November 8th, 2007
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The whole idea behind the common market, or European Union as we call it these days, was that borders between the countries participating would gradually cease to exist and, for the most part, that has been gradually happening over the last 20 or 30 years. How come then there’s almost always a queue at the border crossing between Spain and France then?
I used to think that it was just a case of “jobs for the boys” until I saw a number of cars and caravans being pretty much taken apart by the customs guys. Presumably they’re enforcing some import control then? Perhaps, but then anything that you can legally buy in Spain can be legally taken to France.
Whatever they’re doing it certainly causes major problems in the Summer when the queues of cars can reach right back to the toll booth (abour 6 kilometres!) and the hill leading up to the customs post is littered with cars that have overheated and had to pull in off the road.
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Posted in French politics, French taxes, Spacer, Travelling | No Comments »
May 7th, 2007
The margin was relatively slim (53/47) but France has, much to my surprise, chosen the president that it needs at this time.
His first hundred days are likely to be turbulent ones and I suspect that last nights riots across France are merely a taster of things to come. Many of his policies seem to run against the deep socialist grain of French thought and practices.
The 35 hour week is to be reviewed. That was one of the planks of job creation from the socialist era. Reduce the time that anyone is allowed to work and everyone will have more work, won’t they? Well, perhaps in theory if you drop the permitted working hours by 10% you might think that employers will need 10% more people to get through the work but that’s only going to work with cuts much larger than 10%. As is clear everywhere else in the world, semi-parttime workers get through just as much work as full-time workers do.
Immigration rules are to be tightened up. This one seems pretty strange coming from the son of immigrants. The counterpart to this is that he seems likely to work with the countries in northern Africa to form a kind of African Union to help improve the economies of those countries.
France is to become a little bit more capitalist too as he plans to reduce the regulations on businesses to make the job creation process much easier. Taxes too are to be reduced to improve the incentive to work.
Will he have the strength of character to follow through on these reforms is the biggest question though. I think he will: he seems to have that inner strength that is so necessary to do it.
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April 19th, 2007
One of the striking differences of this election vs previous ones is that there is an appreciation that a significant proportion of the French population lives overseas.
Of a total population of 53 million voters, an estimated minimum of 2 million are resident abroad. Now 4% or so might not sound like a very big proportion but critically, the political makeup of the overseas French is considered different from the political makeup of those remaining in France and, on the whole, they are more to the right than to the left. How come? Well, the typical left wing approach of bribing the electorate by increases in social security payments clearly won’t work with this group as they simply won’t receive them ie there is no pull towards the left for them. On the other side, they will, for the most part, be in countries that are more to the right than France is and can see a less socialist system actually working ie there is a pull to the right. Combine these and you get a drift to the right for this group as compared to the makeup of those remaining in France.
Surely, that doesn’t really matter as there aren’t really that many of them, are there? Whilst it’s true that the absolute numbers represent a mere 4% percent of the population compare this to the typical predictions of the share of the vote for each candidate: you’ve around 27%, around 25% and around 20% for the leading candidates. That means that only 2% percent can change the running order and that’s why those overseas voters are so important.
Consequently, we have the peculiar sight of a political rally in London conducted entirely in French.
Is it right that these people should be able to vote at all though? After all, some of these people have been abroad for 20 years or more. I’d question the validity of the vote of someone who has been living outside France for that long. What contact would they really have had with the issues affecting people who live in France? Would they even understand the issues after so long? Yes, some will, but the majority will not.
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Posted in Commentary, French politics, Political Comment | 9 Comments »
