European elections

The results of the European elections are in. Here in France the FN is the biggest party, although they actually only took 25% of the 43% turnout. In the UK it is a not bad result for UKIP although on 28% of the one third of the electorate who voted. Across Europe the Eurosceptic parties have done well, with the exception of Germany where even the Animal Party and Pirates now have a seat each.


What is clearly going to happen now is chaos in the European Parliament. The rightwingers are going to block and sabotage whatever they can, use delaying tactics and destabilise the parliament and Commission.


What remains to be seen is how that works for them. It may be that they discredit themselves and discourage people against supporting them at the next national elections or will drive the popularity of their brand of politics to greater heights. It is very unlikely they can bring about the end of the EU in one legislature, but should they do well and then increase support in their own parliaments in a few years we might all need to think again.


The risk of them turning against Europeans living in France, in our case here in France, is probably minimal given the Le Pen rhetoric, but I shudder to think what it will be like for non-Europeans and others like Roma confronted with a government of the right given that the present one is hardly sympathetic to begin with.


We must now all watch, be vigilant and perhaps prepared to think about the future. Without being narrow sighted, it may be that because of the politics that are turning back toward a watered down version of the past, namely the pan-European right of the 1920s and 1930s, that even home countries may not be the places to turn to. The legendary 'Plan B' perhaps? However, let it all unfold over the next few years and we shall see.

No Brian, no fear. I only debate hard. I also bait, which you do too. It is a Cambridge thing in my case. That is a place where there really are people who make somebody like myself feel like a political pygmy but I tried my utmost and stand my ground, especially when I believe in things. It also helps very much when one works in human rights, albeit mainly children, as the OH and I do. It is never personal. (Well, there are people who go away sulking and I doubt you are one and I ain't mate ;-))

I have no vote in the UK, parted with that when I left. Part of the package for me. Wherever I hang my hat... I do not split loyalties between countries if I live in one that is where I am. Wherever we are political change scares people, but it is like Kondratiev waves, almost inevitable. Cycles really do happen, it is just the form each wave in is of another period so they look dissimilar on the surface, they will happen no matter how people feel. Unfortunately I see the present changes going badly wrong. The 'fronts' are getting further apart which too often leads to violence. No form of violence, including revolutions, has ever solved anything. However, they do release the tensions in the most unpleasant way. I am happy I am old enough to probably not see the worst of it, I have young children and do not see a fantastic future for them.

Apart from that Brian, I have spent enormous amounts of my life playing poker and backgammon and more than my fair share on race courses, I gamble and that is the buzz I get with this all. However I know that backing favourites is no guarantee and bluffing only works if the other player is not better at it. So worry not, sparring involves jabbing rather than punching if I remember rightly, perhaps some jabs are a bit hard and sharp.

Brian I do read the manifesto. I could never support the Labour Party, they do not have what I consider to be a manifesto. It is hype and doggerel simply aimed at saying the Tories are wrong. The Tory manifesto is no change and would go from bad to worse for the people who are suffering now. UKIP's manifesto is unworkable and would be the ruination of the rUK. So, before you make dogmatic assumptions try reading them yourself. Not flicking through, but making notation wherever necessary. I read the political pages of about a dozen papers before most of us have breakfast, so try to get a cross sectional view of what the media is saying. So baiting me with that trite little snipe was wasted my friend.

The difference between us is I am absolutely passionate about people, they deserve better and there is no known party who could deliver that. In the UK UKIP deception is no better than anybody else's but it is worse than others. Moreover, your beloved party is a one horse race, Farage and Farage with Farage and Véro has described his party and him aptly enough for me not to bother. Clegg is gone and was of no importance anyway leaving Cameron and Miliband. Neither have a clue what life out of privileged circles is, both are appalling but one is worse than the other because he has continually lied to the electorate.

France, in comparison, is far more clear cut. Hollande is probably the worst president since between the two world wars when they really did have some deadwood here. Even Sarko comes across as a good politician in comparison. Hollande is remote and appears not to listen to the electorate. Any party leader who makes his own electors as angry as he has should be on his political hands and knees begging for forgiveness and asking what he should do now. Le Pen has used that to enormous advantage so that unless PS, UMP and other parties do not shape up and turn back to the people they are lost. Le Pen is a very intelligent woman as much as one might hate her politics. She plays to the electorate perfectly whilst plastering over the nastiness under her nose. Her disadvantage is her sex and there are so many misogynists in FN who have not yet offended her that I am surprised. But I shall watch and wait until one of the madmen opens his mouth and says the wrong thing and drives a wedge into FN, whereby the factionalism will undermine their credibility and support. The racism and the rest of it is tolerated but some of them are so megalomaniac in their own 'realms' that that is where they may well be their own downfall. However, without the other parties looking in the mirror at themselves and then doing something there would be no benefit for the electorate.

