France's last newspaper hawker gets Order of Merit after 50 years
Not that the decline in trade remotely bothers Mr Akbar, who says he keeps going for the sheer joy of the job."I am a joyous person. And I am free. With this job, I am completely independent. There is no-one giving me orders. That's why I do it."The sprightly 72-year-old is a familiar and much-loved figure in the neighbourhood. "I first came here in the 1960s and I've grown up with Ali. He is like a brother," says one woman."He knows everyone. And he is such fun," says another.Ali Akbar was born in Rawalpindi and made his way to Europe in the late 1960s, arriving first at Amsterdam where he got work on board a cruise liner. In 1972 the ship docked in the French city of Rouen, and a year later he was in Paris. He got his residency papers in the 1980s.
"Me, I wasn't a hippy back then, but I knew a lot of hippies," he says with his characteristic laugh."When I was in Afghanistan on my way to Europe I landed up with a group who tried to make me smoke hashish."I told them sorry, but I had a mission in life, and it wasn't to spend the next month sleeping in Kabul!"In the once intellectual hub of Saint-Germain he got to meet celebrities and writers. Elton John once bought him milky tea at Brasserie Lipp. And selling papers in front of the prestigious Sciences-Po university, he was acquainted with generations of future politicians – like President Macron.So how has the legendary Left Bank neighbourhood changed since he first held aloft a copy of Le Monde and flogged it à la criée (with a shout)?"The atmosphere isn't the same," he laments. "Back then there were publishers and writers everywhere – and actors and musicians. The place had soul. But now it is just tourist-town."The soul has gone," he says – but he laughs as he does.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
cn844n379y5o (GIF Image, 1 × 1 pixels)
James Cook Scotland editor • @BBCJamesCook BBC Nicola Sturgeon's memoir Frankly is now on sale, slightly earlier than expected after newspaper serialisations and interviews teased some tantalising extracts. True to its title, the book has Scotland's former first minister writing candidly about the highs and lows of her time in office including challenges she says had a serious impact on her mental health. So with the full text now available, what are the key things we have learned? Transgender controversy After more than eight years in power, and eight election victories, Sturgeon saw final months in office marred by rows about trans issues. It was, she writes in her memoir, a time of "rancour and division". Sturgeon now admits to having regrets about the process of trying to legislate to make it easier to legally change gender, saying she has asked herself whether she should have "hit the pause button" to try to reach consensus. "With hindsight, I wish I had," she writes, although she continues to argue in favour of the general principle of gender self-identification. Spindrift Isla Bryson was jailed in 2023 after being convicted of rape Sturgeon also addresses the case of double rapist Adam Graham who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson. It was, writes Sturgeon, a development "that gave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people". As first minister she sometimes struggled to articulate her position on the case and to decide which, if any, pronoun to use to describe Bryson. "When confronted with the question 'Is Isla Bryson a woman?' I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights," she writes. "Because I failed to answer 'yes', plain and simple... I seemed weak and evasive. Worst of all, I sounded like I didn't have the courage to stand behind the logical conclusion of the self-identification system we had just legislated for. "In football parlance, I lost the dressing room." Speaking to ITV News on Monday Sturgeon said she now believed a rapist "probably forfeits the right" to identify as a woman. JK Rowling JK Rowling posted a selfie of herself wearing a T-shirt describing Sturgeon as a "destroyer of women's rights" The former first minister also criticises her highest profile opponent on the gender issue, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, for posting a selfie in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women's rights". "It resulted in more abuse, of a much more vile nature, than I had ever encountered before. It made me feel less safe and more at risk of possible physical harm," she writes. Sturgeon adds that "it was deeply ironic that those who subjected me to this level of hatred and misogynistic abuse often claimed to be doing so in the interests of women's safety". Rowling has been approached for comment. Her relationship with Alex Salmond Sturgeon's mentor and predecessor as first minster, Alex Salmond, is mentioned dozens of times in the book, often in unflattering terms which reflect their estrangement after he was accused of sexual offences. Salmond won a judicial review of the Scottish government's handling of complaints against him and in 2020 was cleared of all 13 charges but his reputation was sullied by revelations in court about inappropriate behaviour with female staff. Sturgeon lambasts Salmond's claim that he was the victim of a conspiracy, saying there was no obvious motive for women to have concocted false allegations which would then have required "criminal collusion" with politicians, civil servants, police and prosecutors. "He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy," she writes, adding: "He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all". The claims have been angrily rejected by Salmond's allies. The former SNP leader died of a heart attack in North Macedonia last year, aged 69. The independence referendum Nicola Sturgeon recalls a "totally uncharacteristic sense of optimism" as Scotland prepared to vote on whether to become an independent nation on 18 September 2014. It was arguably the defining event of her professional life and, in her view, a chance to "create a brighter future for generations to come". The campaign was tough, she says, partly because of what she calls unbalanced coverage by the British media including the BBC and partly because Salmond left her to do much of the heavy lifting. "It felt like we were trying to push a boulder up hill," she writes. PA Media Sturgeon claims Alex Salmond showed little interest in the "detail" of the independence white paper A key period in the lead-up to the poll was her preparation, as deputy first minister, of a white paper setting out the case for independence. At one point, she says, the magnitude of the task left her in "utter despair" and "overcome by a feeling of sheer impossibility". "I ended up on the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe. It was definitely some kind of panic attack," she writes. Sturgeon says Salmond "showed little interest in the detail" of the document and she was "incandescent" when he flew to China shortly before publication without having read it. "He promised he would read it on the plane. I knew his good intention would not survive contact with the first glass of in-flight champagne," she writes. Operation Branchform Sturgeon describes her "utter disbelief" and despair when police raided her home in Glasgow and arrested her husband, Peter Murrell, on 5 April 2023. "With police tents all around it, it looked more like a murder scene than the place of safety it had always been for me. I was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified." In the weeks that followed she says she felt like she "had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel". Sturgeon calls her own arrest two months later as part of the inquiry into SNP finances known as Operation Branchform "the worst day" of her life. She was exonerated. Murrell, the former SNP chief executive, has been charged with embezzlement. The couple announced they were separating earlier this year. Getty Images Sturgeon described her house as looking like a murder scene Leading Scotland during the pandemic ForSturgeon, the coronavirus pandemic which struck the world five years ago still provokes "a torrent of emotion". Leading Scotland through Covid was "almost indescribably" hard and "took a heavy toll, physically and mentally", writes the former first minister. She says she will be haunted forever by the thought that going into lockdown earlier could have saved more lives and, in January 2024, after she wept while giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry, she "came perilously close to a breakdown". "For the first time in my life, I sought professional help. It took several counselling sessions before I was able to pull myself back from the brink," she writes. PA Media Nicola Sturgeon appeared visibly upset when giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry Misogyny and sexism Scathing comments about the inappropriate behaviour of men are scattered throughout the book. "Like all women, since the dawn of time, I have faced misogyny and sexism so endemic that I didn't always recognize it as such," Sturgeon writes on the very first page. One grim story, from the first term of the Scottish Parliament which ran from 1999 to 2003, stands out. Sturgeon says a male MSP from a rival party taunted her with the nickname "gnasher" as he spread a false rumour that she had injured a boyfriend during oral sex. "On the day I found out about the story, I cried in one of the toilets in the Parliament office complex," she writes. She said it was only years later, after #MeToo, that she realised this had been "bullying of an overtly sexual nature, designed to humiliate and intimidate, to cut a young woman down to size and put her in her place". Her personal life PA Media Parts of the memoir are deeply personal. Nicola Sturgeon says she may have appeared to be a confident and combative leader but underneath she is a "painfully shy" introvert who has "always struggled to believe in herself." She writes in detail about the "excruciating pain" and heartbreak of suffering a miscarriage after becoming pregnant at the age of 40. "Later, what I would feel most guilty about were the days I had wished I wasn't pregnant," she says. Sturgeon touches on the end of her marriage, saying "I love him" but the strain of the past couple of years" was "impossible to bear." She also writes about her experience of the menopause, explaining that "one of my deepest anxieties was that I would suddenly forget my words midway through an answer" at First Minister's Question Time. "My heart would race whenever I was on my feet in the Chamber which was debilitating and stressful," she says. And she addresses "wild stories" about her having a torrid lesbian affair with a French diplomat by saying the rumours were rooted in homophobia. "The nature of the insult was water off a duck's back," she writes. "Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than thirty years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters." What the future holds PA Media Sturgeon loves books and has often appeared at literary events such as Aye Write in Glasgow Nicola Sturgeon has a few regrets. These include pushing hard for a second independence referendum immediately after the UK voted — against Scotland's wishes — to leave the EUn, and branding the 2024 general election as a "de facto referendum" on independence. But now, she says, she is "excited about the next phase" of her life which she jokingly refers to as her "delayed adolescence". "I might live outside of Scotland for a period," Sturgeon writes. "Suffocating is maybe putting it too strongly, but I feel sometimes I can't breathe freely in Scotland," she tells the BBC's Newscast podcast. "This may shock many people to hear," she continues, "but I love London." She is also considering writing a novel. Nicola Sturgeon concludes her memoir by saying she believes Scotland will be independent within 20 years, insisting she will never stop fighting for that outcome and adding: "That, after all, is what my life has been about."
