Angers doesn't look threatened by an heatwave comparable to August 2003

Angers is preparing to face the hottest period of the year. The temperature on August 17th reached 34° C and should records on the next day one degree more. The thermometer will not decrease significantly before August 22nd. Thirty five degrees is an unusual and high temperature in Angers region but it is not nevertheless the hottest the city experimented.

On August 4th 1990, the Avrillé station of Météo France noticed a heatwave at 38,4° C. But is was not the peak. In 1947, 39,8 ° C were noted down in 1947 (a famous year for the wine). More recently, in 2011, a peak was recorded by the Avrillé meteorologists at 33,4° but according to these specialists, such levels are epiphenomenas and don't occur more than 6 times in a quarter of a century.

The most remembered meteorological phenomena is of course the heatwave of 2003. Angers city, between August 1st and 18th,  faced 8 days with temperatures above 35°. The heatwave was made worse by few rains. In Angers, the level of rainfalls didn't reached 80% of the normal level. On a long period, the global warming looks noticeable in Angers. The values noticed in the from 1820 to 1825  don't increase above 21 degrees. (Credit pictures Angers city)

In case of heatwave

What to do in case of heatwave? First keep out of the heat by trying to plan one's day in a way allowing to stay out of the heat; it's important to avoid to get out during the hottest part of the day. Second stay cool : one must reduce heat coming from sunlight out of the windows kept closed. Third : drink regularly even if one is not thirsty avoiding tea, coffee and alcohols. Four : help others.

Angers risks the sunburn during next days

On the very next days to come, Angers, as most cities in France, should face the hottest period of the year. According to Météo France, from 75° F on Thursday, the maximum temperature should increase to 90 ° F on Friday, then to 100° F on Saturday! Regarding the sky, from partially sunny on Thursday, it will become very sunny on Saturday.

That would change the atmosphere of the Ralliement square, where colourful deckchairs have been set up. Criticized for the its lack of trees and plants, its surface should concentrate then reflect the heat of the day, for the pleasure of passer-by. Curiously, the city website didn't published on Thursday informations or advices regarding the predictable heatwave and didn't informed about the situation of the Maine lake bathing spot closed since a week and for an undeterminated period...

If some Angers swimming pool are opened, others are closed and that's the case for the most important of them : Jean Bouin. This is not the only hiccup : the summer equipments on Ralliement square will be available till August 18th, but the high temperatures will probably continue on the next days. Météo France forecasts 95° F on Wednesday (Credit picture : Angers city).

An Angers "channel" between vacationers and "staycationers"

"Long absent, soon forgotten". This English adage should be remembered and implemented by people who go in holidays while others, often elder persons, have only the choice to stay home. In Angers, as in many French cities, it is noticeable that the place looks less crowded in August than the rest of the year.

Emma and John, two Angers inhabitants, stayed recently in their native country letting behind them a neighbour, retired and widow for years. Having established a good relationship with the man, they asked him if he would be available to monitor their home during their absence. The man said yes and two times a day casts a glance to the place.

"I am pleased to feel I am still useful to others", said the elder whose daughter explained recently to Emman and John that her father was delighted with such a mission. Recently, Emma gave a call to her neighbour.

- "Hello Robert, this is Emma. May I come and have a coffee?", she said.
- "Oh Emma, thank you for your postcard. Of course you may come, I have just set to cups on the table", he answered before remembering that in fact, he will not have visits that day...
- "Sorry Rob, I was joking. I can't come because I'm calling you from abroad", she replied.
- "That's not a problem dear. Your call is like a visit for me!", laughed Rob.

Sometimes, it's possible to "combine business and pleasure". Inhabitants and homes feel less alone...

The Angers Plantagenet petition is not yet crowned with success

It is not sure the sponsors of the Plantagenet petition, launched at the end of May, to demand the England crown jewels brought back to Angers, may have gained the support they wished. On August 15th, 2 600 persons had already signed the claim, but that figure is far short from what was expected : 800 000 signatures. Nevertheless, the Facebook page dedicated to the claim still records "Likes" and visitors. An Angers inhabitant visiting London during the Olympic games even waved a little board about the restitution of the jewels in front of Buckingham palace!

