tmto

I believe that the cession is the cost of buying the business, so it seems odd that that they want it if the premises are empty (so you wouldn't necessarily pay this to the landlord): if you decide to close shop a few years later, you'd sell it and get back whatever your business might be worth at the time.

It's not the wage after 25 years that is the yardstick - the basic wage is the one given to a youth with no experience, so it's not like starting off with a percentage of the correct salary and working up to finally getting a full wage 25 years down the line. People start off with the correct salary and it increases from that point onwards. If ancienneté had been got rid of when your husband had started work, then he would still be on his basic wage from 25 years back (adjusted for inflation). It's there for the benefit of employees to get a higher salary the longer they have worked, not for employers to pay less than the correct wage until your final year before retirement (imagine the strikes and riots that would have provoked).

[quote user="Teamedup"] Really tmto, we would have given up the 13th month and the CE if they had got rid of the rotten lousy ancienneté. We didn't  really need the last 25 years of work and still not getting maximum salary for that grade of the job. [/quote] I'm not sure if I've understood you completely, but are you saying that workers should give up two benefits in exchange for which they will get a third one taken away? In any case I believe ancienneté to be mostly irrelevant in the private sector whereas the other two benefits aren't. The things that are really great about France aren't the pretty postcard things, but the overall big picture: the fact that there is the popular and political will to uphold certain shared values, rather than consistently flip-flopping around to different tunes: this is how religion has been kept well and truly out of the public sphere, why national assets and French-owned private companies aren't frittered away to foreign interests, and why, although yes it is harder to be entrepreneurial in France, it is also harder to sink into abject poverty. The French social fabric may be torn in places (as evidenced by the suburb riots, chronic unemployment and all sorts of other things), but it's also what is truly great about France: that the majority of people don't think that poor people have themsleves to blame for being poor or sick, that most people are willing to pay high taxes for the common good, and that the population takes an active interest in the direction the country is heading.  

I really don't understand why working and living in France is described in such a way as to make it sound like some terrible hidden secret. On the one hand, yes there is 10 per cent unemployment and salaries are lower than in the UK or the US. On the other hand there are systems in place to guarantee employees' rights, and benefits such as Comités d'Entreprise, holiday entitlement which is not insultingly low as it is in some other developped nations, and several other things which can vary according to which convention collective your industry/sector is affiliated to, for example the doubled wage for december (13ème mois).    

According to this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4653807.stm the fact that English is the international language of business seems to be hampering the UK economy rather than being an advantage to it! Although I'm a little skeptical about that. As for the French language, Chirac should simply accept that it is not the international language of business; however it certainly isn't all doom and gloom - it is not a dying language, we can safely assume it will always be spoken in France, and it is still spoken by millions of non-French nationals in many different parts of the world (on 4 continents plus the Pacific and Indian Oceans). If Chirac is still worried about all of this, he simply needs to look at the Netherlands - a large proportion of the population speaks fluent English, yet get a couple of Dutch people together and they will naturally prefer to converse in their mother tongue, and I can't see that changing in the foreseeable future. Which is good news for English speakers, because it's simply a matter of time before Chinese becomes the new international language, so although we will have to learn it in order to conduct business at least it won't interfere in our daily lives any more than the English language interferes with the way French people live (Chirac excepted).

There's a vegan shop and restaurant in Marseille called Country Life, it's probably in the yellow pages. I think the owners and most of the clientele are foreigners though so I doubt you'll be able to buy many actual vegan French products if that's what you're after. The chef is French, but he's not a vegan; I often bump into him in the brasserie next door eating a steak.

[quote user="Mistral"] I HATE the moyenne general, where you make a moyenne out of all the subject moyennes. It doesn't anything, I mean a pupil ends up with ten when he has 1 in maths and 19 in education civique. [/quote] Not exactly - firstly, making a moyenne générale out of all the other moyennes is mathematically flawed as some teachers give out more tests than others. You can't make a moyenne générale by taking the moyenne of a subject where a student has only been tested twice, and adding it on to a moyenne where he has been tested ten times, and then just divide by two. You'd have to divide by 12. Secondly, different subjects are weighted differently, according to their general importance within the educational system and their relevence to the section a pupil has chosen to be in. For instance a pupil in 1ère Scientifique will have more emphasis placed on maths, biology and physics than litterature and languages, so his/her marks in the former subjects will have higher co-efficients than the latter ones. So if the co-efficient in maths is say 5, it will be about 2 in litterature, meaning that all marks obtained in maths will be weighted 2 and a half times more. At the lycée level this generally priviliges the subjects in which a pupil is better at, because a kid who tends to get better marks in scientific subjects will probably choose to pass a bac scientifique. Therefore if a student, in his first two tests of the school year, were to get a 13 in maths at co-efficient 5, and a 7 in literature at co-efficient 2, his moyenne at that point would be (13x5) + (7x2) / 7 = 11.3. Not 13 + 7 / 2 = 10. And so on with all the marks that would ensue. Sorry to be pedantic, but just wanted to say that marks aren't as arbitrary as they appear and some students can even use the different co-efficients to their advantage, particularly when it comes to obtaining the bac and optional subjects can be taken by students if they wish to do so, some of which carry co-efficients which will boost the overall final mark.  

