What has Sarkozy actually achieved since being achieved since being elected, from his policy basket.
France will keep its 35-hour working week in order to enable employees to add tax-deductible overtime to their salaries and boost growth, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Tuesday.
Ryanair, a highly entrepreneurial airline, has always sailed a little close to the wind with some of its advertising and branding. Like a Costco or WalMart, Ryanair has stacked it high and sold it cheap, amassing the scalps of airlines along the way, such as Buzz, or severely dinting the profits of the so-called 'national flagship' airlines (Aer Lingus, BA, Lufthansa, Air France).
Most famously was Ryanair taking on the BA/Lingus duopoly on travel between London and Dublin. They broke it, and Lingus is now forced to fly small aircraft out of Stansted, while Ryan flies 15 times a day to Dublin.
The airline realises that if you're going to cover your costs (and maybe make a profit!) flying people around, you can have a half full cabin paying high fares or a chock-full paying little. Ryanair has inversed that traveler's addage of "it's not about the destination, it's the journey".
The fact that these cheap fares are available means that air-travel is within reach of everyone, not just those using other people's money to fly. This is not flying to enjoy, but flying to smell the camembert of a true French fromagerie, to taste Guinness at its source or to feel the sand between toes on a Tenerife beach.
Now, there are a few groundings to this seemingly perfect scenario. Critics of the airline (often the scorned full-fare competitors) say: "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys". The critics are correct to some degree. Let's take an example:
If I booked a flight today from London Stansted to Belfast International for Travel on June 2 returning June 16 the fare is 2 pence. Fine but; this does NOT include:
So you can understand the poor passenger's gripe when a fare is advertised at £0.02, but ends up being £72.70 (taxes included). Nor does Ryanair necessarily fly to mainstream airports. Beauvais is an hour's bus outside Paris, Prestwick is down by the Troon golf course, and Torp is well out of Oslo past snow covered fields, transfers are an extra cost. Nor does the airline offer refunds of any kinds. Nor does the airline offer large baggage allowances.
But, despite the pledges of many travelers to give up the airline because of these differences, money talks. Ryanair is often the cheapeast way to see some destinations, despite the so called 'stealth taxes' imposed by the airline. Ultimately, the customer has everything laid out in front of them, and a final price to pay to their airline. They can still choose to proceed.
Update: After putting this up, I checked the EasyJet equivalent for the same day, approx same flight times, 1 pax with 1 bag, and they came to £51.96, a good £20 cheaper than Ryanair. Competition exists at the low cost end market also, and EasyJet's baggage allowance is 20kgs, to RyanAir's 15kgs.
But ultimately, Ryanair is not competing with full fare airlines. Ryanair is competing with train and shipping lines. Part of a European holiday involving a crossing of either the English Channel or the Irish Sea usually meant bringing along the family car in the hope of saving the (often exorbitant) cost of rental, especially in pre-Schengen days. Now the money saved on flights can be used to rent.
Advertising: Sharp but risky
The longer than expected background brings me to today's news that Carla Bruni and Nicholas will be suing for invasion of privacy. They are seeking €500,000 and €1 respectively, with Bruni's picture used for commercial purposes without payment commanding the largest sum.
Carla's speech bubble says:
With Ryanair, all my family can come to my wedding.
The smart advertising makes the connection between the size of Ms Bruni's Italian family and her imminent wedding to President Sarkozy.
UPDATE 2
Sarkozy has decided to settle for a euro, but Carla Bruni is carrying on the action. Ryanair has offered to donate 5000 Euros. A spokesman for Sarkozy said:
"For the President of the Republic it is a question of principle. As for Carla Bruni, it's her profession, it's her image. She has suffered a financial loss,"he told a regular weekly news briefing.
Francis Taitgen, the Ryanair lawyer has claimed free speech when defending the company's actions. Taitgen said Ryanair agreed to publish the judgment in three newspapers and to make a 5,000 euro donation to charity but he said Bruni should accept that she was in a special position.
"She declares that she comes before you as a model and singer who earns a great deal of money. But this is not the photo of a singer! It is the photo of a woman with the man she loves!," he told the court."When one has the immense good fortune to have glory and fame, one should accept the inconvenient aspects," he said.
