French press review 24 May 2010

Just three French newspapers to hand this Monday morning, the others taking advantage of the national holiday. I'm afraid gloom, doom and disaster are the rather unfestive themes dominating the front pages.

Le Monde continues to hammer the struggling euro with a main story analysing the dangers of the new official policy of hardship and belt-tightening (for those lucky enough to still have belts).

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, since government promises of cuts in spending on just about everything are vitally necessary if the eurozone is to be able to keep Greece out of debt by loaning it more money.

But the danger is that failure by those same governments to spend may cause the European economy to go back into recession. It could even, warns Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, provoke a depression.

What Joe doesn't explain is where we might find the money to prime the pump to get the whole system working again. That sort of gloomy analysis certainly won't cheer anybody up.

Just to show that the new coalition government in London is paying close attention to the cost-cutting efforts of neighbouring governments, right-wing Le Figaro reports that the newly installed Conservatives and their liberal allies have announced plans for SUPER-austerity.

With budget cuts worse than any seen since the Second World War, the Cameron-Clegg coalition hopes to save 7 billion quid. My question is: who or what will save the Cameron-Clegg coalition?

The same Le Figaro reports that Nicolaus Copernicus can finally rest in peace, having been buried for the second time on Sunday, 467 years after his death.

Nick, you will remember, upset quite a few people in high places, notably in the Catholic church, when he peered through his telescope and noticed that the Earth and the rest of the planets in the solar system actually revolved around the Sun.

Worse, Nick suspected, well before his time, that the Earth, far from being the centre of the universe, was little more than a hair in the cosmic soup. That sort of talk was heresy at the time, and could lead to you being publicly burned, unless you saw the error of your ways.

Well, Copernicus was wise enough to wait for the judgement of history. His second funeral was attended by the Polish primate, Monseigneur Josef Kowalczik.

Copernicus now rests, in hallowed ground, under a monument showing a sun surrounded by the six planets known at his time. The church has other, more pressing, problems and didn't feel that an official apology was called for.