An inspector calls

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Down in la France Profonde, a little revolutionary spirit is stirring. At least two associations have been set up - if there are more the postlady can't know about them - to oppose authority - in this case, the water board - in the local sewage wars.

In the past the commune, the local unit of governmental control over the populace, had responsibility for waste disposal. As you might imagine, that meant that not very much was done about it at all. Local councils had more important things to do like refacing the facades of their buildings and replacing perfectly good but old fashioned office furniture with modern junk, in the intervals of initiating vastly expensive projects like buying up chateaux to house the childrens' play group.

One nearby town contented itself with using its' historic subterranean caverns for waste, which must have done a great deal to discourage archeology and research.

Any commune on a river thanked its' lucky stars and piped the whole lot away into the stream.

Elsewhere, the ditches were ripe in summer and fertile to an amazing degree.


However this is an environmentally conscious age so, given the chance, the communes happily signed over their disposal responsibilities to the water board and continued to modernise office furniture and buy up chateaux.

The water board, now responsible for both supply and disposal, included an obligatory charge towards disposal in its' bills, whether or not the property was linked to what might laughingly be called 'the mains'.

I can remember sewage stations being opened with great fanfare, only to find that in periods of heavy rain the whole shooting match would rise to the surface and flood low lying parts of the village and others which were and are flushed out into the river when it was in flood, as the debris on my banks bears witness when the waters subside.

It is not that long ago that the abbatoir in a local town was finally coerced into sorting out its' disposal and not before time. Upstream of me, in the next commune, there were times when, like Virgil as quoted by Enoch Powell, one could see 'the river foaming with much blood'. And other stuff. The last of the ladies who washed clothes on its' banks complained long and bitterly for years, but only the coercive power of prospective European legislation on clean water brought about any change.


The French are supine generally, crushed into inactivity under the burden of producing huge families in order to get the most from the tax system while attempting to make ends meet while paying the vast taxes required to support the social security system which enables......but then, to me, the whole French way of financing health and social security resembles something invented by Dr. Strabismus (whom God preserve) of Utrecht.

However, the hike in local taxes, necessary to pay for all the civil servants transferred from state control to local authority control, has made people rather more likely to raise their heads above the parapet, and the advent of the sewage inspectors has been the spark which has set off, not the powder keg, but certainly the fuse leading to it.

The theory is that these overworked gentlemen will proceed from commune to commune, inspecting every disposal installation or lack thereof, will certify it as being in the norms or not and will go on their way having trousered some 85 Euros, leaving some householders very happy and others facing bills for the installation of new systems which will leave them unfit for reproduction for some time to come, having been blown backwards bow legged by the size of the said bills.

I have already related mutterings from the next commune and the unproductive meeting with the head of the water board. Mark you, I cannot think why anyone thought a meeting would bring about progress. Meetings in France - participation in the democratic process - are occasions where everyone blows off steam and then higher authority tells them that no doubt the occasion has done them a world of good and that higher authority will now do what it was going to do anyway. Another manifestation of the theory that the state embodies the will of the people.

There has been no answer as to why, when we are already paying towards the costs of waste disposal on our water bills, we should pay again to have our installations inspected.
The qualifications of the inspectors have been called into question.
Their methods have been decried...messing about with bits of red and blue colourant does not seem very scientific to the French mind...not when it's paying for said messing about, anyway.
The wild and unjust variations as between installations.
The discovery that they are taking the word of - some - proprietors as to the state of their system and making no investigation at all.
The further discovery that they were given their own secret norms to follow...not more than 15 per cent of installations to be found unacceptable or the water board will come under pressure to provide sewage stations.

The associations have decided on a course of action.

Their adherents will be out for the day when the inspectors call.

Shat on from a great height

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Not far away from where I first lived is a little town that I scarcely visit these days. It is run down, has social problems and is on the way out, yet it should be one of jewels of tourist France and a cultural hub for its area.

Imagine if you were planning to visit France and someone proposed a town with part of its medieval walls and massive gatehouses intact....a wonderful church with a magisterial carved frontage....a medieval town centre with timber framed houses and little winding alleyways leading down to the river below, the whole thing dominated by a chateau perched on its rocky base. You would probably jump at the chance to visit it.

Well, when you did, you would be deeply disappointed. Yes, the town has all these attractions, but does nothing with them.......in fact, it seems perversely to want to negate their impact.

You arrive, and seek the tourist office. Twenty years ago, it was run by volunteers, in the centre of the old town and you would walk down the shopping area to get to it from the main car park on the old market place. You were already in the heart of things.

