Bretons turn on Britons
'Extremists' torch restaurateurs' car
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If Jamie Oliver or Rick Stein were thinking of exporting their talents to Brittany, they might want to rethink their culinary imperialism plan.
According to the Telegraph, it's not just the Cornish who have taken exception to "incomers" forcing up house prices and alienating the locals - Breton "extremists" have a similarly incendiary attitude to unwelcome outsiders, as Linsey Widd and hubby Darren can attest.
The Widds apparently spent three months with the 26th Artillery Regiment in Iraq* before relocating to the village of Callac in western Brittany to open a restaurant. Unfortunately, they received a rather warmer welcome than they were expecting when they were "woken in the night by smoke and fumes and found their car on fire in front of the restaurant".
Fire services attended the scene, but were too late to prevent the vehicle rolling down the hill into another car, which duly exploded. The blaze had been started using a rag stuffed into the car's fuel cap, and "if confirmed as an attack by Breton extremists...would be the third in north-western Brittany in 10 days".
Linsey Widd, 24, from Scarborough, said: "What shocked us was that there was no warning. We love it here. Callac is a quiet village with quite a large population of English. We bought a property that was previously a TV repair shop and turned it into a restaurant.
"We called it Le Rendezvous and took care to write all the signs in French. We had the usual bureaucratic problems setting up the business when we first came just over a year ago but the local people were very friendly. We have French and English customers coming into the restaurant to eat and drink."
Local property prices have rocketed by 300 per cent since Brits began their invasion, the Telegraph notes. ®
Bootnote
*You can save your wisecracks about it probably being safer to open a restaurant in Baghdad.
COMMENTS
FAO: David Corbett
"It was a fucking typo - I was too quick on the 'Post Comment' button after changing "What nationality does it say on your passport?" to "What nationality is stated on your passport?".
Don't be so sensitive, have a sense of humour, you just made yourself any easy target for me to poke fun at.
"Jeeezus, I'm starting to hate the 'moaning Scot' types almost as much as I hate the 'little England' types..."
I suppose I'm just not the type to shut up and put up with things.
"Oh, and for the record I'm Scottish. But guess what, I'm also British (just like it states on my passport). Is that alright with you, Rory-boy?"
I'm fine with you or anyone else being Scottish and British, none of my posts have suggested otherwise. I myself consider my nationality to be Scottish, I base this on the fact that Scotland is the nation I was born in. If an argument is made that Britain is a nation rather than an island housing 3 nations then by definition Scotland, England and Wales must be something less than nations. That's not an opinion I hold or will ever hold. If someone calls me British or puts British on my passport in reference to the fact that Britain is the island I live on or calls me European or puts European on my passport because geographically I live in Europe then I can live with that, I wouldn't have a huge smile on my face but I've been called worse names. Just as long as they realise that I will always consider my nationality to be Scottish and nothing else but Scottish.
FAO: Rory Milne
Posted Wednesday 11th July 2007 11:56 GMT "Incidently I don't expect perfect grammer but above b-movie zombie level would be nice. "What nationality does stated on your passport?" isn't even primary school level."
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It was a fucking typo - I was too quick on the 'Post Comment' button after changing "What nationality does it say on your passport?" to "What nationality is stated on your passport?".
Oh, and for the record I'm Scottish. But guess what, I'm also British (just like it states on my passport). Is that alright with you, Rory-boy?
Jeeezus, I'm starting to hate the 'moaning Scot' types almost as much as I hate the 'little England' types...
Re: This English / British issue..
"Though i think it's mostly a pointless conversation, because those English living there are British, just as the scottish, Welsh and Northen Irish are - regardless of which part of Britain they live / were born / have some vague claim to belonging."
The rest of your comment makes perfect sense but the above paragraph misses my point. It goes without saying that the English "incomers" living in Brittany can be described as British - but since they are exclusively English then the article can be more specific by describing them as such. If for example we were talking about a group of exclusively Italian "incomers" would the article describe them as Europeans or Italians? If we were talking about a group of exclusively Argentine "incomers" would the article describe them as South Americans or Argentine? The answer to both questions is obvious and takes no thinking about. Of course all articles could be no more specific than describe groups of people in relation to which island, continent or land mass they originate from rather than which country but it would be both ridiculous and confusing. Who could make sense of something like "today the leader of a country somewhere in Europe said they strongly disagreed with the fishing policies of another country somewhere in Europe" or "a statue was unveiled today celebrating the world famous 1966 world cup victory of a country located somewhere in Britain". If a certain percentage of people within the British Isles, Northern Ireland, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, etc. all describe their nationality as British then that's absolutely fine by me. If a certain percentage of people in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc. describe their nationality as European then that's fine by me too. But for the sake of clarification news regardless of which medium it's published in really needs to differentiate between a group that's exclusively English and a group who could all reasonably be called British but not English. The occasions when a differentiation isn't made is exactly why there is a recognised English / British issue.
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