Hamish Champ: Why can't the UK be a bit more like France?

Travel, they say, broadens the mind and by golly they're right.

I recently whizzed around Northern France on my motorbike and found the people in that part of the world to be a darned nice bunch and not at all like the caricature of French types so often portrayed in the media on this side of the Channel.

I've been to a few countries around the world but I don't think I've come across a population that knows how to live life as life is meant to be lived quite like the French. Wherever you go in that country the pressures of work seem a million miles away.

In rural Normandy, along whose charming country roads and through whose delightful villages and hamlets I pootled last week, there was no sign of activity - economic or human - during the day whatsoever.

Yet at night communities hitherto apparently locked away sprang into exuberant life, with bars and restaurants full of families, couples and groups of friends, all enjoying each other's company and the warm weather.

I'm sure there are idolant French people, just as there are anywhere else, the UK included. But in France they do seem to have sorted out the life/work balance thing better than us, through good times and bad.

Over a few bierres my biking companion and I wondered how they've got it so sussed, while we at home scrabble to earn a crust and never seem to have the time to enjoy properly what we've laboured so long and hard to achieve.

Perhaps our Gallic friends have a different perspective through which they see life. Maybe it's the food. Or the vin.

Or perhaps it's because en France​ they have more space than we do on our cramped island? Room to breathe and relax and stuff.

Certainly the roads, seemingly less crowded than our own, are better suited to us two-wheeled types. Also, car drivers appeared to be more bike aware, considerately pulling over to allow one to ride past, unlike the expletive-ridden snarls and raised two fingers one normally receives from Mondeo Man and his ilk over here.

And there's another thing; the beer tastes different too. Watching Germany rout Argentina in a bar in Bayeux, home to a famous bit of medieval carpet, my chum and I knocked back a few pints of Stella.

I know our friends at AB InBev might not thank me for this observation, but it seemed to me that the French version of its premium product was a different experience to that of the UK variety.

Maybe this, and my perception of the French people in general, was the result of the headiness of being on holiday. Nevertheless I rather took to la Stella​. And to them...

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For reasons I won't go into I had cause last week to check out 'Conservative Home', a Tory blogging site, and in so doing read a piece about Brian Binley's Early Day Motion calling for a review of the smoking ban.

While I empathised with some of Binley's points what was more interesting was reading some of the comments on the article, many of which sounded like they'd been written by people who do the same whenever thePublican.com​ or one of its bloggers writes about the ban.

There were the same arguments about how inhaling smoke isn't that bad for you and how it's not illegal to smoke so why ban it from enclosed public spaces and why doesn't the new government allow pubs to have separate smoking rooms, etc, ad nauseum.

And as with those commenting on similar stories on thePublican.com​ anyone agreeing with the ban on health or other grounds was shot down in flames.

It's not just us then…