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France faces the future


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   France has been going headlong for nuclear since the 70s.  Have the French people been lied to about nuclear energy, or do they just not care?   Or have they protested and the govt has gone ahead anyway.

What lies?  Perhaps the fact that they have nuclear energy shows, in fact, that they DO care. Why should they protest about the most sensible energy policy in Europe? If only the UK would see the light!! ( pun intended)

Regards

Powerdesal, an Energy professional.

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[quote user="Most Holy"][First, the price of electricity expressed in Euro Cents / KWH in April 2005, for the supply of 1000 KW for a business with a monthly usage of 450 KKWH (excluding VAT):

- France: the graph bar looks like it's near 5.2
[/quote]

Yes, but in real life there is VAT, and there's an abonnement. 

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[quote user="SaligoBay"]

[quote user="Most Holy"][First, the price of

electricity expressed in Euro Cents / KWH in April 2005, for the supply

of 1000 KW for a business with a monthly usage of 450 KKWH (excluding

VAT):

- France: the graph bar looks like it's near 5.2

[/quote]

Yes, but in real life there is VAT, and there's an abonnement. 

[/quote]

In real life, businesses reclaim VAT, for the most part.

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Sorry, I thought we were talking about ordinary people.

It must be nice to live in the protected world of ivory towers, where everyone spends their days quoting statistics and saying how lovely everything is. 

If I had the money, I'd love to join you!

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[quote user="SaligoBay"]

Sorry, I thought we were talking about ordinary people.

It must be nice to live in the protected world of ivory towers,

where everyone spends their days quoting statistics and saying how

lovely everything is. 

If I had the money, I'd love to join you!

[/quote]

Don't be bitter. I'm comparing apples and apples; you're comparing

apples and oranges. In fact you haven't compared anything, you just

made a blanket statement.

As to the statistics, I'm doing it on the spot, using google. You could do the same. It takes maybe 15 minutes.

It's uncivil for one who has run out of arguments to turn to personal

attacks. I would hope that you wouldn't want to lower the standards of

discussion of this thread.

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I just don't see the point of quoting statistics to say that this is better than that, or there are two points of difference between x in Thailand and x in France.

It doesn't help anyone, and is just a way of avoiding the real discussion.  You know, like discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, while people are starving outside your door.

I haven't run out of arguments because I was never arguing! [;-)]

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"...I haven't run out of arguments because I was never arguing"..  [;-)]

[:D] [:D][:D]

You sure have to hand it to SB, Holy, there is no argument with that answer, now is there.

Perhaps SB might prefer to discuss the virtue of a McDo in

Montpelliershire and a McDo in Rennes and in particular, why Milkshakes

are only in two flavours here but more choice in the UK, SB will have

to let us know how many in her local McDo, then perhaps we can argue,

nay discuss on a like for like basis on something we can all get

involved in, and not just from the No Comment journal !

It's 5 by the way SB. One on each corner and the littlest fairy goes in the middle of the pinhead.

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[quote user="SaligoBay"]

I just don't see the point of quoting

statistics to say that this is better than that, or there are two

points of difference between x in Thailand and x in France.

It doesn't help anyone, and is just a way of avoiding the real

discussion.  You know, like discussing how many angels can dance

on the head of a pin, while people are starving outside your door.

I haven't run out of arguments because I was never arguing! [;-)]

[/quote]

My humble suggestion would then be either to not post at all (there are

a number of things I read here that I disagree with, but I don't feel I

have enough of an interest in the matter or an expertise to contribute

to warrant a post) or post something personal, and therefore unarguable.

For example, instead of saying: "it's interesting that electricity is

so expensive in France" which was a general statement which begged the

reply "no more than in the UK", a more challenging contribution would

have been: "I'm on a fixed income and I find electricity very

expensive" or "electricity is major % of my budget" which would have

hopefully elicited  thoughts on  how  you could reduce

your bill, save power,  etc.

For example I've heard about these blue days, red days, white days that

EDF has. I don't know if it saves money or not. There's plenty to talk

about when discussing the cost & consumption of power.

In any event, no offense taken here. Let's all strive to remain civil.

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Quite right, MH.

Otherwise it will become like that other place! [:-))][:-))][:-))]

I also elected not to extend my own arguments, as it would not be in the spirit or to the benefit of the forum and most importantly, the majority of the members.

Come on Bay Person, either post specific statistics or nice jokes. Pretty please.[:)]

 

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[quote user="Most Holy"]
My humble suggestion would then be either to not post at all [/quote]

It is an option I have often considered, but what else would I do instead?  [Www]

I know, I could always watch the electric meter going round.  Or I could watch the wooden door falling off the water meter onto the street.  Again.   Yes, that's quite a good one, I could do that.

