>this thread appears to be construed as basically a hit on France, which is always a popular escapade for Americans and British related peoples...<

Not really, but your post was certainly a diatribe against the US and the UK, orval.

((I))

Yes I do, Ziana. What you just wrote was complete nonsense, sorry. And yes, I do know the laws and regulations in Germany, and pay my taxes. I have no idea from where you get your "mis-information"?

OK then...you saying that as soon as you lose your job you can have Unemployment benefits to be paid to you?

She went to apply for a loan to buy an appartment (which is btw a third of my house but cost more) anyway...this is what they told her and now she is not buying anything because jobs (that is 'easy' to find) are so not secure etc...for VERY educated people btw.

Polly Magoo, two words: <u>Logan's Run</u>.

Ziana - LOL - I do agree with you when you say &lt;&lt; i thought that Paris need a fece lift...&gt;&gt; but I think the French are getting better at stooping and scooping as you suggest.

robjame,
I am so glad to hear that. So then France will bounce back I am sure...
Europe is old, let's face it. It is started to stink but it'll stay in place. And will be re-born, US will help.

Ira...not so much a diatribe, but a defense against frankly, quite enough negativity against France. I always find it interesting that some people post their diatribes against France in these threads about travel to France. This thread began that way, and is akin to trolling for responses. I follow your gourmand postings with great interest, especially the recent one with Stu Dudley.

My post is not against the U.S., but against the continual rap of the media and ranters that seem to love hitting France...there is absolutely no news regarding France on the media unless it is negative. It has been that way for a long time. The story is old. I feel the need for the empire to strike back at times, and certainly some of us must, considering the preponderance of attacks against France.

Other talk sites require this type of discussion to be in different threads, such as &quot;Everything Else&quot; or &quot;Political
Rants&quot;, or whatever. That would work quite well with me, and therefore allow those that want travel info about a certain country to avoid wading through the rantings of those that have issues.

Thank you for your wonderful reports.

Ziana, I can't discuss this nonsense with you , but it's very obvious your trying to provoke but have no idea of the actual facts. Yes, if you actually learned someting you can &quot;sell&quot;, you have the choice between a number of nice jobs anytime. Yes, if your unemployed and paid uneployment insurance, you actually have a RIGHT to the money. You're mixing up different things here and talking abuot HartzIV. Even then, you make more than somebody who works in a similar job in the US...

This IS nonsense and I don't want to continue...you go try to make more...it is ridiculous. Now you claim you know how to live in US?
My friends are 2 professionals who can't find decent jobs for over 15 years and of course they are not German, they are lowly immigrants.
I am not coming back to respond to you anymore. Just to show you I am not provoking - I am honestly concern.

I just thought of it...if you are so clever why don't you help me with advice off the board? Email me at tykmef at go dot com. Will you? Maybe my friends just mistaken life for 15 years. Who knows? Care to help?

Hi Orval,

I guess we all have days when we reach the end of our rope. :)

Peace.

((I))

&gt;&quot;&quot;lowly immigrants&quot;&quot;
Don't blame others as you do, but try to look at your own deficits. It's FAR easier if you'd just accept the rules. I'm really, really sick of people blaming society for their own misfortunes.

ziana - LOL You sure know how to lighten up a serious thread. However your contribution is still a distant second to your post &lt;&lt;Question for USA foodies&gt;&gt; on the United States forum.

By the way, if you think you're being clever by writing your email address without punctuation, try googling <b>at gmail dot com</b> some time - then reflect upon how web crawlers harvest peoples' addresses.

One problem no one has mentioned yet is the educational system. In Germany only a third of 10-year-olds get accepted into the higher education track. In France 15-year-olds need to pass exams to be allowed into the Lycees which can lead to university or grand ecole. The remaining kids get vocational training, but as logos999 rather callously explains their training is not enough to succeed in the 21st century economic system. Hence the 25-35% of young adults without a job. America, on the other hand, could probably stand to have more vocational training...but it sends a higher percentage of it population to quality secondary and graduate programs than any other country in the world. A better educated workforce combined with a more liquid job marketplace lead directly to our much lower unemployment rate.

Saw an interesting documentary recently. apparently French small businessmen are travelling to South-East England (a short commute via the Tunnel)and even setting up home here, because they find the employment laws so much more flexible, and the bureaucracy less.....and that's news to the English, LOL!!

&gt;rather callously. Wasn't istended to sound that way.
The high dropout rate is a problem but I don't think it's much different from the US. You have such a huge choice of possibilities in Germany, if you want and are willing to learn in later life all this financed by public funds. Yet many &quot;dropouts&quot; seem to accept their situation and refuse to change, Money comes from the state. The German employment market is divided into two, one who is highly flexible with an abundance of choices and jobs everywhere and one for the rest. And no, it's honestly not discrimiating. You need to speak the language, you need to be the best person for the job. You need to &quot;earn what you get&quot;.

to Orval -
The French have, for years and years, lectured the US, the EU and the rest of the world about their superior social and economic model. They never miss a chance to bash the US when we have troubles.
Fact is, sad as it is, many (most?) Americans and lots of Brits and Aussies consider France as something just shy of enemy status.
When the last decent Frenchman you can point to is Lafayette, something has gone seriously downhill for a seriously long time.

