France's finance minister François Baroin: 'It's better to be French than British'

[Nick Armstrong]

You have to love our French cousins!!

Love the Tory riposte: “This is another example of Gallic self-delusion on an epic scale” (per David Ruffley MP)

There's only one way to decide who's right...

FIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[greenilex]

Self-delusion is not confined to one side of the channel. Alors, enfants...allons ensemble, faut vivre comme on peut.

[Biffo]

Someone ought to remind M Baroin who is going to provide nearly 17% of the $200 billion IMF contribution to the Eurozone Stabilisation Fund even though they are not members of the zone. Slimeball politicians and their minions queuing up to insult the UK is doing nothing to solve the crisis.

[ahinton]

This kind of thing reminds me to go and look up the French for playground but, since I'll eventually be living in that country, I realise with no small amount of embarassment that I should already know...

[Biffo]

This kind of thing reminds me to go and look up the French for playground but, since I'll eventually be living in that country, I realise with no small amount of embarassment that I should already know...

I am sure you will enjoy living there; I am going at the end of next month (only for a holiday). Hopefully all this nonsense will have died down though I suspect a lot of it is electioneering so probably not.

[remdataram]

We need to remind François Baroin that the UK (united?) is bigger and better than France in every way.

We have more debt than France
We have a bigger Trade Gap than France
We have more unemployment than France
We have more US nuclear missiles on our soil than France
We have a currency devaluing faster than the Euro
AND we have the entire EEC Regiment out of step with us!

The French always get it wrong, don't they?

[Biffo]

We need to remind François Baroin that the UK (united?) is bigger and better than France in every way.

We have more debt than France
We have a bigger Trade Gap than France
We have more unemployment than France
We have more US nuclear missiles on our soil than France
We have a currency devaluing faster than the Euro
AND we have the entire EEC Regiment out of step with us!

The French always get it wrong, don't they?

I have never underestimated our difficulties but

(1) We have LESS unemployment than France
(2) Our currency is appreciating against the Euro
(3) The number of US missiles here is irrelevant - they are here by invitation, as they are in Germany and several other European countries
(4) The entire EU (it hasn't been the EEC for years) is not in step within anyone and the 'accord' is fraying badly after only a week
(5) Our debt is bad but are banks are nowhere near as badly exposed to Greek debt (and the coming default) as France's which is why their Finance Minister and the head of their Central Bank should have better things to do with their time than chauvinistic posturing

[John Skelton]

We need to remind François Baroin that the UK (united?) is bigger and better than France in every way.

We have more debt than France
We have a bigger Trade Gap than France
We have more unemployment than France
We have more US nuclear missiles on our soil than France
We have a currency devaluing faster than the Euro
AND we have the entire EEC Regiment out of step with us!

The French always get it wrong, don't they?

Well at least we don't have to eat garlic with everything and wear stripy jumpers and pretend to enjoy sex and snails. Yuck. And at least we get to read Jacques Derrida in English translation which the French don't get, they have to read it in French. And at least everyone in our villages isn't related to everyone else or being murdered by the local butcher (I'm not entirely sure about the last bit, having a hazy idea of the British countryside as somewhere where everything is accompanied by Nimrod from Vaughan Williams' Enigma Variations or further North where they all play bagpipes & wear hairy underwear).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-llUIBekq_8

[teamsaint]

two things we do share with our french friends are being run by the banks, and being governed by their cretinous politician puppets(of all political colours).

For most people, there is more that unites us than divides us.

[MrGongGong]

(3) The number of US missiles here is irrelevant - they are here by invitation, as they are in Germany and several other European countries

Like the soviets in Hungary in 1957 ?

there are "invitations" and "INVITATIONS"

[Mr Pee]

I have never underestimated our difficulties but

(1) We have LESS unemployment than France
(2) Our currency is appreciating against the Euro
(3) The number of US missiles here is irrelevant - they are here by invitation, as they are in Germany and several other European countries
(4) The entire EU (it hasn't been the EEC for years) is not in step within anyone and the 'accord' is fraying badly after only a week
(5) Our debt is bad but are banks are nowhere near as badly exposed to Greek debt (and the coming default) as France's which is why their Finance Minister and the head of their Central Bank should have better things to do with their time than chauvinistic posturing

[remdataram]

I have never underestimated our difficulties but

(1) We have LESS unemployment than France
(2) Our currency is appreciating against the Euro
(3) The number of US missiles here is irrelevant - they are here by invitation, as they are in Germany and several other European countries
(4) The entire EU (it hasn't been the EEC for years) is not in step within anyone and the 'accord' is fraying badly after only a week
(5) Our debt is bad but are banks are nowhere near as badly exposed to Greek debt (and the coming default) as France's which is why their Finance Minister and the head of their Central Bank should have better things to do with their time than chauvinistic posturing

(1) Apologies, you're right!
(2) From when to when? A Euro was worth 65p two years ago.
(3) I love your word 'invitation' but I'm alluding to our so-called 'special' relationship with the all-powerful protector across the pond (sic).
(4) Last week 26 States agreed to sign up to euro zone fiscal pact, there was but one veto........
(5) A tough one to resolve, let's say the debt is very similar.

Surely we would do better to stay inside the EU (I used EEC to differentiate from the Euro zone) and be a positive influence, respected by other members, rather than the reluctant member we have positioned ourselves to be. Our attitudes and posturing have enabled France to maintain her 'influence' alongside Germany when we could have taken a third seat at the 'senior table' and helped to guide policy and finance into a better position.

[vinteuil]

This kind of thing reminds me to go and look up the French for playground but, since I'll eventually be living in that country, I realise with no small amount of embarassment that I should already know...

'cour de récréation' - and indeed the more serious French papers have been using just this phrase in lamenting the inapproriate jibes of the egregious Noyer and the inénarrable Baroin...

[ahinton]

Well at least we don't have to eat garlic with everything and wear stripy jumpers and pretend to enjoy sex and snails. Yuck. And at least we get to read Jacques Derrida in English translation which the French don't get, they have to read it in French. And at least everyone in our villages isn't related to everyone else or being murdered by the local butcher (I'm not entirely sure about the last bit, having a hazy idea of the British countryside as somewhere where everything is accompanied by Nimrod from Vaughan Williams' Enigma Variations or further North where they all play bagpipes & wear hairy underwear).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-llUIBekq_8

Love it! Brilliant! That said, I must take issue with the garlic bit, at least to the extent that the food missionary Clarissa Dickson Wright, in recently extolling the virtues of this wonderful stuff, was majoring in on the fact (apparently) that some of the finest of it is grown in the Isle of Wight.

Anyway, M. Baroin's frankly infantile and utterly superfluous remark obliquely reminds me of Sorabji's extension of the well-worn cliché "genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains - provided that on already has genius"; of course it's better to be French than British - provided that you are French...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

ah yeh but how much is Dave paying them to say this stuff? .... every time a frenchie bad mouths Albion his poll ratings go up 5 points ....