Sticks and Stones 19

I just turned on the telly to find David Beckham looking dainty on the new M3 razor blade advert, switched over to Absolument Fabuleux (a copy of AbFab), and then onto TF1, where a diet of Star Academy, Le Maillon Faible (The Weakest Link) and Millions (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?) is eked out to the public over the period of a weekend.
The French TV authorities are so stingy that they won’t stretch their admiration for all things British to an equivalent to Match Of The Day on Saturday night. Oh no, they make them wait until Sunday morning, (once Canal+ has sucked up the TV budget), at which time the kids are up and pestering Dad to switch over or play with them or take them out or make breakfast.
The French government (l’etat de rien) has been shrewd in giving their people the bare minimum in all ways, as this lowers people’s expectations in life and makes life easier for the state. But the overwhelming evidence is that this saps people’s energy to further themselves. Moreover, life is very ‘laissez tomber’ here. Look at Maddy.
Some good friends of mine died in a road accident recently, leaving three young children without parents.
The general reaction of those who knew them was that of indifference, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary.
People died on roads in vehicles.
Life is a cheap commodity.
The state requires that their people do a ridiculous amount of paperwork, and for the most unnecessary reasons, in an attempt to undermine their every day. On the face of it, though, France is a dynamic market force.
It has the imagery of America and the efficiency of Russia.
When I talk to French people about my latest battle with paperwork, they all nod in compliance when they remember the last piece of paper they had to justify with photocopies of identity that the state don’t even look at.
I tell them that it’s not the French people who are ‘con’, that’s it’s the state, and they nod in pure agreement.
For a moment, we are one, but this moment dulls when they remember I am English, and that I can always run back there when the money runs dry, or I get seriously bored.
With taxes at 45% for anyone wanting to start up their own business, the state has systematically sucked dry the ambitions of this enormously and naturally talented race, leaving them hopeless and dead to the future as they watch the house prices hike along with everything else, apart from basic salaries. The real French go-getters go to London or elsewhere abroad.
For those youngsters who feel they have to grin and bear it back home, the SMIC is the national minimum wage and has stood at just under one thousand euros (£650) for the last ten years.
For a gruelling, backbreaking, nose-rubbing 160 hours a month, there is about fifty euros a month left for pleasure after the rent, heating, phone, food, council tax and insurance.
There is no budgeting for a holiday, a car, a girlfriend, kids. Even a pet rabbit will take you down on the SMIC.
The only alternative to the SMIC is RMI, the dole, because there is literally no other work around apart from the SMIC.
With RMI, they pay your rent and your council tax and throw in about five hundred euros a month for living, which equates to about the same amount as the SMIC.
This unjust but necessary imbalance causes a rift between the SMICeurs and RMIstes, which then enables the elder section of the community to question the ability of the younger generation in a derisive way. Those who have worked for twenty plus years are in denial about the injustice and blame the younger generation for the social problems that have been ravaging France in recent months, while the young blame the old for not standing up to the state.
Worst of all, the state is knowingly pitting each and every Frenchman and woman against each other in an attempt to divert their thoughts away from the omnipotent political crisis that Chirac finds himself in with other member states of Europe.
Chirac didn’t think things through when he went into the euro. Forever bullied and complimented in the same breath by the German chancellor, he took the old line and sold out, throwing past events to the wind.
Germany tried to integrate Europe for its own ends with war in World War One and again in World War Two.
Now, with the prospect of war too delicate an issue to even contemplate (unless they televised the armies of nations fighting to the death en masse in Olympic stadia around Europe), they have tried a third time with peace, but to no avail.
If you asked ten French people if they wished they still had the franc, nine would say yes and the other one would be a nutcase.
If you asked if life was generally tougher now, five years into the euro, they would all say yes.
Prices have hiked across the board (apart from salaries). New paperwork is being authorised every minute, it seems, leaving the people running after their own tails to make amends with red tape ultimatums and extortionate bills.