The leftwing mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has been thrown on the defensive after revelations that she claimed more than €12,000 for luxury fashion on her council expenses.
Among the claims, Hidalgo, 66, who has been mayor since 2014, are that she charged €6,320 for two Dior dresses last year, a Burberry coat for €3,067 in 2023 and a Dior blouse priced at €1,120 in 2021. Copies of receipts for €84,200 of clothing and travel expenses were obtained under a Freedom of Information request by Civic Transparency, an anti-corruption campaign group, after Hidalgo refused to release her expense claims.
But the rules for the little people don’t apply to me!
Another good socialist with her snout firmly in the trough. They just can’t help themselves, can they?
Mind you, she’s a bargain compared with the little Khant in London – EUR103k a year compared with £170k plus all the expenses for security he doesn’t need etc.
I think he does need the security.
Pity he’s got it.
No French equivalent of Lord Alli?
How queer.
Let them wear Primark
that would be Monoprix – the French don’t do US brands
Primani isn’t a US brand. It was founded in Ireland.
Ah, you learn new thing every day…
Not sure the Frenchies like the Irish either though
Wasn’t that Woolworths by another name?
It’s the same ‘Zil Lane’ mentality that all lefties seem to have…
You’re all missing the point. Socialists are so moral and worthy, they DESERVE these things.
Yup. That’s about the only explanation that fits the facts. That and a fantastic propensity for rationalisation and self-delusion.
But…
I was once asked to take on a minor Uni task without pay. Then I learnt that I’d need an academic gown. So I agreed to do the job as long as the Uni treated me to a gown. They said “OK” as long as I later passed the gown along to the next bod in office. All very civilised I thought. I take it that no pol ever passes on goodies to the next fella?
Tim
I haven’t see your take on Ely’s defense of satire…
Free speech in the USA is under open attack.
As it is in this country as well, of course.
Here, the crime is to express your opinion on a piece of cardboard. You can get 14 years for that.
Or it is to project images already in the public domain onto Windsor Castle.
In the States, the issue is different.
There, if you question the President, who, along with his whole entourage, suggests he is completely dedicated to free speech, then your television programme is shut down, or your newspaper is sued for $15 billion simply for questioning his judgement, and you are told that you are from the far left, are an enemy of the people and that as such your right to free expression has ceased to exist, even though the Constitution says otherwise. And you will be cancelled for now, although how long it is before charges, disappearances, and more begin, we can only guess.
That SUV is definitely looking like a necessity
The US Constitution guarantees your right of free speech (subject to some reasonable limitations). It doesn’t guarantee your right to present a (failing) late-night TV show.
“The US Constitution guarantees your right of free speech”
No it doesn’t, not even close. Read the bloody thing.
Also there’s some more quantums of solace:
Of course, there are limits. MMT has always recognised that. Just as quantum probabilities follow rules, so does sovereign spending. However, the constraint is not a balanced budget or a fixed debt-to-GDP ratio. The constraints are inflation, resource capacity, and ecological sustainability. These, however, are limits defined by the world we live in, and not by some mythological origin point of “prudence.”
What this means is that we have choices.
We can choose which potential becomes reality.
We can choose to fund care instead of cutting it.
We can choose to invest in housing instead of leaving people homeless.
We can choose to deliver a green transition instead of watching climate breakdown accelerate.
These choices are not ruled out by the physics of money creation. They are only ruled out by politics, by ideology, and by the myths that economists and politicians perpetuate.
Modern Monetary Theory shows us that the government’s wavefunction of spending is always present. The question is whether we will allow it to collapse into realities that deliver justice, sustainability and well-being or into those that perpetuate inequality and destruction.
The economy is not a universe expanding from a Big Bang of immutable truth. It is a quantum system of possibilities, waiting for us to decide which ones to bring into being.
Strange how the AI always seems to end with greater state control and a more influential role for him….
Time to dig this out again: https://t5k.org/notes/crackpot.html.
A hidalgo (/hɪˈdælɡoʊ/;[1]Spanish:[iˈðalɣo]) or a fidalgo (Portuguese:[fiˈðalɣu], Galician:[fiˈðalɣʊ]) is a member of the Spanish or Portuguese nobility; the feminine forms of the terms are hidalga, in Spanish, and fidalga, in Portuguese and Galician. Legally, a hidalgo is a nobleman by blood who can pass his noble condition to his children, as opposed to someone who acquired his nobility by royal grace. In practice, hidalgos enjoyed important privileges, such as being exempt from paying taxes, having the right to bear arms, having a coat of arms, having a separate legal and court system whereby they could only be judged by their peers, not being subject to the death sentence unless it was authorized by the king, etc.
The French had a good way to deal with this kinda thing . . . 230 years ago.