Demonstration against austerity and for the sharing of wealth

Between 500 and 600 persons demontrated today against the austerity measures decided by the French government. Several trade unions, but not all, had launched an appeal to their supporters to join the demonstration which gathered on Ralliement square, then walked throughout streets of Angers down town. The main demands of the demonstrators are a stop of the austerity policy and another sharing of wealthnesses among people.

(A former demonstration in 2010)

The leaders of the event have denounced the increase of the value added tax which is the same for the low and high income households while "it should be proportional to those incomes". Some criticized the "gifts" to private companies "without economic and social duties". Others claimed that the present capitalist model does not fit to workers and constitutes something the government has imposed to citizens.

If the austerity measures are already tough, and will probably become tougher in the months to come, the demonstrators content themselves with the sharing of wealthnesses among people and do not not worry about the ways the wealthnesses have beeen created and how to increase them. It's also original to consider that competitiveness measures are "gifts". It's widely considered that France, as well as many others countries, has lived beyond its means with deficitary budgets while others didn't have the minimum ressources to finance basic needs.

The Loire à vélo awarded by a British tourism association

The British Guild of Travel Writers has, for its 2012 nominations, awarded to the Loire Bike circuits the title of "best European tourism attraction category". The Loire à vélo is a completion of a safe 800 kms cycle trail from Nevers to the Atlantic Ocean realized after 10 years of work and whic goes through six departements.  The price is awarded every year to projects located in UK, European Union and overseas by a panel of British editors members of the Bgtw.

Two main qualities appear to be at the origin of the decision of the organization : the touristic potential and its economic benefits for the towns and villages located along the circuit. The Loire à vélo is "an immense cycle tourism route which runs from Cuffy (near Nevers) to Saint-Brévin-les-Pins (near Saint-Nazaire and wich crosses the Centre and Pays de la Loire régions along the banks long the banks of France longest river, the Loire.
  
The itinerary has been developed since 1955 "for people who all have one thing in common : that desire to get away from it all", says the Loire à vélo website. Most of the stages are no more than 40 km long, i.e. 4 hours of cycling per day.  (credit pictures : La Loire à vélo)

The opposition to the Notre-Dame-des Landes airport scheme is landing in Angers

The project of a new airport located at Notre-Dame-des-Landes which is due to replace the Nantes-Atlantique airport starts to ignite protests in Angers. A few days ago, while a meeting of the council of Angers Loire Métropole was almost finished, a representative, member of an ecologic party, demanded the end of violences against the adversaries of the scheme. The president of the authority, Jean-Claude Antonini, refused to accept a new debate on that issue beause it had been already discussed. More recently, several communities hostile to the project have made public their decision to support the Notre-Dame-des-Land opponents.

Some leftist and ecologic formations have constituted a committee which, from November 12, will gather daily on Ralliement square from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm in order to explain to Angers inhabitants the reasons of their opposition to the Notre-Dame-des-Landes project. It has announced that he will take part to a new demonstration on the site of the future airport. For that purpose, it will organize a transport to the scene on November 17 (at 9 am, on Kennedy square).

Credit pictures : Wikipedia

On its side, Alm has decided to support the project because it considers that the equipment will better connect Angers to foreign countries. That airport should to be linked to Angers by rail and road speedways. According to the opponents to the project, that one is conflicting with the Grenelle de l'Environnement (a series of political meetings which listed numerous commitments in the ecology field and which was endorsed by Angers city) while others regional airport are already under used.

False notes in the state of mind at the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire

The words are tough and the views without ambivalence. In a long interview in a local media (1) published on November 12, the future past conductor of the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire, the American John Axelrod, recalls his course at the head of the orchestra and details his opinion about the state of mind of the musicians he is about to leave for others in Italia. The ideas Mr. Axelrod develops are about the behaviour regarding the working life and the change. They seem to refer to a community of people much more larger than an orchestra and give a light about the course of the Region where Angers and its inhabitants are in the middle and may be the sample.

