Same story, different country.

[Quillan]

People talk about UK newspapers being all doom and gloom but France is almost the same. Went to La Figaro website to have my daily read and on the front page.......

Juvenile violence is increasing alarmingly

The poor have less and less resources

Measures in March for the unemployed at the end of rights

The strike by air traffic controllers continues on Friday 

Record loss at Air France

If you want to read the articles in English then try finding and installing the Google Toolbar.

[Quillan]

A quick look at Le Monde and we can add....

8 million people live on less than € 908 per month

Fillon: Unemployment will rise "at least until mid-2010"

The artical about The French buy less and differently is interesting, seems 'red' meat is getting to expensive even for the French who are turning to chicken, pork and fish.

[Will]

[quote user="Quillan"]

The poor have less and less resources

[/quote]

And the sub-editors (or rather the translators) have as poor a grasp of English grammar and usage as some of their English counterparts [:P]

More seriously though, it's perfectly true. I get more convinced every day that so many of the British immigrants - particularly those who use a certain blue-coloured forum - lock themselves away in their own expat communities where access to the French media is banned. The problems are pretty much the same, except they are in a different language and can't be blamed on Gordon Brown.

[Quillan]

I was surprised you didn't pick up the one about unemployment Will. I couldn't be bothered to type it all out so just translated then cut and paste but I suspect you may have worked that out. [;-)]

I used to read the French online papers just now and again but then changed to almost every day over the last few months or so, its really an eye opener. Its a shame that more Brits don't bother. I was chatting to a group yesterday at boules and basically out of 5 of us one read them quite frequently (me), another now and again and the others didn't bother at all yet they claim that they play boule to 'integrate'. Just playing boule is not really integrating if you can't join in on the chat about whats going on in France both locally and nationally.

I did find some good news today in my local paper, the railway stations for the TGV from Paris to Madrid are on time for the opening in 2012 and reasonably on budget apparently. There's been a new car park constructed at Perpignan station so hopefully we can 'jump' a train to Gerona which has good Ryanair connections to other European cities. I rather fancy a cheap weekend in Rome or somewhere without having to do much driving or nipping back to the UK to get a cheap flight.

[NormanH]

I would recommend adding:

http://www.lemonde.fr/

http://www.liberation.fr/

http://www.latribune.fr/actualites/actualites.html

http://www.marianne2.fr/Actu_r1.html

http://www.slate.fr/

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/index.html

and change between  them from time to time to get a broader spectrum of views.

I agree that it is depressing to see how little interest is taken in the affairs of the host country by people who either live here or have a sizeable investment in the place.

For example there wasn't a single reply to my post about Wednesday's demonstrations on behalf of raising pensions, even though I imagine a good number of British people in France are themselves retired.

[Will]

There's the rub, Norman. Few of them will be on French pensions or salaries so couldn't give a toss.

Quillan - I agree, there's plenty of good news too in both countries, but you have to seek it out. I'm not sure that more Ryanair flights counts as good news though [;-)]

[Chancer]

I would recommend having French television if only for watchin the news and regional news every day, they really are excellent and you can better understand the mood and character of people from your region.

Dont know if it made the papers bu what about the 3 teenage girls, 12, 14 and 16 IIRC from a single HLM building in a very nice town that befriended and subsequently repeatedly and horrifically tortured a mildly retarded man in his own home for his cashcard and PIN number and after their shopping spree carried on with the torture just for the pleasure?

[Judith]

[quote user="Quillan"]

The artical about The French buy less and differently is interesting, seems 'red' meat is getting to expensive even for the French who are turning to chicken, pork and fish.

[/quote]

That's interesting, as I am finding fish more expensive than red meat.  Are you sure it is only for cost, and not a health thing??

[Quillan]

Its to do with money or so it says. If you are having a problem reading it in French (not that I am suggesting you do but just in case) click HERE for a link to install the Google Toolbar which has a translation button.