Credit Picture : Angers city

The turmoil generated by the Angers initiative in the press round the world looks to be calmed. Now the success of the event relies on Angers inhabitants. Will their participation give to the next Accroche-Coeurs edition the English touch wished by its organizers? The first are invited to come to the different displays with items (cars, clothes) and behaviour (presence at a tea party or a lawyers debate) aiming at giving Angers an English aspect.

It would be sad that such a claim would not be followed by a more positive local policy aiming at strenthening the interest of Angers inhabitants to the English world. That would make more effective the englicized brand Angers Loire Valley. A campaign devised to lead English tourists in the region was implemented in London a few weeks ago. After the Accroche-Coeurs, Angers Loire Valley could become England Loire Valley.

The Amiens events demonstrate to Angers that economy is as important as urban architecture

The dramatic events which occured on the night between July the 13th and the 14th in Amiens may generate fears in many others cities of France. Amiens was one of the numerous towns of the country to benefit of an important program of urban renovation.  About 240 millions euros were invested in several districts of that town. Among them, the Etouvie district where the confrontations between youngs and police took place. The same amount was invested in Angers during the same period and a new plan is underway on the Monplaisir district.

These events demon-strate that if the redeve-lopment of several Angers districts were necessary, may be it will not be sufficient to bring back fulfillment among inhabitants. The daily life of those depends heavily on purchasing power and jobs. In that view, these events could occur in Angers. So the local representatives should take care, not only of material environment, social link and social mixity, but also of economic competitiveness and attractivity. That could be more difficult, but above all more necessary, because the French economy is on the verge of a recession in 2012.

Many projects are planned in Angers in the years to come : a second tramway line, a new swimming pool, the complete redrawing of Maine banks, a new congress center. But these are not the only assets Angers must have to compete with others cities in France and abroad. Low fiscal pressure and balanced budgets may be also useful "monuments" to erect in the years to come for the preservation and the safety of Angers inhabitants way of life.

20 minutes Angers edition still on the mood but paper or web could be a possible choice

The daily newspaper 20 minutes, which distributes on Angers its national edition and had announced it will print a local edition in 2012, could be still in that mood. If, worldwide, the Norwegian group sees its trimestrial turnover increasing, its net profit has declined. In France, it's quite the opposite : the trimestrial turnover has decreased but the net profit stays positive, so the group doesn't apparently change its plan to be present in 40 cities in France and, among them, Angers.  Thirteeen editions are already printed in the country.

In Angers , 20 minutes is already distributed around the Saint-Laud railways station and on Foch boulevard under blue sun umbrellas (even if the weather is gloomy). The Norwegian group operates in France with Sipa press, the holding of Ouest-France which, a few years ago, bought Le Courrier de l'Ouest.

But the way 20 minutes will choice to report news from and to Angers could evolve. Worldwide, the Norwegian group noticed a change regarding the origin of advertisement orders. More and more, they  benefit to the web and less and less to the print. So that could affect, not the decision of 20 minutes to be present on Angers but the manner of it. If it's the case, the project of a local tv channel recently planned by Angers city could be a little bit difficult to launch.

The economy in Angers on next years leads to monitor closely the future congress center

Among the important decisions on the Angers town hall agenda for the years to come is the building of a new congress center. The cost ot such a project and its profitability are things to check carefully before implementation. During their stay in Palma de Mallorca (Spain), a couple of readers of Angers Daily News sent an email to that blog about the construction of the future congress center the city of Palma has launched when economy was still booming in the country.

Largely underway, the complex will be inaugurated at the worst period for that kind of equipment : Spain and the Baleares province are facing the worst crisis Palma inhabitants ever saw for years. The local authorities, which are lead to severely decrease expenses, faced the absence of candidate able to run the congress center according preliminary conditions. So they decided to suspend indefinitely the continuation of the scheme. That one already generated a debt of about 70 millions euros no one knows how to deal with.

