Someone needs to tell these people.
Poor deluded fools. File this along with the rural lefties who don't quite like modern Britain enough to live in it and the liberal literati who prefer their festivals to be "miles away from inner-city crime ... we're safe here".
The exodus of middle-class Britons to France is being fuelled by the desire to regain the lost social and community values of the 1950s, according to research presented to the Foreign Office.
Gervais-Aguer said: “A lot of these people come from urbanised areas. They are looking for an authentic experience that fits in with their dreams. Freshly farmed food, the security of a tight-knit community — all of these things people associate with a typical French village that they feel no longer exists in Britain. There is a nostalgia for the way British villages used to be 50 years ago.”
Some British families living in France agree that the values of the 1950s have survived. Lauren McMullen, 60, a sports marketing consultant who moved to Montcuq, near Cahors in southwest France, said: “Things are like an England gone by. In the rural areas people’s manners are still lovely, the schoolchildren are beautifully behaved and the health service is fantastic.”Gini Cook, 45, moved to Eymet from Britain with her family three years ago and now runs the Bizarre gift shop near the main square.
"There are all kinds of attractions which bring you right back in time, " she said. "There's very little crime, services like the post and transport work, and everyone is generally a lot more polite than in Britain".
30 comments:
And yet when our French friends from Lyon visit the small East Anglian market town in which we live, they remark on the cleanliness of the streets, the politeness of the people, the good manners and self-discipline of drivers, the absence of crime and graffiti, the uncrowded shops, the vibrant market, the absence of immigrants...
Urban France can be a hellhole.
On a trip into rural France in 2006, I noted the lack of graffiti, litter, the lack of booming sound systems, that often houses and (older) cars are left unlocked. The complete lack of non-white faces, which of course has nothing to do with it, no siree.
"The complete lack of non-white faces, which of course has nothing to do with it, no siree."
It may have something to do with it. It may not. There are plenty of council housing estates that are almost exclusively white, yet are resound to the music of car sirens, unrestrained pitbulls and noisy arguments conducted at top volume...
otoh, some friends of mine moved to France a few years ago, and never go into their village centre at night any more "because it's been taken over by Muslims".
This in quite a small town not far from Bordeaux.
On a related note, I see the Bard of Barking and the voice of 80s urban yoof has seen his rural idyll suffer an unwelcome intrusion. Yes, it is a terrible thing, but still...
There was a village fairly close to where I lived in France that also had a bad reputation because it had been taken over by muslims. The problem is, so much of muslim youth is unemployable, so, being young men, the spend the entire day making trouble.
But in the main, rural France has not unravelled the way the British social fabric has unravelled. It still feels very cohesive and yes, the rural French are very polite and formal. They are also kindly.
"The musician Billy Bragg, whose home borders Chesil beach.."
Ah, yes. Bily Bragg, the so-called 'Bard of Barking', who wrote to the local Barking & Dagenham newspaper & had his letter (about the dangers of voting for the BNP & the delights of multicultural progress for Dagenham) printed on the 'letters' page this morning. Complete with Dorset address...
Now I really know the meaning of 'chutzpah'..
ZaNu Labour's hatred of rural England is very much ideological. It is not "diverse" or "multicultural" enough and must therefore be expunged.
To the liberal elite of this nation, rural people are yokels and all racists.
The traditonal working class communities of urban Britain have been destroyed by immigration and a culture which is anti-family and anti-community.
It used to be Thatcher who said there was no such thing as society. Now its the left who want 'society' destroyed. Society would imply community, that would tend to imply people associating largely with people like themselves, the next thing you know death camps. So society has to be destroyed to protect...er society.
It's no good quoting part of a sentence. Thatcher said, "There no such thing as 'society'; only individual men and women."
I did not post anonymous. I checked 'Other' but the place for a name never came up so I clicked Send, thinking it would correct itself, but it didn't.
Eymet?!
Person1:Whats Eymet like?
