Another example of the above difference between British officialese and the French.

Some years ago, some friends of mine who had run a small-holding in England decided they had had enough of all the bureacracy and sold up and moved to rural France.

They had to go through Govt depts to get all the various permissions etc, BUT, they were assigned an official from I suppose the French equivalent of DEFRA. This person worked closely with them and was quoted as saying: "My job is to help you navigate all the rules and regulations and to get round as many as possible, and to make sure you get whatever grants are available. We want you to succeed and we will do what we can to make that happen".

What a contrast to the petty bureacrats they had had to deal with in Blighty whose only motivation seemed to be to make life as difficult as possible.

Last I heard they were making a comfortable living and enjoying life to the full.