I am not against anybody going for it but they need to be 100% committed! That's the best way anyway! She will need to live it, breathe it.....
Interesting to hear that expressed so clearly! I worry for my two teenagers and what they will do in the future - and I think it is really sad that the French don't seem to value a FAC qualification! I too feel that perhaps a UK university may be a better option! There isn't a perfect answer I guess - but I hope that they will find some path that will keep plenty of options open for them. I think that is key to getting a job in the current climate!
I think your global summary is so close to the mark Frances. In my work with children, mainly in developing countries, there was a time around 1980 that we started to see a glimmer of hope and things improving. Whoever works with street and working children as I was then has a lot to do with the communities they come from. Things were grim but there was a decade and a bit of improvements, then stagnation and most recently backsliding. All over the world development projects are being dropped, environmental programmes that were not just beneficial for the planet but also for people are being dropped, human rights and democracy are being abandoned. Instead we have rapacious elites who care about nothing except their enormous wealth and excessive power. It is this hegemony who are running everything and most of our politicians belong to, either as excessively wealthy individuals or belonging socially within those groups. For them the dispossession you write of is of no consequence. That there are now increasing numbers of children on our streets here in Europe is of no concern to them. Indeed, being in charge of resources such as media they can propagandise these things so that either those who sink to lowest levels of impoverishment are blamed for their own situation or such phenomena are bluntly denied. The public is too often media led and repeats their denials. We saw that when I put up a blog about children in food handouts and on the street in the UK last year. Charities working in that field say it is getting worse. People in power say nothing, if challenged say more nothing. I once thought I was contributing to changing the world to a more open, generous, better and in every sense cleaner place. At times I am very cynical but I hope people have the resilience to fight back. Cameron and his cabal are simply like so many other short sighted people in power who unleash monsters and then sit back as if they have just done something brilliantly innovative and for the benefit of the people they are kicking when they are already down.
I have not forgotten how to laugh, have fun and enjoy what I can. Others are sickened and depressed, frightened and uncertain. The UK has just made life difficult at best and potentially impossible if threats turn to reality. If I hear the word 'democracy' trumpeted off those islands again I shall scream. It is not hunky-dory here but as grim as it is, at least the level of hypocrisy is a few notches lower down the scale and politicians are not pretending not to see what is happening.
You are of course correct Theo. Maybe mistakenly when I started my business the attitude was taken that whilst initially of a modest size a structure should be created that took the initiative and invested time, money and trouble in providing not just employment but created a company giving continuous training and education. My view was that if an architect was not always seeking to improve then he/she would not be a very good architect. One should also be a responsible member of society.There was of course a benefit for the company but also for the many dozens of young people we took on from many differing backgrounds. There were frequent seminars, visits to sites, factories, educational establishments, business and other groups. Frequent hands on sessions with the young to bring them on in a serious way. In addition senior people in the business (especially me) got involved with central and local government, Business link, Chamber of Commerce, Association of Independent Business, local societies, planning panels etc. I gave at least 200 hours annually to pro bono organisations for more than ten years. Increasing competition, failure of clients and builders, long term liability on business premises etc made more and more severe inroads into profits to the point where it was costing me to run a responsible business, and to employ people when I wasn't making anything out of it at all. Now some forty years after I first started there are only very large firms or very small firms. At the same time there is now over specialisation to the point that you are a housing architect, a hospital architect, a hotel architect etc. You probably on't have time or money to do the education and probono work.We did loads of listed building and conservation work but now one has to get a special qualification for that. Five years at college was thankfully helped by an exhibition but now with student loans and low renumeration after qualification I doubt that architecture is really a sensible proposition for other than the very few. A general moan I know but just on person's experience and I really feel for the young now choosing their future. I noted yesterday that 55% of the young in Spain are unemployed. For heaven's sake! On the bright side (?) MacDonalds are taking on more people in the UK. I wonder how many of those will be Spaniards? Possibly a few ex architects!
It seems to me that there may be, in the not so far off future, an enormous group of dispossessed, displaced persons with nowhere to go, no means of support in any country, no family to take them in. They might be any age. This is a recipe for human disaster on a grand scale never seen before. It scares me because I can see this could happen to me unless I keep getting lucky. Lucky these days is to have a job somewhere. How did things sink so low? Old values went out the window, greed took over and we let other people take charge of our lives.
For decades we've been encouraged to move around the planet, seek opportunities, develop our skills. And when we haven't been encouraged we've been pushed very firmly by impending personal financial disaster if we don't.
