France is a paradise inhabited by people who think they’re in hell

My feelings exactly. I've immigrated to France with my family about 10 years ago. I always say to my French friends who complain about their country: "you have no idea how lucky you are to live in this country. I do!"

> only to have someone defecate in front of the restaurant as he was walking in. ... He wasn’t aware of the incident of a business owner hosing down a homeless person and had to have the crowd explain it

Did the crowd just side with defecating on the street because you got hosed down with water? If I had to choose I'd take the hose down instead of a giant turd near my door. This seems either masochism or ignorance (which includes thinking you understand history better and have some enlightened perspective), or both.

> When you adjust economic performance for climate footprint (which we should do for every country), France leads all of its peers. Whereas the US generates 0.28 tonnes of greenhouse gases to produce $1,000 of GDP, France does the same with only 0.14 tonnes of emissions.

I wonder what the reason is, and why the Guardian would omit it.

Where you turn down the heat the most, you get the biggest snowflakes. ;p (And I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, despite the normally pejorative term.)