Last year I visited France again for a family holiday. Up till now I have always found France a fun and relaxed place which I love visiting.

Unfortunately its now full of English who are begininning to infect the place with their crazy middle class attitudes. We made the mistake of renting a place from an English couple, a retired school teached and an ex-army officer. Instead of laid back France we got uptight Bazil Fawlty.

Even in the supermarkets you got Brits wingeing. Us Brits ruin these places. We invade other peoples countries and instead of fitting in with them, we spoli them with our desire for home and our inability to be sensitive to other peoples life styles. Why dont these people just stay in England and let the people of France get on with their own culture and life.

Andy Pope, Bristol,

Replace the words "British" with "Bangladeshi" and "Pays Basque" with the "East End of London" and this article would have been denounced as racist nonsense. In fact, of course, it would never have been written, such is the nature of political correctness today.
So why is it okay to criticise Brits for emigrating and taking their culture with them when it is impossible to criticise immigrants to Britain who also bring their culture?
It seems it is one rule for white British, another rule for non-whites. Anyone who thinks that this kind of discrimination is the way to achieve long term racial harmony is living in cloud cuckoo land.

ChrisR, London,

If Scotland were independent, it would still be an EU member... and so could do absolutely nothing about English people buying up summer homes in the Highlands. So voting for the SNP would do absolutely nothing -- welcome to the wonderful world of the European Union, where collective self-defense has been outlawed.

Not quite the free-trade area you bargained for, is it?

Note that when French people migrate to England -- and many do -- they're mostly young and go to work or start businesses, and live in expensive apartments in London or some other city.

When English people migrate to France, they do so for the food, the view, the weather, and the quaint architecture.

In other words, French people move to England to make money; English people move to France to spend it.

This tells you something.

S.M. Stirling, Santa Fe, NM

The French don't have to sell their houses to Brits. It's their greed which is ruining their country by allowing the feckless Laura Ashley clones in. Every time the French see that most prooundly naff of vehicles the Bentley with the personalised number plate, they rush out with the a vendre signs whooping with joy, when they should, if they had the sense, be rushing to slam the shutters.

eric campbell, harrogate, uk

France is changing rapidly. Thanks to British infuence, which is at a stone's throw. Rugby fans were welcomed with open arms. My neighbour offered his guest room to two drunken Englishmen becuse they spent all the money buying booze. He said, " They were honest, that's what I like about them"

G. Das, Herblay, France

80% of Brits who move to France return to the UK within 5 years, so the article is seriously flawed.
And French people generally prefer to live in new-build houses, so their crumbling ruins would remain just that were it not for Brits restoring them.
The amount of money poured into the French economy through buying property, employing local builders to restore it, and spending wads in Mr Bricolage and the like must be astronomical.
The French would need to start worrying if we ever show signs of losing interest.

Jim Carr, Bospham, UK

You ain't seen nothing yet. The Chinese are coming, you do not believe me? You just wait & see. Welcome to the 'real' global world. In the end, money is all that matters.

Umeh Collins, Beijing, China

Collins, Beijing, China

I live in a small village in Provence: I can't imagine two unmarried vets having any problem afording a very nice lifestyle.
On the other hand, I know many English (we don't say Brits in France) Dutch and other EU folk who live and work here who find house prices high for their salaries: so what we have and they have chosen to live in Provence, and like the South East of England the house prices are higher than in the North.
Stop moaning and get on with life.
Ah yes and whilst everyone is being so un-PC, Perhaps young vets should do things in the right order: get married, buy house, and then have children!

Peter Goddard, Le Rouret, France, EU

I live in a small village in Provence: I can't imagine two unmarried vets having any problem afording a very nice lifestyle.
On the other hand, I know many English (we don't say Brits in France) Dutch and other EU folk who live and work here who find house prices high for their salaries: so what we have and they have chosen to live in Provence, and like the South East of England the house prices are higher than in the North.
Stop moaning and get on with life.
Ah yes and whilst everyone is being so un-PC: Perhaps young vets should do things in the right order: get married, buy house, and then have children!

