We went, we saw, we came back glad we don’t live there.

The last couple of days of our UK visit were spent in Glasgow, in the worst possible weather – cold, snow, sleet and wind. Pretty much the reason why we left Edinburgh many years ago. Edinburgh has the redeeming feature of being very beautiful, whereas Glasgow is less so. It has some nice parts dotted around but as a whole I can’t say its somewhere I’d like to live.

It was nice for the girls to see a ‘real’ city though – seeing them try to get on and off an escalator without falling over was entertaining as well.

Main differences we noticed between the UK and France? The UK seems much richer now than I remember it. Almost everyone seems to drive flashy cars, and wear more expensive clothes than we do! Of course, much of the ‘wealth’ is supported by loans and credit cards, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Education and health still seem to occupy the nation and their newspapers – mostly with how gazillions of pounds have been spent on both, and both are still abysmal. Apparently giving doctors great big heaps of cash wasn’t the answer after all. I wonder if they’ll ask for it back? The education system seems to be slipping ever further behind although I understand it is now impossible to leave school without a qualification because that might demotivate somebody.

I heard many tales of the demands made on schools to report ever improving results while the actual quality of education gets ever worse. Schools are better equipped than ever, with computers and so on, while there is still nothing like performance pay for teachers. As example, there is no incentive for them to set homework for their pupils, because they will need to mark it at home in their ‘own time’ – so why would they bother? Most apparently don’t.

One more amusing thing I was told but I can’t definitely confirm – students learning a foreign language at school are no longer to be given an oral part of the examination because it is too stressful for them. Hmm, well that doesn’t really sound like a good idea.

I’m aware of the enormous expense of the health system in France, but at least spending loads of money and getting good results is better than spending loads of money and then having to fly doctors in from Poland because local doctors have ‘opted-out’ of working evenings and weekends.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming everything in France is great and everything in the UK is awful. I’m very aware, for example, of the enormous levels of bureaucracy in France, and the resistance to change, and the power of the unions – and the problems that those issues cause. What we need is a mix of the best of each country…why should that be so hard to achieve I wonder?

Anyway that’s more than enough politics. Do you take drugs?

That was what my daughter was asked by police in Glasgow when she went off shopping. No she doesn’t, but apparently she was walking in an erratic manner – no surprise there then. They then refused to believe she was 14 years old and asked to see her papers. I didn’t know they asked that in the UK.

Anyway she told them ‘Mum might have my passport’, they asked her again if she took drugs, then finally convinced they let her carry on her way.

Now we don’t get that kind of excitement in our local French village.