The conductor reminds that he was told to enhance the level of the orchestra but noticed that this one "was not ready to change" because most of the musicians had a state of mind of "civil servants" : "comfort, routine, security are things some musicians are looking for. Not the stress, challenges, international competitiveness and search for quality. The resistance to changes causes a incredible apathy. The musicians are paid whenever there is or there is not audience".

Credit pictures : Onpl

Having conducted others orchestras over the world, John Axelrod compares the ability of the musicians he managed to assimilate new works. The Onpl members "need time and numerous rehearsals because they considered the programme was stressing and heavy" while " others orchestra wished to be conducted bluntly, without shortered repetitions, [they wanted] to stretch their limits". Mr Axelrod regrets he was not able to plan works because he was afraid of "complaints or strikes. That is specific to this country" compared to Italia where musicians "fight for survive". In Onpl, "in spite of success, musicians don't want additional work". Are they in tune with their environment?

(1) Le Courrier de l'Ouest

Angers customers and stores owners already tuned on Christmas

If almost there are still two months before Christmas, streets and front sides of Angers down town have already a look of celebrations. Town hall has just hang illuminations in the streets which wait to be lighted. Only the mobile wooden huts are missing. Streets are full of people who, apparently, think to the gifts they will have to do in the weeks to come. And they are invited to question themselves by stores owners who have started to adorn their frontsides with Christmas trees onrnaments : candles, tinsels and bowls.

These are the visible part of the care Angers stores owners are preparing the end of the year, a period providing a large part of their annual turnover. According to an observer of the trade sector of Angers, the decision of the city council to prohibit openings of stores the Sundays before Christmas is difficult to understand. "The best way would have been to let the retailers to decide themselves and to let them conclude if the decision to work on those Sundays was appropriate".

So the end of the weekends of Angers will have, as always, sharp constrasts : lively on Saturdays and demoralizing on Sundays. The atmosphere is even happier now than in Christmas. Probably because streets are not disanchanted by the depressing melodies like "Petit Papa Noel", a famous French song, abyss of sadness.

United bags of Angers gather more and more inhabitants

The idea is generous but gives a glimpse of the difficulties more and more Angers households are facing and will, maybe, face in the months, and years, to come. Since spring 2011, Les Jardins de Cocagne, an Angers association member of a national network, started to distribute to low income families of the city unsold fruits and vegetables collected on the Marché d'intérêt national, then packaged in string bags. The idea offers a double interest, says the Angers city on its website, first by reducing the wastes coming from the destruction of unsold products, secondly by allowing households to get access to fresh items. Moreover, the work resulting from the sorting of the fruits and vegetables, their packaging and their transport has given a work to several persons.

Credit : Angers CCAS, Angers city

After it was launched in the Justices-Madeleine, Saint-Léonard and Les Hauts de Saint-Aubin districts of Angers, the idea has been extended to the Monplaisir and Deux-Croix-Banchais and will be implemented in La Roseraie and Belle-Beille districts. The string bags are put aside for low income families who must vouch they are economically modest. The prices range from 2,5 to 6 euros a string bag according to revenues while a part of the cost is met by the Centre communal d'action social.

Magnified par the word "united", this trend is not reassuring about the purchasing power of more and more Angers families. Two conclusions may be learnt from the experience. The more and more common recourses to associations in numerous aspects of daily life demonstrate the Angers inhabitants become few by few unable to face the economic costs of the contemporay life. If such honourable experiences must be continued and generalized to others field (energy, transportation, clothing...), that must not be on the expenses of persons (employers employees) facing the social and economic costs of a commercial business.

Crossfire of criticisms against Angers Loire Métropole and Angers city for their policies and the financial standing of their territories

The AquaVita project

The difficulties foreseen in the economic field for the Angers region and the some of the public investments  in the same area stirred criticism both from political and economical responsibles, reported by local medias (1). The Angers mayor, Frédéric Béatse, as well as the president of Angers Loire Métropole, Jean-Claude Antonini, are targeted by these reproaches coming from a mayor and a businessman. The two Angers representatives are criticized for their policies but, also, for their personal caracteristics, Mr Antonini being qualified of "autocrat", Mr Beatse being, at the opposite, considered as a little bit "shy".

