Living in Brittany

Sarkozy sees himself as a modern Napoleon and is in a position to redraw the internal map of France. At present there are 22 governing regions and it is proposed to be reduced to 15 for Brittany it would mean a fifth department with Nantes being re-united to the rest of Brittany. It was Vichy France which separated it in 1941, there could be a competition for the regional capital Rennes or Nantes. Rennes is more central but Nantes is bigger. Normandy is proposed to be united for the first time since John II lost a chunk of it 800 years ago and its also proposed that Paris copies London GLC and represents most of the inhabitants ( including the "revolting" banlieues) instead just the bourgeois centre. There would be a few losers Picardy and Poitou-Charente which by co-incidence is the fiefdom of Segolene Royal who was the presidential rival candidate in the last election. Those regional groups would be merged and disappear in the new regional set up as proposed by the committee of Edouard Balladur. The Bretons are happy but no doubt there will be demonstrations and protests against the reforms
Bas passed his driving test this week and now drives around with an "A" on the back of the car because he did the accompanied approach he only has it for 2 years if you do purely lessons and pass you have the "A" for 3 years as statistically the accompanied drivers have less accidents and their insurrances is marginally cheaper

We had a cold spell last week and on two consecutive days had snow but it disappeared late afternoon but it made driving very tricky for the school run at 7 in the morning, I had to resort to loading the Boxer with a pile of stones to give it better traction on the roads. The first day (Monday ) the buses were on strike so I had to drive into Lannion I think the council workers were also on strike as the roads weren't treated that day but the next day they found their salt stocks and all the main roads were very drivable. The minor roads stayed treacherous until the snow melted.
Max my eldest son has at last received a letter of confirmation of French nationality, its only taken 3 years and they seem to ask for the same documents three times but I guess it keeps the bureaucrats in a job. You need to be French national if you want to work in the civil service which is probably half the jobs in France, but at least there will be less jobs lost in the looming recession.There is a big motor construction sector but they have been lobed a few billion to tide them over and Sarkozy is taking of abolishing the professional tax in 2010 ( an illogical tax on business ) which is causing local government to worry over future revenue as they are the main benefice of the tax.I guess they will have to radically increase the "taxe foncier" or " taxe d'habitation"
I found a good source of spare parts for my Peugeot classic last week a mechanic in the garage found a local 305 being scrapped so we stripped off the parts I needed for nothing and I just gave him some cash for helping me.The garage had quoted 240€ for just one of the items!
My brother who is a wizz in marketing has been on at me to join "twitters.com" its an insane chat site where you can't post more than 140 syllables but allegedly all the "bright things/people" use it.I manage a couple of posting but don't really understand it and then you get followers, who log on to your 140 utterance,bizarre the death of intellectualism.

Yesterday was "jeudi noir" as most of France was on strike and the boys didn't go to school. Even Lannion had a demonstration of 5000 in the afternoon, I was asking people in the bar why there were strikes and demonstrations and nobody had a sensible suggestion. So half the population doesn't like Sarkozy but the other half does and helping out the banking sector isn't popular but letting it collapse would be worse, but what do I know.
A good or bad example of French industry was last week I had to order a small item for the pool, the pipework is by a British company called Certikin and I was told to get in touch with the Perpignan office as I lived in France.Over the next couple of days several telephone calls and emails produced zero response , they weren't interested so I asked for a English company to deal with,one telephone call and the product is in the post. OK its not a lot of money but its an attitude problem they need to learn to love their clients.
The pounds continuing decline although making life more expensive if you are sterling dependant makes the UK much more attractive for shopping so I'll have to make a list a do a shop in the spring.My middle son bought a laptop from PC World about 150€ cheaper than he would have paid here and it also keeps him off my PC as well.
Its our annual band dinner on Sunday I think its the 30€ menu + wine all paid for by the municipality of Lannion, not sure if they are getting good value.