I went to school in France and university in the UK. I directly contacted the faculty that ran the course that I was interested in (after finding out about it on a UCAS CD-Rom) and they sent me all the information through the post within a few days, along with the forms to fill in to apply. They were also very helpful when I arrived there, when it came to helping me find accomodation and doing all the necessary paperwork prior to starting the course; in fact they had a department dedicated to helping out overseas students. This was in Southampton although I would think that most UK universities have similar structures in place. And while I'm on the subject, to dispel a popular myth that occasionally crops up on these forums, having a non-French qualification is certainly no bar to finding a job in France - my British degree enabled me to find a job here when I finished my course and decided to return.

I think he's actually talking about non-EU immigrants. I agree that newcomers to a country should learn the language, I certainly wouldn't want to work alongside someone who can't even understand what I'm saying and vice-versa.

It's about an egg isn't it?

When I was at school at the time of the Paris bombings, the Plan Vigipirate consisted (amongst other things) of heightened security in schools and checks on people entering the school premises. Given the current climate it wouldn't surprise me if it were the same kind of thing, except more technologically advanced.

If it was on TV, why the need for anonymity? Or were they called A, B, C and D in the programme?

For a more worthy website of American and French culture I found this the other day http://www.codofil.org/ Actually it doesn't have much to do with France itself, but it makes for interesting reading

Although fun to read most of these comments aren't particularly useful to lucid. A-levels are the equivalent of the Bac, which by itself unfortunately is not really worth much in terms of getting a job (nowadays it's useful as a qualifaction that allows you to go to university. A few years ago I think it enabled you to become a postman, but no longer). As someone else mentioned in another thread, you can always register with an agency like Manpower but the kind of jobs that will be open to people who speak little or no French will be quite limited, and possibly unpleasant/tiring. Your partner having a degree may be useful, it depends in what subject. If it has anything to do with sectors where English is widely used in the workplace (marketing, international transport etc) the chances of getting a job will be better. Having said that, I have several friends who are French, well qualified (law degrees etc), a few of them speak good to excellent English, and they have all had difficulties in the job market. Most young French people do. Not wanting to sound pessimistic, but just so you know what to expect.

It's not supposed to be taken literally.

I can't get enough of raw or under-cooked food: I prefer most vegetables raw, I like steak tartare, entrecote saignante, sushi, oysters, sea urchins and carpaccio! There's also a Tahitian dish which involves marinating fish in lime juice until it's cooked by the acidity.

A double-edged sword, that phrase: while studying in the United States I was told that on a couple of occasions - it was apparently meant in a jokey way, although I found it very insulting.

Wen, if new arrivals had adapted to American culture rather than the other way round, the native Americans would not be parked in reserves right now.

I find it odd that people are suggesting that countries should adapt to new arrivals. Personally I think it is far more logical (and easier) for new arrivals to adapt to the country. Locals will adapt  to foreign influences only if they like them or have a use for them (British people don't eat curry because they want to be nice to Indians - they eat it because it tastes nice. French people took up rugby because they enjoyed playing it, not because they felt they had to make the British feel at home).

Just to reply to some of Wen's comments: the French educational system isn't completely as "rigid and inflexible" as you imply. I came here aged 12 and every school out of the three I went to (from CM2 to Terminale) had in place a system where foreign pupils were given extra lessons in French - basically catch-up lessons given by the French teacher, in addition to all the other usual lessons. Obviously I suppose this depends on each individual school and whether they have enough teachers available to be able to squeeze a few hours a week extra. For older kids who do not speak French there are international schools (mainly in big cities and areas where international organisations are based). It would not be very cost-effective to have similar international structures in every school in France, where for some there may be only a handful of foreign pupils. So I can't agree with Wen's comment that "the French simply have to change some aspects of the way they do things here", because I certainly have no regrets about the way I was educated.