As I write this, Longrider Towers is awash with boxes, full of possessions gathered over the past two decades. Slowly, the house is becoming depersonalised in preparation for the new occupant. On Thursday evening we will drive to Portsmouth to catch the evening ferry and make our home across the channel.
This is the culmination of an idea that germinated when travelling through the Larzac in the summer of 1990. An idea that grew into buying a house and spending every available holiday for the past five years working to make it a home. There was a point a couple of years back, one starlit night in the quiet moments as one year died and a new one started, when I made the mental adjustment and there was more home than here. Now, looking at the home we’ve known for twenty-one years, I am ready to go.
When we first thought about living in France, our motivation was the countryside, the climate, the pace of life and the French way of doing things. A love/hate relationship with France became more love than hate. In the meantime, my love for my homeland has descended into contempt. Contempt for a population that is so passive that it fails to hold its political class to account. The French will bring the country to a grinding halt if their politicians upset them. They are not always right, but their willingness to say “non!” has my admiration just as the willingness of the British to accept the erosion of our civil liberties with a shrug earns my utmost derision. I have watched in despair as the righteous have eaten away like a cancer at the things that made this nation so great, that made Britain a wonderful place to live. No longer are we free to speak our minds for fear of the industry so willing and ready to take offence, of the righteous who decide what is “acceptable” or not. Thought crime is becoming a reality in 21st Century Britain.
We live in a country that has reversed the presumption of innocence, that undermines the very principle of justice, where mere suspicion is sufficient justification for the state to seize assets, where law is made on the basis of prejudice and puritan morality rather than reason, evidence or justice, where the citizen is being criminalised and treated as a suspect, where the police are becoming politicised and no longer adopt the Peelian principles, where politicians believe they, not the electorate, are the masters; politicans who treat the electorate with open contempt.
This is a land where youngsters leaving education have A* exam grades yet are barely able to string a sentence together, and mathematical illiterates such as I have to explain to them how to work out percentages. Where our history is being lost or rewritten, a nation that is being taught to be ashamed of its past rather than proud of its heritage.
France is not a common law country, but the French are not followed wherever they go by surveillance cameras, they are not subject to constant demands by the state to poke about in their business. If the state did, they would call a general strike and mean it. The French, when faced with law they do not like, will either get it changed or ignore it. Their national belligerence is something we have forgotten to our cost. I can travel almost all the way to Montpellier and come across only one set of traffic lights and they are switched off. The only speed camera is well signposted and if I take the back road I won’t see one at all. The standard of driving is better, more disciplined and courteous. Oh, and I can sit in my back garden in the summer, in the shade beneath my walnut tree and the loudest thing I will hear is next door’s chickens.
Yes, I’m going for the quality of life. I always was. It’s just a shame, though, that my own country has changed such that I want to leave it behind.
All that said, I’ll be back in December to work…
Bon voyage, and I hope your new life is all you wish it to be… 🙂
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Good luck, Sir. I will be retiring in Serbia for the very same reasons.
Good luck — I believe I have a very long way to go in life before I can do as you.
tbrrobs last blog post..Goonageddon
I have done the same thing, for the same reasons. I am in Spain where we have the right to live as free people without being spied upon every minute of the day. Good Luck to you.
I am in Madeira at the moment. I see CCTV cameras in petrol stations, the odd shopping centre and a few surveillance cameras on the front. The people are relaxed and friendly and absolutely everyone here has a camera – they snap away with utter abandon. The bars are full of friendly people and the beer is reasonably priced (could do with some work on that front though). What a contrast from Britain.
Our country is dead. And though Clarkson may see prople who would like something better as “dimwits” who “launch into a slurred tirade about Gordon Brown and the British weather and how their prawns are the size of Volkswagens. And then they ask if by any chance you’ve got a copy of The Week“, I’m not sure there’s that much to Britain any more apart from the beer.
Over to the rest of you. I’m off for a glass of stout and a lie down.
The ghastly thing is that all too many Britons – especially the younger ones – don’t seem to dislike the creeping Stasi State. Those of us who grew up believing that adherence to liberty was the distinguishing characteristic of this country feel increasingly like antique relics.
Wishing you every happiness in your new home [presume the picture is of the old one?]
Heartened to know your getting what you’ve earned and worked for, hope you enjoy your peace and quiet.
Hopefully you will still blog and inform.
