eurealist.co.uk

I do not move in exalted circles, most of my time is spent either in my kitchen at the computer or visiting local shops or travelling from farm to farm collecting the produce for my menu. And this last week trying unsuccessfully to shoot the few rabbits that are making alarming inroads into the lettuce, beetroot, rocket, leeks and beans my wife is growing for the kitchen, which is why I am writing this at the crack of dawn this morning.

So it is a bit of a shock this morning to read in the Booker column that about half of some very good French restaurateurs, all within an hour of the Mediterranean. Have become “Tired of paying 40-50 per cent of employees’ gross earnings in tax to the state, fed up with the 35-hour week, sickened by the eager willingness of employees to seek rewarding benefits like sick pay, angered at having to give staff up to six weeks holiday and 20 public holidays a year on full pay, five of the chef patrons had decided enough was enough.”
Three Michelin-starred owners had given up that coveted status, sacked all their staff and were now cooking themselves, serving only limited choice menus, with wives or family running the “front of house”.

A fourth patron had stopped serving lunches except on Sunday. A fifth had sacked everyone except his young chef and, doing everything else with his wife, was now content to accept fewer bookings.

And the reporter of all this culinary mayhem is none other than the mild mannered food and travel critic, Richard Binns who apart from writing the odd article for the Sundays also produces useful little gastronomic guides to rural France and Britain. I first met Richard several years ago when he visited Ludlow on a fact finding mission in preparation for an article on what was soon to become the major foodie town outside of London.

For this mild mannered English gent to say “If Chirac thinks he can devise a successful strategy based on the French social model,” “he is living in cloud-cuckoo land.” Is something of a shock to the system, this is no media hack looking for today’s headline but a serious travel writer who abhors the headline grabbing antics of some food writers I won’t mention.

But his observations are very true, and it is not just in France where this is happening here. On the borders of Wales we are already winding down our operation, and simply do not open unless we have bookings. By this time next year we hope to have completed our plans, to reduce our takings and our overheads and our exposure to the mores of the government’s apparatchiks to impose ever increasing social burdens on business. Small business people all over the country are consciously making the decision to down size rather than face the impossible task of meeting the regulations, this is not because we want to turn away trade or do not think employees deserve a decent wage or holidays or sick pay, but that the blanket rules take no account of the facts. We have sat down and worked out that we would actually be a lot better off if we did not have any staff and brought our takings down below the Vat rate. So in the end instead of razing the standards of living throughout the country with its new social rules on business, the EU and government are going to be increasing the unemployment rate and decreasing its tax take.

Was it not old Labour who proudly announced that they were going to squeeze the rich until the pips squeak, but in the event found the rich simply were not prepared to be squeezed, and took themselves and their taxes out of the country. By the same token it is all very well for the EU left wing social policy pushers to insist that we follow their road to the promised land of milk and honey for all, but to paraphrases Mr Binns they are living in cloud-cuckoo land.