It's hard to see how this endemic mess can be sorted out positively for the people involved. We are living through times unprecedented in terms of scale of rape of resources, environment and people's rights to help themselves for a better life. I feel very strongly about the human tragedies unfolding, the carelessness and selfishness of those with the power to change things for the better but who won't. We honestly need a people's revolution but that brings down disasters of its own on those undeserving of them. I hate injustice, greed, selfishness and aggression and most of all the energy sapping, hope-numbing helplessness many folks face.
I felt very uncomfortable reading Jo's post and some others of you who are so vulnerable. I myself feel like flotsam and jetsam in this world and that really gets up my nose. Those who go through very bad times wish they'd been born into another era. I think my parents had the best this world had to offer and it'sa all downhill form there. So, although I sound bleak, I think it's important to have a plan, even though it may not be much of a one, whre you come up with a cuple of possible scenarios as to how to survive until you die and hope you don't have to use them. In the meantime create human connections for emotional and practical support and find a little bit of love out there. Today a tanker driver who was pumping up some sewerage guided me to a little space hidden behind his tanker whre I could park at owrk. it was the only space around. he saw me and with a smile and a kind thought connected briefly with me. In response be got a beautific smile and heartful best wishes. Sometimes that's all we have but in those moments it's enough.
I came over in 2006-8, lost most of my agency nursing contracts at the start of the crise, and became disabled in 2011 from a bone defect. My blokey's brocanting has gone from a turnover of 24,000 euro, to 2,000 euro and is just about keeping one vehicle on the road (that was vandalised last week and will cost 400 euro to fix).
For us, the scary result could be 'on the streets without a penny', in both the UK or France.
Reading through the rules on citizenship, I doubt we'd get it, because we have so little income. Our only chance would be if our son got it first. He's 18 soon and was educated here. We are in our 50s. We don't own property apart from a terrain loisir workshop which has been burgled twice, and we have no private pensions.
Gi'z a job, I can do that! Go on, gi'z it.
Didn't the tories promise a referendum on the EU last time they were in?
Blaming the EU is a very clever move away from criticism for blaming the unemployed, disabled and working class for the financial crisis. It also neatly panders to any nationalistic racist fears lurking amongst the above groups and forces otherwise sensible voters to look for some way of avoiding confrontation with rich and powerful institutions, who are hard to confront.
I think Cameron will win his propoganda war with this, because he holds a lot of bent cards and he was born with them in his babygrow.
I have the impression that France is currently at a similar stage as Germany had been around 1999 - 2003 as Gerhard Schroeder was forced to reform the partnership agreement, the welfare system. That time was for many self-employed but also for employees simply a hell and many who did not stopped whining lost track because of their own self fulfilling worries.
The problem is when trust in a governments future perspectives no longer exists. Then no sane person will invest in something that offers returns over a 5 years target. He simply will be hijacked by vultures, sucked off his assets and dumped. In the consequence most business activities are these daily over-the-counter but no staff-intensive manufacturing. So really, the only possibility is staying small and agile, liaise with trustworthy partners to come to terms with this global pond.
Very good stuff indeed! But..........although all my own working life was spent in the UK economy that to a large extent was very different to the world that exists there now too. Back in the 70s if you had enthusiasm, drive and a few other things you just started a business up. You didn't do hours of business plans you just made sure you had enough work for a few months and you accepted the risk that it would flop if you weren't up to it. My world, the world of construction, had three or four recessions during the years I worked in the UK. Now, even there, things seem to be very different. In France I must say that all the evidence is that the idea of starting a business and employing people seems quite ridiculous. We can't all be AEs, some businesses need plant, premises and people.
Thankfully I am retired but being a silly old duffer (still taking risks after all these years telling me better) I now have a young family and a nearly four year old daughter. The effects of all this latest stuff could be catastrophic for her and for my wife. We are going to have to make plans and decisions. To use that abused expression "the management of change" it would seem that just as soon as I thought I had got our world all sorted out it could be back to the drawing board. But then I am an architect. Strangely the French do seem to treat their architects better than the British do.
Sorry, I didn't intend that to be so long!
Keith, I think that is eminently sensible. I have lived here for over 15 years on and off (the total if property ownership counts). My role as a Marketing Consultant in the last ten years of my official working life - which ended in 2005 incidentally so I lasted longer than many others in the business, took me around many countries that ultimately became EU members.
No-one loves France more than me, I even have a book of my illustrations of the Perigord in the French National Library as 'part of the Patrimoine', I adore the food, the wine, the lifestyle, the sometimes quirkiness of the French people, and of course I love my sometimes maddening French wife of almost 40 years, and her barmy family.
But NEVER, repeat NEVER have I ever been deluded enough to a) start any sort of business here nor b) to recommend anyone else ever to do so. This is simply not, nor ever has been a 'business-friendly' country. How could it be otherwise with 40% of the workforce relying on the public purse? Regrettably this is the basic issue in the EU - or should I really say the EC where there are few if any representatives of the 'sheeple' who have ever worked in a job requiring them to make a profit?
