Why did you leave England?

[Tresco]

'I'm touched to see that you've missed me!!' (Cjb)

Thats what we need, a little more luuuurve on the forum

tresco

[0BRIAN WOODHEADI,m here in franceddMMyyyy0Falseen-USI,m here in franceTrue]

"fell up the duff"was it the french mouse on his day off then,glad to see you survived the jolly with the kids

[Zuluboy]

I came to the UK to get away from the declining education system in South Africa after 1994, the rise in political crime (and general crime as policing softened) and the general downward trend in small business.  I have no regrets about having made the move but in 8 years in the UK have found that it is actually very similar - albeit on a lesser scale - to South Africa - and on a steady downward movement. I will not go back to South Africa as long as there is a government, black or white, that follows the trends set by Western governments.  Therefore I have chosen France, which has a balance of the two as far as climate is concerned.  The village where I have a house is similar to where I lived in South Africa and the people are also similar in their habits.  I have yet to make the move - that will happen in the next couple of years.  I can't wait to get there and start again.

 

[Patf]

We never intended to leave UK and still have a house there. Our house in France was intended to be a holiday house, but we spend more time here than we intended. I think we will go back - when? - but are quite torn as we love the tranquillity and beauty of the countryside, and the climate, and couldn't afford to live in the country in UK. As for the french people, we have some french friends and in general find them accepting. But don't think we'll ever feel that we   "belong" here. On our visits home we still feel a nostalgic attachment. So what shall we do? Time will tell. Pat.

[Chauffour]

Mother in law....

 

anonimous

[Llantony]

[quote]I got feed up seeing my taxes being spent on centres for one legged Albanian lesbians and other fringe groups and not making any inprovements to my quality of life.[/quote]

Oh dear Richard!  Racism, homophobia and disability discrimination.  (Perhaps from reading the most bigoted of British newsapers and actually believing them.)  Just the sort of Brit I hate meeting in France.  Glad you aren't in my area.

M

[0BRIAN WOODHEADI,m here in franceddMMyyyy0Falseen-USI,m here in franceTrue]

Glad your not near us as well(the above),which papers if any do you read?only the ones you agree with.

 

[Tresco]

You are very fond of asking that question outcast, usually when someone makes a point like LAnthony (?).

 Do you read the Guardian then, just to keep a broad range of views in mind?

tresco

[letrangere]

Do you read the Guardian then, just to keep a broad range of views in mind?

Or perhaps Le Monde or even Liberation?  Seeing as though he's here in France...   M

[Miki]

[quote]Do you read the Guardian then, just to keep a broad range of views in mind? Or perhaps Le Monde or even Liberation? Seeing as though he's here in France... M[/quote]

Going on from that Margaret, I personally do read French newspapers about once possibly twice a week (always on a Saturday or Sunday) but am selective and still start from the sports pages, so no change there !

Other times I read them on the net but I do buy both local journals the Petite Beu (22) and Le Pays Malouin(35)every Thursday because for me, it is the best way of keeping abreast of what is happening in my immediate locality as well as regional and it helps me to keep in touch with whose cat/dog has gone missing and what the villains are up to (wink)

Flipping Mozilla, I feel as though something is missing in my forum life !

Another good way of keeping up with the news is simply to watch French TV if only at news time but again, I try to catch the local news in the morning, if I have the time, or in the evening. It never fails to amaze me, although I guess it's their choice to not want to know, just how many Brits have hardly a clue about what is happening in their part of Brittany.

Local journals and local news on the TV really can help anyone to keep up and even help them greatly to understand and get to know their part of France, so much more.

[Tresco]

These local papers can be pretty good, because unlike Le Monde, they are really easy to read. There are lots of small articles 'Lady Drops Shopping - Pompiers to Rescue!), which are very good as short translation exercises. And as you say Miki, you can keep up with the local news 'proper'.

When we are in the car we tend to listen to local radio too. Took me a long time before I started to recognise a story I had earlier read in the paper, or seen on the news the previous evening, but it happened. Slowly, surely, but still very erratically. We know some people in the same department who have been here a long time, speak excellent French, but have never had French TV, or listen to the radio even. As a former total telly addict, i'm pretty proud to say I have never wanted it (English language TV) here, though I do get a bit of a longing when I see some of the chats here about these daft programmes on France etc.

