Francois Hollande having his croissants & eating them!

WHEN, in August 1964, my family and I were living in the Spanish exiles' FIJL safe house of Germinal Garcia in the suburb of Republique in Paris, we used to send Stuart Christie, then an 18-year-old Scottish anarchist out to buy the croissants while we made the chocolate for breakfast.  Stuart was later to serve a jail sentence in one of General Franco's prisons in Madrid after he was caught carrying explosives. 

The French president Hollande in his love nest near the Elysee Palace made sure that he got his croissants fresh by having them delivered at 8.03 in the morning.  But while President Hollande is eating his croissants or getting his leg over a French actress, he must now persuade the French people that France can't keep paying out for the lavish life that they have been leading over the previous decades.



The French may well react to their president's austerity measures as did the president of Tameside TUC, Derek Pattison, when he first tasted croissants on the Kings Road, Chelsea in the 1970s, and spit it out.