What is great about France?

[Miki]

In the spirit of open debate and I do come in friendship, please don't complain Renaud, tis only in jest ....

I like the sense that I am more alive, when in France

That is what seriously happened to us, when we left France to go to

Spain on holiday earlier this month. We felt great to get away for

while, Spain made us feel alive and vibrant once again. Perhaps it is the

novelty of being somewhere else ?

 I like to be able to see the Milky Way again,

Is that just between meals or purely at night ?

I like the empty rural roads,

Not all the way from Brittany to Spain you wouldn't !!

 

I like the muttered 'm'sieur/damme' when somebody enters a shop where the are other customers,

 

Why do they mutter ? Are they unable to tell the difference in gender, they struggle here at times, I tell you !

I like the tiny rural flying club airports where people wave at

the plane coming in, and the staff are pleasant despite the fact that

you are a Ryanair passenger checking in very late,

Cognac or whisky Renaud, pleasant RyanAir people.........pigs, past, another and flying eh

I like the hare sitting motionless in my headlights, in the middle of

the road, who makes me admit that I am lost (my great grandmother's

name was Lelievre)

Splat !!!!

…

I like the little restaurants that are open on a cold February evening

and treat you and the other patron in a pleasant slightly off-hand way,

OK, specifically, I like La Rive in Mortagne where the dog who looks

like he has been made of carpet off-cuts joins you for the steak course

It's called peed off and want to sell.......... plus,  you feed ther mutt, he ain't getting sod all from us !

I like 86 year old Madamoiselle up the road who thinks that we come from Paris because we have trouble communicating with her,

Most good looking chicks around here are about that age, it's the dyed

curly red hair and pinny that just makes the thirty somethings look

that tad bit older eh ?

I like the artisans who are working on our house who come when they say they will and work really hard,

… particularly the tiler who took us round a tile emporium muttering “trop cher” every time we saw anything fancy.

Must have been British and hoped that by speaking French you will be impressed enough to cough up in cash and "too fancy" is cool speak for too hard to fathom out how to put them on the roof !!

 I like the silence at night,

Don't live near us then, it's party time every night with the Breton farmers !  (we wish !!)

I like the Mairie who complains about the numbers of Brits in his commune but could not be more pleasant in person

Ah a two faced M le Maire, how quaint and how normale, register to vote and watch him really creep about !!

I like the wedding convoys of tooting cars.

Not as romantic as first thought, that's the inlaws chasing the other

parents for their share of the outlay and I think they are French cars

or not actually out of Tooting but perhaps from Brixton ?

 I think that there might be a song about this in The Sound Of Music

F****** Ada ? No that was from My Fair Lady I think or was it Ian Drury in Spartacus......wotsit ?

If it's still here tonight, we are at least, still on the internet !

[tmto]

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).

 

 

[Russethouse]

I suspect that many of the British people, almost by definition, that move to France needing or wanting to work, could be called 'enterprising'.

The problem seems to be that France is not particularly set up to nurture a spirit of enterprise and that is when the disillusion sets in.

[nimportequoi]

I've been doing some lesson preparation for my French students (no doubt we will be discussing the current problems regarding unemployment and the CPE). Although it is a little out of date, it highlights the fact that living in France is great if you are a salarié, but not so good if you are an employer or entreprise as it is businesses who pay the biggest chunk of taxes, very different to the UK and Scandinavian countries. Sorry I can't cut and paste, I can't get to grips with the forum software at all!

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=347867

[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.

 

Yes there are hidden things in France. It can be so darned complicated. And at the end of the day it is just a country with it's foibles and problems just like most other places, well 'my' France is like that.

And getting away is getting away. We have holidayed in our region and had a lovely time, but holidays and everyday living should be different n'est pas, or there would be no point in taking a vacance.

[Squirrel]

I have heard (I say that as I have not worked in France) that they at least don't expect you to work yourself to death. They certainly believe in home/work balance (ie the 35 hour week etc)

[Teamedup]

Really Squirrel? That so?

 

I shall have to tell my son that little blague. Thinking about it, he won't really find it funny.

[nimportequoi]

I think you will find that the 35 hour week only applies to large companies (20+ employees?), my FT students get 9/10 weeks annual leave, but it isn't like that for everyone.

[Squirrel]

If it's not true there is no need to be sarcy. That's why I qualified my statement with 'I have heard but have never worked in France.'

[quote user="Teamedup"]

Really Squirrel? That so?

 

I shall have to tell my son that little blague. Thinking about it, he won't really find it funny.

[/quote]

[tmto]

[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.

 

[SaligoBay]

Squirrel, sadly the 35-hour week is only partly true.

The catering trade works its apprentices extremely hard for very little money, for example, and that's not the only one.   Having 2 jobs just to make ends meet, that can also come to a lot more than 35 hours.

Employees are protected to a certain extent, yet people still lose their jobs, and the majority of first-time jobs are short-term contracts, and harcèlement morale is used to get you out if they can't find any other reason. 

But there, it all keeps life exciting, and you can always go on strike if you don't like it! [:)] 

 

 

 

[Teamedup]

My husband has worked in the private sector for 25 years. Done exactly the same job, done some courses, but so has everyone else. He and all his collegues who do exactly the same job are all on different salaries. My husband as he is at the end of his career so is now on nearly twice as much as some of the younger blokes. We would have been far better off with a full salary from the beginning. Twice as much pay every month would far outweigh an extra months salary, well, it never was quite a full months extra salary and the bits our CE has ever given us.