The Technicolor closure

Regarding the policies, the mayor of Murs-Erigné, Philippe Bodard, find regrettable the Angers reconquest of the Maine banks projects, titled "new banks" as well as the local television deploring, for that one, the lack of debate in Angers Loire Métropole . But more generally, the Murs-Erigné mayor points out a centralization of the powers favouring Angers at the expense of little cities. "When Angers has decided, it's useless to fight", says Mr Bodard. 

The New Banks project

In the economic field, a businessman recalls the same day the increasing impoverishment of Angers and the concentration in that city of many of the asylum seekers arrived in the Pays de la Loire region. According to that person, the project of a new penitenciary will never grow while the financial difficulties of the public university will get worse while the judicial city of the Pays de la loire will not come in Angers in spite the fact the city is the center of the region.

(1) Le Courrier de L'Ouest

Activists for the right for persons of the same sex to get married and adopt children demonstrate

About a hundred persons demonstrated on November 7th at Ralliement square in favor the passing of a law giving to lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual and heterosexual the right to get married and to adopt children. The date coincided with the consideration by the French council of ministers of a bill widening to persons of the same sex the right to get married as other persons. Consecuently, the bill opens to the persons concerned the right to adopt a child. 

Several Angers associations took the initiative of that gathering, as "Quazar Lgbt (1) Centre of Angers" and "Les enfants de l'arc en ciel - L'asso" which claims that "The (French) republic must recognize all families and must protect all children". These communities say the bill is not going as far as it would be necessary because female parents must be able to get maternal assisted procreation.

The opinion of the Angers population regarding the homosexual marriage and adoption is unclear. The city looks quite conservative but could be, logically, in phase with the French opinion mostly in favor of the right of the persons above to get married. On the other hand, the opening, to these persons, of the right to adopt children is more controversial. But since a long time (maybe more than 30 years) Angers elects Socialist mayors. Now, sympathizers to the bill are more numerous on the left side in France than on the right side.

(1) Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual

Angers awakes to the Election Night

The English Language Library in Angers was tuned, as probably American citizens or students living in the city, to the Us presidential election night. On November 6, public was invited to a talk about the American elections. The guest of the libray was the Us consul in Rennes, Robert Tate, who delivered a conference on what is "behind the scenes, the electoral process and the economic issues". 

The following morning, from 9 to 11 am, the Angers public will be invited to  "stop by the library to hear about the results of the elections and treat itself as a full American breakfast! Eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, tea, coffee, orange juice...no need to reserve! 3 euros at the door" announced the library on its website. 

On the eve of the results, hustle and bustle were visible in the Library whose frontside was sprinkeld with stickers of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party as well as the two 
candidates, Bararck Obama and Mitt Romney pictures.

It seems that the American inhabitants of Angers, most of them students, were in favor of the outgoing president who extended scholarships for them (what Mitt Romney is said he would scratch). Some of them were even visibly anxious by what could come out from the ballot. The interest in Angers is more acute for that election given the opening of a deparment of the Saint-Edward's University and the twinning of Angers with the Us city of Austin (Texas) whose mayor is a Democrat.

Angers towards a "biodivercity" statute

Biodiversity in 2010

Angers Loire Métropole will soon attempt to demonstrate that the "quality of life" it promotes in France and abroad to attract companies and job is not only a slogan, but a reality. Its president and deputy-president, Jean-Claude Antonini and Gilles Mahé, will officialy launch the "Agenda 21 of bio-diversity of Angers Loire Métropole" at Le Grand Theâtre, on November 24th. The Agenda 21 is one of the components of the 2015 Agglomeration project, drawn up in 2003, almost ten years ago, when local economy was in better conditions than now.

Biodiversity in 2011

No less than forty actions were planned in different fields : economy, building and transport, citizenship, ecology and energy. Regarding biodiversity, Angers had in 2012 implemented awareness campaign regarding the necessity of wildlife protection and one year later a trail displaying all the animals colonizing the Angers urban jungle.