Right wing parties have the same bad odour about them as Stalinist 'left wing' ones, they are not parties of the masses but narrow sighted demagogues who believe they are right and when they tell the people they are right they will have to accept it. History in the 9th into mid-20th century and present is good illustration of how that goes, plenty in countries who have had democratically elected despots like Amin, Mugabe, Huerta, Noriega, da Costa e Silva, Saddam, Assad, Kim Il-Sung, Sukarno, Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Mussolini and not to forget Hitler. A few others if you can remember the names. In their time and way most of them has started off with promises and smiles, familiar isn't it. Farage and Le Pen are specialists.

The problem with normalising a party like UKIP is that it lets all sorts of extremists become not-so-extreme and gives them a veneer of respectability (after all, they have been elected, so they must be OK) , so it is the thin end of the wedge - if the Tories become the 'centre' how far to the right do you have to go to be really right-wing? Farage's rhetoric, moderate compared to that of some of his followers, is an incitation to divisiveness and hatred. From what I have seen of him he is a ghastly offensive creep who trades on blokiness and populism.

If UKIP win in Newark the floodgates will open to all kind of oddballs and whilst the brand of politics they bring with them is more reminiscent of the 1950s that 2010s they are also for the greater part destabilising rather than genuinely a force for positive change. The political world is in a big enough mess without that happening and rather than what was intended post 1945, creating a Europe (OK, 'world' was the word used) that would never see war again they open the door to that possibility for the future. Ukraine is a useful shot across the bows and any destabilisation that puts Russia on the upper hand is folly. Also, sadly to say, the collision course they are steering in respect of attitudes to Islam and how the people in the West might be exposed to the extremes of prejudice are a frightening prospect because of the hardening of attitudes in Islamic states and possible wars with them. The social damage that will be done by 'undoing' things like gay marriage, ending civil agreements (PACS here), privatising health services, having private pensions only in the future, having differential wages for women and men and no more minimum wages, those being the ones I remember and there are plenty more, is horrendous. The people supporting these parties are picking things that they do not like such as immigration and gay marriages and basically ignoring the rest. The social tensions following any real move toward reversing liberal legislation will make minorities very angry and somewhere in the equation the next generation of terrorists a la 'Baader-Meinhof' type will be born.

It is not that I am a pessimist, quite the opposite really, but I accept the future those people are designing as a given and have my place among the protesting minorities whatever my age.

Absolutely Joanathan, Cameron and Hollande are economically incompetent. Their advisers are close to cretinous in political terms if that is what the have guided the two toward. The vast majority of politicians are not listening to economists but to bank directors. The IMF has said that. Now the likes of these two have the EU as a scapegoat. That is all rather counter productive when they should be trying to regain confience and turn the likes of FN and UKIP support back round.

The thing that puzzles me about this last election and as more than adequately pointed out by Brian, is that the UKIP story line is just well let us say the figment of their imagination. Their statements and assertions are nonsense, must have been known to all parties, but nobody challenged them!! Why is that??

I can understand the appeal of UKIP, to a population that has seen the UK change form what it was, a backward looking dream of a fantasy UK that never really existed and of course the underlying racism, that is carefully disguised (well not discussed), and which is sadly supported in the same way by too many people in the UK.

The combined results have been analysed in terms of how a parliamentary election would turn out with more than one-third of the electorate turning out. It would give Labour a bare majority but not even ensure UKIP any more than a handful of MPs. In terms of returning MEPs, they are still part of a minority bloc in the EU and even if agreement is reached between all similar parties that is all they will be. In real terms Labour comes out having gained, even numerically as a portion of an assumed 100% turnout for the Euros because of the way the vote elects rather than the numbers of voters they come out on top. It is a really quite stupid system, no better than FPTP and needs to be changed. In that case in EU terms UKIP would have won without doubt. Start reading political analyses Brian, very good if you fancy a nice deep sleep but nonetheless very revealing.

It was almost inevitable. France has to turn things around or become a pariah in the EU along with the UK who are making every effort to do that at present.

What I do not get is this UKIP winning the election business. It was Labour followed by the Tories, despite considerable losses. I think I'll make a habit of going in for competitions where I do not have to have a first prize ticket to get the big one from now on following that form of calculation.

