Flat Earth: Some French gall

ON THE subject of booze, that group of delightful French bucolics, the Coordination Rurale, which hates not just Gatt but Efta, Nafta, Bafta (I suspect), Brussels, Washington, London, Madrid, Rome and Paris, too, has issued its own Grand Cru bearing the name of the international trade agreement. This 'Gatt vintage', they say, is bottled anywhere, rich in pesticides, tasteless and drunk by anybody.

The 10,000-member group of gentlemen and peasant farmers, who come mainly from the south-west and north of Paris, trust neither the French government nor the official FNSEA farmers' union. It was the farmers, remember, who attempted to seal off Paris with their tractors some months back. The blockade failed only when they realised, just before lunch, that they had about 50,000 tractors too few.