, unspecified, sanctions to counter social discrimination of all kinds

A bit more pressure from the street thugs and de Villepin will be handing out keys to the cities.

Update: The BBC article linked above is basically hopeful that the proposed solutions will work. The BBC article from which the excerpt below is taken offers a much more realistic appraisal of what's really going on:

Years of reporting on riots and revolutions have shown me that crowds display a mysterious collective sense which somehow overrides the perceptions and fears of the individuals who make up the mass. And crowds have a remarkable feeling for the weakness of government.

There is of course a huge well of fury and resentment among the children of North African and African immigrants in the suburbs of French cities. The suburbs have been woefully ignored for 30 years.

Violence there is regular and unexceptionable. Even on a normal weekend, between 20 and 30 vehicles are regularly attacked and burned by rioters.

This time the riots are joined up, pre-planned, co-ordinated. At some level of consciousness, the demonstrators know that the governmental system they are facing is deeply, perhaps incurably, sclerotic.

Mr Chirac, standing back until his ministers showed their inability to agree a clear line on the rioting, seems not to have the answers when he speaks now. His presidency is overshadowed by an inescapable sense of past corruption and weakness, and he has governed France at a time when its economy and its position in the world have both declined sharply and markedly.

What's that old saying about people getting the government they deserve?


The BBC is soliciting comments on the article, so you can lodge a comment if you're so inclined.