Why France is better than Britain - quotes from the London Telegraph..I could have told you that!

The CEO of one of Britain’s largest retail corporations reckons France is "downbeat and hopeless"but At least it's not packed with Poundlands (99 cent stores) , kebab shops and staggering drunks.

Villages:
 It’s been said before, but can stand repetition: French villages retain vigor. They remain complete unto themselves as many rural English settlements no longer do. They will have a grocer’s, a butcher’s, a baker’s and, all being well, a bar-tabac with lottery tickets, old fellows playing cards and pictures of the village football team when they all had moustaches, c. 1978. They will have a boules pitch, associations, a weekly market, a carnival and an annual church trip to Lourdes. There are reasons for this vibrancy. One is that all 36,532 French communes run their own affairs, with a mayor and council. They are not offshoots of some bigger municipal entity. Village stuff is largely run in and by the village. Another is that, to a remarkable degree, French farming has remained small scale, thus ensuring proper country life which villages serve. (“Euro-agri-subsidies,” I hear you snort. So British farmers never received subsidies?) And a third is that the average French person retains ties to the countryside. Though they've lived in the city for generations, they reckon they remain of peasant stock. And they’ll likely return to the village in autumn for the annual pig-killing. 

Restaurants:
 It is now usual to say that French catering is terrible, British far better. It is also nonsense. Naturally one may eat satisfactorily in Britain – if one pays the price, or is prepared for corporate fare and a well-trained welcome. But British quality cooking is all top-downwards, spreading to the populace from expensive restaurants and mouthy chefs. The food chain starts in Waitrose. In France, the food chain starts on land, on sea and with animals, in all their gory detail. There’s the pig-killing and mushroom-hunting, and everyone’s an expert and may discuss the nuances of a coq-au-vin until you pass out. But it is this culture which informs chefs and which they must satisfy. Nowhere else do you eat so well up and down the scale because nowhere else has such unbroken links with a culinary heritage. And where in Britain are the family restaurants that jostle on every city, town and village street in France?

 Service:
 France has career waiters – serious chaps in serious aprons and ties who can correctly deliver 12 different drinks on one tray to one table, even though they were ordered in English. Britain has youngsters filling in time between television reality shows, who can’t spell cappuccino.