Er ... let us see

Hollande makes it by four percent.


Socialist celebrations here in Bourges best described as muted.


Ok, my ( non voting ) affiliations are with the soundly trashed Greens - thus 'we' aligned with the left but...


General feeling we could have done better.



Maybe, just maybe ...


Thank goodness it is over?

Good bye to Cosy....

And is this goodbye to the euro?

How can you get 2 pints into a one pint pot?

Just reminding myself about the way it all starts...

How it started in UK....borrowing money which you knew, deep down that,

perhaps you would not be able to pay it back.

John, I am as I have been since my early teens an avid reader of Marx, Engels, Proudhon and other ideologues of 'socialism', my family were merely left leaning Labour which really did not convince me and Joe, our 'militant' shop steward neighbour was so ignorant I had to find out. To boot I was a member of various young people's groups such as YHA (have a life membership there) and Young National Trust so was always heavily into environmental issues. The two extremes are very compatible but somewhere along the way have decided that whilst they know that that neither will concede that overtly and unite to make a cogent, meaningful political movement. You will find that many truly left leaning people went 'green' in Germany and throughout Scandinavia without discarding their principles, in France I am not so sure. They lean toward the left but then much of the so-called left leans toward the centre, so let us see if Hollande delivers on the votes for EU citizens more than five years fully resident in France and what those of us who believe we have a political message can contribute.

Whatever, Hollande has done better than Mitterrand did at the ballot box and the forthcoming elections that will actually shape his government will be either and endorsement of his election or a warning and then we shall see what is in store until 2017. If celebrations were muted, well people I know were either exhausted or disinterested and whatever the turnout may be, the attitude appears to be thank goodness it is over rather than anything I find celebratory.