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Brief letters: The antidote to a French Monday | August on holiday | School dinners | Dance-hall don’ts
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World news — The Guardian
As I write this, I’m enjoying my French Sunday ( Polly Hudson, 23 August ) with a croissant from the local bakery – open, of course – and a coffee. I’ll meet friends for lunch in a local riverside restaurant, then travel a few miles to a wonderful cafe, for even more coffee and their homemade cakes. Relaxing? Of course it is. It’s a much-needed antidote to a French Monday, particularly in rural France, where 80% of businesses, restaurants and public bodies remain closed all day in order to recover from the excesses of a “do nothing” Sunday.
• I enjoyed James Mackay’s article on villeggiatura , the Italian tradition of taking August off, which is shown to help rather than hinder economic output ( 17 August ). As he says, though, the point is “reclaiming life from the totalising logic of the market”. For an expansion of this idea, I recommend the work of Amintore Fanfani, Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, who deserve to be better known in Britain. Like Pope Leo, they put human dignity and flourishing at the centre of economics.
• Many problems have an easy solution that is wrong, but I suspect that including food standards in Ofsted results would fix this one very fast ( Most English secondary schools are breaking healthy food rules, finds report, 24 August ).
• In Elgin in the 1960s, if you were caught snogging in the Two Red Shoes dance hall, a spotlight would be shone on you to kill the moment ( Letters, 20 August ).
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• I enjoyed James Mackay’s article on villeggiatura , the Italian tradition of taking August off, which is shown to help rather than hinder economic output ( 17 August ). As he says, though, the point is “reclaiming life from the totalising logic of the market”. For an expansion of this idea, I recommend the work of Amintore Fanfani, Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, who deserve to be better known in Britain. Like Pope Leo, they put human dignity and flourishing at the centre of economics.
This report is published with credit to The Guardian. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on The Guardian →
Source: The Guardian. Published 24 Aug 2026, 05:32 pm.
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