Peter Goddard, Le Rouret, France, EU

If I could actually afford to buy a house in the UK I might not be looking for one in France

Peter, Birmingham,

What about the 80-year-old widow who gets 90,000 euros instead of 70,000 for her old house and can thus afford better care for her final years? What about farmers who can use the cash to upgrade their equipment? What about children who inherit the house and can use the extra cash to offer better futures to their children? It's always easy to criticise rising real estate prices until it's time to sell your own house...

Thomas, Bayeux, Normandy,

This isn't a new problem - British property tourists have beeen buying up half of Europe for a long time now. When I was growing up in the West of Ireland, it was German and Dutch incomers who were buying up every abandoned farm cottage they could find and moving in without mixing with locals. It became so bad in some parts of the country that the local councils put legislation in place to disallow those with no local connections from buying land or houses in protected rural areas.

Now, the houses in these same areas are too expensive for outside buyers due to Ireland's home grown property boom so it's not just an issue of foreigners buying up property. Property speculation in general is socially detrimental whether it's led by outsiders or locals. A house should be somewhere to live in, not a form of speculation. Go to the stockmarket and investment funds if you want to speculate - that's what smart investors do.

MB, Edinburgh,

Not quite sure why Melanie Reid attracts quite such a vitriolic reaction with this thoughtful piece. I can quite understand how the French might resent this incoming flood of mediocrity, wealthy not because of any innate work ethic or talent but instead by riding the tide of hysterical property price inflation in their home countries. I don't think I'd be entirely comfortable living in that situation myself, but have a sneaky envy: this latest wave of emigres might have their timing spot on.

Jack Barker, Marlborough, UK

Absolutely right.
British citywise people have no idea of the hardworking life of the French countryfolk. So when the lower classes who can't afford houses let alone swimming pools in Britain live the life of wealthy colonials and exploit the native population there must be something wrong. British society with its class structure and contempt for the countryside traditions and farming life must be sick. The countryside in France mostly lives in the frugal and natural way the poostmodern ecologists are trying to re invent with the concept of ecological regression.
Vast amounts of money can only destroy this.

paul, France,

Lets face it people whether British French or Eskimo cannot be relied upon to self regulate...I abhor what is going on but given me idyll going cheap and my priciples would begin to crumble. Sensible laws and limitations are the only answer both inUK and France.
A finger of blame can also be pointed at the cheap airlines who are opening more and more routes to French regional airports...great for holidaymaking but also great for holiday-homers.

Ian Dicks, lyme regis, uk

Why are people so stroppy? Melanie Reid never said it was ok to vote for the SNP!, please take your time to read again and can you disagree with: A wonderful windfall, of course, for a few lucky locals, but a real tragedy for the community as a whole, which has not a hope of attracting nurses, teachers, snowplough drivers and paramedics – for even if you tripled these workers’ salaries they still couldn’t afford to live there. And so schools shut; and in winter, when the holiday houses are boarded up, these places become ghost villages, and councils struggle to maintain public services for the elderly who remain. Indigenous Scots are readily sickened by the avalanche of money that has rendered them impotent.

eve, Woking, Surrey, south England

I live just outside Biarritz and have done for three years...not certain where all this anti-Brit nonsense is coming from because we know very few who live around here, we rarely hear English spoken and the French voisins (neighbours) have been nothing but friendly and generous. Reason I picked this area (to rent) was the beauty and the people who are welcoming, warm and kind other than to the Parisiennes who are ACTUALLY the ones who own the property, do not use it, and have pushed up the prices.

George Anthony Thompson, Ustaritz,

I'm totally in agreement with Narguesse Stevens, our house had stood unoccupied for several years because it needed too much renovation. Much of it was just hard work clearing the overgrown garden, the Local people did not want it. Our next door neighbour has his house for sale at about 50% more than it's worth. He hopes to attract a wealthy Brit or Dutch buyer, that is not my fault, purely greed on his part. Nobody wants to live next door to a derelict property and we are the only ones crazy enough to take them on!

