Spurred by incoming French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposition to draw up League Tables to measure not only EU member state federal contributions, but also comparatively to rate the performance of individual French ministers, I started to imagine my own league table, but this time, of grossly overqualified immigrant workers.

I started to imagine my own league table, but this time, of grossly overqualified immigrant workers.

Heading the table of course in absurdity is outgoing American President George Bush, whom the SNCF (French National Railway Company), might consider offering re-employment as an on-board Ticket Inspector. The beleaguered railway utility might ask him to address the vermin of fare dodgers, not least of all confused tourists, and “starve [them] of funding, turn them against each other, rout them out of their safe hiding places, and bring them to justice.” It should be noted that this would not be the creation of a new position, just the re-enforcement of a well-established rôle.

Former captains of car ferries and oil-tankers might be tasked with directing radio-controlled boat traffic on the pond in the Jardin du Luxembourg

Former captains of car ferries and oil-tankers might be tasked with directing radio-controlled boat traffic on the pond in the Jardin du Luxembourg

Former sports stars and ballet masterclass divas could separate angry public transport passengers, with at least one (unloaded) machine gun-equipped marshal in every bus, simultaneously giving firm butt-end advice to travelers on the most community-friendly ways to enter and exit the vehicles, as well as the optimal body posture with which to sit in order to avoid provoking the wrath of other, more tired and, après tout, legitimately frustrated passengers, who are precipitately flocking into their Chambres de Bonnes (maids’ rooms), plummeting headlong on vacation into motorway bottlenecks, and lethal pileups, at what cannot be denied to be the end of their last 35 hour office week, until the Re-entry, “La Rentrée”, back to school, in September.

Laid-off brain surgeons and neurologists could be employed to concoct the least ergonomic layouts for major subway and train station renovations, and permanent installations, with a view to providing the neuro-pharmaceutical industry with a healthy, long-term boost, whilst redundant Financial Controllers could provide helpful explanation in real-time to grocery-store consumers on the conversion from French Francs to Euros of the goods they are purchasing (the currency switch took place early 2002).

Perhaps you can imagine how your own profession might shape up here in the world’s 4th most powerful, ahem . . . 29th richest nation (GDP per capita 2007, trailing the Faroe Islands).

And if by now, you are cosily imagining a life of boulevard coffee-sipping, museum browsing, or protracted intellectual debates illuminated abreast jaded Belle Epoque lampshades, leaning against gleaming gold-topped bar counters in the City of Light, tinged perhaps with a sliver of relief that you are not wallowing in a suburban predicament of generalised intolerance, or perchance just a touch of schadenfreude in the relative face of overall world events, your thoughts may sympathetically, or guiltily, be leaning outre-atlantique toward the not entirely dissimilar fate of Mexicans north of the border, in their tireless attempts to underpin the US economy without legal or financial recognition.

your thoughts may sympathetically, or guiltily, be leaning outre-atlantique toward the not entirely dissimilar fate of Mexicans north of the border, in their tireless attempts to underpin the US economy without legal or financial recognition.

If so, you could consider coming to France and doing your bit to uphold the French Social Dream, more than vaguely reminiscent of Orwell’s Animal Farm, but in this case, with frogs perhaps, rather than pigs.

(c) Martin Lowe 2007