French press review 23 September 2009

by Matthew Kay

Article published on the 2009-09-23 Latest update 2009-09-23 06:31 TU

Every newspaper that has half a heart - that's all the dailies minus Le Figaro and Les Echos - is leading with the closing of the immigrant camp in Calais that came to be known as the Jungle.

Before that however, let's begin with the heartless, sorry, the wealth-creating jetsetters at right-wing le Figaro, who are told this morning that dangerous practices at France's air traffic control are compromising safety for flyers.

The biggest problem, the paper tells us, is that those working in France's control towers are often employed illegally, with their conditions breaching health and safety regulations.

It's not that they work too much, but not enough complains the output-driven daily.

Air trafic controllers should work 24 hours per week, which is equivalent to 160 days per year. Not bad, I hear you say.

But here's the rub, many only work 12 hours a week because the rest of their shifts are to cover if somthing happens to the man manning the radio. If he dies on the job, for example

Those on back-up duty often don't bother to turn up, leaving no long-stop should there be booboo.

Tut tut.

Communist l'Humanité is running the picture of a sobbing Afghan on its front page, complete with the caption "Calais - 7.35am. Nice work Mr Besson."

The paper is refering to France's immigration minister Eric Besson, who announced last week that the camp, home to some 1,500 Iraqis, Afghans and Eritreans, would be closed in an effort to smash human trafficking rings.

Yesterday his words were turned into deeds when some 500 members of France's riot police descended into the camp and cleared out the unfortunate few that hadn't already disappeared into northern France's woodwork.

Leftie Libération reports that 276 undocumented migrants were rounded up by Calais' boy's in blue, 135 of them we're told were self declared minors.

Most of the migrants resisted peacefully, while fisticuffs were mainly reserved for support groupies and protesters decriying the actions of La Republique.

Eric Besson, Libé tells us, was delighted at how delicately the police handled yesterday's raid.

It's perhaps no surprise that the paper's editorial says Besson's use of manu militari to clear out the Jungle was heavy-handed and unjustified.