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- Gérard Collomb* (right-wing PS): Interior - Nicolas Hulot* (unaffiliated ecologist): ecological transition - François Bayrou* (MODEM, center-right): justice - Sylvie Goulard (MODEM, center-right): defence - Jean-Yves Le Drian (right-wing PS, minister under Hollande): Europe & foreign affairs
- Richard Ferrand (right-wing PS, rapporteur of the Macron bill): cohesion of territories - Agnès Buzyn (no political career): solidarities & health - Françoise Nyssen (no political career): culture - Bruno Le Maire (LR candidate at the primary): economy - Muriel Pénicaud (no political career, technocrat/CEO/high bourgeoisie): labour
- Jean-Michel Blanquer (no political career, technocrat): National education - Jacques Mézard (PRG [social-liberal]): agriculture - Gérald Darmanin (LR, supported Sarkozy): action & public accounts - Frédérique Vidal (no political career, former president of an university) : higher education - Annick Girardin (PRG, minister under Hollande): Overseas
- Laura Flessel (no political career, olympic champion in fencing): sports - Elisabeth Borne (no political career, technocrat): transports linked with ecological transition - Marielle de Sarnez (MODEM, center-right): European affairs
4 secretaries of State :
- Christophe Castaner (right-wing PS): spokesman of the government, relationships with the Parliament - Marlène Schiappa: (feminist, short political career coming from the right-wing PS, campaigned for Macron): equality between men and women - Sophie Cluzel (no political career, associative movement related to handicap): handicap - Mounir Mahjoubi (no political career but supported Hollande 2012, entrepreneur): numeric
That sounds like pretty much exactly the same as what was already in place.
On Eurovision: I think one of the biggest things I don't like about it is simply the tendency to have English language songs. I can't speak for every language but I can say with a pretty solid degree of certainty that English-language songs by Russian singers are almost universally terrible. Beyond the terrible accents it's just that the two languages are melodically quite different and what works in one rarely works in the other. I suppose it's not a straight rule that you have to sing in English but in reality it tends to be the case. And while I can't say it's the same in all cases it seems to be so.
But it did give us ABBA, which is genuinely quite good, so I guess it's not all bad.
I really can't imagine the mental process happening in the head of someone who sees that there is a thing where each European country is represented by one song and decides to watch that. I just don't know how something like that could possible be not devastatingly terrible. It's can be either national stereotypes or bland pop, or a mixture of those two.
Just be glad that Czech Republic doesn't (presumably, what do I know) submit the actual traditional music of our country. For the brave among you, there are 54 minutes of a .... cultural experience.
Most sing in english because in the past years the winners have sung in English and people started assuming that you couldn't win with a song in your own language. Therefore most submissions became attempts at pleasing the lowest common denominator, aka eurotrash. The winner this year sung in Portuguese and so did Italy who could also have won it.
EDIT: opisska, give it a chance. Did you ever watch Jeux Sans Frontières? These Eurovision contests can be a lot of fun and something that brings europeans closer together, along with the Erasmus program, the interrail pass and Ryanair.
Eurovision is pretty fun to watch while making fun of it with a few friends.
I didn't really find Portugal that interesting. Generic dude sings generic melancholic song in darkness while cramping his shoulders for some reason. There was just nothing really interesting in it.
My group of friends preferred Azerbaijan, while some also liked Romania for the sillyness (Though i personally found it really too silly. Why the fuck do you have someone from Romania Yodeling around? That made no sense.)
Though obviously, the whole thing is not really to be taken serious as a competition. It is basically a 4 hour trashy pop music show with some random judgements afterwards, while everyone on the show acts like it is incredibly important.
On May 18 2017 03:03 opisska wrote: There is some yodeling tradition in Romania, I think it's connected with the fact that some German minority lives in the mountains.
Really? HAHAHA! That just made my day. It feels like cheating having two german-ish contributions. Well, can we now say Germans didn´t get only the second last rank?