I used to read at least one broadsheet every day in England, can't think for the life of me why, now, and I don't miss them at all, not even the Guardian

tresco

 

[Lbannister<P><a target=_blank href="http:www.carolynbannister.com">http:www.carolynbannister.com<A><P>]

Not a conscious decision to leave england, but the furniture was in storage costing us a fortune and we needed somewhere to put it

 

[0BRIAN WOODHEADI,m here in franceddMMyyyy0Falseen-USI,m here in franceTrue]

There are link via the forum/mag home page to the french newspapers which I do so times read,though most days it is the telegragh online followed by the sun,the sun deemed by some members to be the "gutter press"but which happens to be the biggest selling newspaper in the UK,so where does that leave the loony lefties who read the the labour daily with all them there public jobs on offer,ps only read the sun to see whats on tele

 

[Tresco]

Hey outcast you had me laughing there. Until I got to the end I thought you were saying you read the Telegraph, and the Sun to get the other view!

I used to read the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Independant (or 'Indescribablyboring' as Private Eye calls it), anything I could get my hands on really. Havn't read the Sun, or the Mirror though, since I was about 17.

tresco

 

[Llantony]

[quote]Hey outcast you had me laughing there. Until I got to the end I thought you were saying you read the Telegraph, and the Sun to get the other view! I used to read the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Ind...[/quote]

Not read the Sun since you were 17, i.e. since you grew up!  (It is a comic, albeit a vicious nasty one.) Reading the Sun obviously does nothing to improve outcast's spelling and grammar - though it did support Labour in the recent past - does that make Sun readers loony lefties?

 

[Blackadder<IMG src="http:forums.livingfrance.comimagesline.gif"><BR>Blackadder<BR>Keighley and Creuse]

You don't read the sun or the mirror, you just look at the pictures...don't you?

[0BRIAN WOODHEADI,m here in franceddMMyyyy0Falseen-USI,m here in franceTrue]

[quote]Not read the Sun since you were 17, i.e. since you grew up! (It is a comic, albeit a vicious nasty one.) Reading the Sun obviously does nothing to improve outcast's spelling and grammar - though it d...[/quote]

"..a vicious nasty one"oh dear you poor little sensitive thing does the big bad world upset you.Why is it the(the sun) best selling daily newspaper, because it is in touch with most peoples view ie asylum, scroungers, the EU being a drain on the UK,s taxes and to many managers in the nhs pushing papers?Yours from the back of the class

 

[Turnip]

[quote]"..a vicious nasty one"oh dear you poor little sensitive thing does the big bad world upset you.Why is it the(the sun) best selling daily newspaper, because it is in touch with most peoples view ie as...[/quote]

The Sun - a newspaper for the semi - literate

[0BRIAN WOODHEADI,m here in franceddMMyyyy0Falseen-USI,m here in franceTrue]

For semi would that mean half,if so one is half way to being literate or half way from being totaly iliterate,stuck in the middle n,est pas on

[Ian Hoare<br>All the best<br>Ian<br>La Souvigne Corrèze<br>http:www.souvigne.com]

I promised myself I wouldn't rise to trolls and I promised myself that I'd be a good boy and stick to the subject of the thread, but I can't help myself. "C'est plus fort que moi!"

Hi all,

If there's one thing that epitomises those changes I've seen happening to England in the last 30 years that I've hated and detested, it's the Sun and its popularity.

It lives by appealing to all that is base and hateful in the human character, greed, vindictiveness, jealousy, race hatred, prurience. As many an unscrupulous media baron has discovered, it's a good formula for selling crap if you can stomach it.

For what it's worth, I think Rupert Murdoch is one of the most dangerous men alive. His power is staggering, and his use of it utterly unscrupulous. So far, I've never to my knowledge bought any of his newspapers and I will never subscribe to Sky.

No lie is too tawdry, no half truth too misleading and no intrusion into ordinary individuals' lives too painful for their "editorial team" to resist. They will gladly destroy a person's happiness to sell more papers, using some specious argument or other to legitimise it.

Their political stance is simple. 1. Keep Britain from becoming more integrated with Europe (european media controls would really hurt Sky & other Murdoch stable rags if applied fully). 2. Embarrass the royal family. My feeling is that if there is one single thing that has been responsible for the decline in respect for the "royals" it is the 20+ year campaign against them by the Murdoch group. I'm no monarchist, but no one deserves to be treated as they have been.

