Article

2007-02-25 Europe

God help France if it falls for the charms of Ms Royal

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Posted by Steve White 2007-02-25 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 incredible. Just the fact that French are moving to Britain to avoid high taxes? LOL!

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2007-02-25 09:30|| 2007-02-25 09:30|| Front Page Top

#2 Time for "France's Blair"?

No, time for France's Thatcher, if she has one.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-02-25 09:36|| 2007-02-25 09:36|| Front Page Top

#3 Or for the french Pinochet, ~~please~~ perhaps?

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-02-25 09:50|| 2007-02-25 09:50|| Front Page Top

#4 If the Independent thinks your program is too socialist you have a serious, serious problem.

Posted by Excalibur 2007-02-25 11:45|| 2007-02-25 11:45|| Front Page Top

#5 Posted on the off-chance that France still matters.

France has nukes and also could give to China planes who are much better than what Chines have. So yes it mattes that pro-American Sarkozy replaces piece of shit Chirac.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2007-02-25 12:00|| 2007-02-25 12:00|| Front Page Top

#6 Having read that, a French Pinochet seems France's best hope.

Posted by phil_b 2007-02-25 12:52|| 2007-02-25 12:52|| Front Page Top

#7 BTW, that comment was in all seriousness.

Posted by phil_b 2007-02-25 12:53|| 2007-02-25 12:53|| Front Page Top

#8 A Pinochet would set France back at least 50 years. The French still don't have the personal responsibility, representative democracy thing down. I doubt a Pinochet (De Gaulle) would help them. One of the greatest contributions Washington made to the development of the United States politically was doing so little so that many learned the lessons. The French system is too stuck on men on horses. But what can we expect from a nation without shopkeepers.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-02-25 13:06|| 2007-02-25 13:06|| Front Page Top

#9 God help France

Omnipotence --- a necessary attribute for helping France.

Posted by gromgoru 2007-02-25 14:53|| 2007-02-25 14:53|| Front Page Top

#10 The French system is too stuck on men on horses.

Probably true.

But what can we expect from a nation without shopkeepers.

WTF ???
Cliché.
Remember there are about 17 millions active french workers supporting 43 millions unactive people. Despite the sclerozed structures of french economy, labor productivity is good (I suck at economy and all, but IIRC, it's better than Germany's, for example) and free-market is not an unknown to us, despite the socialist nature of France since 30 years+, and the 200+ statist love affair of our successive gvts (true french disease is jacobinism, the matrix of all totalitarianisms ever since).
Does anyone remember that "entrepreneur" is afrench word, that there's a long tradition of independent small workers, shopkeepers, skilled laborers... and that one Great Old One of the free-market theory is none other than Frédéric Bastiat.

But in some way, this "shopkeepers" cliché is rather funy, because one major staple of french Enlightened Elites' anti-americanism is that the "USA are a Nation of shopkeepers", without that characteristic french élan and spirit.

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-02-25 15:29|| 2007-02-25 15:29|| Front Page Top

#11 -- God help France --

Cos I'm not inclined.

Posted by anonymous2u 2007-02-25 15:52|| 2007-02-25 15:52|| Front Page Top

#12 Do the French elite really think that being a shopkeeper is something bad? If so, that might explain the current French economic trend.

Posted by Mike N. 2007-02-25 17:12|| 2007-02-25 17:12|| Front Page Top

#13 It was a Scotsman, Adam Smith who first called the English a nation of shopkeepers, though Napoleon usually gets credit for the phrase.

The reference to shopkeepers reflects my impression that while entrepreneur may be a French word, the French have never been satisfied to be bourgeois politically. And it is being happily bourgeois that is part of what is necessary for a civil society to sustain representative government. It is also why the cultured French can look down their noses at mere shopkeepers like the English and Americans.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-02-25 17:19|| 2007-02-25 17:19|| Front Page Top

#14 Bastiat had the left pegged:

"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"from The Law

Posted by Bobby 2007-02-25 17:22|| 2007-02-25 17:22|| Front Page Top

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