'Guess We'll Just Go Eat Frogs'

Down in the Dumps in Dijon:

LONDON, June 19, 2006 (AFP) - The French are highly pessimistic about their country's future, with 85 percent finding their nation headed in the wrong direction, a survey of five European countries published here Monday showed.

The poll in the Financial Times newspaper, spanning 5,000 people across Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, found that Spaniards were the most optimistic, with 44 percent believing their country was on the right track as opposed to 45 percent thinking the opposite.

....Just nine percent of French respondents thought the country was moving in the right direction as it enters the final months of Jacques Chirac's 12-year presidency, ahead of elections in April.