Just a bit of humour and light relief. This story is out on the AFP wires about a dust-up between two French districts. Note that it’s between right and left wing areas with the conservative town opening fire first.

“French commuters ran head-on into a local political standoff Tuesday after feuding towns redirected road markings to leave two busy one-way streets facing off against each other.

The Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret and its conservative council lies next door to middle-class and Socialist-run Clichy-la-Garenne. Daily, thousands of motorists pass between the two, heading into and out of the capital.

This week, after deciding that the D909 route brought too much congestion to his town, Levallois mayor Patrick Balkany declared his portion of it a one-way street, speeding traffic into neighbouring Clichy.
Balkany’s Clichy counterpart, Gilles Catoire, was not amused, and promptly issued a decree of his own, declaring his section of the D909 one-way as well, only this time in the opposite direction.

Chaos naturally ensued, and on Tuesday both local and national police were deployed to direct traffic away from the gridlock on the towns’ borders and onto narrow suburban routes unsuited to high volumes of commuter traffic.

Following Tuesday morning’s traffic chaos, the French central government, in the form of the regional prefect Patrick Strzoda, stepped in to order Clichy to re-establish two-way traffic on its section of the D909.”

Damn spoilsport. A proper French prefect would have stirred the pot for the ongoing amusement of all but “Patrick Strzoda” doesn’t sound the sort of nom de guerre to be sported by a garlic and onion wielding type.

Salut!