As for time. Mostly cut and paste from things I have written already. To put it together my mug of coffee was not cold. I only posted a short time ago because I had to go back over to correct my legion spelling mistakes which is probably the longest job ever ;-)

Ian, let me go through you comment point by point.

Laws made in Brussels is one of those wonderful bits of political machinery to drive in any direction one wants. The UK media have done so and now Farage and UK have used it to advantage. Actually it has been misused. They have all been saying that 70% of the UK's laws are made in Brussels and quoting somebody who expressed that wrongly, Viviane Reding, bearing in mind her English is not always perfect and she does get things wrong fairly often. What is correct is that 70% of EU laws apply to the UK. That does not mean that they are all adopted by the UK. In fact, those that are incorporated into English and Welsh law make up about 17% and Scots law 19%. They are hardly big issues either, such key laws as the regulation of commercially grown raspberry canes not exceeding 1.65m hardly affects everyday lives. However, play around with this type of detail and up pops a political plaything.

Unelected bureaucrats making laws. The do not at all. Again, a wonderful propaganda tool to play with. However, the laws are all drawn up by bureaucrats on request of committees made up of representatives of member nations who we elect. The bureaucrats are EU civil servants, employed as the UK, France or elsewhere employs them and of course they are not elected, who ever heard of civil servants being elected? When a draft law is ready it goes to the commission the committee is working under. Commissions are the equivalent of ministries, so that should be fine in anybody's mind. The commissions put them into the proper language and translate into all official languages used within the 28 member EU, plus Rumantsch, Icelandic and Norwegian for the non-EU members who are closely tied to the union. The draft laws go to the member countries for their officials to examine then on to the European Parliament to be scrutinised, voted on and amended as required unless they go straight through which few do or are rejected outright. Then when all of that is done then all final translations and instruments for the adoption into the laws of member states are prepared and then the finished laws passed on to the responsible commissioner. The commissioner, who is not part of any lawmaking process in that he or she does not make laws or have any say in making them, presents them formally to the EU. Commissioners are appointees, their candidature is made by member states, their appointment by majority voting and their actual role is as a figurehead and spokesman/woman for particular branches of the EU. Whatever people say, José Barroso does not make laws, has little influence in general but is responsible for allocating portfolios to members of the commission and can reshuffle or dismiss commissioners if becomes necessary. The commissioners determine the policy agenda and examine all legislative proposals it produces following the procedure through committee stage and so on already described. Thus, given the EU's structure the commission is the only body that can propose EU laws very much like any member state's ministry is the only body that can do so. It is not so different to domestic legislation except that in that case member states usually get to pick and choose which laws to accede to to some extent.

£50 million a day. That was a figure bandied about. £18 billion a year. That is a tiny little bit of the annual UK government budget of £117 billion a year. £3.8 was rebated almost immediately in 2012. France, where we are living, actually makes up the largest part of the funding for the UK rebate. The UK has a quite small farming sector producing its proportion of GDP. Payments to the EU are mainly funded by VAT returns and more or less proportionate to the size of the economy. The rebate was originally approved because when it joined, the UK was the second poorest member of the the 10 EEC member states. It certainly needs to be revised, no question at all, in fact some countries are calling for its abolition and replacement with a more equitable scheme. Above and beyond rebate there are the grants the UK receives for EU projects and programmes that vary from years to year but can bring the UK back in up to £12 billion a year, normally more like £7 or £8 million. However looked at, of £50m going out each day, well over 20% returns anyway plus roughly speaking a further 40%. So, yes £50m does go out every day but do these political manipulators bother to tell anybody that around £30m a day goes back to the UK. The £7.3 billion spent each year is already offset by equitable trade agreements within the EU and put in perspective, as a couple of economists did recently but the media mainly kept quiet, it is less than the budget spent on replacing civil service and government department hardware, software and networking each year, also taking into account several billions of pounds of totally wasted development and delivery of systems that have not worked and had to be dropped immediately at the cost to the taxpayer.