Keith Wilson, Beziers, France

So what's the alternative to this new mobility?

Should everyone just stay in their own communities from cradle to grave as they did in the middle ages?

Young employed people go where they can afford, more often than not away from their local area (whether in France, Englad, Holland etc). Then the influx of such people to cheaper areas sees services/amenities improve and property prices rise.

What goes around comes around...

homer, London,

If I said this about immigrants to England I think I'd be accused of racism. Not want migration across the European borders? Haven't the millions coming here been brilliant for Britain or something? Well, tough, rest of Europe. You can't have it both ways. We had a culture too. We had lovely rural communities, we had a way of life worth keeping. We sold it all down the line for a growing global economy. Sympathy for the French rural way of life being destroyed? Not one ounce.

Jenny, Salisbury, Formally known as England

Have you been to rural Scotland recently? Many villages are like ghost towns with schools, shops and other facilities closing down because rich southerners want somewhere to stay for a couple of weekends a year.

It's disgusting but that's the English for you. They're never happy until they've taken over.

Anna Smith, Aberdeen,

So the 120% price increase over 10 years is "as a result of" English buyers is it? You might like to look at what Anatole Kaletsky has to say today about property prices across Europe having risen further and faster than in the US, before attributing the performance of the French property market overall to a miniscule number of English buyers. And another thing. I think your charming neice and her husband must be pulling your leg about not being able to afford to buy. Two professionals, no kids, and living outside a major conurbation? Do me a favour. It doesn't sound like a sob story to me.

Redcliffe, London,

This seems to be typical of all Europe. No-one wants this grand unified Europe, except politicians, and dare I say it, bankers!

We are told it is in our best interest, except those in power that actually make the decisions don't live in neighbourhoods flooded with immigrants, and even if they had too, they could afford too.

The French, like the English, Germans, Dutch and so on, want an end to this grotesque social experiment, destroying difference and encouraging a fragmented society built on fear, fear of speaking out against those that are foreign, fear of being labeled a racist.

Let Turkey in and we will destroy the EU, but at the same time we will destroy hundreds of years of Western Culture all for the sake of being pleasant. The right will rise and then we will all be thrown back into a world which we have fought so hard to prevent existing!

Benjamin, London,

One of the reasons that so many Brits can afford to buy up property in France is that there has been an influx of both rich and poor immigrants flooding into the UK creating a housing shortage and pushing up the value of property. Europe is one large country now and I find it quite offensive that a rich Russian can buy a multi million pound apartment in London and that is okay. However save up, mortgage yourself to the hilt to buy a holiday home in France and you are pilloried.

Mark Lintott, London, UK

So, if you are born in or move to an over crowded city, work hard, take risks, put up with all the down side of city life; traffic, crime , polution etc, you have to stay there.
On the othe hand, if you are lucky enough to be born in a lovely rural village, probobly due to your parents or some previous ancestor taking all the risks, you are automatically entitled to live there for the rest of your life?

This equally applies to France, Wales, Scotland or the nicer parts of England.
These rural whingers are nothing more than lazy snobs.
There is no automatic right to live near to where you were born. or grew up.

Perhaps if places like South East England were not taking more than their fair share of immigrants, crime, traffic and building, the people that live there would be happy to stay there.

Perhaps the bumkins should pay a tax on all the services they use that travel through places like London.

How about an M25 tax for all goods destined for Wales & Scotland?

Patrick Darcy, London, UK

So who are selling the properties and making a nice bit of cash from the proceeds?
Maybe its the "other locals".
Same all over rural UK. and Ireland.
The Welsh, Irish and Scots love to whinge but you sold the land in the first place.
Maybe if there was not so many people travelling to my home town of London to work I would be paid more and the place wouldnt be so crowded.
But its Ok for Paddy, Jock , Pierre, and David to "take my jobs" just so long as I dont dare want to live in the same place they do.

