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5 Facts You MUST Understand if You Are Ever Going to Lose Your Belly Fat and Get Six Pack Abs

I live near her, and I am not the only neighbour to wish she would just move back to mummy and daddy and leave us alone.

I should have prefaced it all by saying I well know that France, lovely as it is, remains an exceedingly unfavourable environment to: Start a business, run a business, be young, be other than white, seek a permanent job or even dare to want to buy a pint of milk at 3pm on a Sunday. This is largely because of the mega-Statist Gaullist straightjacket that President Bling-Bling is now chipping at a bit which you cite and that I referred to in my title.

Decades have been lost to it – even if it were slightly less onerous France would be far richer and more dynamic than it is today.

You are right that the State is the wrong answer to most questions, except those involving market failure or natural monopoly (which do exist – though the former is too often cited where it isn’t and ignored where it is). You are also right that being a foodie in the UK leads to disappointment and a trip to Carrefour can thus be religious. A better food culture (and it is also true that my old English tutor’s lament that Carrefour sold better books than WH Smith seemed accurate) could lead to a disproportionately great retail experience.

B&B Hotels is a less distorted example – the first time I used one I wondered why there were none here (of course one sadly suspects that an unmanned motel in Blighty would soon become a gangmaster stop off or informal brothel). I then half-remembered an Economist survey that argued the awful business conditions in France could, sometimes, lead to excellence and innovation. Like genius B-movies or Samizdat literature – a hostile environment can force some things to be better. Thus overpriced and suicidally inflexible labour may have led to a lower cost, high tech motel model that needs none of it. If only the Tube upgrades could be as wise.

I was especially interested to be reminded that in an uncompetitive environment incumbent firms can benefit from supernormal profits and monopoly rents. Maybe the fact that business conditions in France have been so awful for so long has meant Carrefour’s excellence has been built on the backs of what was shut out or never could start up in the first place, so like a fat Baron it’s coffers were ready for investment when globalisation became a buzzword.

For me the paradox of France is that it seems like a wonderful place to be a ‘have’ with a permanent job virtually-for-life-if-you-want-it, affordable houses as the planning laws are not based on Swampy and Mr. Nimby, rich culture and quality of life all round.

You could probably apply the same ‘have’ model to companies as well as individuals – national champions like Carrefour, Renault, EDF, Thales, etc. Nice work if you can get it.

However, this holiday from the nasties comes at a terrible price for everyone who cannot be a part of it (its cushy nature means it can’t be for all) and indeed future generations of Frenchmen. Too many have to leave home to be allowed to achieve unencumbered by a bloated, meddling state and a deeply conservative and often xenophobic society. The fact that everyone in the wilds around Calais is trying to get here rather than hang there is instructive.

That said, sitting in a ghetto rabbit hutch here in the Big Smoke, French niceties seem quite seductive. Contrasting the smooth departure from Calais with the 90-minute tailback in Dover, caused by the just four lanes and a couple of gimps in tabards serving a massive carport was shaming enough in itself.

As for why you prefer the likes of Carrefour to Waitrose, I suspect it is more to do with the fact they like to eat nice food in France and we, generally, don’t. They also have more of a food culture which will have some knock on to the quality of the retail experience.

In short, if higher taxes, a larger more overbearing state and more bureaucracy is the answer then you are asking the wrong question….