Thanks a lot!
Alan
Thankyou all.
No, that is the new one. It is old, though – indeed, some parts of the building are 500 years old.
I visited a bar in the village this evening. On arrival the bar owner graced my table with delightful tapas (which included advocado, something I have never had before). He then served me delicious pork steak and homemade chips and nearly poisoned me with his homemade 65% spirit concoction. I talked to an alcoholic local who made juvenile sexual gestures and told me repeatedly that drinking beer was somehow bad for my Shropshire-sized stomach. What is there not to like about abroad?
If Britain doesn’t do fun then I may well become Portuguese. Or Danish. You can join me in a Copenhagen bar when you’re ready.
Until Britons treat their politicians to a taste of the machine gun then nothing will change.
It’s sad that it had to come to this.
jameshighams last blog post..[bloody word verification] again
I’m feeling more stressed than sad at the moment..
If you have read the Samizdata thread on emigration no doubt you will feel more despondent than before. There is no place where we can be ourselves. The world has been dragooned into a twisted version of the film Brazil. You mark my words.
As for LR: have a lovely time in the wilds of southern France.
Its funny how you whingers who supposedly ‘love your country’ and moan constantly about high taxes and ID cards, end up leaving for a country with…ahem..even higher taxes and ID cards that have to be shown on demand.
As for this cr** about how fantastic ‘common law’ is. Have you ever wondered why France might be better? Maybe a proper written constitution that protects rights has something to do with it. Have a good time over there and don’t come back. Good luck to the French is all I can say.
Neil, you are at least consistent. Just for once it would be nice to see a comment from you that was not complete ill-informed bollocks.
France does not have a compulsory ID card system. It certainly does not have a national identity register.
As for taxes, while I will be continuing to pay income tax and NI in the UK; on a similar income and paying French taxes, I would pay less because they have a wider range of tax bands. My equivalent of the council tax is significantly less than in the UK. So, wrong on both counts. Well done.
Yes, I am aware that France is not a common law country, I said as much in the article. I have balanced this against the lack of obsessive surveillance and the willingness of the French to tell their politicians who is the boss.
Do try to keep up.
Why? Because I detest your spiteful politics and do not share your petty, childish mean spiritedness? What makes you assume that the French people share your despicable view of the world and humanity? My experience is that they do not.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I will be returning in a regular basis to work for the foreseeable future.
“Random checks of passers-by ID by the French police are quite common, especially in poorer neighborhoods. Even though it is not compulsory de jure to carry an ID, not doing so may lead to a de facto arrest (vérification d’identité) of up to 4 hours according to art. 78-3 of the French Penal Procedure Code (“Code de procédure pénale”)”.
So you have left a country where you don’t need ID for one where your refusal will put you in a cell for four hours.
I look forward to your first post fuming about French jail conditions! Ha ha!
Neil Hardings last blog post..Excellent – Lets Blast Those Libertarian Loons!
As Old Holbon demonstrated last month, that’s not so very different to the UK. I have made no pretence that France is perfect. What I have done is looked at the overall balance, and that balance is that I am more free here than in the UK. In all the years that I have been travelling here, no one other than the douanes when entering from the UK has ever asked to see any form of identification – unlike the UK. No one has taken the slightest bit of notice when I walk about with tripod and camera – unlike the UK. I can go where I want when I want and no one cares and there are no cameras following me about – unlike the UK. When the French parliament proposed a similar ID scheme to the UK one, the French kicked it out as they deemed it a breach of human rights – they were right.
Britain is a surveillance society, France is not.
Your response does not alter my point, though, there is no compulsory ID card scheme in France. You were wrong about that just as you are usually wrong about everything else that you comment upon – with one or two exceptions.
Oh, do try, just for once, to grow the fuck up.
How’s the Evidge issue proceeding in Frogland LR? Have the people spoken yet?
I’ve been out of it, so no idea…
“Oh, do try, just for once, to grow the fuck up.”
Sorry that’s asking a /lot/ too much for a fuckwit like Neil.
Neil just fuck off and die please. No scrap the please just fuck off and die. Quickly. No Slowly. No actually I don’t fucking care, just die. now. You. Cunt.
This of course, I realise. However, I remain an optimist despite the evidence… 😉
Your new home looks idyllic. *raises a glass* May you and Mrs Longrider have many a happy year there. All the very best, xxx
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