IN A HANDBASKET BUILT FOR TWO (via Tom Morin):

France & Britain: we are both going to hell in a handbasket - just in different ways (Anthony Daniels, Social Affairs Unit)

If France is in some ways better-placed than Britain, it has nothing to do with its "social" model; it is because it has better preserved, or perhaps destroyed less, of its cultural capital, without having been completely wise or far-seeing. It is certainly not a country to imitate, except in its relative (but only relative) educational conservatism.

Britain and France are very similar in their inability to tackle the problems that confront them. The French cannot tackle the rigidity of their labour market, that makes the creation of new jobs or new enterprises so difficult, because no politician has the guts to do it; the British cannot tackle their abysmally low educational and cultural standards, which are obvious even on landing at a British airport, because no politician has the guts to do it. In the abstract, France's problems are the easier to solve, though in practice everyone in France is so ready to struggle, even violently, for the preservation of his own little privileges and protections (while pretending to do so for the good of humanity – the French are just as hypocritical as the British, but their hypocrisy attaches to different things), that politicians prefer the tried and trusted policy of Apres moi le deluge.

Both countries are sleepwalking to insignificance and international oblivion. We are united by our decadence.

What use is the Anglo-American model if you can't derive it from your own culture anymore?

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2006 9:29 AM