While France is facing a slight recession in the months to come and foresees the end of the crisis in a more distant future, Angers should closely think about the issue of a new congress center, by reconsidering its size or even by postponing it for better times.

Auschwitz, final destination of Angers martyrs always chills visitors after nearly 70 years

Credit Picture Wikipedia

"The place chills you as soon as you go in", was Percy and Edward's first impression when they crossed the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp (Poland) where one million Jews was slaughtered from early 1942 till late 1944. "What happened here scares you given (the holocaust) took place no more than 70 years. What a cruelness", they said. Some of their pictures testify the incredible conditions populations coming from all Europa had to face before to die.

Credit Picture : Percy

One of them shows hundreds of glasses of deported persons in the middle of head of hair. Every person wearing glasses may have a little idea of the "discomfort" they felt without them. Alas, most terrible treatments wera wainting them. One of the surving prisoners who recalled in Angers medias a few weeks ago their arrival at Auschwitz said the guardians told them they would go out "through the chimneys"...

Auschwitz was the "final destination" of those Angers victims deported on July 20th of 1942 (Angers Daily News July 20th 2012) from the Saint-Laud railway station where their martyrdom started. Apparently, no sign commemorates that sad event on that place.

Poland, an opportunity to reconsider some Angers daily life conditions

Summer is at least a propicious period for Angers inhabitants to relax but also to discover new countries. Some of them, Percy and Edward, readers of Angers Daily News sent to that blog a message about Poland where they were invited by an American friend native from that country. If Angers and surroundings are hit by the economic slowdown, Polish cities have not yet reached the same state of development. Their observations about daily conditions of life of Polish families may relativize the own difficulties Angers inhabitants are complaining about.

"The road are in bad condition and full of lorries", notices Anthony on way with his brother to the Auchwitz camp after a 143 kms trip "which took us two hours and a half". Regarding the gas, "the prices are the same as in France. So many people use to travel by bike and apparently, it's not for health or fitness purposes".

Another way allowing to compare the economic development is the food. The two brothers notice Polish people look to eat high-energy food. Few vegetables are on daily menus. "The care about sane fooding has not yet been 'swallowed' by Polish people but, one of these days it will surely be on the tracks", they remark. Sport doesn't seem to be a daily hobby of people. "Most of them only know soccer and few practice jog. In the sports stores, fashion items are more numerous than sports equipment". But Polish very welcoming people and the two Angers chaps look have good time there.

If pollution demands less cars in town, Angers city should generalize low fares for all inhabitants

In order to stimulate Angers inhabitants to use collective transportation modes, the municipal council has, before summer, decided to increase the fares of public parking lots. Such an idea could not be sufficient to trigger a change of behaviour. Another way could be possible : to extend to a larger part of the Angers population the benefits of reduced fares presently applicable to persons or families having low incomes.

At normal conditions, a round-trip ticket costs 2,80 euros. Is such a price sufficiently competitive to lead a part of the Angers inhabitants to take the buses instead of their own cars?  But who could, from a material point of view, use his, or her, own car : Angers inhabitants. So Angers inhabitants, whatever be their income, should benefit of reduced fares. Another reason pledges logically for such an extension.

Angers city representatives have repeated that time was come to limit or even reduce the present position of cars in urban traffiec for ecological purposes. If that is true, and at least it is, it would be wise to extend the reduced fares of Irigo to all Angers inhabitants, paying local taxes, because the pollution is not connected to the incomes of Angers households.

Letter from the editor

Angers Daily News publications will be intermittent in the weeks to come. We ask the readers to apologize that situation. Edgar.

"Walls smart" in Angers castle

Credit picture : Iris

2012 could be the year of the re-birth of the Angers castle. After a fire destroyed, on the first days of 2009, the core of the monument, the royal home, that one will be re-opened to visitors after the summer vacations. More recently, a work of restoration of the surrounding walls had been launched and an important step has been achieved with the removal of the scaffholdings from the walls near the Maine river. 