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[quote user="Gluestick"]

Come on Bay Person, either post specific statistics or nice jokes. Pretty please.[:)]

[/quote]

You can work out my statistics yourself from the photo over on another Phrench phorum, but they'll be out of date, and moving towards the average Singaporean dimensions rather than average mammoth dimensions.

Can't think of any jokes right now, I've just read the Communist Manifesto through twice.  How about a little limerick, would that do instead?

She frowned and called him Mr

Because in sport he kr

So out of spite

That very night

This Mr kr sr.

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[quote user="Miki"]

Perhaps SB might prefer to discuss the virtue of a McDo in Montpelliershire and a McDo in Rennes and in particular, why Milkshakes are only in two flavours here but more choice in the UK, SB will have to let us know how many in her local McDo, then perhaps we can argue, nay discuss on a like for like basis on something we can all get involved in, and not just from the No Comment journal !

It's 5 by the way SB. One on each corner and the littlest fairy goes in the middle of the pinhead.


[/quote]

Milkshakes?   Any more of this nonsense and you'll get a Mikishake.  

Five, indeed.  Pin heads don't HAVE corners, they're ROUND!   AND you're getting your angels mixed up with your fairies.  Non mais!

AND while I'm at it, where's the smiley with the rolling eyes gone?   I didn't flatten that one.   

 

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"...Five, indeed.  Pin heads don't HAVE corners, they're

ROUND!   AND you're getting your angels mixed up with your

fairies.  Non mais!"

Always get caught out by clevercloggies me do ! Are you absolutely sure there are no squareheaded pins ?

angels,  fairies, fées, hadas, feen, engel, angeles, anges, is it

any wonder I mix them up, too many languages in my tete........[;-)]

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angels,  fairies, fées, hadas, feen, engel, angeles, anges, is it any wonder I mix them up, too many languages in my tete........

 

Well i'll go to the foot of my apple & pears, fluent in all those languages, and a Chelsea fan to boot. [8-)]

It's a fair cop guv, i'll come quietly.

 

Bedders

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  • 2 weeks later...

I find the statistics that Most Holy has provided very interesting, more importantly they appear to be easily verifiable. Saligo Bay, while it's true that statistics can be made to point towards one or another point of view depending on what the organisation who comissioned them may be wanting to tell us, at least they can provide a solid base from which to compare, rather than friends' and neighbours' opinions on the matter (be they French or not), and even one's own general perceptions. It's then a matter of verifying the statistics, and the reputabilty of their source, and making an informed opinion based on that. I don't think statistics can be so easily dismissed like that, it all depends on the source.

 

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Maybe, but I'm still wondering how it is that clever Anglo-Saxons "know" that unemployment in France really isn't very bad at all, yet all around me in France I hear that things are very bad indeed.

Why do you think this is?

Is the French govt lying, and trying to make things look worse than they really are?  If so, why?

Are French people stupid? 

Are French people pessimistic by nature?  Or just cynical from lifelong experience of French governments?

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[quote user="SaligoBay"]

Maybe, but I'm still wondering how it is that clever Anglo-Saxons "know" that unemployment in France really isn't very bad at all, yet all around me in France I hear that things are very bad indeed.

[/quote]

Well, I suppose can often depend where you are.  From your descriptions of life, SB, it sounds like you are out in the middle of nowhere, in an area that is extremely slow.  Apologies if I'm reading this wrong, but that's what your posts sound like.  There are reasons why vibrant young people leave small towns.  It's not rocket science and it is not particular to the French. Small town life can be boring, insular, conservative in the extreme and lacking in stimulus and opportunity for the young.   People don't live in big towns and cities throughout the world just out of choice - if you want a decent job, you generally have to leave the small towns and villages. 

I have lots of young, well-educated French friends in excellent jobs thoughout France, the UK and Ireland.  As in Ireland, my French friends find a few years working in somewhere like London does wonders for their CV when they return home.  Please note: they're not moving to Britain, but to London which is a totally different thing.  The French students I know are not slitting their wrists - they just don't see why they should be the butt of Villepin's autocratic re-organisation of the labour force, and striking is just how they show it.  Again, I'm not for a second saying unemployment is not a huge problem in France, but neither is it all doom and gloom for everyone.  Different people will have different perspectives.  That is why statistics  (produced by official bodies using an accepted methodology ) are useful  - they get rid of the personal perspective and allow us to see the big picture more clearly.

 I have conducted research with young people living in the likes of Dagenham and Basildon.  They have no hope for the future, are living on welfare, have little to no education and the gentrification of East London and the Thames gateway only means London workers moving out and smashing any chance they ever had of getting on the property ladder.  Tell them about low unemployment and the wonders of the vibrant British economy....  Or, go to the Welsh valleys and talk to the thousands, particularly men over 50 years of age, on Incapacity Benefit.  They're not counted as unemployed by the government (handy!) and neither do they benefit from the pumping economy.  

