In London, waiting to meet a few people who are late due to the Tube strike, with a cacaphony of guns going off in the background (apparently someone’s mother died three years ago and is an excuse to waste a few barrels of cordite) and with a copy of the FT beside me, is giving me time to reflect on a discussion this morning
I made my feelings known earlier on the underground strike, but soon after I have to admit to being a tad ashamed of flying the flag of my defacto home of France! As was clearly pointed out to me, the RMT have the good grace to confine their strike to one csuse and not run around like (qoute) ‘headless chickens not knowing what was going on’ as the French want to do this and next week.And all because France has someone who can find a way to save 40bn€…
reading the FT now, compounded my embarrassment as I had no idea that France was in such a poor economic state. It seems thst with the second largest economy of the EU, France is, like Greece many years ago, on the brink of bankrupting the EU.
I wish my French were able to digest the technicalities of the French economy. A pity there is not a forum for English immigants, with poor French, who can feed off each other the extent of the realities we are facing
Really, I think you’ll find France financially standing is just as much in the do do as the UK. Whilst in France I can at least see where some of the money gets spent unlike the UK.
This is not about comparing France to the UK! Why is everything brought back to this?
France has a large debt - if the commentators are to be believed - the second highest to Japan. The difference is the Japanese is largely owned internally. 54% of French debt is owned internationally, and one day these creditors will want their payback. At 3.5tn USD, this is a big find.
My worry is that if this ever came to pass, then all the lovely money that we see spent on us - health to keeping roundabouts trimmed, will go in a flash eaten up by austerity.
Where should we lay the blame, accountants, economists, all enjoy a wonderful std of living get invited to all the swanky parties etc. sack the bloody lot, they have screwed up countries everywhere so let’s find, I dunno maybe Engineers who are used to dealing with crap and have to announce bad news from time to time. The truth, you can’t handle the truth
Le Conseil départemental de l’Aveyron recently voted to permanently close what I consider to be the best museum in the whole department. It might surprise some that I’m not referring to the superb Musée Soulages in Rodez (possibly France’s greatest abstract painter); instead it’s the Musée départemental des arts et métiers traditionnels.
It’s a huge unique collection that spans every aspect of traditional local life, work and culture from tiny neolithic artefacts to gigantic C19th steam-powered threshing machines. It’s a tremendous reminder how only a couple of generations back, virtually everything here was made locally. It’s also a fantastic tool for connecting with the everyday aspects of patrimoine that are of greater historical relevance to most people than grand chateaux.
Just this morning, I was commenting on how dirty and unkept our local village is looking recently.
It’s always been typically French tatty, but pleasant.
Rubbish being left out and got at by foxes. Litter not getting picked up. The roads leading in have litter on the side of the roads. Road surfaces are appalling in many parts. Broken street furniture. Vandalised bits and pieces all over the place. To name a few things I’ve noticed. When I started looking and nit picking, I was quite shocked.
I live way down in the south west near the Spanish boarder, so not a particularly populated area.
I often go for a walk in the morning, not in this village as it’s a short drive away, but in the countryside surrounding my place. Over the last year, I’ve started taking a plastic bag with me so that I can pick up all the litter on route. It’s not a lot, but it wasn’t like this.. I want to say pre-covid, but I’m not sure there’s a correlation there.
There’s a lot less verge cutting, which I don’t mind. However, our little road that leads up to our house is getting narrower and narrower because the verges are not being cut back off the roads.
Any how, my friend told me that the mairies have had severe budget cuts.
There is really not much of an excuse for not knowing since easy access to French news in English. That plus the aides for translation which are brilliant now, and reasonably accurate, means we can keepmup to date.
And well worth listening to right now because of confidence vote.
Let me clarify! News in English gives the headlines, but not the detail eg such as the total debt to gdp etc.
And here is another issue Museums will be the first to make way for savings, as I just not think the young French have much affinity to their heritage, so, an easy target.
Been watching the debates as they happen live on TV, MLP getting her gander up and I felt sorry seeing the look on Bayrou’s face as she slagged him off. Looks like lean times ahead for all of us.
France 24 English channel has daily business news and broadcasts continually in English. It also has high quality debates in English, particularly after the 7pm news. The secret to this quality is that unlike the BBC (at least as I remember it) their debates are between experts in the field rather than politicians.
This museum is in a very popular year round tourist spot, and although it does a lot of outreach, visitors tend to be older and from outside there area. Nevertheless IMO there is at least one rather dreary old-fashioned provincial museum in the centre of Rodez (dept capital) that should go before this one .
Try looking at Le Monde, Banque de France, Trading Economics, conseil d’analyse économique, the Conversation, etc, etc…. all available in English. I am sure that by doing a tad of research you will find what you are looking for without much effort.
There are many opinions from which you can formulate a moderately detailed overview.
P.S. Being deliberately controversial is not helping.