The first result is maybe a little bit disappointing because the walls have not recovered their original aspect. but was it possible? Was it desirable? Probably not. Stone-cutters and masons have restored the joints between the dark schists and the cream freestone what restores a clean but not smooth surface. The solidity of the monument is more perceptible than before.

 Viewed from the right bank, the castle has recovered a part of its previous beauty. But that restoration mackes more incongruous that the giant all which overhang the Maine river is still in a neglected state. The corrugated iron are an insult to the delicate shape of the new roof of the royal logis. The complete restoration of that part of the castle, the most visible from the express way and the future new banks should be the next step to  achieve.

Letter from the editor

Angers Daily News thanks Loding Angers, Loding Saint-Malo and Loding Tours for their kind opinion. Edgar

The Plantagenet petition leads to a man who didn't want to be king

George, father of Edward Plantagenet

Has the Plantagenet dynasty disappeared with the execution, in 1499, of Edward Plantagenet? Maybe not. That unique child had nevertheless a relative, the brother o Edward IV, who had royal blood and was a legitimate child. His descent is still alive, far from England, far from Anjou, in New South Wales, Australia. Jerilderie is the name of the little city where the heir of the Plantagenet dynasty settled in the 60's.

Michaël Abney-Hastings

Michaël Abney-Hastings was a rice farmer. The man was a committed Australian republican and publicly expressed no interest in pursuing his claim to the UK throne, although he was amused by it. Regarding the throne he said he "didn't want it. I am not going to write a letter to the queen saying : you have three weeks to go and you owe me 500 years pension". He died on June 30 of this year.

Simon Abney-Hastings

He had a son, Simon Abney-Hastings, born in 1974 who lives and work for a textile company in the Victorian city of Wangaratta.  Following his father's death, he would become the rightful monarch of England under this alternative path of succession. But he calls himself a "reluctant royal", preferring a cap on his head to a crown, and fiercely protects his privacy. If he hasn't ruled out staking a claim to the monarchy, he recalls the motto of his family, "I Byde My Tyme" adding : "given the Abney-Hastings have had to wait six centuries to stake any claim, a little longer won't make much difference."

[Pictures and quotations are excerpt from Wikipedia]

Plantagenet Petition : the descents of the Anjou dynasty live in Australia

Richard III [Wikipedia]

The Plantagenet petition stirred the curiosity of an Angers Daily News reader. His opinion sent to Adn has brought to the Angers initiative a unforeseen perspective regarding the legimacy of all British monarchs since Edward IV. That one, king of England between 1461 and 1483, was the uncle of Edward Plantagenet for who the Anjou capital, birthplace of the Plantagenet dynasty which ruled England from 1154 to 1485 (331 years), has today launched a petition.

London Tower [wikipedia]

With the accession to the trone of Henry VII, the Tudor dynasty has defeated the Plantagenet. Richard III, the last Plantagenet king, was killed in a battle against Henry VII. The predecessors of Richard III, themselves Plantagenet, are dead. Only one person could catalyse the political opposition against Henry VII : Edward Plantagenet, the last link of the Anjou dynasty. So Henry VII made him imprisoned in London Tower in 1485 and beheaded in 1499. He was 25 years old.

Jerilderie, New South Wales [wikipedia]

Not only that murder was horrible, but it was useless because king Edward IV, after who England torn apart during the Two Roses civil war, had a young brother, legitimate that one, whose descent is still alive... with the Abney-Hastings family who settled at the beginning of the sixties in Jerilderie, Australia...

Plantagenet petition : the missing link of a dynasty

Angers has recently caught the attention of French and foreign medias, above all UK medias, since its town council sponsored on the town website a claim demanding the return in the capital of Anjou of the jewels of the British crown. That is aimed to compensate the murder of Edward Plantagenet, pretender to the throne and last heir of the Plantagenet, by Henry VII in 1499.

Henry VII was the first king from the Tudor dynasty. He became the England sovereign in 1485 after he defeated Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England. Richard III had himself deposed Edward V, his predecessor in 1483. Edward V has probably the shortest reign of England history : two months and 16 days. He died at the age of 13 in uncertain circumstances. He was the son of Edward IV, king of England from 1461 to 1483.