[Quillan]

Norman - Thanks for the links, I already had La Monde but have added the others. One item I didn't know which I found only on Slate was that its OK for people with TB to fly (in aircraft of course) apparently so if the person sitting next to you starts coughing and splattering you might consider moving seat (quickly). I read about the demonstrations regarding pensions, I thought I mentioned it somewhere. My French guests and I were talking about it at dinner a couple of nights back. I don't think its only the French who are finding their pensions are not going as far as they used to.

Will - The thing is that as you know being in the 'print' bad news sells papers the world over. Its like the old glass half full/half empty thing. Perhaps if they moved more good news to the front page people would feel a bit more happy but then it doesn't sell papers. Shame you have to go looking for it.

Chancer - Personally I didn't read about these girls although I am sure I read something similar about it happening in the UK a few years back.

One thing I do find interesting is the different, and often totally different, interpretation French and other European papers put on international news issues. One that comes to mind at the moment is Obama and his health reform bill.

I would encourage others to use some of the links given in this thread to French new paper websites to learn about whats going on. OK some people don't read French very well but using something like Google translator (there are others if you go looking) is better than giving up or not bothering. Personally I also like reading the comments people make on some of the news items. When you compare them to the ones you see on English news paper websites there's not that much difference in some of the stupid or ignorant things people write. Some of them are actually quite amusing, it seems the English don't have a monopoly on stupidity at times.

 

[NickP]

[quote user="NormanH"]I would recommend adding:

http://www.lemonde.fr/
http://www.liberation.fr/
http://www.latribune.fr/actualites/actualites.html
http://www.marianne2.fr/Actu_r1.html
http://www.slate.fr/
http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/index.html

and change between  them from time to time to get a broader spectrum of views.

I agree that it is depressing to see how little interest is taken in the affairs of the host country by people who either live here or have a sizeable investment in the place.

For example there wasn't a single reply to my post about Wednesday's demonstrations on behalf of raising pensions, even though I imagine a good number of British people in France are themselves retired.

[/quote]

Now Norman maybe you could help me out here? My French is far from perfect and when I read in Lemonde about the Total strike it appears, to me, to say that the company had huge amounts of government funding in 2009 around  8 billion Euro. Have I got that right? Hope you can help me or correct my misunderstanding .[B]

[Doodle]

Hi Quillan,

Any idea how to translate into english using an apple mac?

Chris

[Quillan]

I don't know much about Mac's but I think you will probably have either FireFox or Safari. Anyway if you do a search on Google Toolbar for mac XXXXX where XXXXX is the name of your browser you will find a link to the right Google toolbar. There are Mac users on the forum so if you get stuck ask in the "French Satellite TV, French Internet and Telephone" I am sure they can help you.

[Gluestick]

Translations:

Select and Copy the desired content: Paste to an Online Translation Engine: this is reasonably effective: Here:

As with all such engines, it struggles with idiom - constantly - and also has problems with common usage, tenses and context.

Heh! it's free! Nothing's perfect!

If bored, then try translating some text from English into Spanish: the result into French; and that result back to English!

[:)]

 

[NormanH]

[quote user="NickP"]

[quote user="NormanH"]I would recommend adding:

http://www.lemonde.fr/

http://www.liberation.fr/

http://www.latribune.fr/actualites/actualites.html

http://www.marianne2.fr/Actu_r1.html

http://www.slate.fr/

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/index.html

and change between  them from time to time to get a broader spectrum of views.

I agree that it is depressing to see how little interest is taken in the affairs of the host country by people who either live here or have a sizeable investment in the place.

For example there wasn't a single reply to my post about Wednesday's demonstrations on behalf of raising pensions, even though I imagine a good number of British people in France are themselves retired.