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Anger, fear and a total rejection of politics: the Palestine Action protest was a snapshot of Britain today
In the third month of this tense, parched summer, the British state is under severe strain. Stripped of resources by 14 years of reckless rightwing government, contorting itself to maintain relations with ever more extreme regimes abroad, expanding its security powers at home through ever more tortured logic, regarded by ever more voters with contempt, a once broadly respected institution is increasingly struggling to maintain its authority. You could see the strain on the faces of some of the police officers, reddening with exertion in the sun, as they arrested 521 people in Parliament Square on Saturday for displaying pieces of paper or cardboard with a seven-word message supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action. It was one of the biggest mass arrests in London's history. The many protesters who refused to be led away had to be lifted off the ground, one by one, without the exercise looking too coercive in front of the cameras. Then their floppy, uncooperative forms had to be carried by clusters of officers through the hostile crowd – to chants of 'genocide police!', 'shame on you!' and 'fascist scum!' – to a ring of police vans at the square's perimeter, which were then sometimes obstructed by further protesters, before they eventually drove away. So many officers were needed that some had come from Wales. When Tony Blair's Labour government introduced Welsh devolution 26 years ago, in times of more harmony and less scarcity, cooperation between the nations was probably not envisaged in this form. On Saturday, so that the capital's police custody system was not overwhelmed, those arrested were taken to 'makeshift outdoor processing centres', the Observer reported – as if during a general breakdown of law and order. Some of those released on bail then reportedly went back to the protest. 'Given the numbers of people arrested,' said the Metropolitan police, 'it would have been entirely unrealistic for officers to recognise individuals who returned to [the square].' 'Entirely unrealistic' is not a reassuring phrase for those who believe that the government's approach to Palestine Action is practical and based on sound law. If charged, those arrested will enter the overburdened criminal justice system and then, if found guilty, Britain's bursting jails. It's likely that further supporters of Palestine Action will follow. The organiser of Saturday's protest, Defend Our Juries, has promised a sustained campaign of 'mass, public defiance', to make the proscription of Palestine Action 'unworkable'. This amendment to the 2000 Terrorism Act – a less benign legacy of Blair than devolution – states that anyone who 'wears, carries or displays an article' publicly, 'in such a way… as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of' Palestine Action could be jailed for up to six months; and anyone who 'invites support for' the organisation could be jailed for up to 14 years. Authoritarianism and austerity have risen together in Britain, as the relatively generous public spending of the Blair years has receded and new waves of radical activism have formed over the climate crisis and the destruction of Palestine. Yet the possibility that austerity will make authoritarianism unaffordable, with too much of the government's funds swallowed up by the security state, does not seem prominent in Labour's thinking. The fact that Keir Starmer is a former director of public prosecutions and that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has for many years been one of parliament's leading authorities on national security, has given them a lot of faith in law-and-order solutions to political problems. The Parliament Square protesters took a different view. They had been advised by Defend Our Juries not to give quotes to journalists, to avoid distracting from the protest's focus on the Palestine Action proscription and the genocide in Gaza. Yet the dozen protesters I spoke to informally all talked about Britain's police and politicians without the slightest deference, as part of a system that was failing, practically and ethically, to address our era's escalating crises. As the arrests went on and on, through the hot afternoon and into the evening, many of the protesters barely moved, but kept facing the same way, sitting on the ground with their placards carefully displayed and their backs to the Houses of Parliament. Partly, this was to provide a globally resonant image, but it was also to dramatise their rejection of the will of the Commons, where only 26 MPs voted against Palestine Action's proscription last month. Parliament likes to see itself as a historic defender of freedom and