The EU gives a very big budget for joint medical research but health services, as too pensions, schools and other budget items are generally national matters the EU has no say in. The expenditure of the computer systems mentioned, plus money invested in replacing nuclear weapons, the means of delivering them like Trident and new military aircraft has seen over expenditure of many billions for items that have been rejected after extensive research and development when prototypes were found to have been faulty. Further to that, the money being spent on HS2, fracking, the new airport east of London and additional LHR runway are only ‘exploratory’ at this point in time. The estimate for the 12 mile tunnel, diversion of rivers, a canal, electricity trunk routes, gas pipelines, water mains and rehousing several hundred people (over 90% of whom are home owners) for the LHR third runway is hair raising and the government spokesman releasing the review even said that that would most certainly need to be adjusted in line with inflation and the errors that are inevitable! Each of these things has greater public opinion against than for. Is that democracy and reasonable use of taxpayers’ money?

There is hay made of the EU audit, it needs to be dealt with very quickly and consequently for sure. However, what about national budget audits? The UK has an embargo of 100 years before the books can be examined by the public. It all smells very wrong to many of us. The scandals arising over expenses and wastage are only the tip of a huge iceberg. The entire political system in Europe is corrupt and needs to be entirely overhauled. Unfortunately there is no party that would ever have the clout to even propose that in its parliament let alone legislate to achieve it.

European Free Trade Association is a free trade organisation between four European countries that operates parallel with and linked to the EU. The EFTA members are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. It is used as a ‘fringe’ group to the EU but its regulations are mainly made in Brussels. All of its trading terms are within the EEC terms which are now incorporated into the EU. The clock cannot be turned back on that association and become a larger group of countries.

As for blaming Edward Heath, Harold Wilson or whoever else for the way the people were ‘lied to’, that is again political haymaking. In 1975 the UK had a referendum on the state joining the EEC, the so-called Common Market. There was a manifesto produced by the then commission along with the UK government. It was sold by HM Bookshop on the Kingsway for 2/6d. I have recently blown the dust off my copy and had a very close look. The future programme of the EEC was to develop economically, socially and politically. In broad terms what we have now is what was foreseen in that bulky bit of technical jargon. I read it, cast my vote for the membership and was part of a large majority. Even accounting for the relatively small number of people who did not vote, the choice was made by a sizeable majority in any terms. If each new generation decides it does not like what it sees and demands a new referendum then that could apply to every treaty a country enters into. If thus the next generation wants back in because leaving was wrong then that mistake may be irreversible.

Now there is a fuss being made about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to boot. The USA has seen the writing on the wall and knows that they cannot compete economically with several nations already and should any of those form blocs comparable with the EU then they will go down like a proverbial stone. The EU is in a comparable position. The USA and EU are negotiating the TTIP to stay ahead of the game. The critics are forgetting TAFTA. The Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) between the US and EU has been proposed with the aim of ‘protecting’ investment and removing ‘unnecessary regulatory barriers’. The negotiations could very easily result in the opening of the floodgates for GMOs and shale gas (fracking) in Europe, also threatening of digital and labour rights and empowering the large multinational corporations to legally challenge a wide range of regulations if they do not like or want them. The EU would generally have to accept US standards in many areas, particularly food and agriculture, which are lower than those of the EU. The largest food corporations (Unilever, Kraft, Nestlé, etc.) and the multinational chemical, agricultural biotechnology and pharmaceutical giants (Monsanto, Bayer, etc.) have welcomed the negotiations, with a key demand being the facilitation of the low level presence of unapproved GM crops. The two treaties would have devastating social and environmental consequences within the EU, so the opposition is not without good reasons. However, the chances of entirely blocking them is very low. Any country that is then outside the EU will still be subject to the rules the treaties will make but at greater cost. No single European country could sustain what would come to bear on them. Those treaties were not part of the 1975 deal and they require a referendum that clearly we will not get.

Finally, Switzerland. A wonderful myth. All of my family are Swiss. I have very few ties with the UK any longer really. Although the Swiss have recently had a referendum to introduce quotas for all immigrants seeking work there which may place restraints on their Schengen membership, in practice once the federal government has put the legislation in shape and place it may simply put a brake on people going there to live without means of financially sustaining and supporting themselves. EU citizens already supply large parts of the medical, banking and technical sectors which the country cannot afford to lose. Nothing is going to change there. Superficially, they will demand people wishing to teach must have qualifications acceptable in their country which means, for instance, German and UK teaching qualifications that are accredited will be OK but not French, Italian, Polish, Spanish and a few others. If the UK left the EU and was admitted to EFTA, which none of the countries would want because two already depend on a financial sector the City would then impose itself into, it would still be bound by EU laws and regulations.

