In some ways it is ahead of the UK: if you include Minitel, its pre-internet electronic information and trading system, the proportion of commerce done online is actually even higher than that which takes place in the US.True, we don't yet know whether Minitel-based business will migrate to the Net and, if it does, whether that will give France a European lead in e-commerce. But at least the game is open.There are other technologies in which France is ahead of the US and the UK - the use of smartcards for example.There is also the French equivalent of Silicon Valley at Sophia Antipolis, in the hills above Nice, where there is a cluster of hi-tech firms specialising in software, telecommunications, and management consultancy.But none of this really answers the big question: Why, by continental European standards at least, is France doing so well? It's easy enough to see bits of the answer but hard to grasp the whole picture. Why, in particular, does France seem to be outperforming Germany and Italy?If there is a common theme, I think it is that France, thanks to luck as much as anything else, is structurally well suited to the way the world's economy is moving in the 21st century. It has areas of excellence in sectors such as luxury goods and services, and in high technology industries that happen to be well placed the new industrial forest.
And it does not have a long tail of bog-standard mass consumer industries challenged by East Asian imports. France's excellent technical education has re-enforced the success of the hi-tech bits of the economy. And its strong cultural identity has buttressed the lower-tech bits.Further, it does not have a burden on the scale of East Germany or the south of Italy - areas that have to be carried by more prosperous regions. So, stir in a bit of general growth in continental Europe and, zip, up comes France.Looking ahead, can this better performance be sustained? After all, France had low-trend growth for much of the 1980s and 1990s There seems to be a window of opportunity here. There are undoubtedly big structural reforms that France needs to make. These include cuts in direct taxation, simplification of the social welfare system, and cutbacks in regulations These will not be popular. But the country has a couple of years of people feeling richer, which gives it a chance to do unpopular things.So come what may, the immediate outlook is all right The test comes later.
And, while the core of Paris glitters, there are the grave social and economic problems in the housing estates on the periphery. Running an economy with 10 per cent unemployment is really not going to be acceptable when Britain and America have levels of half that. The exodus of France's young, bright people to London is troubling too.The country has a solid base that deserves recognition and respect, particularly because this progress was not expected by many in the UK and US. But it only deserves two cheers, not three. More from Hamish McRae.
So the party is over, and the celebrities have been counted. Tate Modern's opening gala at London's Bankside, inaugurated by the Queen, reported live on television by the king of telly art, Matthew Collings, and - so the rumours persist - attended by desperadoes willing to pay a grand for the privilege, is consigned to art history. Today, finally, Tate Modern is open to the non-paying public. So the party is over, and the celebrities have been counted. Tate Modern's opening gala at London's Bankside, inaugurated by the Queen, reported live on television by the king of telly art, Matthew Collings, and - so the rumours persist - attended by desperadoes willing to pay a grand for the privilege, is consigned to art history. Today, finally, Tate Modern is open to the non-paying public. The Queen was not targeted at her ribbon-snipping by anarchists, as breathless newspaper reports had warned.
It has emerged though, that had the group Movement Against the Monarchy conducted a protest, it might have been masterminded by Ian Bone. Mr Bone is notorious for his group Class War and its eponymous magazine, which responded to the economic boom of the Eighties by exhorting us to kill a yuppie.But no yuppies died in this latest volley of empty anarchist threats. Instead the only consequence was that a mother-of-five protesting against élitist art (seemingly on the usual grounds - that it doesn't include her) was moved on somewhat insensitively by the police.Pauline Wilson-Copp had parked her broken-mirror-mosaiced Ford Capri in the forecourt of the gallery on Monday, clamped it, and announced that she wasn't leaving. She planned to stay for four days, she said, in "an unofficial attempt to get the cosy world of establishment art to change gear and rev its ideas up". Her protest, she claimed, had the support of Damien Hirst, which nicely served to further subvert the idea that she was subverting anything.According to Mrs Wilson-Copp, the police surrounded her while she was asleep, removed her clothes and forcibly ejected her from the car. The car has been taken to a secure location until Mrs Wilson-Copp can arrange recovery Mrs Wilson-Copp, however, was not taken to a safe location.