It seems almost another age when we were railing about the crookery of the French president, Chirac, who had been dubbed even by his own citizens as L'escroc, and indeed it has been some time since we last looked it him. But all good things have to come to an end. Today we see confirmation from the city of Paris that Chirac and France's ruling UMP party will pay the city €2.2 million euros to drop its fraud charges against the former president. €550,000 euros of the fine is to be paid by Chirac while the remaining €1.65 is to be paid by party of current President Nicolas Sarkozy.

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"More so than ever, it becomes a society where the elites simply grab what they can get, and a weary cynicism takes hold of the population."
Post the second world war the EU became as such. Led by heath and his ghastly establishment.

Most unfortunate name of Mr Chirac's lawyer me thinks. After all, that is precicely what these conjourors do, draw veils here & there, slight of hand here, distraction there, then tralla! Welcome to the Peoples Democratic Repulic of the European Union (PDREU)!

I understate my distress at the Septic Isle where, today, all is about Rights...and little or nothing about Responsibility.
Our elite, which should be providing good examples, is a fimiculous bunch of troughers in it only for its own enrichment at sheeple expense.
That France is, in some respects, suffering from the same malaise should be no surprise. It is, after all, pandemic in Western society (small wonder that mediaeval Islam is making such inroads)...the French, however, aren't quite as laissez-faire as those on the other side of la Manche....and have even been known to have decapitated those thought to have stepped over the mark.
Time will tell, of course, but Chirac has the same chances as Berlusconi ever to see the inside of a jail.

Some years ago I lived in Paris and married a Parisienne who happened to own an appartment in the XVIth and also had a half share with her sister in another larger one in the same building. I noticed that her local taxes were greater on the smaller appartment than on the larger one, so I went down to the Mairie to investigate. I discovered that her original declarations regarding square metres, number of bathrooms etc. had been altered by a functionaire so that the smaller appartment was now larger than than the other one for tax purposes.
When we pointed this out to the manager he shrugged and said what can I do, she's a communist and thinks everyone who lives in the XVIth is a lier and a capitalist.