Do the singers understand the status of civil servants?

While Stanislas Guérini talks about attacking the taboo of dismissal in the civil service, Bertrand Dicale listens again to the way in which artists envisage a life as a civil servant.

Here are returned back to back the civil servants and the merchants, the servants of the general interest and the symbols of individual profit. It’s perhaps unfair, officials will say, but that’s what we hear from Philippe Forcioli, one of the most generous poets of song, who died in 2023.

While Stanislas Guérini, the Minister of Transformation and Public Service, calls in an interview – I quote – to “lift the taboo of dismissal in the public service”, we realize quite easily that popular culture doesn’t like them very much, including when criticizing civil servants is not very politically coherent.

In the first episode of These songs that make the news this weekend you hear excerpts from:

Philippe Forcioli, The Smile of the Traders, 2000

Jean Ferrat, The mountain, 1964

Charles Laurent, general secretary of the federation of CGT civil servants, 1931

Johnny Hallyday, Son of no one, 1971

113, The Bronzed, 2002

The Dirty Majesties, Be poor and shut up!, 2010

Ricet Barrier, The Lady of Ris-Orangis, 1958

Amalia Rodrigues, The House on the Port, 1968

Ricet Barrier, Civil servants, 1969

Abd al-Malik, He dreams of himself standing up, 2006

Serge Lama, Besides, 1978

Philippe Forcioli, The Smile of the Traders, 2000

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And you can also find the podcast on this link Behind our voices, with the writing and composition secrets of eight major artists of the French scene, Laurent Voulzy, Julien Clerc, Bénabar, Dominique A, Carla Bruni, Emily Loizeau, Juliette and Gaëtan Roussel.