But this isn't the first time Ryanair has found itself in hot water over its tack on advertising. Just a couple of months ago, it released a glamour charity calendar with its female staff strutting their stuff in various airside locales.
But that's not all, the airline was also rapped over the knuckles by the British Ads agency over the "Hottest Back to School Fares" newspaper ad featuring a skirt clad young woman exposing quite a bit of skin.
I feel Ryan's biggest faux pas was when they charged a man 18 pounds for use of a wheelchair. The UK Court of Appeal found that Ryanair and Stansted had discriminated against disabled people.
Update 3
Its flamboyant CEO Michael O'Leary, has a few quotable quotes with regards to regulation, the environment and the state of the travel industry:
Tidnup has flown Ryanair on a dozen occasions, to Destinations such as Glasgow (Prestwick), Dublin, Edinburgh, Paris (Beauvais) and Oslo (Torp).
In the movie "Les 400 Coups", a youngster played by Jean-Pierre Léaud is disowned by his parents and thrown into the state juvenile system for his crimes. "Les 400 Coups" literally translates as the 400 Blows. Today saw the leaking of a document prepared by Jacques Attali, a former advisor to Francois Mitterand, with 314 ways to "unleash economic growth" in France. Sounds good doesn't it?
To Bernard Fixot, the editor of this review who hoped that it would be launched in book form before being pre-empted on a news website, the leak was considered "Theft, concealment and forgery". Especially when it was to be launched amid great fanfare, and make some money for the (hard copy) publishers. That doesn't relate to the content though.
Mitterand once described Attali, the author of said report thus:
“I don’t need a computer; I’ve got Attali.”
The words of a past advisor to a socialist president wouldn't encourage great confidence in the majority of sitting MPs. However, he has come up with some good ideas to modernise France out of its (well earned) reputation for being a nanny state, and failing to make improvements in areas such as the public sector since the second world war. Despite the good idea, there is no 'mode d'emploi' (user guide) to go with the suggestions. The implementation is thus left up to the current Government, whose Prime Minister is now outpolling the President in terms of popularity.
Oh yes, and even the author has a bearish outlook on the state of the French economy:
“France remains very largely a society of connivance and privileges”, Mr Attali says, in a leaked draft of the report.
Some of the key suggestions include:
Less bureaucrats, more flexible workforce, less waste. The suggestions also seem to rebalance the immense tax burden that is place on those in the private sector who subsidise the benefits, conditions and retirement of those who work in the public; a polarising gripe considering how large the layers of bureaucracy make the French public service. There will be a summer of discontent and riots if this plan is implemented too viciously, and the French will be up to their old tricks in taking to the streets.
Sarkozy is still acting on the strength of the mandate he garnered in his own election, and that of his parliamentary colleagues. He is acting, because he can see the fabric of the nation fraying under the weight of its generosity, built up over the post-war generations.
The final word goes to Marine Le Pen of the National Front (remember her father Jean-Marie?) tagging Mr Attali as Attila (boom boom):
"because this is a precise and organised plan for ensuring the death of the French nation as we know it”.
You know what, she's absolutely right. The French nation as it is cannot continue to survive: it must follow the Darwinian philosophy of evolving or dying.
Update: Sarkozy's Parliamentary Majority is 314. Coincidence?
Nicholas Sarkozy must have retained the same team who designed his campaign website to build the French President's website, a very accessible and detailed version compared to Mitterand's old site. Sarkozy's is lacking an English version though.
Sarkozy gave his wishes for the New Year live from the Elysée Palace, a break with tradition where previous presidents pre-recorded their address, much like the Queen's Christmas Message. Perhaps the autocue is running a little too fast at times, and he loses some of the emphasis, especially when he is trying to explain that 2007 was only the beginning of a 'rupture' from the past, and that he will step up his efforts in 2008. More luck to him.
This morning he had emergency servicemen and women around to thank them for being on duty the previous night, where only (!) 273 cars were set alight in that great French tradition. This is down on the 313 from the previous year. 259 people were detained nationwide. I don't think there could be anything worse than stepping out onto a narrow french street where you'd parked your car the night before to find it reduced to a smouldering pire. I can only imagine the cost of insuring if you park on the street in the 'banlieues' skirting France's major cities reknowned for torching cars.
