Gallic Grit: French collective says “Non!” to rental prices

Mort — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:58:10 +0000

I saw this piece in the Telegraph last week, and have only just had time to comment on it; The long and short of it is that a group of people decided to take up residence in a big old Paris mansion, but without bothering to go through any of the standard stuff which one generally does when one moves into a new home, you know, things like signing a contract or paying rent; to put it another way, they’re squatting.
So what’s newsworthy about that, you ask? squatting is hardly a new concept. Well, fair question, the thing in this case is that the squatters are actually a group of clean cut, well-educated, professionals, who, at least partly, are protesting about the price of rented accommodation in Paris, and, to their credit, they’ve done a fair amount of maintainence and repairs on the property, which has been uninhabited for about 40 years. Even the mansion’s owner, having met the group, was persuaded that they were a decent bunch who weren’t wrecking her property, although legal complications have meant that moves to evict the group are still on-going.

For all the cross channel rivalry that’s existed between Britain and France, for pretty much a millenium now, I do have to say that, as a nation, the French have a great attitude to protesting and protecting their rights, an attitude which sadly the Normans seemed to leave on the continent, or which, at least, has been well and truly beaten out of the British at some point over the last thousand years.
Still, for all I admire the Gallic attitude to asinine laws and regulations, any Brits planning a holiday in France this year would probably be safer to take a conventional approach to arranging their accommodation, and, for that matter, travel arrangements, I’m not sure that even the French would take kindly to one borrowing an unused car or van. No, even in France car hire is probably still the safest bet for getting around, unless you’re planning on your stay being extended, and “at the pleasure” of the French authorities.

Morts Musings » France

Gallic Grit: French collective says “Non!” to rental prices