You may have gathered that France is going through a difficult patch right now. To the dogs, even. Well don’t believe it – it’s rubbish.
At first glance the doom-mongers’ case looks persuasive. But let’s take a closer look at their arguments. France lost the Olympics, yes. But could this just have been because the Comité national olympique didn’t play by the corrupt rules of the game? In a referendum, the French threw the European Constitution out of their pram, granted. But then far more of the Dutch did exactly the same thing three days later – and we all know what would have happened if the Brits had got their chance. The riots in the housing projects, you say. What, those riots in which exactly one person got injured? And as for the ransacking of the Sorbonne by revolutionary students, try looking at it through the other end of the telescope: you will see a lot of young people who still believe in politics. Naive maybe – but nice, surely. The cherry on the gateau of Gallic malaise is supposedly the “Clearstream affair”, a Franco-French political scandal of such baroque complexity that you probably haven’t heard of it. But then this French Watergate is so soporifically dull that most French people have chosen not to hear of it either. Scandale? Plus ça change.
The horrible truth is that France is a great place to be today, as it always was. There are far too many reasons to list, but I’ll have a quick stab.
- Starbucks Coffee. French cafés, so ineffably civilised compared to English pubs, are getting better. And all it took was a little gentle encouragement from Seattle’s evil empire.
- Haussmann – Saint-Lazare station on Line E of the Paris RER. New, central, effortlessly stylish, absurdly spacious – and the train pulling up to the platform will get you to Gare du Nord ten minutes before your Starbucks coffee is cold.
- The United Nations Human Development Report 2005. In which is debunked the myth of a poverty-stricken French underclass. British poverty rate: 17%. Canadian poverty rate: 15.9%. French poverty rate: 6.5%.
- The shopping mall at Cergy Saint-Christophe. In which is debunked the myth of French racial segregation. Just go and look. You will see every which colour of skin, including white. Only blue and green are under-represented.
- The Eiffel Tower. So iconic, so monumentally pointless. No it’s not boring. Call me impressionable but I still gasp, just slightly, every time I see it up close. A sort of Mecca for atheists – and that’s something that could only ever be in France.
So resist the temptation to be smug. And if a French person ever tells you that it’s all correct, what you saw on CNN, pay no attention. They’re imagining it.
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