liberty, yet when panics about subversive groups are under way, its liberalism often evaporates. While the Commons narrows its views in times of crisis, the electorate sometimes does the opposite. Half of those arrested in the square were aged 60 or older – usually the most politically conservative demographic. Many had had middle-class careers in public service. Chatting among themselves on the grass in the quieter moments between police surges, they could almost have been taking a break between events at a book festival. One woman sat on a camping stool, wearing a panama hat. When I introduced myself, she said: 'I don't like the Guardian, I read the Telegraph.' The last time Labour was in office, opposition to its more draconian and militaristic policies also emerged across the political spectrum. The more rightwing members of this opposition can be questioned: are they as outraged when Tory governments support wars or suspend civil liberties? My sense is not. But either way, broad opposition erodes a government's legitimacy. At the 2005 election, after the Terrorism Act and the Iraq war, Blair still won, yet with almost a third fewer votes than when he came to power. With Labour more unpopular now, Starmer can less afford to alienate anti-war voters – much as his most illiberal subordinates might want to. Yet any electoral consequences from the scenes in Parliament Square, and from likely sequels, are hardly the only things at stake in the Palestine Action controversy. At mid-afternoon on Saturday, with the police cordon tightening around us, I got talking to two elderly protesters who had watched people being arrested beside them. 'I'm in two minds about carrying on with this,' one of them said, opening and closing her piece of cardboard with its illegal message. Defiant earlier, she now seemed frightened. The legally safe space for protest in Britain is shrinking again. Meanwhile in Gaza, there's no safe space for anything at all. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Nicola Sturgeon: Alex Salmond refused to read independence white paper
Alex Salmond refused to read the SNP's crucial independence blueprint in the run-up to the 2014 referendum, Nicola Sturgeon has claimed. In the latest explosive allegations which have reopened deep rifts within the independence movement, Sturgeon accused Salmond of an 'abdication of responsibility' in the months before the historic vote that could have delivered on the SNP's foundational mission. In an interview with ITV ahead of the publication of her long-awaited memoir, Sturgeon said she had been left in a 'cold fury' when her former mentor said he was going on a trade mission to China without reading a draft of the Scottish government's white paper on independence, a few weeks before it was due to be published. The 670-page document, which was released in November 2013, was then seen as critical to the Yes campaign's prospects of turning around what was then a significant deficit in the polls before the historic September 2014 vote. However, Sturgeon, who was then deputy first minister, claimed that she suffered a 'panic attack' due to the pressure of compiling a document in which her boss showed no interest. 'He really didn't engage in the work of the drafting or the compilation of the white paper at all,' Sturgeon told ITV's News at Ten presenter Julie Etchingham, in a major interview to mark this week's publication of her memoir Frankly. 'He was the leader, he was the first minister, and he hadn't read it. 'He'd maybe read bits. I don't even know if he'd read bits of it. I knew I was going to have to sit him down and say, 'Look, you're going to have to read this, and you're going to have to tell me now if there are bits you want to change, because it has to be signed off'. 'He told me he was going on a trade mission to China. I don't think I'd ever felt as much cold fury at him as I did in that moment. It just seemed to me like an abdication of responsibility.' The suggestion that as first minister, Salmond, who died of a heart attack in October last year, potentially jeopardised the success of the independence campaign led to outrage from his allies. • Alex Salmond obituary: ambitious politician who fought for independence It follows Sturgeon's inflammatory suggestion, published in extracts of Frankly in The Times and Sunday Times, that he may have leaked allegations that he was facing an investigation for sexual misconduct to a tabloid newspaper himself. Sturgeon said that she had become overwhelmed at having to deliver the white paper, which was titled Scotland's Future, which the SNP had promised voters would answer critical questions about how a Scottish state would operate. 'I remember an evening which I just suddenly had this overwhelming sense of impossibility,' she said. 