It is the absence of supply that I think is shameful. It doesn’t seem to be a French problem but an EU Bureaucracy problem. They couldn’t even get off their bottoms and review the evidence on AZ before they started moaning at the UK for hoarding it when the UK actually put in an order and they hadn’t (they later had a “best endeavours” commitment from AZ which they chose to call a “contract”). The Germans were so frustrated that they did a deal outside the EU just to protect their citizens. I hate the ammunition it gives to the Brexiteers! (I’ve just had a nightmare getting our household goods across the Channel, Covid restrictions I could manage but changing Customs Rules and paperwork - “Ooh La La”).
I think citizens in a free society should have the right to decline a vaccine whatever the consequences. “Experts” don’t always get it right and aren’t always free of political or money hungry influences. They are volunteering in a huge experiment and may have the last laugh. Personally I regret that I cannot get back to England for the jab I’ve been offered but maybe someone else will get it who might otherwise have missed out.
We live in “interesting times”.
Jonathan
When a whole age range has been pushed down the waiting list, it is more than whining about next door.
As someone who would be one of the last one the list, I think I checked the U.K. ‘when will I get the vaccine?’ site when it’s was launched just out of curiosity, and it said mid 2023 (just to give you an idea how far down the list I was, I appreciate with the UKs current pace that would have shortened significantly now), I was just happy to wait my turn, and I still am, whenever that may be, so I’m afraid I have little sympathy with wherever anybody else is on the list, especially if they’re higher up in the list because they’re a bit older than me. That’s very harsh, and perhaps rather unkind I appreciate, but it’s how I truly feel at the end of the day. Those with medical conditions should perhaps be ahead, but because they’re a little older? I’m not sure.
Maybe you have not noticed Kirstea, but likelihood of dying is in direct correlation with age. I wish it were otherwise.
You’re right, and it’s all quite nuanced. It does bring into the equation about whether we should be stopping older people dying at the expense of younger people having their lives, and mental health absolutely destroyed, potentially for decades to come, though. The debate that has raged since day one of lockdown of ‘should we just make those venerable isolate while the rest of us get on with making the world work?’ All of which is far too big a topic for me to want to discuss, and has been discussed for over a year now with no real conclusions, we’ve just all gone along with what has been decided, but that was my entire point, that this is far more complicated and nuanced than some people make it when they reduce it to who has what vaccine when, as if that will be the end of the problems when really it just seems like a sticking plaster over much bigger potential problems that we should perhaps be focussing on more instead.
But fundamentally I agree with your point entirely, which is why as I say, I am waiting patiently for my vaccine, perhaps one of the last people on here to get one, who knows, and shall not kick up a fuss as hopefully they are being given to those who need them most first.
I get my news from all over the place, I like seeing what’s going on in the 8 or 9 countries where I have lived - but you should realise that for most of us (French people currently living in France) what happens in the UK is actually of very limited, niche interest.
Unless it is about the Cotswolds around Stroud/Ciren!
And strangely Kirstea the equation is a very simple one. We live in a world where the last couple of years of a person’s life typically are very costly to the NHS. As a society we have yet to learn how to “manage” longevity in a way that gives quality as well as quantity of years. Giving a vaccine to an elderly person, so that they remain fit and active, that they are not in an ICU, that medical staff are not being tied up in their care actually I would suggest is by far the most effective way of making sure the other side of the equation can be about releasing funds so that they are directed elsewhere - the ongoing cancer treatment or the well-staffed A&E or the operation for cataracts, or the diabetes management, and so on.
I understand all that entirely, but I feel like either I’m not being at all clear in what I am saying, or you’re not actually reading what I’m saying, as that doesn’t actually address any of it. Either way this wasn’t even a discussion I wanted to get into so I’ll get back to cooking dinner! 
Unfortunately that’s what a lot of Brexiteers felt of People living on mainland Europe, and we know the result of that, but I wouldn’t for a minute want to include you in that bag !!
You talk a lot of sense, particularly about EU bureaucracy and giving ammunition to brexit
We are interested in our European neighbours, what happens there affects us and we work together with them for all sorts of things, we can go/live/work/plan stuff etc there without much hassle (eg I have a number of projects going with Germany and Spain, on ice at the moment because of covid, but they will work out at some stage) but the UK has chosen to make itself irrelevant to us and was never a team player anyway - hence the general and increasing lack of interest.
Lots of British people who come here and don’t bother to speak our language, talk to and about us (because they don’t realise quite a lot of us can speak English) in the most extraordinarily condescending way about all sorts of things we apparently should or shouldn’t be doing, based on misunderstanding our way of seeing things, our values, our history. Obviously that isn’t the majority.
But all that means that often we just aren’t particularly interested in eg the minute details of what the current gang of Westminster carpetbaggers are or are not doing or saying.
We’ve gone a bit off topic which I normally don’t favour… but politicians are the same the world over including Manu, and I absolutely agree the UK was never a truly committed EU team player. The biggest poison in the UK is the press…only two papers The Guardian/Observer and FT ever tried to support and even explain the benefits. When the public have been fed 25 years of bendy bananas, EU regulations on contraceptive sizes, and legislating for content in chocolate you can hardly blame the more gullible for wanting out!
Unfortunately the pro EU and people who value and love mainland European culture and values were drowned out .
As David Cameron remarked to George Osborne…“how could I have convinced the British public of the benefits of EU membership in six weeks when they have been fed a diet of the opposite for 25 years by virtually all the British papers”. And you will know what power they wield compared to papers here.
Yup, apart from my friends and family it is of little relevance now. Mostly my emotion re England now (not the UK) is shame / embarrassment and pity.