Monday, April 18, 2005

Disenfranchised

I've just taken the ALL NEW! Political Survey which tells me where I stand in relation to the "rest" of the British population in terms of my political opinions. Depressingly, over 90% of Brits seem to be to my right. The results are probably skewed because not having lived in GB for many, many years, I don't really care about British taxes or the British rail system because they don't have any direct impact on my life. Stuart Mudie is in the same situation as me and has a post on this at Blethers.com. We're not qualified to vote in Britain because we haven't lived there for yonks and we can't vote here because we're not French citizens:

"In my case, I can vote in certain local elections in France (and was very excited to receive my first French polling card) but I cannot decide, for instance, whether or not Nicolas Sarkozy will be the next Président de la République."

Being able to vote in French elections is the only reason I would ever apply for French citizenship: I just can't see any other valid reason. It's not as if it would make me feel any more French or look like a born-and-bred Bordelaise or instantly lose my Scottish accent. Well, okay, I suppose it might be useful to have two passports just in case I mislaid one of them, or if I happened to be in a plane that was hijacked and the hijackers announced "Right, we're going to kill all the British passengers" at which point I would whip out my French passport and speak without a trace of an accent à la wide-mouthed frog. Anyway, here for what it's worth is what my political profile would be if I lived in Britain and if I was allowed to vote there:
Toulouse

4 comments:

Lesley said...

Oops. This will probably look a bit better when it moves down the page.

Anonymous said...

Well, you have 'taken' the ALL New etc, but you don't say what questions were in the survey and what you answered .... by your position on the map we must guess ....perhaps I would be on your right too?
I applied for French nationality without much enthousiasm about thirty years ago (just after marrying THE best Bordelais in Bordeaux)! because I knew I wouldn't lose my British passport. It was a long and complicated process (or so I thought at the time), lots of red tape and women with faces like fiddles). At first 'I thought why did I bother'? but year by year I found having a French identity card made various things easier, getting jobs seemed less complicated.
The final satisfaction came when Chirac was against the war in Iraq ... I felt rather more French than British, absurd but so it was!
Blair said even if millions marched he still thought 'we' should go to war ....

Guy Jean said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Guy Jean said...

Lesley, in the interests of collegiality, etc., here's mine:
http://marcoblogstudent.blogspot.com/2005/04/my-political-profile.html

Confinement

Being confined indoors most of the day, just the four of us, is reminding me of the days when my children were wee and most of our weekends ...