If you’re in charge of France (don’t panic — this is just a rhetorical question) and you want to restore your nation to greatness, what would you do?

• (a) Tell the French know-it-alls to stop pontificating to the world
• (b) Tell the French slacker-class to pull up their socks and get to work
• (c) Stop posturing around about the supposed supremacy of the French language, culture and brain trust
• (d) Stop toying around with failed socialist exercises. Cut the baloney, promote entrepreneurship and incentivize business.

Nope. Apparently if you’re Jacques Chirac (don’t you just always want to call him Black Jack Cherack and give him a pirate costume?), the answer is none of the above. In fact, the answer is … build a search engine. Yeah, that’s it. We don’t have any of those yet. Sheesh.

The French president, Jacques Chirac, yesterday unveiled what he hopes will be his great legacy to France’s struggle against the global dominance of the US: a series of technological projects including a European search engine to rival Google.

Mr Chirac, who walked out of an EU summit last month when a fellow Frenchman committed the grave offence of speaking English, styles himself as the defender of France in the globalised world…

The project was one of six unveiled yesterday by Mr Chirac. A plan for delivering high-quality television to mobile phones, a project for refineries to turn cereals into chemicals, a new light train system, and diesel and electric cars are to be part-funded by the Agency for Industrial Innovation, set up by Mr Chirac. German companies and scientists will work with French industry on the projects.

Mr Chirac said he wanted to raise the global profile of French industry and avoid a future in which France was known only as a “museum country”.

So … goodbye, Louvre. Hello, Radio Shack. Or maybe Black Jack leRadioShack. Much better — take that, globalised world!

Guardian article here.