Riots in France

George, disagreeing for the disagreeing sake?

It was this way for the last 60 years...

One of the effects of these three months of demonstrations and "voter revolts" certainly is - and I wonder, if you find this negative as well, George - that the French youth got politically active (again).

Moreover their chosen political activity, riots and closing public buildings and systems, was not exactly what I would wish them to choose or sustain.

Sorry, but the French simply do it better

Imagine you are a Parisian visiting London. Even before you step off the Eurostar, a conductor announces that you have reached Waterloo. You might wonder: are these British trying to tell me something?.

You'd be right. „A certain joy, it is true, fills the heart of all free-born Englishmen at the sight of a French government on the ropes," you read in the current Spectator, which accuses your compatriots of „neuralgia, paranoia and irrationality".

The turn to the Economist. „Some are wondering if the country will ever be able to reform," it sights. „Perhaps the French are just not up to the sacrifices that change imposes."

The metaphors of British pundits are as riotous as Parisian students. France is „a selfimposed value of tears", afflicted by a „crippling sclerosis" because it refuses to „swallow the nasty medicine of change". (Perhaps given French habits, a suppository of change would be more acceptable.)

The contrast between Gallic disaster and British triumph couldn't be starker. But hang on a minute: if France is so terminally sclerotic, why have 20,000 Britons chosen to take up a permanent residence there?

A few answers spring to mind. France offer excellent healthcare, affordable housing and efficient public transport. Families still eat together at the dinner table - and eat proper food.

My friend Philippe Auclair, a French musican and writer, suggests several more in his new book. Tony Blairs kingdom. Britain's catastrophic level of personal debt - vats credit-card bills, continual remortgaging - is unimaginable in France. Nor would French parents tolerate an education system that produces school-leavers who can barely read or write.

True, Parisian youngster occasionally take to the streets to assert themselves. But in Britain this happens throughout the land every Friday and Saturday night, with no political intent but plenty of vomit.

Although Auclair's portrait of Britain as a hellish inferno of binge-drinkers and fat-cats may be hyperbolic, it's a useful corrective to the hysterical Frogbashing propaganda of recent weeks. And if you assume he's an incorrrible anglophobe, you're wrong. He is married to an Englishwoman, has lived in London 20 years and does the Independent's cryptic crossword every day. He even plays cricket.

But then almost every assumption we make about ourselves or the French is false. France, the birthplace of revolutions, is actually a profoundly conservative nation wich resents being ordered to adopt „the Anglo-Saxon model".

The British, who supposedly reserve tradition, are giddy neophiliacs who deface their citycapes and abandon civilised habits without so much as a passing sigh. Is it any wonder that some of us still yearn to catch the next train to the Gare du Nord?

Britain? C'est un slave ship

French people don't bother about contradictions and are usually good at irony...

Francis wrote:

French people don't bother about contradictions and are usually good at irony...

I will agree that a well-developed sense of itrony is a particularly useful thing in the present circumstances.

georgeob1 wrote:

Francis wrote:

French people don't bother about contradictions and are usually good at irony...

I will agree that a well-developed sense of itrony is a particularly useful thing in the present circumstances.

I can feel you have no irony in you comment, George...

Besides, we are not good at itrony.

Seems you only understand irony, when it's yours, George.

Damn !!! I see myself as among the most understanding, balanced and compassionate of posters here.