This is Paris’ mayor Anne Hidalgo at the closing ceremony. She was the one who started Paris’ campaign 9 years ago, after the worst terrorist attacks the city had ever known she became one of the most passionate (if not only) advocates for the games in the city.
If you’re not French, chances are you do not know her. She is pretty hated within the French population, mostly for her anti-car politics. Her opponents have always said she was “destroying” Paris. It was one of France’s most popular top tweets " #saccageparis". Even though she’s been re-elected, she’s been called every name in the books, lunatic, crazy (dingo) and so on and so forth, and everyone was betting on her to fail. Honestly ? Myself included.
When I turned on the Games, I was expecting to see her gloating everywhere, from the opening to the closing. Tweeting about the games, Léon Marchand’s victory and so on. Turns out the closing was the first time I did saw her. She remained very discreet the whole 2 weeks, not going to pose with the French champions or drying their tears like other French politicians did.
Now let’s be clear, the lady has flaws, but her and her administration’s ambition’s for these games in the face of constant public opposition ended up proving me wrong. This is a huge victory for Paris. Congrats, mrs Mayor !
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Yeah, no, we don’t owe her anything actually. Paris these last few years has decayed significantly, under her mandate
Welcome to human behaviour
Love being negative and fearful
Same hapoened with Biris and London and all the people saying itll be crap
Both London and Paris Olympics were amazing
#saccageparis was mostly astroturfed by the far-right, as you said she was re-elected : people in Paris mostly like her but you always here the vocal minority.
And it also seems the olympic games were a huge success financially but it might be too early to tell.
/#saccageparis is a movement of supporters of Rachida Dati, a centre-right politician. They are prepared to pull any trick to try and discredit Paris mayor Anne Hildago. They’re a bunch of fifty-somethings trying to create outrage with old people in the depths of the countryside as a reasoning box on Facebook. Clearly, the mere sight of a cycle path is enough to make SUV drivers outraged.
Imagine driving a car to Hotel de Ville instead of riding a clean, fast, reliable automated metro line.
So glad to see Parisians see them for what they are : a bunch of selfish cry-babies. I can’t wait to get rid of them, along with their stupid selfish cars.
Rachida Dati, a centre-right politician
She’s definitely right wing
Anne Hidalgo has transformed Paris and the Olympics were her crowning achievement.
Bravo.
Anyone that’s anti car is a good person in my book
So what you’re saying is Paris is a place so big and important that people outside of Paris know and follow their politicians, to the point where there’s so much anger and noise about them that it makes you forget that most of these people don’t actually live in Paris or even France and have no say over it anyway, and the elections end up bearing that out
I suppose that makes it appropriate that the French are handing it off to the Californians, because if anyone in the United States understands that, it’s the one run by “far left radical terrorist” Gavin Newsom and “practically Karl Marx in a dress” Karen Bass and has all the “mental patients from South America” living in it
I hope our Olympics offends Marine Le Pen just as much as yours did Comrades!
“Anti-car” sounds fantastic. And I have a feeling I would not particularly enjoy the compact of the people that deride someone as “anti-car” since any intelligent person sees the long term benefit of being pro-public transportation and pedestrianism.
For all the people that cry on about the people that can’t use public transportation or walk, this actually clears up traffic for them and makes it easier for them to commute. Traffic lessens and competition for parking diminishes. So again, it comes down to critical thinking, or a lack of it.
Completely agree. My in laws are French so I’m aware of how divisive her car restrictions have been. But the city was such a fantastic backdrop to the Games and it sounds like it all functioned so well. She needs a lot of credit for this.
She took vacations to Tahiti with the money of the French people, officially to see the beaches for the surfing Olympic event, she stayed 2 weeks in luxurious hotels for more than $60k and lied about it. During Olympics, she nagged at Frenchs and people who didn’t liked the opening ceremony. calling us “hard to come” (“peine à jouir”, a French insult that I don’t know how to translate it well to you), and also that we are “people who gna gna gni gna gna gna” (her own official words).
She did lots of other things, I am not gonna tell everything here, not worth it, and not enough space in reply to tell all.
I don’t owe her any apologies, however, she owe us some.
I know my reply gonna be ban. But I am glad I did it.
I lived in paris for decades.
I can safely UNCONDITIONALLY state that Paris is way way better with less cars, more public transport and bike lanes.
the whole technocratic push for building these fucking highways through paris by the river from the 60s and 70s was a disaster for the city, the smog fucked up all the monuments, parking became a huge problem . Paris is a relatively dense and small city that prides itself on its side-streets, monuments, parks…its literally designed for strolling and light traffic.
now people can walk and cycle along the banks of the river, you can take the trams round the periphery saving tons of time.
People don’t understand how bad they wanted to make paris , you want a vision of what a "modern paris’ would look like check out La Defence, its a giant slab of concrete , malls , towers and fuck all else, the germans wouldn’t have spend a millisecond thinking about bombing the place flat.
At a cost of around 8 billion USD, Paris could have used that money to fight crime, poverty, unemployment, improve life in the banlieues, improve buildings, streets or fix traffic issues. Fight pollution and rat infestations, improve housing or indeed fight anything related to “Paris syndrome”.
There’s nothing to celebrate here. Thanks for the downvotes, but this is my honest take.
Some of the things you mentioned are not within Paris’ administration’s reach : life in the banlieues = the banlieues, or the Région, unemployment = the région OR the state, crime = national police, so the state.
Improving buildings, housing and traffic issues, fighting pollution : it can always be better, but those are heavily financed by the City Hall and/or dealt with with the anti-car policies I’ve mentioned. Housing for example, with rental control or the bails réels solidaires to fight against speculation, an innovation started under this administration.
As for “Paris syndrome” : i do believe none of these games’ visitors experienced it.
Now, for the 8 billion USD : not only is is twice less than any other games so far because 95% of the venues already existed, but it’s not Paris’ taxpayer’s money. It’s a 50/50 between public and private funds, and public funds are split between the Région, the city of Paris, the Département de Seine Saint Denis, and so on…
And one has to think about the money the games will bring into Paris and France overall. It’s been estimated around 10 B$ in 2016. So…All in all…Not a bad investment.
the level of karma whoring is so high here only the french can achieve.
Except when she loudly proclaimed “F%CK the Paris Olympics haters” in the medias during the Olympics. Real classy, she stooped as low as Rachida Dati.
I don’t know who is worse between Anne Hidalgo, her nemesis Rachida Dati or her arch-nemesis Valérie Pécresse.
politics is another topic. However, one has to admit that if these games were so successful, it’s largely thanks to Hidalgo’s and her administration’s efforts, and, to an extent, Pécresse (because let’s be honest, we were all convinced that the public transportation would be hell on earth and it went smoothly). We did not see these ladies anywhere during the games though, when one could have expected them to gloat at every event. The president, however, was everywhere and loudly basking about how “he had a dream”, when the 2 ladies actually put on the work way before he was even elected.
Tell that to all the inhabitants they deported outside Paris treating them like parasites, migrants and students all alike.
https://reporterre.net/A-Paris-des-expulsions-a-un-rythme-olympique
Non
il y a trop de non-français dans les commentaires, ils comprendront pas que tu as raison mdr.
We french are the kings of pessimism and self depreciation. I confess i thought all along it will be a nightmare but these olympics were a pure awake dream.
That was so great !! Thanks to people who had faith from scratch !