Expat Brits to cash in on French recession-busting initiatives

Esplanade minis
Originally uploaded by Tampen

Exporting a British car to France, administrative hassles aside, is not an idea that fills me with much excitement. If I told you that I have trodden this fairly expensive path, and ended up standing on the hard shoulder of an Italian motorway, with a fat leathery man in a boiler suit repeating 'kaputti, kaputti', as white smoke poured out of the exhaust of my ageing Ford Fiesta, then you're starting to understand where I'm coming from. Way back then, in 2004, I had to cough up about £250 to have the car taken to the 'demolizione'. The French call it 'la casse'.

In these times of economic hardship, the Europeans (championed by the Germans I believe) are catching on to the idea that charging someone to trash their car and then leaving them to catch the bus home is not a particularly effective way to get them spending again. OK, let's be absolutely accurate - get them borrowing again, which is, it seems, the only way out of the mire. Through debt. But wasn't that how we got into the mess in the first place? Anyway, that's another tale for a rainy day.

So welcome to the 'Prime à la casse' - where if your car is over 10 years old, you get a cool thousand euros off the purchase of a new one, providing the new one is ecologically sound. So if you have exported a British car, now have French plates, and fancy a new set of wheels, it would appear that the time is nigh for a bargain.

Then again, with the exchange rate being what it is, isn't it cheaper to use your euros to buy another British car? Has anyone dared to take the plunge à la casse? The conditions are worth a read if you do: http://www.service-public.fr/actualites/001093.html

TF1 grovels to miffed Sarkozy

SARKOZY TELE
Originally uploaded by Group: dvnewslive.com

With France's shock unemployment figures for January, the not very well renowned patience of the Gallic electorate with their president may be on increasingly rocky ground. So understandably, as his poll rating drops, the equally impatient Mr Sarkozy is particularly averse to the idea of being messed about on prime time TV.

So on the 18th of February he took a deep breath and spoke passionately for fifteen minutes to the rolling cameras of TF1, attempting to put out the smouldering fires that threaten to engulf his presidency. It was a strong, determined, if a little ratty Mr Sarkozy who was if anything pulling out all the stops to get his message across. So when a TF1 technician interrupted him after about fourteen and a half minutes to explain (with one eye on the nearest and best exit most probably) that someone upstairs had forgotten to press the 'record' button, Mr S was not best pleased.

To add insult to injury, it transpired later that the sound guys had realised the error after 30 seconds, and telephoned down urgently to the studio to pass on the bad news to his advisors - none of which could pluck up the courage to do the dreaded deed. You can imagine that the muttered comments that passed between them were the French version of 'What? Me? No way, you're havin a laugh, mate, you do it! Me? Get outta town etc'.

Grovel time for the top man at TF1, who had to call and apologize, while Sarkozy sharpened his knife back at the Elysée, asking himself 'Is this another forced redundancy at TF1 I see before me?'

Better not, who needs one more face in the dole queue?

Sarko distances himself from Anglo-Saxon troublemakers

So, Sarko's big night on national television, explaining France's way out of its woes, seems to have gone down like the old lead balloon as seething discontent stirs around a country fed up with the empty promises of politicians. Apart from mentioning removing a tax for companies in a couple of years time and meeting with the 'social partners' in mid-February, whoever they might be, Mr Sarkozy's talk- confidently, pop-up every now and then in troublespots, and do next to nothing strategy appears to be exasperating those who had hoped for more.

The trouble with talking too much is journalists have that annoying tendency to listen and record your every word - so red-faces all round if his cronies were watching the lunchtime news today - showing a recent clip of Mr Sarkozy (pre-crisis) saying how he aimed to follow the excellent Anglo-Saxon economic model, followed by a more up to date exert with him saying something along the lines of 'God forbid we ever end up like that lot.'

The Swiss I teach have one word for their French cousins 'Eh, ben, they are, how you say, ungouvernable.'