Reply to: Chirac walks out of talks

[TinTin]

Hercules Poirot

Can't help it really. Spent all my primary school years in Bruxelles, where my father was posted (hence the pseudonym).

[expat]

... on which side of the fence you are. As a taxpayer, having a large public sector means a huge chunk of your taxes needed to maintain it. As a public sector employee, it means a good salary and a pension = 100% of final salary. Again if you are unemployed in France (or Germany etc) it means getting paid 80% of your salary and not becoming almost destitute like here in the UK, however this has to come from somewhere ie the taxpayer. If I weren't a contractor, I would definitely prefer to live and work in France, wouldn't you ?

No. I've done it. I don't work to get unemployment pay, nor to pay others 80% of salary not to work.

"As a public sector employee, it means a good salary and a pension = 100% of final salary". So it is a good thing if you are a public sector employee and you're in it for what you can get out of the taxpayer. That's equivalent to saying that a wasteful gravy train is a Good Thing if you're on the gravy train and don't mind how much waste there is as long as you get yours. Vive l'esprit fonctionnaire!

BTW the space before the colon, or "deux points", in your posts gives you away.

[Fungus]

... on which side of the fence you are. As a taxpayer, having a large public sector means a huge chunk of your taxes needed to maintain it. As a public sector employee, it means a good salary and a pension = 100% of final salary. Again if you are unemployed in France (or Germany etc) it means getting paid 80% of your salary and not becoming almost destitute like here in the UK, however this has to come from somewhere ie the taxpayer. If I weren't a contractor, I would definitely prefer to live and work in France, wouldn't you ?

Not really. A country cannot live indefinitely in cloud cuckoo land. It's like in the cartoons when someone runs over the edge of a cliff. Once they realise there's nothing beneath their feet, they fall.

[TinTin]

It depends...

... on which side of the fence you are. As a taxpayer, having a large public sector means a huge chunk of your taxes needed to maintain it. As a public sector employee, it means a good salary and a pension = 100% of final salary. Again if you are unemployed in France (or Germany etc) it means getting paid 80% of your salary and not becoming almost destitute like here in the UK, however this has to come from somewhere ie the taxpayer. If I weren't a contractor, I would definitely prefer to live and work in France, wouldn't you ?

[expat]

The result (in France) : Public sector/local authority employment around 50%, secure private employment 30%, self-empolyed 10%, unemployed 10%.

Are you presenting "Public sector/local authority employment around 50%" as a good thing?

"unemployed 10%". Compared to (EU stats ) UK 4.7%. Are you presenting that as a good thing?

[stackpole]

Lone Gunman, how are you defining the UK's territorial waters? I don't think that they are that big (12 nautical miles?) Taking the UK out of the EU would protect that small stretch of water? If you are talking about letting all these all these other nations into areas which were traditionally fished only by the UK, well, yes GB negotiated themselves to give that up to join the EU, but it wasn't theirs to fish solely (pardon the pun).

As I understand it, quotas are organised so that each nation gets a limited bite of, for example, the North Sea cherry. I think that it's a good idea that has been cocked up in implementation. How would being out of the EU protect the UK's fishing industry? The UK could have as many boats out fishing to it's hearts content? Great you would reach the same situation as you have now only quicker (no fish).

Is the reason that you now have only a tenth of the fishing industry, due to Spain and others fishing in waters traditionally only fished by UK fishermen or that you have increased technology which requires a much smaller fleet to get the same amount of fish?

I think blaming the EU for that is a simplification and unfair.

"cocked up in implementation" could be applied to the majority of EU initiatives, and the UK is usually the fall-guy. The Times 08/02/2004:

A double-page spread in Fishing News, under the headline "Fleet slashed - 260 whitefish boats go", lists some of the hundreds of British fishing vessels scrapped in the past four years thanks to the Common Fisheries Policy.

The Scottish whitefish fleet alone has been cut from 351 boats to 100. Many were sizeable modern vessels, built in the past 15 years, worth millions of pounds each.