Then it was moved to the market place 'to be more accessible'. It was accessible where it was, in a half timbered building at an angle to the old church, so what was meant was 'accessible from the parking area'. Then council money came in and they got rid of the volunteers. Nice young things from goodness knows where took over the counters in the summer months, doing their 'stage' - training - no doubt for some diploma in tourism, and events started to be held. Night markets...story tellers and conjurers accompanying walks round the town. A fortune was spent on chateau images in metal implanted on the pavements.

What you could no longer do was consult leaflets either about the town and its attractions or about what was happening or available in the general area. To 'avoid waste', these were all kept in drawers of the filing cabinet to be produced if asked for...which begs the question

'How do you know to ask about something if you don't know it exists?'

Recently in an epic power struggle between factions of local government, the tourist office is to be moved to the outskirts of the town, where local government conveniently has spare office space due to the failure of yet another of its wild schemes. How the tourist is to find it is a puzzle. Where the tourist is to park having found it is yet another...there is only on-street parking, all taken up already by local government workers.

The main market used to spread from the market place, with the nineteenth century market building, down the main shopping street to the clothes market near the old tourist office, so, at least once a week, people would be drawn past the shops in that street and business was flourishing. Then, there was concern on the part of the council about the circulation of traffic. The market area was drawn back to the main marketplace, and commerce lower down in the town atrophied. Already, the town faced competition from two supermarkets installed in communes on its outskirts, so you would think, if only out of a sense of responsibility to its ratepayers, it would do something to keep commerce going in the centre.

Not at all. The town had set up two industrial estates, and its tax income from the enterprises installed there let it ignore the dying heart of the town. As commerce died out, rates went up. The only first class restaurant closed its doors. That was fifteen years ago and the hulk of the building is still there, its roof green with algae and the windows falling apart, the wreck of a sixteenth century wonder. No one will take it on. The shopping street became a desert of empty plate glass windows. A tattooist installed himself.....the only active commerce for some hundred metres and indicator of another phenomenon. The population change.

The centre used to house families, but mostly in rented property. The 'big' families of the town, heirs of notaires for the most part, owned the houses and saw that it was much more profitable to turn these properties into studio flats, as there were council grants for the conversion. The council led the way, turning a magnificent medieval hostelry into poky flats, ruining the interior and where the council led, others were quick to follow. The old centre became a ghost town of the unemployed and single, empty of commerces because they did their shopping at the supermarkets on the edge of town and decidedly unpleasant to frequent at night as the population changed yet again - younger people from the Paris area, bringing their habits of all sorts with them. Trash built up, dog turds littered the streets, and the council was unconcerned despite the calls of the original inhabitants of the area to have something done. The rates went up again.


A notaire - from the North of France - decided that the old centre could be turned round if a few people started to renovate the old buildings that were available for sale, and formed a group of like minded people with a bit of money to try to start on the area around the church. They faced nothing but obstacles as, not only was there the normal planning permission to be obtained for change to exteriors but because the area was one close to historical monuments, further permissions had to be obtained from the departmental architect of 'Batiments de France' - something like English Heritage.



These gentlemen, once appointed, are difficult to shift and run their departmental policies as they please. The one in place at the time of the notaire's initiative had an obsession with covering all walls in 'crepi' - rendering - in a colour described as 'ton pierre' - stone colour- but which would be more accurately be described as shit yellow. Now, this town was noted for not only its half timbered dwellings, but also for the buildings in local stone, built like the town walls, more than a metre thick, and it was this feature that the architect wanted to cover in - shit.
He had managed to have this done this to the medieval ramparts of a town down the road, with the result that the bastion overlooking the river now looks as though a giant had had an bowel movement while touring the area....and this is the sort of person entrusted with France's architectural heritage.

The notaire persisted and has a wonderful house, but most of his friends gave up, defeated by the beaurocracy and sheer resistance that they encountered. The town council sat on its' hands. It had the revenues from the industrial estate, after all. The town centre continued its' decline.

Two years ago, there was a suspicious death in one of these studio apartments and finally the police intervened in what had become an area of drug trading and sleaze. The council was forced to take action and sent in a councillor to hear complaints. He was blown backwards bow legged by the volume of said and the council set up an action group meant to improve conditions.

What has it produced? A plan to ban parking in the little square by the church. More litter bins...which have had to be protected by knee high concrete surrounds to prevent larrikins overturning them. As one long term resident was reported as saying

'If I'd put up a thing like that, I'd have been fined and made to take it down.'

How true that is. His story is echoed all round the old centre. People who want to make it come to life again, who want to restore it, who want to make it an area where tourists would like to come and spend their money are being prevented by a lack of initiative at all levels. Worse, obstructionism.

Why might that be? Go to the notaire, now retired and having to put security devices on the doors and windows of his lovely house.

'Simple. The big families still profit from these studio rentals. They don't want anything to change and they still control the place, whichever party they say they're from. The other thing they don't want is outsiders making a penny from anything in the town. The town is for them and their kind. It's not for us.'

