Why I think it's far better to be in France than the UK during these Economic times

I agree, the economic future is completely open to conjecture, that's the fun part ;-) It's like Schroedinger's cat, no one will know the truth until we open the box.

I do like your pragmatist's approach, however.

Hi Hayley, in Burgundy we buy wood by the 'moule' which is 2 1/4 stéres and we pay 90€ a moule cut into 3rds - if we want them shorter it is more expensive! Cut into 50cm it is cheaper - v good wood, mixed and well dried. That is also the delivered and stacked price!

Pretty cheap but then we have a lot of forest round here, unfortunately no communal forest in our commune.

Meh, no one knows how it will shake out. Every way you look at the stats tells a different story. Every economist and politician thinks one number is more important than another. We'll only know who fares best in 5 years time. All I care is the weather is a helluvalot better in Nîmes than it is in Nottingham! =)

that's what I've heard people have paid, I've also heard as low as 40 but that was exceptional as a market rate - depends on where you are as you say.

Rugby and other contact sports don't do much for comfort later on in life, I know what you're saying and when we do get some wet weather I hate it, I suffer from SAD every autumn so I get a double whammy (sp)! Yes hot summers are often too hot in the Dordogne, again because there's more humidity in the air and no wind, the aveyron gets like that toobut without the humidity plus we get some cooler air after midnight from the mountains in the Cantal... having studied a bit of metrology I'm aware that no where's perfect though!

Oh yes, our folly in missing the humidity bit. I did years and years of rock climbing and have the broken bits and pieces on top of rugby player's ribs. The price has been rheumatic aches and pains and when the heavy rain and stuff like to day set in.Would love to be near the Med, but then we do get very hot summers here and things we eat grow. Without the wet winter, I guess not.

Stères at that price! Woah... I know regular oak here is the most expensive, which is strange being the most common tree, but that means we are living in a land of the 'sales' given the lot less we paid. No matter how much cheaper, the man who sold it to us is no fool and perhaps it only really backs up what I say about price variance from one place to another. Hayley, go to several people selling it and play them off one against the other. We did that first go and whilst I just wanted to pay and be done, my wife simply called the other guys until she heard what she wanted to hear and said "Deliver".

Log rates, not a clue. We bought two years worth of oak, chestnut and beech in roughly equal measure that have different prices BUT we bought them from a neighbour who owns lots of woodland and adores our daughters especially and my malt almost as much (he is actually welcome). So cheaper than one might normally expect to pay. It also depends where in France you are and we are (fortunate will have it) on the edge of a fairly vast area of forest.

Toulouse is nice, have visited when taking flights from there and spent a couple of days a couple of times, but the Cote d'Azur I shall pass and take your husband's view. I know it is probably oxymoronic but 'Happy move'!

Hayley, not that I know you but judging from what you've written on the forums you'll love the Midi-Pyrénées. I was at uni in Aix-en-provence (Paris of the South) and all you say is true of the area! just miss the climate in winter :-(

stère = anywhere between 50 and 70 euros from what people tell me, never bought any because I've got 7 hectares with plenty of trees and a big chainsaw! it depends where you are ;-)

Oh Brian, that's why I'm much further East - not wet or foggy here this morning! I can't do humidity, my knees are shot to bits and I need as dry a climate as possible which is why I'd still like to go the last hop down to the med ;-)

I do not write novels because I lack that talent, I write rather plodding work in my professional domain. It is what I am (supposedly) doing rather than sitting here doing only this.

With regard to what I wrote, none of that points at any individual and most certainly NOT you. I do not know why it would be. If responses are under one of your posts then sometimes it is because a thread works that way. However, you too must concede that there are people who do simply 'put everything down' who appeared to be a mirror image of everything that is of the (metaphorically meant) Daily Mail type of approach. OK, you follow ratings agencies and need to but others glean what they can from what is not sufficiently informative and a few people, one might suspect, from what they think about everything as a rule. It is a good point about not knowing any of you personally, since it is true and goes both ways. As for narcissism, well perhaps you are right, and if so it was instilled in me by working in the academic world for so long which is an extremely narcissitic environment and probably needs to be. However, that is another discussion entirely, so let it be.

The bottom line is that of necessity I have for years only ever dared to have opinions by finding out what to think. Professionally I have no choice or I am finished, indeed would never have got anywhere to begin with. I have been doing research for four decades. I suppose it impinges personally and to that extent I might well appear aloof or something like that. I'm not, with very few exceptions to some people who clearly have unpleasant agendas, I have no axes to grind. When I debate I do so as hard as I can. I concede overstepping the mark at times but do so without malice in mind, but Catharine and James tell me and I tend to see it is time to get back on course.

OK, I should be working and not doing this. In my case logs need cut too, unlike you in the more pleasant climate there it is dismal, wet fog today. It is a good day for working except that if the central heating goes down and I have the last radiator on the system and then my office is not the place to be... As regards your daughter, for example, I have nobody to compare with except one sister left in the UK. She is too close to retirement age to count in that respect. Some of my friends do though and I see both failure and success through them and a generally happier life here in France, so I wonder why people so often put that down. In this thread Nick's starting point has been lost so often that perhaps we should all bow our gracefully and put our thoughts elsewhere.

Back to novels. I wish I could. They pay if taken by publishers, what I write does not but then I do not expect it to. A best seller in my area is something that sells 200 copies in a year and I would actually like to do that, but fiction it is not and there I must return...

