Secular = holidays for everyone, says Eva Joly

As a long time ecologist, I'm confused.

The Greens nominated an intrepid former judge who despite her many astonishing virtues has no track record whatsoever in ecology. Her main selling point: she's honest. And that's not nothing.

But when Le Point columnist Patrick Besson poked a little fun at her accent "(Zalut la Vranze ! Auchourt'hui est un krand chour : fous m'afez élue brézidente te la République vranzaise.") our lady of integrity went ballistic.

Now, many of us non-native speakers are sensitive about our accents (especially when our own children mock us) but the truth is we do sound a little funny, and that's part of expat living and even imigration. But an enraged Eva Joly called the joking a “a racist attack, a form of ostracism” “symptomatic of the French state” and devoted an entire page in Le Point to denouncing Besson.

Patrick Besson, columnist for Le Point. Not Eric Besson, ministre de l'Industrie, de l'Energie et de l'Economie numérique, and as such, arch defender of nuclear power.

Such an opportunity lost!

And now, in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression with Greece and Italy under massive threat, interbank money markets seizing up, the euro on the brink of falling into the abyss and shattering and France clinging with two fingers to its AAA rating, the Green candidate Eva Joly proposes, wait for it, TWO additional holidays. One for Muslims, and one, to be fair, for Jews.

Oh, Eva, Eva, Eva, it's nice to not work. And it's lovely to want to be generous. But WHAT ?

In other countries ecologists often actually focus on ecology. Not, however, in France.

Abuse of pesticides, reliance on nuclear energy, agricultural subsidies for intensive agriculture, polluted rivers and lakes, energy conservation, GM crops--these questions always seem to take second place to the weirdness of the day.

It's inexplicable. Ecologists in France count a number of heavy hitters: former ministers Corrine Lepage, Dominique Voynet, the up and coming Cecile Duflot, as well as talented but mercurial figures such as Daniel Cohen Bendit and Nicola Hulot.

And we find ourselves talking about foreign accents and holidays for everyone.

There is a real and important discussion to be had about ecology in France. But this, sadly, is not it.