Life in France, as it is seen.

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The regional elections are coming up and the ruling party of the right, the UMP, has issued a little propaganda film, showing how France is changing and how the regional structures must change as well, with clips of multiracial groups of children, an eco house and families flying kites.


Well, as it turns out, the film is flying a kite as well, since most of the clips were bought in from an American firm and were shot in various parts of the U.S.A. Thanks to the non subscription bit of Canal Plus television for the revelation.


However, it brings me back to my old chestnut, the difference between the image projected and the reality of living in France, and I feel that my point can only be reinforced when the UMP, who are, after all, running the show, find it easier to use American clips in their election campaign than to show France as it is.


Any PC inclined readers might like to cover their eyes for the next paragraph, but, be reassured, there is a purpose in including it in this post. For those still with me, endeavour to look past the word and look at the underlying argument.


I do not have my copy of Love in a Cold Climate with me....bring it back, you know who you are...but I believe it was Uncle Matthew - after all, who else could it have been - who claimed that

'Wogs begin at Calais'....

Take away for the moment the derogative nature of the remark and look a little deeper. British culture is not that of the continent of Europe. It has developed differently and produces a different mindset.

In my youth, brought up in a left leaning household which was regarded as normal then and would probably now be the object of government surveillance, 'wog' governments were viewed as corrupt, inefficent and oppressive of their peoples, while the tragedy of the end of colonialism was that the colonial powers, in their haste to drop their financial burdens to pay off their war debts to the Americans, left the ordinary people of their colonies prey to these vultures.

Well, living in France, I feel that it is run by a 'wog' government, as defined above. It is not what you expect, fed on the diet of 'common European values' and other EU nonsense, nor what the magazines and television programmes show you. In fact, they show you little if any of the political and fiscal structure of France, content with allowing their advertisors to offer financial advice on your pension arrangements and sell you houses. Thus the soft definition articles and presentation.
Thus the shock when you discover what you have come to.


I am prepared to believe that some British immigrants adapt quite happily.....drowsy from wine at lunchtime, the peace of retirement after a working life, total ignorance of the language...they pay what is demanded of them and congratulate themselves on their escape from Blighty...now full of 'wogs' in the view of many of them.


Others, mainly those who wish to work and enter the French system, find out the hard way that enterprise in France is sternly discouraged unless you are of a certain class and French to boot, and with the depression, the fall in the value of sterling against the euro and the lack of work, some of these people are finding that they cannot make ends meet and are returning to the U.K. to start again.


I find it distasteful that the retirees with their secure pensions regard these people who have tried to set up their own business with contempt....as failures. I would like to see some of these smug nonentities try do something on their own initiative and see how they get on.

If any of them wish to take up the challenge, might I suggest that a 'pay as you gossip' internet site might do well as it would be cheaper than providing the wine and nibbles for the usual suspects and would also widen the field.

So what do I find so shocking about France?
The strength of nationalism. It suffices to put anything in French v anyone else terms and no reasoned argument can prevail. France is always right. Everything French is best. Clearly it is not, but the education system, in which there is not only just one answer, but also just one question, does nothing to produce minds open to reason. Amazing, that the heirs of the 'siecle des lumieres' have been reduced to the status of mynah birds.

In its' turn, this nationalism arouses antagonism among immigrants, a refusal to become 'French', which only serves to wind up nationalism to a higher pitch. People who came to France for a better life for their families, willing to do the jobs the French refused as being of too low status, asked for nothing more than to be able to integrate, while keeping their own cultural references. Treating them as 'wogs' has resulted in a second and third generation turning their backs on a society which doesn't wish to employ them in higher grade jobs and turning their backs on its culture. While the French football team were cheating the Irish out of a World Cup place, young men from immigrant families were rejoicing in the victory of the Algerian football team over Egypt - their loyalties lying far from the place in which they live.