As for Sun readers. I don't really blame them. Not everyone can have the IQ to be able to maintain a vocabulary of more then the 1000 words used by the Sun. One might prefer it if the papers designed to be read by the unintelligent actually tried to dispel prejudice and envy instead of reinforcing it. But you can't really blame the stupid for being stupid.

GRRR. In my earlier post on this thread I should have said that Mr Murdoch and his unholy alliance with successive political leaders was also one of the reasons I wanted to leave the UK.

[Llantony]

Well said Ian!

The popularity of the Sun doesn't indicate quality or taste, any more than the popularity of pornography or shoplifting.

Why can't outcast learn to use punctuation, e.g. 'I'm here in France'?  and the odd comma would make his postings easier to read!

I like France because it's the country I know best after England, because I speak French (not as well as I used to, but I can have good conversations with neighbours and friends), because there's lots of countryside and more interesting wildlife and because I could afford to buy a small house in a village I love - which would never be possible in England).

I just cringe when I hear a bunch of Brits talking loudly in bars, usually complaining about the French.  As some people who post here might have said in the UK 'if they don't like it here, why don't they go back where they came from'.   And don't let me start on the appallingly behaved English kids I've seen here...    Yes I know, there are lots of lovely ones too, it's just that you can't help noticing the awful ones, they stand out.

 

[JohnM]

I haven't bothered to read any of Outcast's posts for a while because I don't want to get wound up about trivia (there are plenty of important thiings to wind me up). I have a theory that he knows how much his poor punctuation annoys some people and that's why he doesn't bother trying to get it right. It seems odd to me, to deliberately wind people up in order to feel better about ones self, but he's not the only person to do it.

 

[Lesbatees]

"If there's one thing that epitomises those changes I've seen happening to England in the last 30 years that I've hated and detested, it's the Sun and its popularity.

It lives by appealing to all that is base and hateful in the human character, greed, vindictiveness, jealousy, race hatred, prurience. As many an unscrupulous media baron has discovered, it's a good formula for selling crap if you can stomach it."

Ian,

You are so right. Unfortunately, it's nothing new. The Sun and its ilk are the inheritors of a tradition that goes back to the days of the bards. Mass literacy has, unfortunately, given them much more power.

Over the years the Murdoch Sun has been right in the forefront of pushing journalism further and further into the gutter. What is really frightening is that the man owns a whopping great proportion of the print and broadcast media all over the world.

Val

[0BRIAN WOODHEADI,m here in franceddMMyyyy0Falseen-USI,m here in franceTrue]

Oh dear the great unwashed can read a newspaper that the high and mighty dislike,maybe we should eat cake ,wear sack clothe and doff our flap caps,get real and wake up your sort went out with the ark, you are the minority not the ten million that read the sun.Myself I glance at the sun newspaper it does not take to long to read it for sure.

Here in france where we live,we have come across the great and the good from the UKmost of the folks have not got a clue what to do when they get here and stick out like a sore thumb,do not speak french and drive round in the brit reg`d cars,then there is the members of the teaching prof. who think that they are in some way french because they spend most of their 12+weeks holidays in france.Look down your nose,s at sun readers(working class)all you want.

 

[Cjb]

Whatever one thinks of the Sun newspaper, it would only be a very foolish person that would try to deny its power and influence in the UK and suggest that it can simply be ignored like an annoying child. Do I ever read it? Yes, from time to time, even though I was a Guardian reader when I was in the UK.

If any party wishes to get elected they can ill afford to not recognise and accommodate the tabloid press. There are many negative aspects to such press reporting, but then again, here in France, a blind eye has been traditionally turned to some outrageous abuses of power, (most notably by the man at the very top) and many journalists and politicians appear to have a very cosy relationship, which often stretches back to their days together in the Grandes Ecoles.

Overall, there is a widespread decline in quality investigative journalism, as reporting (and creating) news becomes bigger and bigger business. The tabloid press make no pretensions as to what they are and what they represent and as we live in a democracy, if the majority of people choose to get their information from such sources, we can hardly ignore them. It is the decline in quality investigative journalism by the likes of the BBC that I find far more concerning.

For me The Mail and The Express are for more dangerous than The Sun, as they spread the same vile prejudiced cr*p whilst purporting to be serious newspapers.