Tuesday 10 April 2012

Françoise Hardy - Comment te dire adieu



Politics can be a tricky business, particularly for those who are not actually politicians.

Françoise Hardy says she will leave France if Socialist candidate François Hollande winds this month's presidential election.

It's over Hollande's proposal to tax millionaires 75% of their salaries.

Hardy told Le Point magazine that the policy would leave her 'living in the street' and that she would have to move to London or New York if Hollande gets in.

London's a pretty welcoming place to the non-domiciled super rich, where the tax breaks to foreigners who can say they have a 'residency' outside the UK while they are domiciled there are only a little behind places like Monaco, making it a friendly place for many a Greek shipping magnate, Russian oligarch and Arab oil heir.

She told the magazine that she only earns a meagre 150,000 euros a year, a fact certain to win her friends in the difficult economic times.

I'm reminded of the story about how Phil Collins would leave the UK if the Labour Party won the 1992 UK general election. He moved to Switzerland two years later even though Labour didn't win.

Whether his move to the tax haven was related - Collins said it was not - and the quote was misunderstood - he said he's never been a Conservative Party supporter - the story certainly stuck and Phil Collins has never enjoyed the widespread success he had in the UK in the 1980s since.

However, I'm sure Collins, worth apparently £115m and one of the richest people in the UK music industry and still residing in Switzerland, is not hugely troubled.

Hardy, incidentally, made her first TV appearance in 1962 during an interlude in a programme reporting the results of a presidential election referendum. Charles de Gaulle was president at the time, and the referendum helped secure the powerful position that the president currently has in France.

Politics can indeed be a tricky business.

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