So, take heart, immigrants to France. It is not only that France is for the French, and not for us, but that each town is for its 'owners', and not even for other French.

Dirty water wars

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It's been a funny year again...the river didn't drop as low as a few years ago when I could cross almost dryshod, but it was possible to cut up and remove a lot of the dead trees brought down over the last winter which were blocking the river bed. Some readers may recall that there was a European Union grant to do just this, but, having paid for the 'study' and for the 'democratic participation', there wasn't much money left to do the work,so, as usual, we end up doing it ourselves.

With 2015 and an EU deadline on clean water coming up, there is a lot of activity about the great clean up, and a great deal of disgruntlement as well.

Let's revisit sewage wars. Local water authorities have taken over responsibility for the disposal of waste in a seemly manner, but problems have arisen about what to do about houses and installations which are miles from anywhere. We have all been paying a contribution on our water bills towards installing sewage stations, from which we have no benefit whatsoever, and the water board's proposal to inspect our individual disposal systems - at a price - and decide whether we are within the ever changing 'norms' are not going down too well. Quite apart from the time it is taking. Prospective purchasers are very wary of buying a house in a commune that has not been inspected in case they end up with a bill for putting the septic tank in order, while rumours - via the postlady's colleague - from a neighbouring commune that has been inspected indicate that French beaurocracy is excelling itself yet again. Two residents have been told that they do not have installations at all, even though they can lift the lids and point to the very real existence of same, so are slated to put in new septic tanks at vast expense, not to speak of the delays in getting the artisan francais to get off his backside and do the work before the deadline expires. What happens if they miss the deadline? Fines, that's what...at least so the postlady's colleague says. Others, notably one whose entire waste runs into a ditch on the approaches to St. Ragondin, are declared to be in the 'norms' when everyone knows that they are not, and the lack of confidence in the whole operation is so palpable that an association is to be formed, to haul the water board chief down to explain himself.
The majority view is that the water board took on responsibility for sorting out the sewage, the water board has been taking our money to build sewage plants and it's down to the water board to sort things out for the rest of us without further charge. There wouldn't be so much opposition normally - the rural French are pretty spineless, after all - but times are hard, the taxe fonciere has just come in to startled intakes of breath, and the Green Tax is about to strike.
An association in another canton has just had the pleasure of interviewing the water board chief, and by the reports in the local rag it was an exciting evening. This being France, I am not convinced we will get anywhere, but it will be fun to have an evening of beaurocrat baiting.

Then we turn back to the rivers. We used to have a prefet - Paris's man in the department to see what local government is up to and tell it to stop it - who was quite clued up on the nature of rivers. He felt that they should have water in them and was quite strict about imposing bans on irrigation by farmers. The regional prefet - Paris's man in the region to etc. - sees rivers differently. He sees them as existing even when they don't have water in them and has been overturning the departmental prefet's bans. He has now managed to overturn the departmental prefet himself, who has departed for some cupboard in Limoges. The regional prefet has been explaining that the problem is one of drought, not competition for use, that next year will probably be wetter and that the problem will thus go away of its' own accord without the need to upset the farmers. One thing is for sure, a regional prefet with a farmers' revolt on his hands will soon also be in a cupboard in Limoges.

Meantime, there is a scheme to clean up the rivers without upsetting farmers. Most of the existing weirs are slated to be destroyed, thus giving much longer stretches to enable water to clean itself. At least, that is what the river technician said when he came round. We shall hear more at the public meeting - and a great deal as well from the outraged fishing lobby. No very enviable position for a French beaurocrat, caught between farmers and fishermen, so that's another evening of bloodsport.

And people ask what we find to do in the countryside in winter......

Very taxing, life in France

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So there's another tax I am going to have to pay.
What do we have so far?

VAT...a disgraceful tax which bears on every aspect of life and on essentials as much as luxuries.
The various local taxes which figure on my utility bills, for the local organisms to waste on studies for future useless projects.
Taxe fonciere. More waste on the local and regional level.
Taxe d'habitation. Ditto.
Taxe professionelle. Ditto.
Income tax. Waste on the national scale.
Contribution Sociale Generalisee. Paying for past waste.
Contribution au Remboursement de la Dette Sociale. Ditto.
Prelevement Social. Ditto.

