The John Lewis boss Andy Street may have apologised for declaring France to be “sclerotic, hopeless and downbeat”, but many French people arriving in London on the Eurostar from Gare du Nord – “something [Street] can only describe as the squalor pit of Europe” – agree with his views, reports The Guardian.
None of those arriving or waiting for trains, however, agreed with Street’s claim that the food and wine is better in London than Paris.
Greg Metoz, 19, a shop assistant at a vintage shop in Camden:
“For me, it’s true. All of it. This is why I left France. No one cares, they just complain all the time. That is all they do, complain, but they don’t fix it.
“People in France are lazy, really lazy. They only work a 35-hour week and they complain about it. People in the UK work much harder.
“We need to change the president and change the government. It is such a mess and everyone is pissed off.
“Everything he [Andy Street] says, apart from about the food and wine, is true. The food and the wine is the only reason I go back to France. I feel much better in London than in France, I feel at home here.”
Read more of this report from The Guardian.