A Spanish newspaper reports that the Junta de Andalucia has given €3.5 million to local fishermen "for the construction of 12 new fishing boats" and the modernising of others. "Up to 400 families," says the report, "are expected to benefit."

In recent years UK taxpayers have contributed more than £100 million for the building and modernising of Spanish fishing boats, and £50 million towards the scrapping of a large part of the UK fleet, to make more room for Spanish boats to fish in the waters round Britain's shores.

[ASB]

One visiting French professor spoke English to French speaking Canadian students because he disapproved of their supposedly poor French i.e. not spoken as per the French.

I had a meeting in Montreal with some French over from Paris and some French Canadians. The French insisted on English.

The Quebequois patois would have the acadamy Francaise in fits of apoplexy. There are quite a lot of significant differences.

The lady on the Metro the other week couldn't understand any of my impeccable French . She wouldn't even take Euro when I tried to give her the wrong currency by mistake.

For real basterdised French Mahe takes some beating.

[Fungus]

eg You can't get a job/contract in France without speaking French to some degree. I have had interviews in the past where we started speaking English for the IT part and switched to French afterwards. Quite a bit of project terminology is using English words and phrases, so you are right to a certain extend. For the record, I am not a Europhile, however the French are right in many things and if we go down the UK approach of letting any country that wants to join the EU without satisfying even the basic political and economic criteria for membership (eg Turkey), it will be the end. The EU was set up by France, Italy, Germany and the Benelux countries, so they ought to have a say as to what goes on. All we do is try and get the new entrants on our side by playing them against the old members and that hasn't gone down well with France. It helps if one knows and understands what goes on before spouting out various cliches.

Chirac storming out was typical French petulance combined with French chauvinism. Some of them still think that French is a major world language, whereas it is insignificant compared to Chinese (various flavours), English, and Spanish.

I lived in Montreal for 2 years and the French were amazing. One visiting French professor spoke English to French speaking Canadian students because he disapproved of their supposedly poor French i.e. not spoken as per the French. A friend went to French classes and was told by the French teacher who came from France that she would teach standard French rather than a provincial dialect i.e. Quebec French! And yet they were living among 6 million speakers of that provincial dialect. IMO the French can be astonishingly chauvinistic and mild zenophobia does seem to be part of their culture.

[Fungus]

Oi Manuel, give us our bleedin' fish back.

Is the reason that you now have only a tenth of the fishing industry, due to Spain and others fishing in waters traditionally only fished by UK fishermen or that you have increased technology which requires a much smaller fleet to get the same amount of fish?

I think blaming the EU for that is a simplification and unfair

No. Norway and Britain negotiated to join the EU in the early 70's and at the last minute, after agreement had been reached, but before the paper had been signed, the EU added an extra condition of membership namely that Britain and Norway had to cede rights to their fishing grounds. Norway told them to get stuffed whereas Edward Heath agreed, and returned home proudly waving a piece of paper. That's why our fishing industry was wiped out and why foreign factory ships hoover up our fish. Heath was piss poor at sorting out the industrial strife of the 70's (as were Wilson and Callaghan) and the useless sap was also tulipe at negotiating with the EU. And he was tulipe at judging the public mood when he took the country to the polls in his "back me or sack me" referendum. And wasn't he the one in charge during the Bloody Sunday massacre? In fact did Heath do anything good?

Fungus

[xoggoth]

I agree with that. I am totally opposed to the EU as to most other supra-national organisations, but if it must exist it should be a cooperation between countries , including France, of a similar standard of living, culture and outlook. Admitting Turkey would be an insanity on all counts.

That idea has BLAIR written all over it. If you look at some of his thoughts on the net (search for Blair's Wars) , it is typical of the shallow thinking he indulges in. His ideas look most logical and convincing until you ask, "yes but, what are the likely practical consequences of this move?"