'I can't get this to the point it needs to be at. It's so unwieldy. It's so difficult. 'And I just remember having what I can only describe as a panic attack. I was sobbing on the floor of my office at home and just my heart was racing.' Salmond went on his trade mission to China on November 3, 2013, when the white paper had been in development for several months. It was published 23 days later, with Sturgeon and Salmond launching it side by side. While there were several doubts raised about the claims within the document, not least the projections of lucrative oil revenues which later turned out to have been wildly optimistic, the event was broadly seen as a presentational success. Although Scots voted against independence by a margin of 55 per cent to 45 per cent, the document was seen as a factor in closing the gap in the polls which in late 2013 had shown a far wider lead for the unionist campaign. Sturgeon's claims that Salmond had not been engaged with the contents of the document provoked conflicting accounts from senior figures who were involved in the Yes campaign. One described Sturgeon's allegations as 'mental'. 'What is she talking about? Of course Alex was engaged in it,' one source said. 'There were umpteen meetings in the run up to its publication discussing it.' However another gave credence to Sturgeon's version of events. 'It is not a surprise Nicola is saying this,' the former advisor said. 'Within the narrow confines at the top of the SNP it was talked about, and has been discussed since. It reflects what I heard at the time, there was a disconnect, she was doing all the heavy lifting.' Salmond and Sturgeon were once seen as the closest of political allies but the pair fell out after sexual misconduct allegations against him, which first emerged publicly in 2018. Salmond was later cleared of any criminality following a trial in 2020. In extracts of her book, Sturgeon claimed it would have been 'classic Alex' to have leaked details of the investigation as he was practiced in the 'dark arts' of media manipulation and knew they would have become public anyway. Her remarks provoked a furious backlash among friends and allies of Salmond, who accused Sturgeon of launching unfounded attacks on a man they see as a titan of the independence movement, who is now unable to defend himself. David Clegg, the journalist who broke the story for the Daily Record and is now editor of The Courier, said at the weekend that Sturgeon's claims that Salmond was behind the initial leak were 'not credible'. He maintains he does not know who leaked the story by anonymously sending secret documents to his newspaper. In her ITV interview, Sturgeon said she had been hit by a 'wave of grief' after learning of Salmond's death, at the age of 69, despite the pair having not spoken in years. 'Even today I still miss him in some way — the person that I used to know and the relationship we used to have,' she said. 'But I thought I had made my peace with it, that I'd got to a point where I felt nothing. And then I got a call to tell me that Alex Salmond had died. I started crying on the phone and I just was hit by this wave of grief … and it was complicated because obviously we weren't just no longer friends, we were political enemies. • Sturgeon: I came perilously close to a breakdown 'There was no prospect I was going to be able to go to his funeral or anything like that and it was a kind of strange, strange feeling.' Kenny MacAskill, who served in the SNP cabinet throughout the run up to the referendum, disputed Sturgeon's claims about the white paper. MacAskill succeeded Salmond as leader of the Alba Party, which he set up after his departure from the SNP, following his death. 'The white paper was drafted by a team of civil servants,' MacAskill said. 'All cabinet secretaries were given copies to review. Alex Salmond oversaw every aspect of the government even though he allowed ministers to just get on with their job. 'The issue he kept some responsibility for was the constitution. Alex Salmond was also a master of detail. Many issues in the paper were fraught and complex with much discussion. The idea that he avoided oversight is simply laughable. Alex was in charge and always on top of matters. Yet again Nicola Sturgeon seeks to rewrite history. ' Chris McEleny, a former general secretary of the Alba Party, said Sturgeon's latest claims about independence exposed her book as a work of 'amateur fiction'. 'Alex took us closer to independence than we've ever been, whereas Nicola destroyed the independence movement and has few achievements to look back on,' McEleny, who was close to Salmond during the final years of his life, said. 'That Nicola's upset that Alex went on a trade mission and left her to complete a task she was responsible for sums up her lack of personal political accountability.'
