Word: socialists
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...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 a closed meeting of provincial Socialist officials in Angers last January. "How is it they have time to do paid tutoring but no time to help kids in public school for free...
...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...
...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...
...leak was certainly well-timed: On Thursday, 218,771 card-carrying Socialist party members will vote for either Royal, Strauss-Kahn, or former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius to be their party's candidate in the spring elections; if no one gets 50% of the vote, the top two will face off against one another a week later. How many party members are Socialist schoolteachers alienated by Segolene's impolitic remarks? No one knows for sure. What is known is that some 70,000 members have joined up over the course of a year marked by considerable "Segomania." There...