What else disturbs me?
The institutionalised cronyism and corruption...now all too familiar in the U.K. once its' politicians became acquainted with the practices of the European Union. On the basic, local level, you, as a foreigner - which can mean in some places coming from the next department or even the next village, never mind the other side of the Channel - might have problems getting planning permission to put in a window. A friend of the maire can rely on his agricultural land suddenly becoming open to construction, spoiling the views from a whole slew of houses.
You want a 'cattle crossing' sign? You can't just go to the local works department and put your case. You have to write to the President of the Conseil General, the departmental council, to get what you want...you have to ask a politician for something which should be a straight administrative job.

The multiplicity of elected posts held by politicians....maire, local councillor, national deputy...where the work is done by subordinates, but which keeps their local power - and perks - intact.

What, to me, is the most discouraging is that this is accepted as a way of life...thus the refrain
'Nous sommes pour rien'...we count for nothing
among ordinary people.
The older ones grew up in an era where, if you were not seen at mass on Sunday, you would not be employed. Their children know that if you, as a local councillor, do not dance attendance on the local deputy, your village will not be getting any handouts.

To call the French legal system a 'justice' system is to take the word 'justice' in vain....I suggest the blog of Maitre Eolas to those who read French. All is form and nothing is substance, giving inappropriate power to the prosecution in criminal cases and inappropriate liberty of action to the police before a suspected person has a chance to consult a lawyer. Coming from a common law background, it is unthinkably incompetent if the aim is to arrive at a result approximating to the realities of the case. I am not at all convinced that that is the aim of the system.

I suppose what disturbs me most about France is that French people know their place.
In the U.K., that notion was overcome first, in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the serving soldiers recognised the mess that those in high places had created in peace and war and voted them out.
With the expansion of higher education in the sixties, 'place' was what you created yourself, not a construct created for you.

These processes have not taken place in France. Postwar, the eagerness to keep the Communists at bay reinstalled to power the same hidebound nonentities who had led France into disaster, now more keen than ever to regain control.
Education in France has never been a way for the intelligent young of the lower classes to escape their station....if successful, they aim to become beaurocrats, not entrepreneurs, reinforcing the weight of the State in society, not reducing it.

These things may not disturb you, but they disturb me. Our ancestors fought, starved and died to obtain liberty and justice in British society and we kick up when we see liberty and justice eroded.
The French, heirs to 1789, 1830, 1848 and the Commune, respond with the Gallic shrug.

It is dispiriting.

The European elections - nul points

If the European Union had had any sense, it would abolish elections to the European Parliament. They just stimulate disgruntled European citizens to express themselves and, while this has no effect whatsoever on the workings of the EU, it does not make for good publicity.



I have been looking at the lists of candidates,or, more precisely, at the lists of parties who will, should they win in my region, impose their choice of candidate upon me. There are all the usual suspects....the Union for the Presidential Majority, the Socialist Party, the more socialist than socialist list, the further out than socialist list, the right wing list, the right wing non LePen list - have to be careful how you describe this gentleman as he is litigious - the Philippe de Villiers list....follow his example, breed for France to keep the immigrants in check- the third way list of Bayrou, wonderfully entitled MoDem...burned out before it started - Greens....after the German experience of Green power causing the average voter to refer to them as the Green terrorists I'm staying well clear - the Esperanto list - and, fascinatingly enough, a royalist list! There are others, but exhaustion takes over after a while. I did just wonder what happened to Chasse, Peche, Nature, that association of chancers who believe they have a right to trample over anyone's property in order to shoot or hook anything living in the name of tradition, but I expect they're in there somewhere, hiding under another name.



European politicians complain that these elections will just be treated by the public as a chance to react to national politics, but they should think carefully about this line of argument. If people didn't treat them in this way, then very few indeed would turn out to vote at all. People have more sense than politicians like to think....we know that European Members of Parliament are just the window dressing for the deeply undemocratic operations of the European Commission...but natural indignation gets the better of us on the occasions when we are allowed any participation in political affairs. Rather than crying 'A plague on all your houses', we let off steam with our cross on the ballot paper whenever we have the chance, which isn't very often.



I dream sometimes that people will try a new form of civil disobedience....just not participate in elections at all. Just imagine if after Thursday's hullabaloo the results were announced all over Europe.....