Person2: Just like any other English town
The place is nearly 50% Brit now!
Of course, France seems to be rushing head-first into becoming an Islamic state. I somehow doubt that those wonderful little villages will be quite as pleasant when the local church has become a mosque, and Muslim 'youths' attack native French in the street, as they do in the banlieues of Paris.
Those people (including a number of people I know) who are moving to rural France should count themselves lucky - they're going to be the last generation that gets to experience the traditional France, before it dies.
Come now it is pretty obvious that Fascism will be making a return to Europe...the political systems set up after 1945 have run out of steam...France is due for another Republic and the rest of Europe has become sclerotic as the regimes survive solely by plundering whatever the populace has held back from the last round of extortion.
The polities are dying and the populace is turning away. Does anyone feel in tune with the societies in which they live nowadays ?
The current political systems are fascism, not as bad in Britain until recently but in Europe certainly the state as held very dominant positions for a long time.
Take the EU working time directive for example. How dare they tell people how much they are 'allowed' to work.
It doesn't look and feel like fascism because the way the media elite represent it. But I'm sure when future generations look back to this time they will have a rather different point of view.
Thatchers full quote (which attempted to explain that by passing ones problems onto 'society' you were actually passing them on to other people who were not responsible for those problems):-
"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."
By the way, I have two family members that have run off to France. They told me that Britain was going to the dogs. I said to them "But France is just as bad, probably worse" - but they replied "Yes, but I don't give a stuff about France. Seeing the way Britain is going just makes me want to cry". I guess they just can't bear to look any more.
Going back to the Thatcher quote - here is the complete article:-
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106689
Interesting since the left like to regularly quote that one section out of context to demonstrate Mrs T's lack of compassion, when in actuality it is full of compassion. Certainly more lucid and compassionate then anything you will ever hear from "hey, look, ya know, I'm a pretty straight kinda guy" Blair.
Seeing the way Britain is going just makes me want to cry"..
Probably sums up most feelings outside the coke-addled politicos.
Funny how no media outlet has pointed out that 2007 is the EU Year of Diversity and that the issue of the Gender Equality Regulations is actually an EU Directive of 13 December 2004
Funny really how the EU is going to create a diverse and right-on workforce across Europe so it can unleash its latent energies and make the EU top-dog
ii
Apologies for the previous contribution, I'm new to this game and am having problems with my PC. But is the fact that being British or to be more precise English, an identity that has been undermined by the cultural left for the past 40 years, is something to be ashamed of significant? The French do not, in contrast to the English (let's leave out the Scots, Welsh, and the Ulster Irish who are seen as being victims of the evil English)do not apologise for their colonial exploits or involvement in the North Atlantic slave trade. They take pride in their culture, language and food; this is reflected in the local festivals which celebrate specific regional cultures, as well as the wider national identity.
It's not just France; here in rural Virginia, US of A there is a burgeoning Brit ex-pat community who have discovered that small town America is like Bitain in the 50's and 60's without the rain and wall-to-wall compulsory soccer coverage ;~)
Clean, safe friendly communities freedom from officialdom and a thriving economy where taxation is minimal and the cost of living low. Many are recent retirees like us, who simply cannot afford to live in rip-off Britain any more.
The first thing we notice on a visit back is how dirty and squalid London is, and how nothing seems to work properly. It is more like a decaying third-world city in some Marxist hell-hole than the capital of what we were once proud to call our homeland.
do not apologise for their colonial exploits or involvement in the North Atlantic slave trade.
without it we would not have had Mr Cube from Tate & Lyle
@Foxy Brown:
The "apologising for the slave trade bit" is an interesting one. Certainly I was given the impression during Guardian-inspired school history lessons that we Brits were wholly responsible for the slave trade and I, personally, should be ashamed of myself for being the same nationality as the perpetrators. I only discovered a few years ago that Britain was one of the first countires in the history of the world to outlaw slavery and then forced the rest of the world at the point of a gun to give up slavery too - including the USA. The fact that this detail was missed out of my education tells you a lot - the Guardian reading left are afraid of the truth in case the Brits actually start to feel proud of their past. There is, after all, little chance of a socialist revolution if we decide we quite like the way we are. In a similar vein I was told that the Nazis in Germany were a party of the right (they were a party of the left, very similar to Socialists in Sweden), and Stalin was "not a real socialist at all".