Credit : Angers Loire Métropole

The programme regarding the launch of what be done in 2013 looks unclear but it could concern all the actions aiming at the preservation of the natural assets of the Angers region : the landscapes, the rivers and the flora around. That seems a little bit vague but Angers representatives hope that these may make Angers more attractive for employers and employees in the years to come. But would it be sufficient?

Angers poker club puts its cards on the table of the Angers Resto du coeur

Credit Picture : William

They were gathered by the heart. Some because they have from time to time an ace in their play. Others because they give food and meals to low income Angers inhabitants. The Angers poker club and the Resto du coeur were associated in a "solipoker" event on November 4th. The "recipe" is simple. The players come with a food gift as fees and have a competition from 9 h 30 till the afternoon.

The initiative was accessible to 100 cards lovers from the Angers poker club and other communities from Maine-et-Loire and outside. The tournament was in Texas hold 'em, a variation of the standard card game of poker. In Texas hold 'em, as in all variants of poker, individuals compete for an amount of money or chips contributed by the players themselves (called the pot).

The Angers Poker club was created in 2007 and gathers around 100 players all lovers of that game and who promote it in the Angers region through events, tournaments and workshops. The Restos du coeur community gathers, in Maine-et-Loire, more than 1 200 volunteers and hosted on one year about 10 000 persons to whom 1,5 million meals were served.

Authorities are looking for temporary facilities for more homeless persons in Angers

If the human consequencies of winter affect all the Maine-et-Loire inhabitants, they are maybe more visible in Angers. Towns gather homeless persons who find in their boundaries food help, shelter and social assistance. More numerous persons, sometimes families, from the region or from abroad, could, during the cold season 2012-2013, find themselves in desperate conditions because the worsening economic "climate" will put them a severe test in the months to come.

The measure Angers city council has passed a few days ago about the prohibition of alcohol consumption in down town streets will certainly calm anxiety of residents and store owners. But it will not strike the root of the problem. If homeless are source of concern because they are over alcoholized, it's simply because wines and hard liquors are their only way to endure (temporarily) themselves from the cold. And temperatures are far to be at their minimum in Angers before next spring...

So the Maine-et-Loire prefecture, as well as other cities, has started to anticipate the problem by launching on November 1st the "intense cold plan" because Angers could maybe face an increase of homeless in the months to come. That state authority is looking for "further rough and ready facilities for temporary housing" in town. That could reassure (a little) Angers town hall which recently noticed that the existing facilites were already overloaded and warned that the city could not host more misery from abroad. A difficult winter is feared.

Letter from the editor

Adn received on November 2nd the following mail regarding the post "Dead workers cemetery" :
"Hello,
Thank you very much to keep on following Thomson Angers - Technicolor "adventure" with such well-targeted reports.
The employee that I was, now fired, is grateful of your concern. 
Gilbert"
Thank you Gilbert for your kind appreciation.
Warmest regards
Edgar

Angers Loire Métropole economic scheme aims at stir jobs (without growth?)

Bichon open air market

In its latest issue, "Métropole", the magazine of Angers Loire Métropole, the territorial authority gathering Angers and surroundings towns, dedicates six pages to the new "Sustainable economy and job director scheme 2013-2017". The document, passed on by the board of Alm in September, points out "an absolute priority : job creation". If the recent closure of Technicolor, an economic and social disaster, worries, understandably, the representatives of Alm, the contents of their plan (as they are described by "Métropole") do not clearly establish that growth  is an essential condition for job creation. So, it is not sure that the importance of the Techicolor closure has been appropriately considered as a turning point in the economic future of Angers.

In an Angers superstore on November 1st

One of the four goals of that scheme (which has put 150 millions € available for five years in order to create 10 000 new jobs) is to promote the development of "employment providing companies". Among the sectors quoted in that chapter, is the retailing trade. One of the key opening new opportunities for Angers store owners would be to let them open their business on Sundays before end of year holidays. But, unanimously, the towns members of Alm decided they will not allow store owners to open during that period. How these could hire employees if they are not allowed to work during the most high-growth Sundays of the year? That stance is beyond understanding while, at the same time, Angers city council favours the opening of temporary wooden stores in the streets and squares of down town (and rents, on ordinary Sundays, its exhibitions park for public or professionnal events).

