Globophobia
A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade What is the reward for a government which protects and subsidises a cherished national industry? Workers parading through the streets in gratitude? Like hell, it is. When an industry is advanced favours, it merely comes back and asks for more. The French wine industry is in trouble. In spite of generous subsidies, exports fell by 10 per cent last year; domestic sales by 5 per cent. And what is the French wine industry doing about it? Improving the product? Cutting costs and margins in order to reduce prices to match competition from New World wines? No, it is launching a vitriolic campaign against the French government's enforcement of the drink-driving laws — or l'effet Sarkozy, as the French call it, after the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. Never mind that French motorists kill 8,000 people a year — nearly three times as many as in Britain — the salvation of plonk-producers in the nether regions of Bordeaux must come first.
What the French wine industry would like, presumably, is a government campaign persuading motorists to drink more on the basis that it helps their driving. That would not be out of line with previous propaganda campaigns to boost the wine industry. For years, French health authorities have been pushing the supposed health benefits of red wine on the basis of the 'red wine effect'. The benefits attributed to red wine in French medical journals read like the label of a bottle of 19th-century quack pills: apparently it cures sleeping sickness, sickle-cell anaemia and may contain substances useful in the treatment of Aids. Above all, we are told that France has the highest intake of red wine in Europe, yet has the lowest level of heart disease. This statistic has long since been proved to be bogus, created by a discrepancy in medical records. When an Englishman drops dead of a heart attack in the street, his doctors enter 'heart disease' on the death certificate. When a Frenchman does the same, his doctors enter simply 'sudden death'.
Ross Clark
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