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Part XIV: Masks Attack! ... & More
The big issue at the moment appears to revolve around masks.
But first the nonsense news, appropriately reffered to in French parlance as ‘chiens ecrases’, run-over dogs. None of the such in Monaco, where strays are unknown, people drive carefully, and dogs usually come in a very expensive variety. But the vicious ‘Mechlin’ has still not been traced, afaik. There were however two interviews in Monaco-matin about people who had been biten, in a grand ‘huilie-huilie’ (weepy-weepy?) style, extreme right Dutch politician Geert Wilders surely would have called it. They know how to run a local rag over here.
So no wonder that the big issue of the day is also being sensationally splashed: masks! It has been an ongoing story since the begin of the Covid crisis, but Monaco manages to give a unique twist to it. Like in France, where the masks shortfall has still not been resolved (never wind PIMO Johnson’s Britain), Monaco suffered a brutal supply/demand imbalance in the beginning. For weeks on end Pharmacies had stikkers on their door telling NO masks available - nor hydro-alcoholic gel. Then both started making a timid reappearance - at mind boggling prices, even by local standards; there was a moment that a box of 50 surgical masks (the simple ones thus, like what your dentist puts on) were on sale in pharmacies for E 138 - cost price they said, because of the world-wide rush to obtain them at any price (note).
But this is all behind us in the (mini) state where “the authority of one protects the liberty of all” (-Marcel Pagnol): Monaco is manufacturing (yes!) its own masks! The Banana Moon Company, which is usually into bathing suits, and the enterprise Bettina, specializing in high-grade apparel for famous French fashion houses have recycled their productive apparatus, the latter firm even boasts ‘print’ them in 3D and run a zero-waste production process. So now the principality sits on a stock of 3,6 milion masks for general purposes, plus 276.000 ‘advanced’ (FFP2) ones, for the health services. And more have been ordered at a cost of 9 million Euros. A clear case of ‘where a small country can be big’ (Dutch loc.)
But this ‘happy news’ also sheds light on a largely unknown sector of the Monegasque economy: industry. By last reckoning it still counts for just over 5% of the not inconsiderable GNP of the principality, and is concentrated in ... high rises in the Fontvieille district. They have now been eclipsed, in all sense of the word, by the new developments, but when I was young industry was the mainstay of Fontvieille - and hence not the glitzy neighborhood it has become.
The two most conspicuous establishments were the brewery, ‘Brasseries de Monaco (), regularly spewing characteristic fragrances, and the coal gas plant unloading its nourishment from the railway goods yards just above it. The Coal gas factory had already been closed by the early 50s, but the two (in my remembrance) huge ‘gasometres’ (gasholders) remained for a long time, and my governess and I passed them by on the way to school on days we were not taking the bus.
Prince Rainier III, the father of the current one, had developed a keen interest in industry and sponsored it - as long as it was out of sight - possibly because ‘economic diversification’ was a cover for his notoriously complicated relations with the ‘Societe des Bains de Mer’ (’La SBM, a.k.a. the Casino), which held a strong hold on Monaco’s economy, and a virtual monopoly on its reputation, besides being substantially owned by the flamboyant Greek ship magnate Aristoteles Onassis (*).
But leaving previous ‘heavy’ industrial activities behind - the port of Fontvieille also housed a small shipyard, Monaco took a leaf from Hong Kong’s book, a place where space is possibly even more at a premium than in the principality, and went for small-scale manufacture of all kinds of products in multi-storied flats, varying from cosmetics to plastic tubes (my mother’s companion owned one of such one-floor-in-the -building factories) and even several fish canning plants (**).
All of them of course polluting, malodorous, relatively low value added (& usually all three) activities were bound to clash with the glitzy ‘new Fontvieille’ conquered over the sea, and are now vanishing one after the other, the princely government wishing for quite some time - and succeeding in - to replace industry by high-end services, which have the added advatange of employing a less uncouth-looking workforce than the Italian ‘frontaliers’ (trans-border workers) I remember being disgorged in large numbers by the early morning steam-hauled ‘omnibus’ from Ventimiglia in the old Monaco station (5*).
18’minutes to yachts’ horns sounding ... so:
(to be continued)
Read more... {AKA: “The MonaCovid Chronicles Archive” -Ed.}
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Practical info
3 Part I: The MonaCovid Chronicles
4 Part II: Coming Soon
5 Part III: The Morning after the Week-end Before
6 Part IV: The Week When It All Was Coming Down
7 Part V: The Week-end after the Previous One
8 Part VI: Digging in in the Crisis
9 Part VII: The onset of Lethargy
10 Part VIII: ‘Adventure still exists!’
11 Part IX: More adventures!
12 Part X: Here comes the Drone
13 Part XI: Oooo-oh Myy Go-o-oo-oD!
14 Part XII: The Dogs are Loose!
15 Part XIII: ‘It’s the Economy, stupid!’
16 Part XIII b (’extra bulletin’)
Notes ( ) One remembers the unseemly scenes on airport approns where consignments of masks for country ‘A’ were literally hi-jacked by country ‘B’, a practice Liberation humorously dubbed ‘arnaques et mic-mac sur le tarmac’ ... (rip-offs and hanky-panky on the airstrip). No fun however for the patients and health workers in France’s ‘Grand Est’ ...
() Its factory having been removed somewhere in the mid 60s due to its totally non market conform value/soil occupation ratio, the company disappeared for a time but has reinvented itself - I guess with new owners - as a boutique venture established on the harbour. Its product line has naturally also been ‘up-marked’: from sturdy one-liter bottles favored by the ‘travailleurs de force’ of my youth, to obviously smaller, but much pricier containers for discerning connoisseurs (wanabees actually, the stuff horse piss)
(*) To add insult to injury, Onassis’ yacht, the Istanbul ferry-size ‘Christina’ was considerably larger, and hence a much more striking presence in the harbour than the princely family’s modest ‘AlberCaro’, while the sovereign’s wife Princess Gracia couldn’t stand Onassis’ paramour, the famously tempestuous opera diva Maria Callas. Things went to a head when the Prince, at one stroke of his sovereign pen, ‘diluted’ the share holding of the SBM by 100%, keeping the new half for himself, that is for the Monegasque government, which basically is - or at least, was then - the same thing. An understandably furious Onassis bolted out of Monaco’s waters, Christina and all.
(**) The world-renowned ‘La Monegasque’ sardines, along with their unforgettable tin design, are now canned in Morocco.
(5*, like the party!) Needless to add that these proletarian hordes have been elegantly disposed of - pension rights, but no residence - in the course of years. In the days when there was a relatively large number of them, an unwritten, but robustly enforced ordinance made them extremely unwelcome to ‘hang around’ in any area of the principality other than their place of employment, and especially so in cases of what French so nicely call a ‘delit de facies’ (the of having a non-white face) ...