It seems that the authors of the plan have the strongest will to preserve the life quality as an asset for present and future inhabitants of Angers Loire Métropole. Is that concern consistent with the present constraints (the changing work schedules) and wishes (to go for shopping on Sundays or no working days as regularly testified by crowd in superstores those days) of the city households? Angers desperately needs jobs, so growth. It's not sure growth will only come from empty stores in Angers during many days of the year as well as it's not sure that empty stores are a guarantee for quality of life for Alm inhabitants and visitors.

Dead workers cemetery

A new cemetery is visible in Angers. A cemetery where apparently nobody paid a visit on that November 1st, day of the deads in France. All the names, ages and seniorities of persons in connection with that place are indicated on the "orbituaries" along the fences of the "graveyard". And the only "flowers" that embellish the site are yellow limetrees leaves brought there by the wind. The cemetery is not an ordinary one. Here are the grave of an existence who ended on October 22nd from "a long disease".

Along the iron fences of Techni-color, twelve panels have been set up. They have the silhouettes of signs visible along the French roads which represent the victims of car accidents. On each of those, victims of the economic crash of Technicolor have  affixed letters. As employees of the Angers decoders manufacture (the last Technicolor had in Europe), they have been informed they were laid off. Christiane, Dominique or Jean are still alive but their hopes to find a new job after the years of seniority in Technicolor are badly ill, or even  spelled to death: 15 years for one, 36 for another and 39 years for a third.

These figures they wrote on the letters are a kind of epitaph and could mean : "I worked here, faithfully, loyally, for almost forty years and that is the epilogue for me. Please, think of me". Within a few days, Angers authorities will pay tribute to the soldiers died between 1914 and 1918 (even if the last survivor has disappeared a few years ago). The Technicolor fences with all the names of the economic victims recall the monuments of the war France (and England) won, bloodless, more than 90 years ago. Contemporaries of the present economic disaster could think about the ways to avoid such casualties.

Angers cemeteries from stone to lawn

Credit Picture : Angers city

Few by few, silently, the Angers cemeteries borrow to the English graveyards their main caracteristic : lawns. This resuraction of green comes from the duty of the city to limit the use of pesticides in the maintenance of cemeteries. The massive use of pesticides during the 70's led that numerous undesirableplants became much more difficult to kill. Moreover, the presence of those substances in cemeteries made compulsory to reduce their access to the public. That became difficult during period like the Toussaint day when graveyards are overcrowded.

Credit Picture : Trees of memory (Pruillé)

Rather than fighting the botanic intruders, the Angers city now tries to make them disappear by sowing surfaces with grass seeds. "By covering the spaces with lawn or ground cover plants, we limit the appearance of undesirable species. And when, nevertheless, those grow despite everything, they integrate themselves in a vegetal environment in which their presence becomes less troublesome", explians Gilles Mahé, deputy-mayor in charge of environment and greens.

An Angers cemetery has, from its beginning chosen to cover its surface with lawns and trees : "The trees of memor" located near Angers which could be unique in France. On the Eastern cemetery, about 3 200 m2 have been sowed with grass seeds in  2012 in the place of paths and between gravestones. But to make more similar to gardens, the three Angers cemeteries will take a long time. They cover about 24 hectares. It will need more than a lifetime.

The remains of the last Plantagenet king of England, could come back to Angers rather than the Crown Jewels

If in Angers, the family name of "Plantagenet" has now disappeared from the news, in England the name of that Anjou dynasty who ruled the country from 1154 till 1485 is still on the front pages. In August, archeologists discovered under a car park located in Leicester the remains of a man who could have been Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England, defeated and killed by his rival to the English crown, Henry VII. A reader of Angers Daily News in England, reports that the remains could be those of Richard III.