The only option would be for the UK to go it alone. Entirely alone. Looking at the changing world competing with China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico and even little Singapore now with other countries coming on fast would make that very difficult. Leave the EU because a minority of political voices wish to consign the UK back to the 1950s without the last bits of empire to cling to, bearing in mind that the 1975 decision to join the EEC was because the UK was going rapidly down the drain as well, would be folly. So leave or not? I know what I think and I take all of the above into account, much of which I do not like, but prefer in to out.

An old American pundit once said: "Politicians are like diapers (nappies). They need to be changed often and for the same reason." ~ Mark Twain

Which brings us to the question of career politicians. Those men who formed the original government of the United States were very familiar with the behavioral patterns of those who became too comfortable with the power of high office in Europe. The job was a magnet for psychopaths, although they did not have that clinical diagnosis back then to label them, they were more than aware of the predictable behaviors of those once power was attained. Hence they set about limiting terms of office in the hope that the best and brightest of industry, trade and agriculture would set aside the tools of their trades for a brief period and devote themselves to the governance of the land, then return to their chosen professions, to be replaced by others like them.

Of the three branches of government, only the Judicial were allowed to serve for life if they so chose. The Executive was limited to two, four year terms and the Legislative branches required re-election by their constituents at brief and regular intervals. This was not a Democracy, rather, a Republic. The rule of the mob (Democracy) could only go so far as to elect their representatives who would decide their fates in Congress, with each geographic region represented. This worked moderately well in the beginning when the country was primarily agrarian.

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter" ~ Sir Winston Churchill

A career in politics, serving the people, is not a bad thing. Its just the individuals that make this choice should first be required to submit to Canadian psychologist, Dr. Robert Hare's Psychopathy Check List before being allowed to campaign for any public office, even dog catcher. It would also probably not be a bad idea for international corporate directorship and military leadership. Government leadership the world over is woefully shy of men of good character. That needs to change.

Unfortunately Ian, there is no proof the UK government would spend the 50 mill per day wisely. I mean, any government who feels it ok to waste £9.4 billion on the olympic games must not be trusted with your/our hard earned cash.

I think this is only the second time I have written on the SFN site in all my years of membership but I have been stirred by this topic.

Lets not bang on about immigration. The fact that UKIP have done so well in the UK is because the electorate are fed up with their laws now being made by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, and fed up with sending over 50 million pounds a DAY - yes, you heard that right - to that same army of monkeys. Think for a moment what Britain could do if there wasn’t a constant flow of money into the EU: more hospitals, more schools, and more for pensioners - including ex-pat pensioners like us here in France, for starters. As it is, so much money in Brussels has gone “missing”, or cannot be accounted for, that for some years now no professional has been prepared to audit the EU’s accounts. Any private company that carried on like that would be closed down !

Cameron and others say they want to “renegotiate” the UK’s terms of membership. Forget it. Renegotiated terms would require a “yes” vote by the majority of member states, and that simply isn’t going to happen.

Edward Heath lied when he spoke of a future “Common Market”. It already existed. Does anyone remember EFTA (the European Free Trade Association)? Let’s just stick with that.

I see no reason why Britain shouldn’t be treated the same as Switzerland, with all of the advantages and none of the disadvantages of staying out of the infamous Union. I don’t think we ex-pats here will have much to worry about when Britain leaves the EU.

Jonathan, what do you mean by 'don't play that game'? I'm not criticising anyone from the EU for living anywhere else in the EU (or indeed anyone from anywhere for living elsewhere, or wishing to). I think it is interesting that nobody actually has a clue about who lives where and that as usual numbers are chucked around, in order to back up a variety of specious arguments, without any actual precision...But what do I know, I'm just a French person living in France ;-)

Also I'm highly unlikely to approve of anything the BNP or the Daily Mail have to say because I'm French (and exactly the sort of person they dislike intensely, even if we set that aside).

I could never work out why I rather liked German marching songs until it eventually came out that some of my forefathers were Prussians! That was all "hushed up" about 120 years ago and before the Windsors!

Ultimately earlier David, albeit the origins of modern homo sapiens being debated between somewhere in Africa, probably the east, and somewhere in Central Asia. Certainly none of us has an ultimately English, French or any other finite origin, absolutely little 'pure' blood lines between the lot of us. Where my father's family stem from up in what is now Morayshire, almost 20% of words in their version of Scots are easily identified: a quean is a woman in some places, a young girl in others but the same as kwinne which is Norwegian for woman, querty is not the top line of a keyboard but means lively or vivacious and is kwert in its original form. My grandfather used such words and not the English forms. So clearly I have Norse blood. My mother's grandmother (my g-g-mother) was an Irish Huguenot bride of g-g-father when he was a soldier in Cork. She clearly carried French blood into the family. It all gets very silly and pointless when the nationalist voice tells us about pure blood and all of the trite origins business. There is almost no such thing.

