Word: royall
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...video is low on action: In fact, it shows Royal addressing a closed meeting of officials of her party, making a statement that would be considered a political liability only in France. There were no nasty aspersions nor revelations about her home life. She merely proposed that middle school teachers should be compelled to be on the job for 35 hours a week. "We have an absurd system where we have companies on the stock exchange that offer catch-up courses for students, and the people teaching those courses are public sector teachers," she said on a tape officially recording...
...from 'Macacagate', which helped to puncture the expected victory of George Allen in the Virginia Senate race. But if Segolene Royal doesn't win Thursday's first round vote to become the Socialist Party candidate for upcoming French presidential elections, everyone will say what turned the tide was an incriminating video exploding on the internet...
...videotape picked up the gasps and winces of listeners, who were well aware that most of France's 1.3 million public schoolteachers have always counted on the Socialist party to defend the privileges of French public sector employees. A senator close to Royal's most serious rival, former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has admitted he procured a copy of the tape for "political friends," but says he had nothing to do with what happened after that. For all its wonkiness, the tape has been viewed 400,000 times since it appeared on the YouTube-like site dailymotion.fr late last...
...students is supposed to bring their weekly charge up to 35 hours or more. It's true that some teachers seek supplemental income as private tutors, but most do not, and teachers' union officials, while leery of being manipulated by the anonymous leak, have expressed their disagreement with Royal's proposal. In practical terms alone, they say, few French schools provide any space for teachers to help students outside class...
...other hand, Royal's basic point is in line with Socialist principles: If paid tutors are what it takes to get through middle school with decent grades, then those whose parents can afford them will fare better, perpetuating the inequities that have kept the underserved urban ghettoes on the boil for years. And the idea of public teachers dipping into the private sector for a little extra cash is bound to strike more than a few French people as downright Anglo-Saxon - or so her supporters hope...