Mark Greenwood, London, UK

Croatia is not in the EU.

Jim C., Brussels,

"Old European Cant Move, they have lived in the same communities for centuires", ref C Webb Italy.


Oh yes, and Old English love to see our homeland full of vibrant ethnic diversity. We dont mind if a once peaceful neighbourhood is blighted by a Motorway so lorries can deliver cheap electrical goods to Wales and Scotland.

We love to see people travel to our cities to work making it harder for us to earn a living wage.

We embrace crime from all over Europe.

Turn back the clock 100 years and much of our land was rural as well. Had we not taken all the building you wouldnt come here to work and maybe we wouldnt be looking for a better place for our kids.

There is an alternative Worzel: Come work in a city. Take a risk, and then one day you might be able to do what we are doing.
Or sit on your backside whinging about how unfair life is as you chew your corn.

D Warren, London, UK

Perhaps when the French cease purchasing half of South Kensington, preventing me moving closer to my office by heavily inflating house prices, I will have some more sympathy!

Alex Horne, London, England

This has been happening for years in all rural areas, I lived in Somerset in the late '70's & had to go to London for work & housing, & now all the small villages are mostly second homes for w/enders or holiday lets

sarah, Wellington, Somerset

So the average house price has risen 120% in France over ten years? In England that figure is nearer 200%. Surely it is young English people who are most priced out of property.

Steve, Too-Expensive-London, Rip-Off England

In Languedoc, I have noticed many local French people are selling their old, dark, centuries-old dilapidated stone village houses with no ouside space to Brits for renovating - and then building themselves lovely centrally-heated detached concrete sunfilled villas with flower gardens on the outskirts of the same villages with their profits.Nobody is forcing the sales of French houses by the French to other Europeans -and all Europeans are allowed by law to live and buy houses where they choose these days. The-times-they-are-a-changing and we had all get used to it.

Liz, Cambs,

ah.. now.. going back in time... The Norman Conquest was a pivotal event in English history for a number of reasons. This conquest linked England more closely with continental Europe through the introduction of a Norman aristocracy, thereby lessening Scandinavian influence. It created one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe and engendered a sophisticated governmental system. The conquest changed the English language and culture, and set the stage for a rivalry with France that would continue intermittently until the 20th century... so as they say "you started it."

martin sadofski, london,

So, according to Phil from Edinburgh there is concern that excessive numbers of English "white settlers" are buying weekend/holiday homes in Scotland whilst contributing nothing.
I have a without prejudice proposal.
If you agree to take back the excessive numbers of Scots politicians (including Gordon Brown) who in return for inflated salaries perks likewise do nothing for us we will promise to leave your beautiful lands.

Steve Cantle, London,

I'm confused that the SNP is lumped in with far-right French political parties. The SNP isn't doing well because of pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment - it's a left wing party without any anti-immigrant policies.

And as for the Dutch, I know a few and none of them are humourless. In summary: what a lot of bigoted nonsense.

Angus McIonnach, Edinburgh,

So lets see, French Person complaining about bloody English immigrants, has a fair point.
English person complaining about Nigerian immigrants, evil racist who must be stoned to death?

Dominic, Tameside, UK

Sadly an all too familiar story. Scotland and Wales have been blighted for years by these "white settlers" as the locals call them and it is now happening in Northern Ireland too. Whole villages turned over to "weekenders" who bring everything with them and support nothing locally.
There is bound to be a backlash sooner or later and the French proposal to charge these incomers for healthcare may be just the start of it. If nothing else they may prove a rich source to be milked dry for the benefit of the locals.

Phil, Edinburgh,

Are there articles like this in any East European Newspapers making them feel guilty about displacing English people to France.
Let the French snap up cheap properties in Croatia and then let them dwell on how wonderful the EEC's open border policy is.

