Let’s just say they wish today was over: Penelope Fillon & Marine Le Pen
Marine Le Pen: élue au Parlement européen, et est accusée d’avoir rémunéré avec des fonds européens comme assistante parlementaire Catherine Griset, alors que celle-ci travaillait essentiellement pour le FN. Cette dernière était en effet secrétaire puis chef de cabinet de Mme Le Pen au même moment et dispose, par ailleurs, d’un bureau au siège de la campagne présidentielle de la candidate frontiste, à Paris. Le Parlement européen lui réclame, pour cela, 300 000 euros.
Penelope Fillon: a été rémunérée comme assistante parlementaire de son mari, François, ainsi que de son successeur Marc Joulaud, pour un montant total de 900 000 euros entre entre 1988 et 1990 puis de 1998 à 2002, d’après les informations du Canard enchaîné. Une enquête préliminaire a été ouverte alors que des soupçons d’emplois fictifs pèsent sur le couple Fillon.
Full text: Direct politique : nouvelles révélations dans l’affaire Penelope Fillon
Not the happiest day of the year for the UMP or the FN. One expects corruption from the Le Pen’s because they operate like a mafia- but I have to say I found the Fillon case terribly disappointing. I just don’t understand this level of greed. It’s not like a senator’s salary in France is small. They get over €7000 per month plus expenses which pushes the total up to just under €11,500. Does anyone in that position really need to (I’ll be gentle and say) manipulate the government out of another 7k per month? It’s in such bad taste.
My Mazamet 
Apparently not only does greed have no upper boundary, but it is autocatalytic. Once you exercise greed, it makes you more greedy.
As an American, I live in a nice apartment, in a nice neighborhood, and have plenty to eat and do. we have a “pay as you go” culture, but we have been able to do okay under that. I do not desire to live in a palace, but I can imagine a number of things I would do had I more money. But once you have a million dollars/euros in the bank, why would you need more money (it is a need for the greedy, not a want)? It is very puzzling.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Someone said in all other areas of life accumulating things we are unlikely to use or need is treated as a sickness it is only money that we hoard and there is nothing wrong with it
LikeLiked by 2 people
Pay as you go? Interesting. I see the US as having more of a debt culture. Life seems to be completely organized around owing (sometimes) vast amounts of money. Student loans, car loans, then a mortgage.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Are they politicians? Then nothing is beneath them. Our mps who are paid way above the national average still manage to make fake milage claims!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Marine is an extremist right wing politician and Penelope is the wife of a politician who apparently took 900 thousand euros in payment for a job she didn’t do.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And that latter politician, François Fillon, has for a long time looked likely to be the next President of France! (though perhaps not any more, in light of this?)
Also just to note that the UMP’s name was changed to Les Républicains in 2015 (I’m presuming that had something to do with patriotism and Gaullism, but obviously now the American connotations are quite unsavoury).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi, Henry
Yes, Fillon was expected to win, but at the moment there’s a wave of people in his own party asking him to step down.
The name change was a Sarkozy move after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It was seen for what it was, a publicity stunt 😉
LikeLike
If I were french I would probably vote for Macron. C’est triste, mon ami.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I go back and forth on Macron. His reforms were brutal and I’m not sure they were a move in the right direction.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Emblematic of so many among the political classes. We’ve had dreadful problems with it here in Britain over MPs expenses. They see a few thousand pilfered here and there from the taxpayer as petty cash, mere trifles, because they’re multi-millionaires — upper middle class lawyers with multiple directorships and buy-to-let property portfolios; power-hungry and self-entitled suburbanites feathering their nests in the Tory shires and Tuscany.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I expect dear Francois did it from a sense of solidarity with his fellow politicians…wouldn’t do to let yourself appear more holy than thou – well, not until the election season.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Holier than thou was part of his performance, which makes this all the more amusing 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Peculation may be but a venial sin in the eyes of the Church…remains to be seen whether it is a mortal one in the eyes of the voters.
LikeLiked by 1 person