French realities
From Mr Jonathan Fenby Sir: As somebody who prefers the quality of life (including married life) in France to that in this country, I only wish that Michael Gove's argument ('Why chauvinism works for the French', 11 August) made sense. But he ignores some salient facts in his touching hymn to Gallic resis tance, economic liberalisation and the resulting protection of the male breadwinner working in suitably virile industrial jobs supporting his united family as the sun sets over the pastis-drenched landscape.
A combination of an international boom and government make-work schemes, including the 35-hour week, has, indeed, enabled the creation of a million new jobs since 1997. But even after that the unemployment rate is still 8.8 per cent compared with 5.6 per cent in Britain and 4 per cent in the United States. France has shed two million factory jobs in the last quarter of a century. and added 1.3 million posts in those service industries that Mr Gave sneers at. As for job stability making French men more attractive partners than their British counterparts, employers across the Channel use short-term contracts so much that a new term has entered the language: les emplois precaires.
France's divorce rate may have fallen, but the main reason has nothing to do with the preservation of the paterfamilias. It is simply the result of a mushrooming of the number of single parents and of couples living together without bothering to get married because of their entitlement to rights under the system of concubinage.
Perhaps Mr Gove should spend some time in the suburban housing estates of Paris. or in old industrial cities like Saint Etienne or Roubaix, where factories have been shut on a massive scale and social tension regularly erupts into violence. Or he might consider how to reconcile his admiration for French chauvinism with the Jospin government's pursuit of gender parity in politics.
If there's one breed more suspect than dyed-in-the-wool Francophobes, it must be Eurosceptics thrashing around for another stick with which to beat Tony Blair and anybody suspected of not espousing primitive nationalism.
Jonathan Fenby
London WC1
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