And now I have to pay for another scheme to recycle the tax I pay into other people's pockets, all in the name of the environment! A Green Tax!
As far as I can see, I have to pay more for my heating fuel under this tax. Luckily I installed a new boiler a couple of years ago...the last one was like something off the Queen Mary adapted for oil...roaring as it engulfed money down in the basement. How many more rooms can I close off during the winter? How much more wood will I have to haul out of the river after the floods and cut for burning? How many more chimneys will I have to pay to have opened up, swept and certified?
The house is about as insulated as it can be for its' age....new insulation was installed when I bought the place, and double glazed windows went in at the same time, but it's a big brute to heat, all the same.
Don't tell me to downsize.....just look at the property market. Anyway, I like this house.
I have absolutely no intention of going all electric.....any experience of Electricite de France and the behaviour of its' unions would put you off that option, left in the depths of winter for days without electricity. No wonder they sell so many gas and electric hobs combined in France. Apart from which, though I am a supporter of the nuclear option - come to think of it, the nuclear option is the first one I reach for when perturbed about anything at all - I am deeply unhappy about France's leaky nuclear stations.
Out in the wilds there is no piped gas, I already cook on gas bottles and refuse to be hostage to the prices hikes of Butagaz for refilling those ghastly white gas tanks that sit like massive puffballs on the lawn. Quite apart from being unwilling to pay for yet another certificate that my installations are in order before Butagaz would fill the wretched thing.
Then there is diesel for the car. I suppose that is going up as well...really welcome when you're miles from anywhere. I am already economical, grouping my shopping and other trips insofar as French opening hours will permit, so what else am I supposed to do? Start collecting birds' feathers and gluing them together, then taking off like Icarus from the balcony, a shopping bag tied firmly to each foot?

There is going to be a scheme that compensates those living in the wilds......I shall believe that when I see it. Any money that gets into the maw of the French state stays there and, besides, I can bet my boots that a 'study' would be made proving that I actually live in the heart of the civilised world and thus do not qualify for any compensation, while politicans' second mansions in Normandy would so qualify.

What I need is a system that could run the central heating from my blood pressure. All year round hot water!

I accept that I must pay taxes to have the services that a decent society needs in order to work, but I do ask myself if that is what I am actually getting for my money.
Education..... I don't use it, but I'm happy to pay for it.
Health services, I do use and am happy to pay, except that most doctors now won't make out of hours calls and you are in the dubious hands of telephone service 15.
Social services....happy to pay for our local system of help to keep people independent in their own homes as long as possible. Not happy with the workhouse like conditions of old peoples' homes.
However, where are the blasted gendarmerie when you need them? Out breathalysing someone.....just lately round here, an asthmatic, who agreed he had been drinking, explained his health problem and asked them to take a blood test instead. He has just copped a fine of 300 Euros.
Why are the rivers so polluted and nothing effective done about it, but a lot of 'studies' produced at great expense?
Why do cash strapped local authorities find grants to bring half witted 'performers' to so called 'festivals', and don't want to find the money to help communes do their own traditional thing?
'Why, when there is a functioning state education system does my commune cough up a grant to the local private school?
Why are our roads in such a poor state when there are so many unemployed?
Why are we wasting money on specialists in seeking grants from the European Union when we could do the job ourselves if only we could get our hands on the money?
And, to return to the environment, why do I have to go to the local dump ...sorry, recycling centre..where the uniformed dictator won't help with bulky items and the local travelling people take anything worthwhile for scrap?

The blood pressure powered central heating has just gone up a notch or two.

It's not just the open taxes..it's all the others.
If I want to sell my house, I have to have 'studies' done to determine its' energy efficiency, the presence of lead and asbestos, the state of its electricity and gas installations, the state of its woodwork, and probably more since I last looked. All this requires the presence of an expert, who is poisoning himself with the radioactive equipment he uses to detect lead, and costs, inevitably, a vast amount of money.
I'd have to be mad not to tell a prospective buyer about the state of all of the above if there were any problems, and what about the buyer using his brain?
Further, I have my doubts about the process. Tell me how, when there are no keys to the house, an expert can enter, make his report and leave no foot or handmarks in the dust to be found when the buyer finally opens the door with a crowbar?

You want to communicate with the authorities, or make a complaint to a commerce? The letter must be sent registered otherwise its'existence will be denied. Amazing how bills, etc always find their way to me without being registered but it doesn't work in reverse. Another small, niggling tax on daily life.

I like the approach of the Turkish builder who used to help us. Hearing over lunch that we were going to buy a television for the holiday cottage, he said firmly
'Now be careful not to give your real name or address in the shop, otherwise you will have to pay the fine.'
In his view, the T.V. licence fee was just that - a fine and I begin to think that he had a point about the nature of taxes. Properly applied, they are taxes...inefficiently used, unfairly applied, they are fines.

It bothers me how many houses of cards we are supporting on our fiscal shoulders. I grew up with English local government when the town halls or council offices were not overstaffed, there was no PR element and ratepayers made regular use of the public auditor, and this free for all style of administration, local, national and European, gives me the horrors. You can't get at it to demand explanations as you could in the past in England.....not that it would give them, your letter wasn't registered.....

Sarkozy wants to do something for the environment? Take a few less jets to Brazil, for a start.