Chirac Defiant on Bastille Day

A lame duck president, running a country that is stuck in neutral, Chirac is not in an enviable position. He has however lost none of his theatrical defiance.

President Jacques Chirac celebrated Bastille Day yesterday by insisting that France had no need to "envy or copy" Britain. Whether the point of comparison was food, health, education or science, France was in far better shape than its old rival, he said.

It all depends on what shape you prefer of course. Cuisine is a silly point of comparison for a politician to make, it’s a cultural issue that bears no relation to government policy. It also ignores in this case they fact that Brits have a better range of options than virtually anyone else when it comes to eating out. I’m no expert on French education but everything I read leads me to believe that there is as much wrong in France as there is in Britain. Likewise the health service.

I do not believe that the British social model is a model that we should copy or envy.

Unlike of course Sarkozy, who is more likely to be President than you are in 2008.

Next in Mr Chirac's litany of praise came his country's birth rate, the highest in Europe with Ireland's, and its status as the world's "second agricultural power".

Has Mr Chirac checked to see who is having all those babies? It wouldn’t be the immigrants in the ghettos would it? Only the European social model excludes most of them from ever finding a job. As for being an agricultural power, I take it he no longer believes that waiters in London and factory workers in Birmingham no longer have to support the output of this agricultural super power?