Let's not forget that the UK has been the destination of immigration for about 2000 years. Romans, Vikings, Picts, Angles, Normans, Huguenots, Jews, Italians. I'm British but only about 3/16 English. My daughter is British, but possibly 3/32 British or something like that. Here in Brittany there was a big arrival of Welsh and Irish between the 6th and 9th centuries, after the Carthiginians and Romans and so one goes on. I clearly remember people in what was meant to be a smart home counties golf club not wanting to allow Jews in as members as late as the sixties. It's all so depressing that we seem to be going backwards suddenly. It's been OK for Britain to go out and "rape the world" as a French book I have describes the colonial process, but now a group of people want to shut out the world. We can however all agree that the EU needs major re-appraisal, and even my more realistic French friends agree with that. Britain, great or not, cannot actually function at any level without immigration.

British in Europe is, according to the EU's statistics, based on people who have taken up residence in an EU member state, the UK uses only those who were immediately previously resident in the UK thus no longer in the ONS census returns. That distorts the real number anyway since there are so many people who have British citizenship who have never lived in the UK but never took up the nationality of their country when it became independent.

It is very much like Véronique's point that France has overseas departments, I used the word colony which strictly speaking in political terms they are. But they do make the point very well that until independence there was (for example) no such thing as Australian nationality, they were all British citizens. I have alone Indian colleagues who are still working in their 70s who travel on a UK passport. They were born before August 1947 and have spent their lives in India and maybe a couple of weeks (if ever) in the UK. Multiply that by X countries and imagine trying to find the real number! However, tell Farage that all of us will be 'repatriated' to his idealised motherland and watch the blood drain from his face when he sees the details.

The word 'joke' used Brian was to emphasise, even exaggerate, the point that is overused about how many 'Brits' retire out of the UK but overlooks the number of necessary skilled people living and working in the UK. Do we heck, most of us work but in Daily Mail land there is another view. Anyway, apart from dependants such as school aged children or non-working partners, the picture is of the vast majority of French available for employment making up the UK population, relatively few are tax exiles but yes of course they are there too. There is no exact figure as the ball park figures show and one of the problems is that ONS has been using the annual Labour Force Survey figures that count economically active individuals but not dependants, students or any supposed 'skivers' on benefits there might be (Daily Mail says there are, so that's it then). The UK census in 2011 omitted a huge number of people such as those in temporary accommodation, hostels, boarding houses and leeway was allowed for not collecting details from people who were not available. The Home Office admitted they do not know how many people did not make themselves available or claimed, for instance, not to be permanent residents thus ineligible for the count. Ultimately there is something incalculable between official figures and how many there really are. In a country with no real registration system for residency at all possible dwellings no population count can be precise. So yes Brian, statistics are manipulated and thrown about like a ball to suit whoever and whatever ends they are used for, the last census being a perfect example. I do not like stats one little bit having seen how wrong they are too often. They are being used to political ends at present and that allows politicians to invent fictional scenarios that will unravel if ever the fools try to make them real.

Oh & I've just seen this later in the same article

"The consulate defines London as the city plus "the south eastern quadrant of the UK including Kent, Oxfordshire and maybe Sussex too".

This is quite a generous description of the London area - it includes Oxford, a city in its own right about 60 miles away from London. Kent and Sussex meanwhile, stretch right down to the English Channel."

I've just cut & pasted this from the BBC website. Article about London supposedly being the 6th biggest French city 'bigger than Bordeaux' which it is yes, but only if you count Bordeaux ville and not the CUB, which is more realistic. Like comparing the City of London and London.

Johnson says there are 250,000 French people in London. Other British estimates say 300,000-400,000. The figure that is quoted most often is 300,000 which is attributed to the French consulate in London.

Continue reading the main story

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Like for like comparisons are pretty difficult because cities in Britain have fairly wide administrative limits”

Eric Albert Le Monde

When asked, the consulate said this figure was for the whole of the UK, although most of those French people would be in the capital.

This is at odds with the figure from the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS). It carries out a household survey once a year and its most recent one says there are 123,000 French nationals in the whole of the UK and only 66,000 are in London.

But these ONS household surveys don't count everyone. For example students in halls of residence and people in care homes are left out.

The UK Census does count this, and the 2011 Census says there are 86,000 people in London who hold French passports.