Every country has its problems - it's not just a French thing.  Italian growth is stagnant.  Unemployment is pretty high in Germany too.  I spent 8 years in England and couldn't get over how the English moaned about absolutely everything. [:P]  Giving out about a free health service while refusing to pay anymore taxes to improve it, moaning about a public transport system that went all over the city....  Some people just like whining and I don't think it's necessarily a French trait.

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"..........Well i'll go to the foot of my apple &

pears, fluent in all those languages, and a Chelsea fan to boot.

[8-)]
It's a fair cop guv, i'll come quietly."

Me a cop bedders!  that'll be the day !!

Je speak 8 languages fluently, well I say fluent, well fluent in as

much, that if one being fluent means one is able to say "Hello Miki

here, a pint and a sausage sandwich please [:D][:D]

 

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[quote user="Teamedup"]

That is because you and I listen to french people Saligo and really, what would they know anyway. Ofcourse them 'rale'ing' isn't being negative, it is just they being charmingly french.

[/quote]

I listen to French people too, in fact having been here since I was eleven years old I haven't had much choice! French peoples' opinions on the economy vary greatly, it all depends on who you listen to and where they are heading in their lives - there are 20-somethings (my generation) with whom I work who certainly aren't complaining about unemployment! Many of us are facing the future with confidence and have already started building up our careers, which is why all this talk of a moribund economy that is heading nowhere is at odds with those young people who work in (say) large multinational companies, many of them French-owned, that are perfectly at ease competing in a global economy. On the other hand I have some friends who have indeed struggled to find employment despite having good qualifications.

That's why I find such statistics interesting and useful, more so than just listening to what people around me are saying about the economy. General opinions are useful in their own way, but certainly don't paint an accurate picture of the environment that we're in, mainly because they can be so contradictory.

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[quote user="Pangur"]Well, I suppose can often depend where you are.  From your descriptions of life, SB, it sounds like you are out in the middle of nowhere, in an area that is extremely slow.  [/quote]

I am in the uncharted outer reaches of the Montpellier Agglomération.  

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Ah now this is a subject I can genuinely claim to be something of an expert on [:D]

"That is why statistics  (produced by official bodies using an accepted methodology ) are useful  - they get rid of the personal perspective and allow us to see the big picture more clearly." Sorry Pangur but that is soooo funny[:D]

I spent 20 odd years working for the Dept. of Employment  in Unemployment Benefit Offices/Jobcentres and can state quite categorically  that anyone that believes the "statistics" needs their bumps feeling [;-)] I spent years compiling U/E stats and talking to my colleagues doing the same in other offices and as someone once said "there are lies, damn lies and statistics"[:(]

 

The  Incapacity Benefit is a prime example, when the Client Adviser role was brought in they were told to ensure that claimants ... sorry clients were on the correct benefit, so anyone displaying any kind of illness or incapacity for work was shoved over onto IB, this had a marvelous effect on the U/E stats but then a few years later comes from on high... "why are so many people claiming IB????"   LOL and this wasn't just in the Welsh valleys it was happening in stockbroker belt Surrey and in every region in the UK!! This is just one of the many methods used to massage figures not to mention the upper echelons attitude to stats having to show what they wanted them to show no matter what the reality was[:@] My attitude was always ... whats the point of innacurate stats??? you may as well just think of a number and be done with it[:(] but that didn't go down too well and I am sure is one of the reasons I ended up early retired... very,very early retired [:@]

 

The upshot of this is that folk can quote stats at me till they are blue in the face and as far as I am concerned they mean absolutley nothing!!!

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Bassman - I won't disagree that statistics can be (very successfully)

couched in terms intended to decieve, but I cannot agree that this

necessarily renders them useless. Skilled interpretation can pull

useful information even from the most contrived figures. Certainly when

preparing "country briefs" our analysts would always quote numbers and

percentages of people of working age engaged in employment. They may

have had to spend days digging through the mountains of spin and bull

put out by governments, but they could usually arrive at a workable

number. They would do the same when calculating tax-take from average

incomes and from GDP (another thing that governments are really good at

spinning) and came to the revealling conclusion that in all of the

(then 15) nations of the EU is was the same to within a couple of

percentage points.

Just for the record, virtually all of my French friends are optimistic

about their economic futures. So are most of my British friends. It

must be the people I hang out with.

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[quote user="jond"]Just for the record, virtually all of my French friends are optimistic about their economic futures. So are most of my British friends. It must be the people I hang out with.

[/quote]

You've already told us that you're in a divided community, and you're on the right side of the tracks.   It's money talking.  Jolly hockey sticks to you, my dear, and I mean that most sincerely. 

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