And I´m with simberto on this one: Just see the Eurovision Song Contest as a funny trash show and don´t take it too seriously. I mean come on, we have russian grannies performing, some yodelling and other hillarious stuff. Where do you think people saw the epic sax guy for the first time? Exactly. ESC! I remember that I accidently switched into it some years ago. I saw some contribution of a woman with some red giant veils waving around her. I thought the song was awful and switched away. Later on I heard that it was the winners song. I was laughing my ass off when I realized that.
Interesting that we get a real Minister for Higher Education and Research and not just a Secretary of State. Also interesting is that the new Ministre de l'Éducation Nationale has apparently written a whole book (L'École de demain, The School of tomorrow) about reforming French schools last year, and that he stresses four points (in line with what was done under Fillon's governments) : more authority and autonomy given to school directors (most notably, the ability to recruit teachers based on profile and evaluate them), more autonomy given to schools (more freedom when affecting number of hours per class), more time spent on learning French and Mathematics instead of other subjects, and more adaptation to a student's needs through more personalized classes.
Also worthy of note is that the highly unpopular Health Minister Marisol Touraine gets replaced by a doctor who doesn't think that researchers and professors having ties to the pharmaceutical industry is necesseraly bad, and who was up until now the head of the Haute Autorité de Santé, an big organization in charge of evaluating hospitals, evaluating the medical and economical impact of anything health-related, and writing recommandations for health professionals about what they should and shouldn't do. And since her chief of staff (? directeur de cabinet) will most probably be the current director of the CHU (University Hospital Center) of Angers, Yann Bubien, and that he likes healthcare innovation (sometimes pointlessly), we can expect a strong development of all healthcare innovations : usage of telemedicine and such, grants given to researchers in the field, bigger roles for pharmacists and nurses, etc
Have to say I like that Macron setup. Keeps his promise of bringing members from civil society into government and at the same time seems to put experienced people into key positions that are largely in line with his program. Also I guess the Republican prime minister is a clever tactic to get the Conservative support after he has already won over the socialists. If he can manage to pull another win in the elections he has dismantled both traditional parties within a year basically. That's quite crazy.
On May 17 2017 18:16 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Suddenly it makes a lot more sense why our police used such a show of force when removing the Turkish minister and her bodyguards from the country during the Netherlands-Turkey incident.
Video of Erdogans guards beating up protesters in washington
One wonders what is LastPuritans opinion to this is. Probably something something Kurds all terrorists something something Erdogan strong something something.
It was some hot whataboutism and explaining that he knew a bunch of the good Kurds and there are bad Kurds and also Obama had thugs beat people up. It was pretty hard to follow.
There is no leg to stand on when it comes to that video. That would be like the US secret service beating the shit out of French protesters in France because they are protesting the US.
On May 18 2017 06:09 Plansix wrote: It was some hot whataboutism and explaining that he knew a bunch of the good Kurds and there are bad Kurds and also Obama had thugs beat people up. It was pretty hard to follow.
There is no leg to stand on when it comes to that video. That would be like the US secret service beating the shit out of French protesters in France because they are protesting the US.
They wouldn't need to do it anyway, French cops would already take care of that.
On May 18 2017 06:09 Plansix wrote: It was some hot whataboutism and explaining that he knew a bunch of the good Kurds and there are bad Kurds and also Obama had thugs beat people up. It was pretty hard to follow.
There is no leg to stand on when it comes to that video. That would be like the US secret service beating the shit out of French protesters in France because they are protesting the US.
They wouldn't need to do it anyway, French cops would already take care of that.
I don’t know how things are in Paris, but in DC, protests are a daily thing. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The DC police are very used to protesters and dealing with them. Its is kinda awesome most of the time. That video is really upsetting for a lot of the folks that work in DC.
