US Boycott affects sales Sender: Ian

You ARE aware that Mr Chirac and his government are both right wing are you? Well ... not by George Dubya standards perhaps, but nevertheless right wing by European standards.

There is and has always been strong resentment against Paris throughout France, but that's because France has always been strongly centralist. To the extent that at one time, in every secondary school in France, students on a particular day at a particular time would be studying from the same page of the same book - 1968 put an end to that.

So the Burgundians hate being told what to do by anybody. Especially if it exposes their nice little earners - adding a bit of Rhone wine in light years - it used to be Algerian, but the Parisians threw Algeria away... and so on. Not all Burgundians do that sort of thing, thank heavens, but I guess there's enough of them to make it hard for the honest ones to take a strong line of moral disapproval.

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