In spite of the fact the DNA test have not been yet completed, "early indications suggest that the remains may well be those of the king".  "There is some sign that he had scoliosis (and) one shoulder being slightly higher than the other", as demonstrated by historians, reports our correspondent. " In addition there is some indication of a break in the skull which does seem consistent with the story that Richard III fell from his horse at the battle of Bosworth and was clubbed to death". 

"A debate has now started as to where the bones of Richard III (if they are proved by DNA tests to be the true remains) should be buried. Some advocate they should go to York Minster, others prefer Leicester Cathedral, some prefer Westminster Abbey in London", reports the reader. who adds that "a spokesman for the Abney-Hastings family said that they would certainly support a claim that as Angevin the body should perhaps be returned to Angers Cathedral!"  

According to that one, "This has a much greater chance of success than the return of the Crown Jewels which in fact were destroyed by Oliver Cromwell some 200 years later. The existing crown jewels were given by Charles II. Come along Angers - just imagine the tourism that this burial would create!".

The change has yet to be done

If the Angers down town retail trade sector is not in great shape, the political offer looks itself a little bit ailing. A few weeks ago, the committee room of Luc Belot, socialist candidate to the French national assembly was buoyant. Votes had to be collected. So the candidate was tuned with the inhabitants of his constituency throughout the opening of its committee room. The electoral campaign is over now and the closure of the office may mean the representative doesn't need anymore to be connected with voters.

In the "store", everything has gone. The inside is absolutely empty. So empty that the vacuum is visible. On the front side, notice boards and posters calling people to give their votes to Mr. Belot have vanished, except the tagline banner at the top of the front side which still says (on Barack Obama's mood) : "The change : it's right now". But that change doesn't look very attractive and that is the point of view of pedestrians who stopped their walk in front of the former committee room to shot a picture, a little bit dumbfounded by the incongruity between the catch phrase and the condition of the store, by the discrepancy between the words and the facts.

It would have been more appropriate, more consistent, and simply more kind, for the former candidate to remove the tagline banner and the candidate's posters at the same time. But it was not the case. Why? Simple omission, indifference or Freudian slip? What does it mean? "Polls are over now : see you again in five years?". Representative and French president are not anymore on the same line? The first option would be shameful. The second looks unlikely. So what does it mean? The change (not only of occupant), it's right now and it could be a sobering experience.

Angers city council satisfies store owners about a free car parks first hour for end of year holidays

Credit picture Angers city

Finally, after several demon-strations of Angers store owners, the city council met, at least for a part, their expections. For weeks, these had asked permission to work on Sundays before end of year holidays and a less costly access to car parks for their customers throughout that period. If the first demand has been denied by Angers majority representatives, these nevertheless granted satisfaction to the second.

The town council will give a subsidy of about 16 000 € to the association of down town stores owners, Vitrines d'Angers. These will convert that money buying car park cheques for the customers of Angers stores. Then, all these could benefit from a no charged car park first hour. Regarding the first claim, the Angers city had promised a few weeks ago, along with the other cities members of Angers Loire métropole, to deny the right of opening on Sundays to store owners. That triggered wrath from the city council minority representatives who described the majority's decision as "reactionary".

The Angers retailers have nevertheless learnt that sales event will be organized in the city during the end of year holidays. A big whell will be set up on Lorraine square and a circus will take place in La Rochefoucauld square. Store owners just hope they will not experiment a lack of purchasers.

Letter from the editor

The article "Angers down town retail trade sector afraid of its future and of the town's future" published on October 22 led a reader of Angers Daily News, himself store owner, to express his fear that the end of the year animations of down town have not been already devised by the representative in charge. "I wonder about the management of that issue. We have been told that sales events are not yet completed and assessed. Christmas arrives in about a month and a half. That' s a little bit skimpy".

This store owner urges the Angers city council to reconsider its stance about "the opening of stores before Christmas, a no charged car park first hour and the access to the city hall car park closed on weekends". He recalls that Angers retailers "must be able to work all year long and not only three weeks". Adn thanks the reader for his comment.