According to Channel 4 theory, that king was not legitimate. Born in april of 1442, he shoud have been conceived in August 1441. But according to a document discovered, by chance, in the Rouen cathedral by an English historian, the official father of Henry IV, Richard Plantagenet, was far from his wife at the time of the child conception... If that theory is true, all the monarchs descendants from Edward IV are not legitimate... But who is? That's the point tackeld by the English reader of Angers Daily News.


[From top to bottom : Edward Plantagenet, Edward IV and Henry VII (National Gallery)]

The Plantagenet Petition revives a theory about the "Britains real monarch"

If the Plantagenet petition has gained the interest of many medias around the world, it has also made reappear a protest regarding the legitimacy of the present English monarch. According to a reader of Angers Daily News (whose name will not be quoted without his consent], "Elizabeth II is not the legitimate monarch". That theory was the issue of a documentary entitled "Britains Real Monach" broadcasted in on UK's Channel 4 in 2004, presented by Tony Robinson. 

In investigating, about Richard III (king from 1483-1485), last Plantagenet king of England, Channel IV "was shown evidence to suggest that the royal line was tainted by the illegitimacy of Edward IV (king from 1461 to 1470). As such, every monarch since has actually had no legitimate claim to the throne. So who did? And, perhaps more to the point, who does? Who, by the right of succession, should we have sitting on the throne today? "To find it out, Tony Robinson had gone in search of Britain's Real Monarch. 

He uncovered "a turbulent story of civil war, aristocratic feuds, religious conflict, disgrace, bankruptcy, executions and a £5.5 million bet. And in the end, he discovers Britain's real monarch, someone as far removed from the splendour of Buckingham Palace as Robinson could ever have thought possible. Having found the rightful heir to the British throne, it's then time to break the news to him..."

Angers film festival 2013 and Angers Workshops : "Action!"

The Angers film festival "Premiers Plans" is now on the forestage twice a year. The website of that cinematic event which gathers in Angers new faces of the cinemas universe, from France and abroad, had just a few days ago, published the date of the 2013 edition : January 18th-27th. It will be the twenty-fifth edition. The candidacies are possible in six competitive sections : European or French First Feature Films, European or French First Short Films, European Student Films and European Animated Films, specifies the website in a perfect English version.


A younger event will be under the spotlights soon in Angers. The eighth "Angers Workshops" initiated by the famous French actress Jeanne Moreau, "are directed toward young filmmakers with one or two short films to their credit and a first feature film in the works". The training "is designed to give them support as they take that crucial step into the world of feature films". 

Jeanne Moreau (Credit Picture : Angers Premiers Plans)

The interns could be very busy. Every day screenings, master-classes, privates interviewes and lab works are planned (it was the case during the previous workshops). The Angers film festival created in1989 is an initiative of an Angevin, Claude-Eric Poiroux, general manager of Europa Cinema.

The Angers down town retail shops could foot the bill of parking lots fares rise

If the increase of parking fares on August 1st will not please many inhabitants, more serious difficulties may be to come for Angers stores owners because many customers use to shop in down town with their car... The impact will be just as much important given that the costs in parkings lots are soaring from 20 to 100%!  For many people that raises the prices of the purchases and may lead consumers to the giant commercial complexes set up around the city, at the expenses of the retail shop keepers already weakened by more than two years of work demanded by the tramway.

The deputy-mayor in charge of transportation, Vincent Dulong, justifies the increase by the necessity to encourage inhabitants to use publics facilities (buses, tramway), "soft way of travelling" ( walk and bikes, even when it's raining, but it's quite unusual that year...), diversion parking lots.

If the increase of the fares, in gross value, doesn't look very important (0,20 euro), in relative figures, the impact is very different (see above). That is almost true for the overtime. So with their free parking lots, big stores will get an advantage. That situation could fuel a demand from some retail shops to open on Sundays.