[/quote]

Now Norman maybe you could help me out here? My French is far from perfect and when I read in Lemonde about the Total strike it appears, to me, to say that the company had huge amounts of government funding in 2009 around  8 billion Euro. Have I got that right? Hope you can help me or correct my misunderstanding .[B]

[/quote]

Is this the bit you are referring to?

" Avec près de huit milliards d'euros de bénéfice en 2009, difficile pour

l'entreprise de justifier un manque de rentabilité du site pour le

fermer"

That means that they made nearly 8 billion Euros profit in 2009, so it difficult for the business to justify closing the site for lack of profitability.

[Gluestick]

A serious question: not a cynical comment or snipe: I am genuinely interested in the answer.

From all stated here and on other threads, France, apparently, suffers precisely identical problems with crime, immigration, unemployment, health service, cost of living, bureaucracy, taxation, etc. as does Britain.

So why did so many of you uproot from your native land and move there?

Can't be just the weather, for example, as looking at climate maps, much of France is very cold at times and precipitation tends to be greater in many areas.

And, if just the weather, then why not Spain, Portugal etc? Spain isn't just the Costa Del Crime: Galicia is rather nice.

 

[NormanH]

For those who use Firefox I can recommend the Quick translate add on.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5641

[NormanH]

"So why did so many of you uproot from your native land and move there?"

I imagine (not my case) that most people who move to France move to the remoter parts where these problems are not so evident, and at the same time they are able to afford a house with land or swimming pool etc much nicer than thay had in the UK.

At the same time many people have had a smattering of French at school, and it is the closest place to get to from Southern England.

[mint]

Because, Gluey, we wanted to have a big change in retirement whereby we needed to learn a different language, culture and way of life.  Didn't want the little grey cells just atrophying and turning to jelly.

Spain didn't do it for us because we also adored French music and, whilst we looked at Spain to begin with, we quickly realised that it wasn't necessary to learn Spanish to live in large swathes of Spain.

Then, our personal reason (only peculiar to us) is that OH was self-employed and it was difficult for him to turn away work (as everybody knew him and wanted to use his services) and it was a case of leaving the UK or working till he dropped. 

This wasn't as unlikely as you would imagine because he was too good-natured to say "no" to people.  We tried to move to a different part of the UK only to have potential clients coming to our village and asking where we lived.  We also tried changing our phone number but people soon found that out as well.

As I say, not your run-of-the-mill answer but it is the true reason why we came to France to live!

 

 

 

[NickP]

Thank you Norman you're very kind.

[Bugsy]

[quote user="knee gel"]Hi Quillan,

Any idea how to translate into english using an apple mac?

Chris[/quote]

Translator for Safari

.

[velcorin]

More than a few times I've virtually given up on this site. Minutely dissecting UK news, and not the vaugest interest in French news, hey ho. I LOVE the sudden outbreak of Frenchness..............long live NormanH and Chancer!!!

I didn't come to France> I was sent here, coz the Frogs were insolvent, internal turnarounds is for what the Germans pay me. My dearly bewildered was motified. She hates her fellow countrymen for all the reasons I see on here why (certain) people left the UK. I don't know another Brit, so this is my lifeline to home. Sometimes the views get a bit scary for my lily livered liberal views, so I just stay schtum. 

Anyway, looks like I'm here for a few more years............anyone work in Bordeaux?

[Bugsy]

[quote user="NormanH"]

I agree that it is depressing to see how little interest is taken in the affairs of the host country by people who either live here or have a sizeable investment in the place.

[/quote]

Once again Norman and sadly, true to form, there is an awful lot of supposition in that statement.

How could you possibly know, certainly not from what you can glean from here.

.

[mint]

Not WORK, Velcorin but LIVE near.

It's OK but we didn't come to France for the er..........cosmopolitan of big city life so, for better or worse, we give it a wide berth.

Feel too old, too set in my ways, too contented to bother.............sorry and all that!

 

[Doodle]

Bugsy, thanks I've found it (systran) didn't know I had such a thing but then I'm not very PC!

Chris