Bastille Day is a fabulous happy day for French Republicans.

It is like a day-long story hour with the papers and politicians spinning beauteous fairy tales about the French Republic, past, present, and -- well, the French don't much look beyond the here-and-now of government "gimmes", imagined slights from the less-than-French, and the exhausting full-time occupations of self-fascination.

Jack, possibly as adroit a French politician as Patrice "Typhoid"* MacMahon, marked the occasion by speaking to a studio televsion camera. It is believed several French people watched the broadcast. And wouldn't they be gladdened -- once transported from sodden realities -- at all the good news.

* MacMahon: "La fièvre typhoïde est une maladie terrible. Ou on en meurt, ou on en reste idiot. Et je sais de quoi je parle, je l'ai eue."

WE'RE BETTER THAN THE BRITISH, SAYS CHIRAC

PARIS July 15, 2005 (Telegraph) - "I have a lot of esteem for the British people and for Tony Blair," he said. "But I do not believe that the British social model is a model that we should copy or envy."

In his annual Bastille Day television interview he did concede that unemployment was lower in Britain than in France, where it is running at more than 10 per cent. But in public health and tackling poverty the French were "much better placed than the British", he said.

If you are French, pay no attention to these curious headlines. Please.

France put a higher percentage of its national wealth into education and scientific research than Britain, Mr Chirac added - "So I don't envy their model."

Best skip these headlines too:

** bof·fin also Bof·fin, n. Chiefly British Slang [Origin unknown] = A scientist, especially one engaged in research.

[Jack's] tub-thumping included French cuisine, which he said undoubtedly played a part in the nation's exceptionally high life expectancy.

Frenchies, please do not click this link. Well, we asked you not to spoil the magic.

Next in Mr Chirac's litany of praise came his country's birth rate, the highest in Europe with Ireland's, and its status as the world's "second agricultural power".

Several of these births are thought to be non-Muslim newborns. But then nobody really knows:

In the 1960s there were only about 350,000 North-African Muslims living in France, with some 1.25 million French living in North Africa. Since then, the notion of "colonialism" has completely reversed. There are almost no French living in North Africa, but the number of Muslims of African or Middle-Eastern origin in France is estimated at 4 to 10 million. The exact number of legal and illegal immigrants is unknown, for the sole reason that French statisticians are not allowed to collect information on ethnic and religious patterns of population.

Nevertheless, some estimates suggest that one in three births in France occurs in a Muslim family. That would explain, among other things, why France has a much higher birth rate (about 1.7 children per woman) than Spain or Italy. Stripped of this influence, the French birth rate would be around 1.2 children per woman, which is a figure similar to those in the countries of South and East Europe.

[Jack] reiterated his refusal to make "the slightest concession" on the Common Agricultural Policy, which the Prime Minister argues is in need of urgent reform because it takes up 40 per cent of the EU budget.

Again we ask our French skimmers, please, do not read any of the following:

SINGAPORE July 6, 2005 (Telegraph) - The 63-strong group of Francophone nations will demand the end of subsidies under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. ...in an article due to be published in today's Le Monde, Abdou Diouf, the secretary general of [l'Organisation internationale de la Francophonie] and former president of Senegal, joins forces with Don McKinnon, the Commonwealth secretary general, in denouncing the "powerful and entrenched lobbies" that maintain rich countries' farming subsidies.

"Increased trading opportunities are the most potent means of combating global poverty," they write. "The single most important challenge is therefore to stop economic warfare against the poor through a distorted and unfair trading system."

Aid agencies have long regarded the CAP, which overwhelmingly favours French farmers, as a prime culprit in destroying African agriculture by denying it access to European markets and flooding the world with cheap subsidised products.

[Jack's] remarks were in stark contrast to recent comments by his popular interior minister and bitter rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, who extolled the "Anglo-Saxon model" Mr Chirac so reviles.

Mr Sarkozy even dared to ask out loud whether it was "France that is wrong and the world that is right".

France wrong, oh, please. It's Bastille Day. The world looks to France for instruction. France has bigger, more credible claims to being better than lots of countries. Here are a few you may recognize:

Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Republic of Cuba
Republic of the Sudan
Republic of Haiti
Belize
Republic of Moldova
Republic of Azerbaijan

It's Bastille Day. Let's be sports and not begrudge the French their big brags.

PFFT (What is this?): Happy (French) fun 3 | Fish story enlargement 3 | Delusional comforts 2 | Rayonnement français 1

I saw that Nicolas Sarkozy was in the news today rattling the saber against some Islamic Imams.

It's the first time I've seen a picture of the guy. Doesn't he look just like that actor Kevin McDonald from the Kids in the Hall? It's a syndicated show out of Canada. I'm not sure if you'd be familiar with it. Photos on my site. Take care.