Vive la difference
Sir: Your correspondent Christian Hurel's unconditional Anglophilia (Letters, 4 July) seems in fact to be, in a characteristically haughty Gallic manner, rather conditional. I, for one, detect no particular bias against France and the French in the newspapers I see. Nevertheless, M. Hurel's examples of French superiority are unconvincing. As for higher British inflation, what about French tax rates? The British motor industry made its mistakes in decades past, all under vari- ous forms of state control, the price of which is its predominantly foreign owner- ship today, but it has attracted more inward investment than any other European coun- try, with exports rising year after year.
France's 186 mph TGV trains are not the fastest in service — they are matched by both Spain and Japan. Britain's APT tilting train programme was dropped in favour of the much better value HST (the familiar Intercity 125), which has proved to be one of the most successful and efficient rail designs of all time. Unlike the TGV, it doesn't need expensive and destructive new track-building and it remains the world's fastest diesel train. While French taxpayers were pouring subsidy into selective TGV building in the early Nineties, HSTs were making Intercity profitable while running more services at over 100 mph than any other European railway.
As for the British monarchy spawning more scandals than Mitterrand's mistress — well, perhaps the British public just has a different moral standard from the French. And the whole country going on strike because the French health service develops a waiting list — that doesn't sound like a very civilised or sophisticated response, even it it does seem characteristically French (militant truck-drivers, farmers, air- line pilots spring to mind). But just a moment . . . didn't that used to be called the 'British disease'? Well, nobody has a monopoly on bad (or good) ideas. So please, M. Hurel, stop whining.
Alexander Popple
12 Mitchell Close, The Lizard, Helston, Cornwall
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