Christmas Trade

Christmas

And so it's winter. We had some token snow three weeks ago but only an inch at most overnight and it disappeared promptly the following morning. It has been visible on the top of Mont Ventoux for over a month now and on the slopes of the surrounding hills down to about 1000ft.

I find it surprising how easily what has already become routine at this time of the year clicks in. The Christmas carols that a crowd of us have sung for the last two years have been decided for this year and rehearsals are under way. As an attempt to expand the numbers involved one way or another, I made contact with the school and some of the children may participate; for the moment we have to wait and see, participation being entirely voluntary, as it should be.

Arrangements are being made for Christmas day itself. I shall go to friends Steve and Jo, along with Liz, Neville, Jill, Robin and two Australian friends of Steve and Jo who have turned up in this hemisphere unexpectedly. We may be joined by my son, Carl. The whole assembly will come to me on Boxing day, so we'll have two days of no doubt over-eating, over-drinking and chat. I'm sure it will be a very pleasant way to pass the holiday.

The winter lights are up in the village, all blue and white to make a Chelsea supporter feel at home, and there is tinsel on the door of the Bar du Pont. The weather for the past 10 days has been sunny, and warm, during the day but very cold at night. All as usual, all as it should be.

Protectionism In France

I've commented before that the Common Market is just a pipe dream. What now occurs to me is that protectionism may be rife in the internal French economy as well as evident in its international stance, and may indeed be a factor that is seriously slowing any French economic recovery. The only outlet for newspapers in the village, the Bar du Pont, apparently has to use the distributor it does. That indicates a cartel, which would be illegal in England but apparently not in France. Moreover, the distributor not the retail outlet decides how many copies of newspapers are supplied. This minimises wastage but also militates against expansion. Speculative extra copies are not on the agenda.

I'm now wondering if some similar mechanism applies more generally. I've noticed that chain shops, when they gave some popular item that sells out quickly, never know if or when they will get resupplied. Thus near-certain sales are curtailed. I have put this down to the generally dozy approach to marketing in this part of Provence but it may be something else. The other day I went to the local nursery to get some more blue pansies for the pots in front of my house. The owner didn't have any but said he was expecting a delivery at the end of the week. Of blue pansies, or any pansies? He didn't know. In fact he didn't know at all what would be delivered. But he had a secured sale if he got some blue pansies so why not order some from elsewhere? It seems he couldn't, and this was not a chain outlet but a family business so no higher up was telling him what he could do. If what I suspect is true, then the French economy is in even more trouble than I thought.

The UK Civil Service

Friend Steve read an article stating that there was growing suspicion that numerous ex-pats were claiming pensions and other benefits for UK nationals who had died abroad. Apparently, UK and French authorities do not communicate on births and deaths. A proposal is to write to ex-pats asking them to declare if they are still alive. Now, granted this is certainly more intelligent than writing to ask them if they are dead (which I actually don't believe is beyond our Civil Service) but not much more. If any ex-pat is committing fraud by receiving money for someone who has died, they will presumably cheerfully confirm that that person is still alive.

I don't know whether it was part of this same scenario but my heating allowance this year was cut by half because, the Pensions' Team assured me, they had evidence that another claimant was living in my house last September. My house is not that large and I generally know who is living in it so I wrote back to say that they had been misinformed. If another claimant was claiming to have been living in my house at that time, then the Pensions' Team had an attempted fraud on their hands and they should investigate it. I did add that a much more likely explanation was a simple cock-up by someone in their team. I await their reply.