Alan, Oxford,

Hey your French niece is a vet? And she cannot afford a place in Rural France? I live in France. There is plenty of properties to buy as Narguesse Stevens, has said. If it wasn't for people like us, France would be full of tumbled down relics. The solution is simple. Don't sell properties to us Brits or Dutch etc. We do not hold a gun to their heads.

smiler, Bretagne, France

Remarkable that only the 'greedy' incomer is blamed. What about the 'worthy' local who profited from the original sale? Whether France, Cornwall, Scotland or wherever, this is more a case of grandparents selling on and themselves denying through their greed the property to younger locals.

Malcolm Jermy, Uzes, France

Escapism is apparently the actual name of the game. The grass is always greener .. elsewhere, but before rushing to a so-called promised land in a trance of blinding euphoria, just think of how difficult it is to adapt and become accepted in a new environment in ones own country, let alone conforming to foreign rituals that are further hampered by a language barrier.

Ray , Hombeek, Belgium

This reads like more English metropolitan self loathing to me. If I were to write similarly about immigration into the UK I'd be called a xenophobe. You people can't have it both ways.

Marion Morrison, Cheltenham,

Wow, what an attack on perfidious albion! Imagine,in the article swapping England for France, Pakistanis or Poles for 'Brits' incomers, and call the incomers humourless, complacent, etc. and lament the loss of the indiginous culture. Finish by commending a vote for the local nationalist party as a reaction to the immigrants,and do you think the article would still be printed?

paul, Sheffield, england

So its ok to vote for the Scottish National Party, or French far right when your village is over-run with immigrants and holiday home buyers ?

So when my part London is overrun with immigrants who push up house prices I guess its ok for me to vote for the British National Party too then is it ? or doesn't that quite fit in with the PC environment

Gavin, London,

if land is used for the economic acitivities based on the ground(including being used for summer house), the prices of real estate can have certain kinds of reasons.things go wrong if people start dealing land for purely capital gains, it easly goes away from fundamentals of the economies, and increase unvisiable risks to burst.

Kanzo, Kyoto , Japan

We have a another home in Austria. Its not a holiday property, and we don't rent it out - we live and work from there. The system here has a good way of preventing empty properties not contributing to the local activities. There is a limit on how many properties are classed as second homes. One can come here and buy according to EU rules, but only to live permanently unless in one of the very, very, few second homes allowance. Seems to work, and despite what some of the Sunday paper property developers are saying, prices are not rising greatly. Local government publishes land and built area prices regularly so no one gets ripped off, and only fools pay over the odds.

jim, Norwich, uk

This piece should be read by those who complain that immigrants are over-running this country!

Calista, cambridge,

The ancient house we have purchased in rural France had been abandoned for decades, as are so many properties here in the South-west. No French person wanted to buy it, even though the price was very low. The local people are welcoming and grateful that those "crazy Brits" want to do up these old ruins which lie mouldering and uncared-for by the locals. Over the past 8 years of slowing restoring this house we have employed dozens of local artisans, who have treated us with respect and kindness. The village had been dying on its feet, but the British, Dutch and Americans (like me) are slowing resuscitating it, businesses are coming into the town, whole streets are being restored. Many young French prefer to live in towns.

Narguesse Stevens, Montaigu-de-Quercy, France

Old Europeans can't move. Their houses are like their skin, they have lived in the same communities for centuries and given their souls to maintain their heritage. When it's a religious festival they put the flowers in the street, the tablecloths in the windows. When it snows they get out with shovels and brooms to clear the street. Foreigners who buy the charm for their few weeks a year would rarely think it's their duty to participate in these activities. They never see the closed houses. The young people move away because they can't afford to buy near their families. The towns effectively die.

Christine Webb, SANSEPOLCRO, ITALY

Welcome to the new world of global mobility and money. what else did anyone expect? I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and I own a second house in Pensacola, Florida. The distance is 4 1/2 hrs. by auto. I bought the house 24 yrs. ago. If I did that why not others around the world?

larry gooch, baton rouge, USA, Louisiana