No, I don't think it's just being lucky, the weather is changing everywhere because of the greenhouse effect.

It's time to buy a house in the north of England, in 20 years it will feel like the Caribbean up here

have been looking at Dordogne Midi Pyrénées,,for that reason .But now really second guessing France, as people saying its a bad time for France.

The weather is changing for sure, I think wetter parts have become wetter and warmer and hot/dry parts hotter and dryer, both worrying trends for obvious reasons. The floods this Christmas just terrible

For what it's worth, here in the SW (not too far from Toulouse) it's been one of the most miserable 'summers' I can recall for many years. In fact we haven't had what I would call a real summer. I even put on a sweater over my shirt this morning.
Again today we've had very heavy showers, and a few brief glimpses of blue sky. Yesterday the weatherman announced there may be some 'spring' weather on the way this weekend!
Never have I had lush green lawns front and back in August, at this time of year they're normally straw-coloured.
Two or three days ago there were hail-stones like golf-balls in Ariege with heavy floods elsewhere, and snow falls reported in the Pyrenees.
And the winters here can be damn chilly too.
Just as well there's no shortage of excellent bread rolls and superb Marie Harel Camembert AOP. Without that I'd probably emigrate.....

Wow! We watch the weather everyday in France (St Etienne as we have a friend there and Lot et Garonne) and only said earlier how rainy its been. We are buying a dairy farm and my husband is wondering if he should factor in an irrigation system for the long term future going by previous years. We were over mid July and thought it looked so green, beautiful in fact, lots of colour. Hopefully an Indian summer is on its way, there is the El Niño effect this yr, maybe that explains it...?! The blackberries are out and apple/plum trees are sagging under the weight of fruit, at least a month early here in the UK.

The El Nino has very little influence on European climate.

[QUOTE=Novocastrian;11369439]The El Nino has very little influence on European climate.[/

Yes, just looked it up, nowhere near....

Here on the south coast of England the summer has been a long and hot one - the last few days have been cooler with some showers which have been a welcome relief - I was fed up with watering the lawn every day!

I'm pleased for you, and wish it had been that way here. And it's not only the weather that is disheartening.
This time last year some of the press media and many economists were concerned that France was like a boat adrift in stormy seas with nobody at the helm.
The news headlines yesterday from TF2 tv (who normally tend to be left-wing orientated) reported France en panne - France has broken-down. Official figures yesterday indicate that the country remains entrenched in zero growth for the second quarter, forcing the government to urgently make forecast corrections for 2014. The countries GDP stagnated in 2Q, as it had in the first, indicating that almost all of the growth engines had failed. And equally worrying is a further decline in business investments. The government here frequently blame the euro, and indeed the euro zone remains troubled, but those French politicians advocating an eventual withdrawal of the euro and replacement by a new FFranc, would imho be madness.
When I see growth recovery of a steady nature apparent in the UK, I ask myself, "Why not here?" I've always tried to maintain an optimistic outlook, but now have more and more doubts, and alas real concerns for the future here. In all honesty to the OP who "cant decide", if I had a family member or friend seriously planning a move to France either for self-employed work or retirement, I'd say in a heartbeat, "Stay put."
Please someone tell me if I've got it all wrong.

Yes I think that is very worrying but in my opinion France is not in quite as dire a mess as Spain and Italy. Youth unemployment in Europe worries me - when young people have no reason to be good citizens then the risk of riots and terrorism grow.

However the growth in the economy in UK is at a huge price - everywhere is getting so crowded and when I go shopping in my local area all I hear are Polish voices. They have come here to work hard but it does feel like a foreign country at times. My daughter lives and works in London and rents there are horrendous - she pays £600 a month to share a flat and doesn't feel she will ever be able to buy a property.

As much as I adore France I would not consider moving to France full time as I feel that it is very difficult to move back in the future if that becomes necessary. Luckily I was able to buy a holiday home in France where I plan to spend 6 months a year in future and can keep a UK base.

I wouldn't recommend anyone to move to Europe at the moment unless they had good employment prospects there.
Caroline

Largely, I think, because the manufacturing economy in the UK was killed off 30 years ago by Maggie Thatcher, drunk at the time on North Sea Oil and the mad belief that The City could provide sufficient wealth for those that mattered to her and her ilk. Damn the rest.

France, on the other hand has only fairly recently come up against the Great Wall of China's block to competitiveness in her traditional industries and has yet to figure out a response.

I certainly hope France doesn't go the way the UK did.

I agree almost totally, she set out to destroy the power of the unions who were on strike every other week and also to dismantle grossly inefficient industries. Move forward to 2014 and that describes France. The land of strikes and grossly inefficient industries that are disappearing by the week.
I accept the comment about the City.
Today the UK has slowly re-invented work - not real work - more of a "you pretend to work and we will pretend to pay you" sort of work.
There are more people "working" in the UK than ever before.
In France, the unemployment figures are reduced by the number of government and local council workers in the "top heavy" bureaucracy that is France.
France is about to go/going through the pains the UK experienced in the 80s and 90s.
France is not the country to move to without having a job lined up.

Having just come back from a month's holiday in a sun-soaked UK (even as far north as John o'Groats), one thing that struck me was how easy it is to get a job, especially when compared with France. This particularly applies to young people, and there is definitely a feeling that even if the job one is in isn't much to write home about, another, better one is on the way. This is a feeling I just don't have here. I wouldn't recommend anyone's coming over here without a job already lined up either. Today's France is most definitely the sick man of Europe, a title previously held by the UK in the 70s and Germany a mere 15 years ago, so there is hope. I agree that Hollande and his bunch of pretend ministers haven't got much of a clue as to what to do, but putting France's economic woes solely down to an ever-growing army of civil servants is a little one-sided. There is no proof that economic prosperity is linked to the numbers of public sector workers. The UK employs roughly the same numbers (five and a half million) as France does, so one has to look elsewhere for an explanation as to why a country like France, with all that she has going for her, is in such dire straits.
PB

I think the current job security that people have with a CDI is not helping, lots of companies are carrying dead weight and CDI's don't encourage employees to give their best. A competitive employment sector in line with the rest on Europe would give folk a shake up.

I Think some of the problems can be traced to the last time the Socialists were in Power. The second worst president of the Fifth Republic began the slide by legislating for retirement ages no one could possibly afford to finance, the working week was cut, the Franc was devalued to keep the industries afloat that should have gone under then. Hollande has just continued along the same lines as Mitterand, and a bath of steel awaits...
Blackie