Despite the enormous numbers coming here at the moment I do not have a major problem with the likes of the Poles and Hungarians. In a couple of decades this will be a two way street. Rather sooner than that maybe, do you know how cheap a small house is in in Budapest? Rather nice place by all accounts too. (pity the language is fiendishly complex!)

Actually, although I do not much like them (does anyone?) I rather admire the French

a) They stick up for their own nation and their own culture, exactly as we should be doing and

b) When their people do not like a government decision they go to the capital and have a VIOLENT RIOT, exactly as we should be doing.

The problem with us British is that we politely put up with every humiliation offered us and every reduction in democracy imposed on us. If you are not prepared to partake in civil disobedience and even in violent riot as a last resort you are a beaten people and democracy disappears, as it is doing now.

[TinTin]

Replies

eg You can't get a job/contract in France without speaking French to some degree. I have had interviews in the past where we started speaking English for the IT part and switched to French afterwards. Quite a bit of project terminology is using English words and phrases, so you are right to a certain extend. For the record, I am not a Europhile, however the French are right in many things and if we go down the UK approach of letting any country that wants to join the EU without satisfying even the basic political and economic criteria for membership (eg Turkey), it will be the end. The EU was set up by France, Italy, Germany and the Benelux countries, so they ought to have a say as to what goes on. All we do is try and get the new entrants on our side by playing them against the old members and that hasn't gone down well with France. It helps if one knows and understands what goes on before spouting out various cliches.

[xoggoth]

There was a prog on radio 3 about this. Apparently English is now so much the language of commerce and politics that French research papers are published in English and even some large French companies and insititutions insist on English at meetings. No wonder Chirac was so miffed, he knows he has lost. In fact he lost a decade or two ago. Oh dear! what a shame!

[Dundeegeorge]

Paradigm shift

You berk. The French are the reason that the EU is such a sack of tulipe. They completely ignore all the rules on government subsidies, they have a stranglehold on the CAP, and they block anything they vaguely don't like. Plus a million other reasons I can't be bothered to list, because "I Love The EU" morons like you either won't read it or won't believe it.
The French are the problem, not the solution. Honestly, I fecking despair.

You would be correct if you believed that the EU was built to allow all of Europe to work together and to build some kind of economic superpower which was of benefit to all of it's members.
However look at it from the viewpoint of the French. The EU is a mechanism whereby everybody else in europe pays for France to run their country as a kind of socialist utopia, and where France get to decide how everybody else runs their country (to the benefit of France). Think of it as war without combat (the only kind the French are capable of winning) and you've got the picture.
Note that the above applies also to a lesser degree to Germany.

[Mordac]

Chirac may look and behave like, but he is certainly no fool. He sees himself and his country as the 'guardians' of the EU which they are, without any dispute.

You berk. The French are the reason that the EU is such a sack of tulipe. They completely ignore all the rules on government subsidies, they have a stranglehold on the CAP, and they block anything they vaguely don't like. Plus a million other reasons I can't be bothered to list, because "I Love The EU" morons like you either won't read it or won't believe it.
The French are the problem, not the solution. Honestly, I fecking despair.

[TinTin]

Proud to be French

Chirac may look and behave like, but he is certainly no fool. He sees himself and his country as the 'guardians' of the EU which they are, without any dispute. For us in the UK, the EU is seen as a legislative body, for the French and their numerous European allies, it is a political organisation where each country competes for supremacy. Anyone that has spent time in France and/or can speak French will know that they are all down to the last man proud to be French without fear of being labelled 'racists'. Their culture, traditions and way of life has not deviated very much over the centuries and neither has their religion (strict Roman Catholics). They are leaning to the right in politics but in social mattters are more left-wing than any socialist. The result : Public sector/local authority employment around 50%, secure private employment 30%, self-empolyed 10%, unemployed 10%. Trouble is the model is slightly outdated, however they still want to keep it. It' s their right to do so, along with keeping all the large French energy, telecom and transport multi-nationals free from foreign takeovers. We at the UK have allowed our large companies to fall prey to anyone, and as a result we'll pay for it sooner or later through higher bills or loss of independence.