Surely one tweeting Teflon president is enough

When a candidate to be the next president of France thinks it’s appropriate to tweet gruesome images of Islamic State killings, it’s time to admit we are in an era where words and images have lost all meaning, writes Clodagh Finn

IT DOESN’T matter that the coffee is merely average, the people-watching opportunities are beyond compare at the local café in Ivry in south Paris.

A man on early-morning business sweeps in and looks at the newspaper on the zinc countertop. It says French presidential conservative candidate Francois Fillon is in big trouble; he’s facing a formal investigation into reports that he paid his wife more than €800,000, over several years, for work she did not do. Mr Fillon claims the fake-job scandal is fake news, but his campaign is unravelling.