French press review 09 January 2013

You might have thought that the class struggle went out with Karl Marx. You'd have been wrong. Social classes and the war between them are alive and well in contemporary France.

All of that is made clear on the front page of today's communist L'Humanité, where the headline "Class warfare makes a comeback" is supported by an opinion poll showing that 64 per cent of French people believe that the struggle between rich and poor is an everyday reality.

The same suggestion was rejected by 66 per cent of French people when it was posed in 1967.

An analyst tells L'Humanité that he's not surprised by the current resurgence of a sense of class in French society. A reaction of overidentification is typical of socioeconomic groups who feel threathened by external forces, he says.

The French middle class today believes itself and its values to be under threat because of the economic crisis and so its members are more conscious of their differences from those above and below them in the social pecking order.

Business daily Les Echos reports that French spending on health slowed down dramatically last year. It's not that we're getting any healthier or that the French love affair with the medicinal molecule is running out of steam. It's simply the impact of new ways of calculating compensation for sick leave and the lower cost of generic drugs.

The bad news is that French hospitals are in deep financial trouble, with spending expected to be 400 million euros over budget for 2012.

Catholic La Croix looks at the garment industry in Bangladesh, the workshop of the world's ready-to-wear business.

The shirts and trousers that will be snapped up today as the French winter sales begin are produced for tiny sums in Bangladesh because workers there will put in six 10-hour days every week for the princely wage of 50 euros per month.

An organisation promoting the interests of Bangladeshi garment workers says consumers can make a difference, simply by asking the manufacturers and distributors to explain how clothes now cost less than they did 15 years ago. A boycott will simply deprive impoverished Bangladeshi women of work, pointed questions posed by large numbers of consumer associations could mean those women work less and get paid more.

Right-wingLe Figaro gives front-page prominence to yesterday's New Year's meeting between French President François Hollande and the leaders of the nation's various religious communities. We have the assurances of both the chief rabbi and the Catholic archbishop of Paris, the sort of fellahs who have a professional interest in telling the truth, that the tortured subject of homosexual marriage was not mentioned once in the hour-long exchange.

That doesn't prevent Le Figaro from publishing a front page picture of Hollande and the religious leaders with the headline "Hollande digs in on marriage for homosexuals as the opposition takes to the street".

There will, indeed, be another protest next weekend in Paris, organised by people opposed to the proposed law allowing marriage for all. But neither the Catholic archbishop, the Jewish rabbi nor any of their Muslim counterparts had anything to say about the matter at yesterday's presidential audience.

If France had a Press Council, maybe Le Figaro would not be allowed to blur the boundaries between information and a political agenda in such a blatant way.