On May 18 2017 06:09 Plansix wrote: It was some hot whataboutism and explaining that he knew a bunch of the good Kurds and there are bad Kurds and also Obama had thugs beat people up. It was pretty hard to follow.
There is no leg to stand on when it comes to that video. That would be like the US secret service beating the shit out of French protesters in France because they are protesting the US.
They wouldn't need to do it anyway, French cops would already take care of that.
I don’t know how things are in Paris, but in DC, protests are a daily thing. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The DC police are very used to protesters and dealing with them. Its is kinda awesome most of the time. That video is really upsetting for a lot of the folks that work in DC.
You would be writing whole lots of things if AL-QAEDA sympathizers threw some rocks to the US citizens and beat them up with megaphones prior to these. I still think the guards should be somehow punished for doing that but IT WAS DAMN GOOD to watch. Wish I was there. Would probably kick some ypg ass too while they don't have their suicide vests on. : )))
You guys really don't understand how we don't care your surreal distinction of PKK/YPG, it's no different than ISIS/AL QAEDA to us, but I'm assuming you will understand it like 20 years after as usual. Don't expect me to side with any YPG or PKK sympathizers ever, it makes my day whenever we bomb them, why would I care if they got a little kickin.
On May 18 2017 03:02 Simberto wrote: Eurovision is pretty fun to watch while making fun of it with a few friends.
I didn't really find Portugal that interesting. Generic dude sings generic melancholic song in darkness while cramping his shoulders for some reason. There was just nothing really interesting in it.
My group of friends preferred Azerbaijan, while some also liked Romania for the sillyness (Though i personally found it really too silly. Why the fuck do you have someone from Romania Yodeling around? That made no sense.)
Though obviously, the whole thing is not really to be taken serious as a competition. It is basically a 4 hour trashy pop music show with some random judgements afterwards, while everyone on the show acts like it is incredibly important.
come on dude, learn your history. from the switzerland-ish/austrian-ish Habsburgs and the Baden-Württemberg Hohenzollerns to our current president Klaus Iohannis <of> Siebenbürgen, german ties(leftovers from the Holy Roman Empire) run pretty deep here, especially in Transylvania.
with that said, Yodel It was pretty cheesy but those legs man, those legs ...
Edit: and yea, do you think we fought for Hitler against the russians, out of principle? ...
also historically, in our schools we learned german, french and russian languages(well and old latin but that was only for good measure, 1 year in highschool); the english bs came only after the '89 revolution.
On May 18 2017 03:02 Simberto wrote: Eurovision is pretty fun to watch while making fun of it with a few friends.
I didn't really find Portugal that interesting. Generic dude sings generic melancholic song in darkness while cramping his shoulders for some reason. There was just nothing really interesting in it.
My group of friends preferred Azerbaijan, while some also liked Romania for the sillyness (Though i personally found it really too silly. Why the fuck do you have someone from Romania Yodeling around? That made no sense.)
Though obviously, the whole thing is not really to be taken serious as a competition. It is basically a 4 hour trashy pop music show with some random judgements afterwards, while everyone on the show acts like it is incredibly important.
come on dude, learn your history. from the switzerland-ish/austrian-ish Habsburgs and the Baden-Württemberg Hohenzollerns to our current president Klaus Iohannis <of> Siebenbürgen, german ties(leftovers from the Holy Roman Empire) run pretty deep here, especially in Transylvania.
with that said, Yodel It was pretty cheesy but those legs man, those legs ...
Edit: and yea, do you think we fought for Hitler against the russians, out of principle? ...
also historically, in our schools we learned german, french and russian languages(well and old latin but that was only for good measure, 1 year in highschool); the english bs came only after the '89 revolution.
Ok, in that case, i apologize for my lack of knowledge. As someone originating from northern Germany, yodeling to me was always something weird that people from Bavaria and Austria do.
To my credit, my romanian girlfriend also didn't know of any yodeling tradition in romania, but she hasn't lived there for large parts of her live, either.
EPT