Thanks, Preternat, for such a balanced (and literate!) contribution. Has anyone noticed that Lucent, a company hived off from the once-mighty AT&amp;T, is being bought by the French firm Alcatel? Or that Chrysler (along with several British car makers, Rolls Royce among them) is now in the hands of Daimler Benz? Is Airbus Industrie struggling to survive? Could there be some life left in the old European dog yet?

jsmith, as a former party official I understand what we have elections for. But it's our right, and I'd argue our duty, to agitate for change between elections. I don't accept that our participation in the process should be limited to meekly walking into a polling booth then going back to sleep for the next 3-5 years. Most people vote for a party as the &quot;lesser of two evils&quot;, and governments often implement changes by stealth, passing laws that were never mentioned (or if so, dishonestly described) in their election campaign. Which is exactly what the Australian government has done in this case.

Ah GalRepro - dangerous ground - let's see there is Bush, well.. Clinton, err Bush, ahh Regan, ahh yes Carter... or maybe not, then Ford (who) Ford, Nixon mmm, Johnson, Kennedy...
You may want to rethink that argument.

LoveItaly - yes, Australian winemakers can and do add oak chips to their wines. Too many rely on it to give their cheaper products &quot;character&quot;.

But who knows - the French move might be a result of their recruitment of Australian winemakers (after years of pooh-poohing New World products as &quot;industrial wines&quot;).

&quot;It would appear that it has come to terms with the idea that a higher level of unemployment must be tolerated than was tolerated in the past, and that those lucky enough to have a job will finance it.&quot;

I don't think you can tolerate 22% unemployment for extended periods of time without eventually having significant social unrest.

Just to weigh in, my sentimental favorite is orval. When I asked to add a day onto a vacation period a couple of years back so that I could go to France, my principal gave me permission only after making sure that he didn't approve of my choice of travel destinations. Seems the French had the good sense not to want to foment civil war in the middle east, and he didn't like it. When the U.S. Congress puts &quot;liberty fries&quot; on the menu in their cafeteria, we know who the chauvinists are.

And reprobate, really, there's not another nationality on the planet that even you would say those things about.

Seems the French had the good sense not to want to foment civil war in the middle east, and he didn't like it.

Get real. The French were selling weapons to Saddem and getting kick backs from the oil for food program. They wanted badly to keep the old tyrant in power no matter how many tens of thousands of people were raped, murdered or tortured.

NorthShore - you sure that isn't Haliburton you're talking about?

Those rapes and murders sure didn't bother you when Bush I was calling Saddam a &quot;stabilizing force&quot; in the region or when we were giving him weapons. Seems like a decade or two should pass between arming a tyrant and deposing him.

You sure that isn't Haliburton you're talking about?

That is really a crazy qustion. Haliburton is a good company that has ben trashed unfairly by fring group leftists. To compare them to a mass murder is just stupid.

Yeah, we took too long to get wise to Saddem. The world should have taken him out long ago, before he started a war with Iran and used WMD against his own people. I won't mention his crazy sons raping girls at will and torturing sports teams for losing games.

Looks like the government is on a collision course with students and unions who don't want to bargain!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060331/...ZhBHNlYwM3MjE-

&gt;&gt;And reprobate, really, there's not another nationality on the planet that even you would say those things about.&gt;&gt;

Thats absolutely correct.
I know it must be painful for the Francophiles among us to read anything negative about their beloved paradise.
So much sticking the heads in the sand.

France is simply reaping what she has sown, and she's planted some bad seeds.
Look at the parts of the world that were part of France's colonial past or sphere of influence. From Haiti to Algeria to Ivory Coast to Lebanon to Morocco etc etc. Basket cases all.
The English, Danes, Dutch and Portugese were much better at that imperialism thing.

But there is such a lovely cafe scene there.......

<b>Achtung!</b>

Using tinyurl.com benefits the users of the board in two ways:

1. It compresses URLs so they don't force horizontal scrolling.

2. It includes characters that vex the board's link-maker.

http://tinyurl.com/ntxxw

(degas, are you listening?)

Those that want to dispose themselves of the benefits of a country while severely criticizing that same country should be banned from such country.

I believe it was Dante that wrote about hypocrites belonging in purgatory.

The United States financed Saddam Hussein. Period. Draw your own conclusions. It is not the first time that we spent money to affectate a goal. I am not saying that it is a bad policy, but I am saying that the United States citizens who criticize France and say that they profited through Saddam are speaking through their hats and are either ignorant of their own country's absolute monetary hypocrisy or are ignorant of the main source of oil in the middle east for some european countries. I wish those that were really, really out in the right field corner would simply read one or two european newspapers online prior to their completely misinformed rantings.

Also, again, why in the h...ll do you post on this forum if you love France?
Obviously those that continually criticize France dislike France. Ergo, get off the forum you ungrateful hypocrites.

orval, loving or liking someone or someone doesn't mean you have to be blind to reality. I love visiting France and want to see some positve change before it becomes a second-rate country. Anger and name calling doesn't add anything of value.

Cato, I am not calling anyone names, I am labelling them realistically as hypocrites. If you are not a citizen of the country you are criticizing, it is hypocritical to continually be severely criticizing them. And I am doing that for the widespread right wing and media in the United States. To call that name calling counterminds any debate and also ignores basic political biases.

In addition, my rap simple says, &quot;take the political stuff to another site&quot;. We need an everything else or political thread forum. This is a France forum.

Cato, In addition, the thread started with the insidious title of &quot;A Sad Requiem for France&quot;....I do not like someone determining that France is either Sad or in any other way disadvantaged. The U.S. has mucho more problems to deal with than France. Concentrate on that perhaps.

The good thing about your and other comments about France is the intensity by which individuals follow the every footstep of this wonderful and ancient land. It makes my heart beat faster.

How do you explain the massive tourista mania to travel in France if it is fading away?

Methinks that there is a great deal of France bashers on this site. Why on earth would those that dislike France dwell on this site continually bashing her? Obviously they are insecure individuals. Those that do not like something do not vacation there.