Is UK best country in the World for babies?

I’m currently in Marseille in the south of France.  The weather is magnificent, as I believe it is at home, baking hot sun and completely blue skies, skies so blue in fact that my thirteen month old is staring at it mesmerized.  It’s as if he has never seen blue skies before, being thirteen months old and English he probably hasn’t!

Being a fairly hands on father I am often out alone with the boy in England and I often get frustrated if the only baby changing facilities are in the women’s toilets, seems a bit sexist to me in the first place but just where am I supposed to change him is the most pressing problem.  However, the last time I remember having this problem is in Tenerife last year, on the whole the UK provides separate changing facilities where blokes are welcome or they’re in the disabled toilets, which is fine.  France is a bloody nightmare, at least Tenerife had changing facilities, France has the floor of the toilets.  Marseille is a big bustling city (very London like) but to not have a single baby changing facility is pretty poor.  A lot of the toilets are mixed too, so often you’re required to mop up piss first!  Don’t get me wrong, given the choice of changing the boy on a French public toilet floor or a British one I’d pick the French every time, if it’s one thing the British has problems with it’s going to the toilet outside of their own house.  To mop up the piss on the floor of a British toilet would require a pump rather than a mop…

Another thing, we have been into 6 eating establishments so far and exactly zero of those establishments have had a high chair.  The French are quite big on family dining and the need to push a push chair right up to the table every time just doesn’t fit in with that.  If you went to a British restaurant without a high chair they’d be hell to pay!

I must say though that the French love affair with their dogs continues even in the big cities, they are allowed in every hotel, every restaurant.  This is fantastic and puts the supposed nation of dog lovers to shame.  Then again, every other dog owner in France isn’t a div with a Staff…

Anybody else reckon the UK leads the world in baby facilities?