I'd say the exact opposite, as long as Jackie speaks French that is, and consider that France is a far easier place to be a pensioner than the UK, the cost of living is about the same but housing is so so much cheaper in rural areas which is fine if you're retired but not so good if you need to work ;-)

???

Thanks Jan for showing everyone on the Forums the validity of your arguments. I could not have done it better myself.

I have asked you nicely to move to another thread , as your conspiracy theories and obvious hatred of Europe and France in particular, offer nothing to this debate.

Ach mensches Kind, wat Berlin! Da bin ick jleich neidig, hab heinweh hin und wieda mit eenijen meenen engsten Kumpels dort auf'm Kiez und so herum.

Not that I am expecting you to be a local dialect speaker, but yeah. My friends there do not have the angst I sense when I go over to London. I have family there who will never leave, so they are going down with the swell of economic pain, so do not want to see it at all.

A good point on the ratings agency Brian, as I noticed that not only did it have zero impact on the US economy , but the same happened in France. The more I look at the ratings agencies, you get the feeling the markets treat them as a minor indicator and nothing more. Frances interest payments on it’s government bonds has actually fallen since the downgrading, so again has had no real impact on the governments borrowing capacity, more an electorate conversation point.

I agree about Osborne, he looked awful yesterday outside no.10 , as you rightly say all the indicators for 2012 and the UK economy are dire. I take no pleasure in that, I have family and friends who are really struggling, and I really wish it were otherwise.

There is no doubt that Europe will feel the cold chill of recession, but I’m currently working in Berlin, and they are doing very nicely. Might this be another moment in the UK’s history for a re-run of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet?

Yes please, Jan has started another of the fantasy realms of argument and then started to be rude. The yellow card was well deserved but nobody else sees somebody else's it seems.

If people actually followed news, in as far as any press is not biassed, and also delved deeper by, for instance, looking at the website of S&P, etc, they would see that some of what is happening in the world is about firing 'warning shots' in order to stimulate countries. In my mind if that was the intent with France and it works then things will turn around, just enough and barely noticeable of course, then the recovery will push this country back up and then past the failing UK. This is not only about loyalties but also pragmatics. No matter how critical some of us are of the UK and happy to have left, in our apparent animosity there will still always be a little core or hope that the UK picks up and sorts itself out. That contradiction is inherent and I imagine we all have that within us no which country we are from.

That is part of Nick's point and I shall repeat yeat again that I wondered why he appeared to have 'dragged' this question up again. But it is not 'again', it is a unique question in itself and is drawing out the responses of people who are not able to fully comprehend what he set out to do. I think some see his 'negatives', then without thinking about them retort defensively or aggressively. Those people are missing the point(s) entirely and if they are used as a comparative to the situation of France, and indeed other countries, even some of those negatives come out better than what is happening in some countries. On the flip side of the coin, to gut respond and defend the UK and say just how hunkydory it all is stands face to face in contradiction with reality. Two or three days ago the economic performace of the UK was published and it did not read well. Even at PM's question time Cameron was effectively putting his government and himself down (!!) plus the normally cheering and heckling Osborne sat there looking pale and tired with only the occasional flat 'hurrah' when everybody else did it. Read that as an indicator and you see and unhappy government in charge of an economic basket case. Things are not good. There is worse elsewhere, certainly, but the UK is not in a good state and is slipping downhill. Mervyn King who is not the most sparkling personality of all time has even got to the stage where he makes a mjor speech to people asleep in the audience. Oh no, not because he is boring, which he is, but because they are exhausted by their work that he is wittering on about by describing the state of the economy.

Is any of that encouraging? Is any of that what makes a country a dynamic success, therefore better than all other? I do not think so and if we opened minds as well as ears and eyes we would accept it. Whoever is so inclined should also contribute in whatever small way to turn things round. Now, I am an observer and have my own fish to fry because I do not have the economic means of helping anywhere on this planet at present but have a family to look after here. I am at the very least trying to look at things in perspective and see that the UK and many other nations are floundering. France has problems and no doubt all of us here in this country will be taxed to the hilt to try to stop the slide. If we do not like that then we have the choice. Get out and go elsewhere, perhaps 'home'. I'll stick it out with Nick and others and take my glass of wine and keep stocking my nice hot wood stove. Being here is my (our really) choice and what is happeneing around us is not. So I shall watch it all realistically from the sidelines and hope our choice is right.

GoldmanSachs and a number of others did see the 2008 events were coming. They traded accordingly and made a killing. Didn't your portfolios reflect re-positioning? Ask your private banker about the memos.

Yup - good about economists - must have been Mrs Queens best line when she said to the LSE - "didn't you all see it coming".

She doesn't normally "do" jokes - so this has to be her best yet

Can we get this debate back on track please, read the original post again and discuss that.

Me neither, believe in keeping my health by natural means. As for Andrew, he has never mentioned pharma products to the best of my knowledge, and come to that I do not suspect Nick has either. But OK, Jean without the e get a real life on the same planet as people who are willing to debate in a sane and sensible manner...

Brian Milne wrote:

"And perhaps an extra pill!"

Thanks but no thanks Brian, I don't do any pharmaceutics, but you seem to be a real connoisseur so I'll leave the pills to you. If ever you'd feel up to getting rid of that habit ask Andrew.

Cheers!

Jan (like in Jean without the e) ;-)

And perhaps an extra pill!