Ofcourse getting those two benefits as well as a full salary within say the first couple of years of joining the company would be nice, but those other two benefits are something we would have given up without a moments hesitation, if he had been put on maximum pay straight away, or within a year or so.

The worst thing about this is that workers who are at the end of their career are often worn out and in all probability don't have the energy or enthusiasm for the job that they had when they were younger.... and they get the most pay. Nah don't like it, it isn't juste or fair.

[Patmobile]

I just watched BBC news on TV and saw that Tom Jones got a knighthood.  That's one of the best things about France - no titles for anybody, and certainly none for nobodies.

It's always been a mystery to me how the talentless gargoyle ever got a record made, let alone managed to sell any.

You don't think he paid Blair a few hundred thousand, do you?

Patrick

[tmto]

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).

[Teamedup]

Squirrel, isn't just the apprentices that get worked hard in the catering trade. My son's working week is supposed to be 43 hours for the SMIC. The companies can't pay more than 15 hours a month over time as it is against the law. However, he works 15 hours + per week in overtime and this is unpaid. No controls about this and so those lovely cheap meals are being prepared and served in many a resto where the workers are not actually getting paid for some of their work. Why do they do it, well, my son has to work and as has been said, unemployment amoungst the young is high and so he 'puts up' with the exploitation. Unemployment is not an option, that is based on having work and has time limits on payments. He isn't 25 and if his unemployment ran out, then he would get not a cent from anyone.

I cried yesterday when I watched the riot police in Paris. I was glad that my son wasn't there, but he gets so miffed off that he does go to manif's when he isn't working. I certainly understand that not only my kids but their friends and lots of young folks are very frustrated with it all. And the cosy little France of 35 hour weeks and long holidays may be a reality for some, but it is but a dream for many many others. The France of Les Uns et Les Autres.

So if I was sarcastic, well, it was perhaps better than me going into the enraged rant I felt like doing when I read your post, beleive me I did try very hard to keep it light. All these myths and generalisations about France tire me. I really don't have any need to hear these things.

[Christine Animal]

[quote user="Patmobile"]I just watched BBC news on TV and saw that Tom Jones got a knighthood.  That's one of the best things about France - no titles for anybody, and certainly none for nobodies.
Patrick
[/quote]

No titles maybe, but there are such distinctions as the Légion d'Honneur and the Palmes Académiques amongst others (which are typically French!).

Edit, now why didn't that silly Légion d'honneur link work!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Légion_d'honneur

Edit Edit.  Third time lucky, I'm dropping Wikepedia.  Légion d'Honneur !

Well, lucky that worked, or it would have been the "Bras d'Honneur" !

 

[ChezShells]

Whats great about France?

Less moaning.

I suspect this forum is a place for those who miss that part of their lives.

[Christine Animal]

Exactly.

 

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

The weather is great here. Not constant sunshine beating you down all day (I'm from Oz), but a variety of different weather even in one day.

Socially it's brilliant especially if you're French is poor like mine. Relationships are shallow which means fewer arguments or bad feelings if you say the wrong thing.

Bills are fewer and cheaper.

No American tv! Even American tv shows are in French! and there are few American tv shows on English tv (compared to Oz anyway)

The history and culture - there's none of that in Oz.

The ability to go from one town to another and not have to go the same way all the time. ie road density

The food, the wine.

The bread (I know that comes under food, but it deserves a special mention because Australians don't have a clue how to bake a decent loaf).

Everytime you go out, it's an adventure.

Life is goooood!

Only a couple of downsides.

Petrol is very expensive.

Beer is awful.

No vegemite :(

[Teamedup]

N'importer quoi.

 

My husband was a full grown, mature, qualified man, with 10 years experience in his field when he came to France. He was doing the exactly the same job with exactly the same responsibilities as all the olde has beens who were on twice as much. That he eventually has become that olde has been, does not make me feel any better about a system that I consider insidious.

 

And as someone who started work at a very young age, I take exception to the insinuation that youffs are going to be useless and carried for well, who knows how long you think it should be, if you think 25 years is OK before one approaches full salary. As soon as I learned any companies systems, coz those young brains can pick things up quickly, I was competant, efficient and always very good at my job. Even when I had the indignity of youth salaries before I was 21, I was still doing exactly the same work with the same responsibilites as any 'adult' I worked with, no one carried me ever. Poor kids in France, no wonder they lack experience, getting taken on by anyone can be very hard. Doesn't mean that can't or won't be sharp and good given alf a chance.

[Teamedup]

Now that takes the biscuit, the french don't moan. ROFLPMP .......... again n'importer quoi..........

 

 

 

[SaligoBay]

Eh oui, champion râleurs du monde and proud of it.

 

 

[Tag]

Raleurs? You don't know the Belgians. Knock the French into a cocked hat!

Back in the Vendée tomorrow if the car holds out. Very strange noises at the moment!

[TWINKLE]

[quote user="Patmobile"]I just watched BBC news on TV and saw that Tom Jones got a knighthood.  That's one of the best things about France - no titles for anybody, and certainly none for nobodies.

It's always been a mystery to me how the talentless gargoyle ever got a record made, let alone managed to sell any.

You don't think he paid Blair a few hundred thousand, do you?

Patrick
[/quote]

Sorry, are you calling Tom Jones a nobody?  Ok - who am I to decide who deserves a knighthood or not? But  please don't say that the man is a "nobody".  

 

[Tresco]

Marvellous character created by Henry Fielding wasn't he. Top Man.[6]