France is the ONLY country which has a Political Dynasty - called SciencePo. No attending that - no political future. Yes there are the odd fringe people such as the Greens (why do greens never wear ties?), but in frontline politics it is a choice of the same attitudes and education. As such little will be understood of business.
We are being led(?) now in almost every country by same sort of people - those without any knowledge of business whatsoever. It would be interesting to hear how many had read or understood 'The Wealth of Nations'? Until we break this mould I cannot see where we are headed.
I suppose everyone knows that France apparently has the Constitutional Right to overthrow a Government by Force? A throwback to the French Revolution. True or not, many people believe it to be true, and it could just happen here in this wonderful country. When I see the belligerence of the Trade Unions, trashing the very places they work in, and almost dancing the Carmagnole, as at the Renault plant the other day, I truly despair.
Can you seriously imagine any substantial employer from anywhere else viewing these scenes and saying 'oh yes, just the place for us to open up a business?' Yes, I DID see the Chinese delegation the other day viewing and apparently agreeing to a new development, but the French workers will be in for a great shock if and when it happens.
There are many times when I am glad I am my age, and as others have pointed out, not having to worry about my children ( I never had any).
Probably more than at any other time, I have been stunned by the amazing incompetence of the new French Government. I didn't expect too much, but they have proved worse than anything I could imagine thus far.
Hollande is way, way out of his depth, and the Minister for Development Montebourg (I call him Mountebank which is more suitable) is beyond belief with his overt and stated aversions to business. But then again with a President who states 'he hates the rich' what can you expect? I sometimes wonder if it is all a farcical dream and I will wake up to reality, but somehow I doubt it.
My biggest problem though, is not seeing anyway in which the system can be fixed unless it completely breaks down, which is possible if not probable (I hope), but where are the alternative leaders? In the Trade Unions? I think not, from Business Leaders? I doubt if any of these would take up the gauntlet. From Education? No qualifications or experience. From the Military? Ah, and oops! Where have we heard that before?
Hang on to your hats, people, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Again I agree with Brian "In a nutshell - NO"
I don't think they would wash and I don't think DC would ever phrase things in that way ..... but I would love to hear him saying all of the above in pretty much that format! :-)
(A bit like Hugh Grant in that silly film where he is PM - and he finally tells the US President to get back in his box!)
Not sure if this is a first or not - but in this case Brian I agree 100% with your view!!
It is very easy to blame Thatcher for everything - but I whole heartedly agree that the Thatcher/Major/Blair combo stifled any interest there might have been - and Brown was just the icing on the cake!!
The option for dual citizenship still remains as well...
No Emily, not a missing rib but the organ that should reside therein that is said to be the centre of our compassion. Many people are saying that the way the people of the UK are being treated, his government totally lacks one. I allowed him to be, as head of the government, the embodied example of that missing organ. If you like, empty rib cage.
Nutshell, no!
Perhaps they'd let you scrape the garbage off the gutter back there they way they are treating the elderly now. I'm not so concerned, I am a decade younger than you but I ain't young so it is not my future I am worried about.
Hi Brian,
if, as someone (you perhaps?) suggested, none of this will happen until 2017 under the normal run of things, this is also a consideration, and in my case I can't see myself running bacK to England with little or no money as I approach 80 years of age! There is definitely an alternative to that horrendous scenario!
Incidentally, I have just received an invitation to a Free lunch for the 'elders of the village', which reads like a 4-star restaurant meal. Now I wonder why I don't think that would apply in the UK?
well said both of you, and I particularly agree with your idea of whinging cherry-pickers, Norman. France isn't perfect, but it suits me. As for the naturalisation forms, perhaps I will be digging them out again but as I rather think it's all a storm in a tea cup I'm in no real rush ;-)
That is what quite a few of us are saying Norman. The fools over there imagine we will all jump up and down and be wanting to go 'home', how deluded they are when for many of us other countries are now home. I'm going nowhere and certainly not there - we're too HAPPY here! Put that in their Europhobic and UKIP pipes and let them smoke it.
I dropped by to see the reaction to the Cameron speech, and I am glad I did, as it appears the whingeing brigade have vanished.
With regard to the issues facing (possibly) expats in a few years time, perhaps it focusses the mind a bit on just what one wants from living in France and if is it worth taking the further step to becoming French. For me there is no question, and that is precisely what I will be doing now.
If on the other hand some expats are literally doing the 'cherry-picking' of just taking the best from France without committing to it, maybe this is the wakeup call to make a decision?
Rather than wait to make any panic move, a considered decision made now - either a planned departure in a few years, or a commitment to the host country now, will surely make the future a lot less uncertain?