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Unread 02-16-2012, 10:53 AM
Chris O'Carroll Chris O'Carroll is offline
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Default New Statesman -- Eric Cantona winners

No 4214

Set by Leonora Casement


We asked for extracts from Eric Cantona’s manifesto for the French presidency in order to encourage him to rethink his decision not to run after admitting that his earlier announcement of his canditature was a ruse to draw attention to the housing shortages in France.

This week’s winners

Well done. I was sorry to lose Una McMorran (“As your president I would have the Tour de France take place in Belgium . . .”), Brian D Allingham (“We need a huge increase in the number of ‘trawlers’ . . .”), M E Ault (“I ’ad a dream. It is of a France where children grow up like me –where they do not study but they live”) and Lisbeth Rake (“I will not be your leader. Only sheep need a leader . . . We will be a team, every woman and man united – not left wing or right wing but both wings – seagulls soaring above . . .”). You can all have hon menshes. The winners receive £20 each, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to G M Davis.

I am the boiler
Life should not be a choice between a question and an answer. It should not be a dialectic nor a dialogue, but a diatribe. The purpose of a president is to act like God, but never to play God. This is why we have elections: to rouse the people into antisocial song. Our society is like an argument which has run out of steam: there is an illusion of smoke, but the wood is wet, and the warmth is slight. When I am the boiler, people will get their hot water. The issue is only who should be scalded. Most should be blistering.
Bill Greenwell

Avatar of destiny
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” My compatriots, you all know this to be true. Whenever France has need of strength and leadership, an avatar of destiny has appeared – Charlemagne, Napoleon, Clemenceau, de Gaulle, men who have guided the nation to glory. Now the political parties, like the jackals who forage for lice in the fur of lions, offer nothing but mediocrity. Where is the lone eagle whose far-reaching vision and intrepid flight lead the restless dolphin shoals to their safe havens? I say here – in the heart and brain of Eric Cantona. Footballer, actor, patriot, neosituationist, I offer not the servile meanderings of sheep who follow the lure of the dung beetle till they drown in the glacier but a heroic future.
G M Davis

Net prophet
I am Cantona. Cantona does not follow trawlers, Cantona trawls followers: seagulls must starve. Heed the rat who fashions lifeboats while the ship is yet docked, for thus is Cantona in the company of economists. Cantona has seen the back of the net and it is illusory, comprising mostly holes. France is like the philosophical lemming asking directions to the cliff edge, only Cantona can divine whether the question is geographical or moral, then detain it with a question of his own to which I, Cantona, am answer. Too many politicians speak of goals; only Eric Cantona’s are behind him and available on DVD. So say not “Ooh!”, say not “Aah!”, say simply “Eh?”’: Vote Cantona.
Adrian Fry

Feast of sardines
In Manchester I was proud to be king, but my psychoanalyst has advised me that it would be better for me to be president in France. Our political leaders are idiots. They have insulted us and we must respond by leaping up to kick them. Even if they are our own teammates, so to say, members of our own party, we must not hesitate to punch them and fling our boots in their faces. They are the bankers and we are customers who have the power to topple them by withdrawing our money. Enormous flocks of gulls will follow the trawler when I am elected and we will provide for them a feast of sardines such as they have never known.
Chris O’Carroll

Hex appeal
The voices of the deaf, the ears of the blind, the eyes of the voiceless – this much is expected of the president. The hexagon demands no less, allied to the wisdom of all the ages, and thought that outsoars the highest mountains. But where is the human scale; what is a man? Aiming for goal, running ahead of the field, the winner leads all those who would follow, and if these are the homeless, the hopeless, then they must be given hype. Philosophy is the engine of the future; the future drives the present; the present stands on our feet. We are the geometry of France. I will be the full hexagon.
D A Prince
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