My comprehensive school education was nothing but a pack of lies inspired by the Guardian - the teacher's favourite newspaper.
To summarise I totally agree with you - the Brits have been forced to re-write their history to cut out the good bits at the behest of the Guardian. All we are left with is that which we can be made ashamed of, taken out of context, so that a process of national self-flagellation can begin. It's no wonder the Scots and the Welsh are rapidly distancing themselves from the English "Och, it wasn't me, it was those dreadful English!".
Ironically socialism can only thrive in a culturally homogenous society, so by creating a multi-cultural society the Guardian readers have ensured that socialism will never see the light of day here. The deeper the divisions in society, the more difficult it is to expect an individual to treat another "as his brother".
the rest of the world at the point of a gun to give up slavery too - including the USA.
Actually The Royal Navy blockaded the Brasilian capital Rio de Janeiro to force them to abolish slavery which they managed to do by 1888
What ofcourse the left also failed to mention about slavery is that:
#1, Muslims from the Middle East were far worse than Europeans but they castrated the slaves so there is very little remnants of it.
#2, Brits have been the victims of slavery, Romans, and the Barbary Coast pirates/slavers.
#3, Most Black slaves were not abducted by whites but simply bought from Black slave owners.
#4, The black on black slave trade was operating long before the Brits arrived on the scene and long after the stopped as well.
Have you read "white gold" ryan?
(I've not finished it yet)
"forced the rest of the world at the point of a gun to give up slavery too - including the USA."
Sorry Ryan, but despite what you may have been told, the Brits got their asses handed to them when they pointed guns at the backward colonials across the pond. Twice.
And the fledgeling US Navy, aided by Sweden first blockaded, then took on the Barbary pirates in their home port of Tripoli.
Dave is right in saying "Most Black slaves were not abducted by whites but simply bought from Black slave owners." as Hundreds of African warriors were quite capable of defending themselves from a hndful of seamen with 17th centry weapons (see the movie Zulu Dawn if you don't believe me)
Tax records show that the land my house is on now belonged to a NEGRO slave owner in the 1800's, and this particular plot was once occupied by one of the three bastard children he fathered by his own black slaves.
Blacks owning slaves of their own - when will we hear apologies and calls for reparations from that quarter?
Sorry Ryan, but despite what you may have been told, the Brits got their asses handed to them when they pointed guns at the backward colonials across the pond. Twice
I still think 1812 was best. Napoleon is at the gates of Moscow just like Hitler in 1941...and the US decides to invade Canada and attack Britain when it is fighting a war of survival in Europe.
But the Canadians and British managed to burn down that building on Penn Avenue and occupy that place - Washington DC.
No other military power has done that - and the Americans have been more respectful towards Canada ever since.
British forces march on Washington. At a brief battle on the road, known as the Battle of Bladensburg; the British forces defeat the American forces, who withdraw in disarray, thus opening the road to Washington. The British burn the White House and the Capitol, but the rest of Washington is saved by a strong rain storm. The British, under orders not to hold any territory, withdrew.
Now that was far better handled than Iraq
Re: Slavery in the New World.
A tiny minority of the slave-owning planter class were freedmen of colour. Georgian England was awash with West Indian heirs and heiresses, the products of masters and their African slaves. They were sent to this country to be educated in some of the best schools of the day. Some married into aristocratic families (despite what the Left says race does trump class/income - ditto historical India)and others returned to the Caribbean to run sugar and tobacco plantations.
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