My wife works with a lady whose other half recently made a trip to France. Oh all right, he went on a “booze-crooze”. Anyway, this trip had such an impact on him that he was driven to write to the editor of the Observer.
I include the letter below. For obvious reasons I have not included any names or addresses…..
Dear Editor,
This weekend (10-11 Dec) I went to France on a long-planned “booze cruise”. With David Cameron’s veto freshly ringing in my ears I was wondering how bad it would be. Would my Euros buy me anything?
I have to say I was stunned at how badly the French are doing. Walking through the main shopping centre of historic Bayeux (a city I would imagine to be roughly comparable to Winchester), I was totally unable to find a single charity shop. Nor was I able to spot any shops with “50% off everything” signs in their windows; in fact there were virtually no “soldes” signs there at all.
And guess what?, it got worse. Walking through the city centre, I couldn’t get a McDonald, a Burger King, a KFC, a Pizza Hut, a Costa, a Starbuck, a Wetherspoon – nothing! How do these French people survive without modern-day essentials such as these – essentials that every high street in the UK can proudly offer? As far as well-known chain stores were concerned, all I could find was modest-sized shops, not the vast malls or factory outlets required as evidence of a thriving economy. For the most part the shops were independent local retailers selling quality goods at roughly UK prices. In fact I’d go further and say “better quality goods”. Not at all the symbols of the successful economy that we are used to seeing in the UK. The experience was made worse because it was dreadful having to jostle through the crowds of pathetically non-obese stylishly-dressed shoppers, some of whom would even stop in the street and talk to each other.
As if I wasn’t angry enough already at the sorry state of the poor French people, I couldn’t even find any fast food cartons littering the street for me to kick to help me get it out of my system. I have to hold my hands up and admit that I took advantage of their weakness and bought the cheap high quality booze, then just gave up on them as a hopeless case and came back to good old Blighty.
No doubt about it, from what I saw in Bayeux, the Eurozone is in crisis. I now realise that David Cameron and George Osborne have been right all along, we mustn’t allow ourselves to end up like them.
WrAnTz 