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NewsletterDecember 2009

Seasons Greetings/Joyeuse Fêtes from Americans in France!

Construction site for a new community hospital in France

Under Construction

The above photo is the construction site for the new community hospital, which will serve the region where I live. Scheduled to open in March 2012 this new hospital will replace the hospitals of Annemasse (where my son had his appendix removed) and Bonneville. The two united about 15 years ago and became the Annemasse-Bonneville Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal or CHIAB. This was the first step in planning what is now called ‘Le Nouvel Hôpital’.
When finished Le Nouvel Hôpital will serve a community of 200,000 people, consist of three buildings of almost a million total square feet, have 445 beds (80% of beds will be in private rooms), employ 1,400 people and have over 1,000 parking spaces. Total cost is about €100 million.
The Le Nouvel Hôpital will be located in the town of Contamine-sur-Arve, just off the A40 freeway between Annemasse and Bonneville. Both towns will be a 10-15 minute drive to the new hospital, planning is underway for a bus line. Le Nouvel Hôpital will have a rural setting as it is being built in what was farmland.
There is a video of what Le Nouvel Hôpital will look like.
The web site of the CHIAB.
You can more photos of the construction site.

Videos

As I stated in my October 2009 Newsletter I was at the Geneva 2009 Expat Expo. Not only did I meet many expats but also met Mike Pedersen of ADVideo, recently arrived in France, Mike made the trip to the 2009 Expat Expo from Paris. Mike brought along a video camera and friend, Shellie Karabell, who interviewed the expo organizers along with some visitors and exhibitors.
The day after the Expat Expo we visited the area where I live including one of my local properties for sale.

Regional Elections

Regional elections in France are scheduled for 2010. The two round voting takes place on March 14 and 21. This brings to mind something fairly unique to France - Cumul des mandats. That is a being able to hold two or more (up to four) elective offices simultaneously. The most typical is to be a mayor and a member of parliament. There are limits: it’s not possible to be a member of parliament and a member of senate at the same time.
For example the president of my region, Jean-Jack Queyranne, who is running for reelection, is a member of parliament. His main opponent, Françoise Grossetête, is a member of the European Parliament and town counselor in Saint-Etienne. Le Monde a few months ago came up with a Cumul des mandats classment.
My favorite Cumul des mandats are when Jacques Chirac was Mayor of Paris he was also Prime Minister of France for about two years. When Jacques Chirac was president his first Prime Minister was Alain Juppé, who during his time as PM continued as the mayor of Bordeaux.
Another less unique phenomenon is parachutage or being a carpetbagger. Ségolène Royal for example in 1989 won a seat in parliament from the Deux-Sèvres department when she had no local ties and was ‘given’ the seat just a few weeks before being elected. For the regional elections junior minister Rama Yade was selected (without her being asked first) to stand for election outside her region but refused. This didn’t go over well but as Yade’s approval ratings are 70% she was able to get away with it.
For the Regional elections Damien Abad is running in my region when he is on the municipal council town of Vauvert located in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.

Links in Last Month’s Newsletter

I’m sorry but a few of the links in last month’s newsletter didn’t work. Everything worked fine in the few test messages I sent out, but then when it counted the links didn’t work. The technical reason is for the first time I enabled Goggle Analytics and this changed the urls of a few links making them useless. I won’t make that mistake again!

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