'France Centre, nul points, France Ouest, nul points.....' Terry Wogan's stint on the Eurovision song contest would come in handy here on a TV election special.

Still, one most not underestimate our masters....the European Commission would probably react by setting up yet another well paid body to investigate the disenchantment of Europeans with well paid bodies set up by the European Commission.

It is, of course, all the fault of the U.K.
Mired in the disentanglement from Empire and the perceived need to lick any passing U.S. presidential backside, successive post war British governments took their eye off what was happening on the continent of Europe. The Coal and Steel Authority and Euratom developed into the European Economic Community without any participation from across the English Channel, and, by the time Edward Heath took the U.K. into its fold, the European structure was set. This has been a catastrophe for anyone hoping for participation by the ordinary citizen.
The model used for the EEC was that of French administration and French administrative law. This might well have been acceptable to the rest of the original partners, since all shared the legal and constitutional legacy of Napoleon I's conquest of Europe, but it is totally alien to what was then the U.K. constitutional and legal heritage. Contact with the pernicious European model has diluted and distorted that heritage in very short order, which demonstrates its attraction to the power hungry and greedy administrator and its danger to the man and woman who has to live with it all.

Until recently, candidates for jobs with the EU went through a sort of finishing school, to train them to pass the qualifying exams for employment. The training consisted of learning and being able to regurgitate the history and achievements of the EU, which might be wonderful way of training the memory, but not much use in relating to the needs and aspirations of the average guy in Europe. However, it was modelled on the French system of crammers for the Hautes Ecoles...ENA, Polytechnique, Ponts et Chaussees...with the same aims. Instant recall of 'La Princesse de Cleves' does not in my view qualify anyone for running other people's lives. For once I agree with Sarkozy.... However, the objective is to form a body which thinks and acts alike and in this respect, the training is most effective.

The idea of a European Union is wonderful....no European citizen would argue against a body that keeps its composite nations 'jaw jawing' instead of 'war warring', but the reality is dreadful. On one hand, farmers get handouts to keep the European agroalimentary industries profitable. On the other hand, money has to be spent to clean up the water supply polluted by these farmers' activities. Local authorities can get grants for traffic calming, resulting in more road rage than I ever thought possible as one negotiates the chicanes and has to back up against a file of traffic as there is no room for a lorry to get through in the other direction, but not for setting up decent old peoples' homes.

A recent project sticks in everyone's craw locally. The river which runs through my garden was the object of an environmental plan. Put in plain language, it needed cleaning out. The obvious thing to do is to assemble the riparian owners, see what equipment they have, hire anything else necessary, then let them get on with it. This is not the European way. A grant category exists. The expert staff employed specifically by local authorities for applying for grants do their stuff. To avoid corruption...pause for hysterical laughter all round....a study has to be done by independent experts. Three men with an expensive car come out and walk along the riverside for a few days and come up with a plan. The cost of this exercise swallows up most of the available grant, but, with undaunted optimism, the job is put out to tender and a public meeting is called....democratic participation in the operation of the EU...to tell those concerned what has been decided. The river bed must be cleared of lumber which has accumulated in the winter floods for the past twenty years. We have to allow access for crawler tractors, tree cutters and their necessary equipment, and boats. We have to agree to move the wood cut before the winter floods carry it back into the river again. We don't have a voice in what trees must be cut.

Three men with a chainsaw, trailer and small bathtub arrive. Red marks are put on trees overhanging the river, including some recently planted under another European grant aided scheme to stabilise the river banks. They set to work. The dog chases them off my property and they do not return. I see them on the river in the bathtub with a chainsaw, cutting off branches protruding from the water. I ask them what happens when the river level drops. They shrug and motor downstream.

In due course an exhibition is opened at the local authority offices. Our stretch of the river is now officially cleaned up. I take the dog for a walk on the riverside footpath. It is still obstructed by overhanging trees as is the river....branches stick up menacingly from the riverbed....a lot of trees have red marks on them. I can only assume that anti European Union dogs saw them off this stretch as well.

On the ground, the European Union is not working for the ordinary European, so, on Sunday June 6th, as far as I am concerned...nul points!