Life Goes On

Life Goes On

My festive season here was quiet but enjoyable. I spent Christmas day with friends at their house and had friends here with me on Boxing day, eating drinking and chatting. I did nothing on new year’s eve but went to more friends on new year’s day. I find that staying up past mydnight to welcome in the new ytear has little appeal for me now. The one (relatively) recent year when I really took an interest was in 2000 when TV followed the arrival of the new century throughout the world. The village mayor has an aperitif gathering organised for next Friday at which he will summarise what the village council has been doing during the last year and what it proposes to do in the forthcoming year (and that had better include pruning the trees in front of my house, or else!) and there will be the annual old fogies’ lunch at the end of the week after. That will be it as far as festivities go until Easter.

The weather has been milder than usual and we are having a quite long spell of daytime sunshine and afternoon temperatures in the mid-teens, which has been good for playing boules. This spell was preceded by very heavy rain resulting in the Ouvèze stretching fully across the river bed, some 50 yards, in front of my house and the road in front becomig a shallow stream. There was no flooding locally though. Every year since I have been here we have had one day of snow but not this year sio far. Despite the relatively warm spell plants show little sign of precocius growth. Maybe more will survive the winter though than is usually the case.

In the meantime I have been busy trying to provide the French authorities with all the documents they need for a carte de séjour and French nationality. The latter is now on hold, unless I hear otherwise, until 2021 but I shall need a carte de séjour a lot sooner. It would help if the various offices involved could agree amongst themselves as to exactly what is needed.

One of my fears for Britain post-Brexit is the plight of the underpaid, those on minimum wages or, Heaven help them, no-hours contracts. The latter should clearly be illegal, as they are in the rest of Europe. These fears, for the people, were only reinforced by watching the film I, Daniel Blake.There are apparently around three million people earning the minium wgae who can have no hope of providing for their old age and will therefore be destitute when that time arrives. What then? It looks to me like a future without the empire but with Dickens. Moreover, it is actually bad economically for Britain. Companies experiencing increased demand will simply add low-cost labour. The Scandibavian countries have amply demonstrated that high wages and social charges force companies to seek means of increasing productivity by investing in automation, plant or new techniques. That gives them a medium to long-term competitive advantage. Productivity increases in the UK have remained at zero for the past ten years (OECD figues) and look likely to stay that way. That is a grim outlook for the UK and a lot of its people, apart of course from the already rich.