This was the first draft of my Guardian column this week, before I found out that Charles had already written a piece about the Arrington/LeMeur spat. Shame to waste it...

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In April 1971, martial law was declared in Saigon.

The city had fallen to the North Vietnamese and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger had announced a dramatic - and belated - airlift of the remaining US, South Vietnamese and foreign nationals from the American Embassy.

Operation Frequent Wind, as it was called, was the largest helicopter evacuation in history, lasting two round-the-clock days until the early hours of April 30th when the last Marines were airlifted out of the compound.

Meanwhile, large numbers of South Vietnamese who didn’t make it on to the helicopters were left to die. By any metric you care to use, America had lost the Vietnamese war - and the final evacuation was a screw up of almighty historical proportions.

And yet, and yet, as the very last helicopter lifted off the roof of the embassy, you can almost guarantee that the pilot turned to the marines huddled in the back and yelled over the intercom “you guys are doing a great job! We can still win this thing!” Why? Because he’s an American and that’s what Americans do in the face of disaster: they encourage.

In France, things are slightly different. In France, when things aren’t going their way, they sulk. They go on strike, they set fire to British sheep, they strike a bit more - and if things get really, really bad, they riot. There is almost no problem in France too small to be sorted out with a good old riot, or perhaps a beheading. Someone used the phrase “le weekend?” Off with their head! Anything to avoid actually accepting that shit happens, the world changes and sometimes you just have to roll with the punches.

I mention these contrasting national attitudes for two reasons. Firstly and foremostly, to annoy Loic Le Meur. For the past week he’s been bitching and whining to anyone who will listen about how unfair my column about LeWeb was.

How dare I suggest that 1500Eur was a quite a lot to pay for no WiFi and a B-list collection of speakers. All week I’ve been getting emails from French journalists asking me to comment on the “scandal” I’ve caused by suggesting that not having a bulletproof way for web start-ups to access the - er - web is absolutely inexcusable. One hack left me a voicemail to say that I had “shat among the pigeons”.

The other reason I mention it is because, since the second day of LeWeb, a transatlantic argument has been raging between Le Meur and TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington over the differences between European and American start-up culture.

It can be summed up thus: first Le Meur accused Valley-dwellers of not enjoying life; of not taking enough of the two hour getting-to-know each other lunches that make the French start-up scene so vibrant. Le Meur knows this is the case because he recently relocated from France to the Valley to launch his start-up, Seesmic.

Arrington countered by attacking Europe’s pessimism and ‘general unwillingness to do whatever it takes to compete and win’. Europe, he declared, isn’t supportive enough of its entrepreneurs and is too lazy to succeed - which is why all the best European entrepreneurs (and Loic) move to the Valley and why all the successful Euro-start-ups get bought by Americans. Le Meur, in turn, responded in the only way the French know how - by sulking; posting a poll on his site asking visitors to vote on whether Arrington should be invited back to LeWeb next year.

Arrington, being American, upped the ante by threatening to - I’m paraphrasing - bomb LeWeb back to the stone age, by hosting a rival event next year from a staging post in London.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. If Arrington hates Europe so much, why host an event in London? Is Britain not part of Europe? Well, no, as far as the start-up world is concerned, we’re not. But nor are we American. Britain is the middle bit of the global technology industry Venn diagram - and that’s exactly what makes us so brilliant.

(Of course, like all journalists, when I say ‘Britain’ I really mean ‘London’. Whatever the BBC might like to pretend, if you’re serious about new media, you need to be in London. In the same way that if you’re in the USA, you should really be in the Valley. Seriously, save your raving emails - there’s regional development money available to encourage companies to relocate to the North and Wales for a reason. And it’s the same reason some people are forced to pay for sex.)

London offers the best of both worlds for web start-ups. We have access to the cream of global VCs, we have the infrastructure and - thanks to our proximity to Oxford and Cambridge - we have the talent. We have all of the creativity of the US, but without any of that delusional “great job!” bullshit that is so inspiring in a boom but utterly crippling in a downturn. We have the joire de vivre, and love of booze of the French but when the merde hits the fan we knuckle down and do what’s needed to get through it.

Unlike the Valley folk, we’re not arrogant enough to shun government support when we need it, but unlike the French we’re not lazy enough to expect it. The recently announced £1billion fund to help British startups will only be available to businesses that are already trading and who have solid business models; it won’t just be a slush fund for bad, untested ideas. A hand-up, not a hand-out. The British way. In America, they’d call it communism; in France they’d probably set fire to it.

Also, while the West Coasters are great at technology, and the French are great at art, London kicks ass at combining the two. Look at the businesses that have come out of London - companies like Last.fm at Moo.com - and you’ll see what I mean. We’re proud of our ideas and our businesses but, if the Americans want to buy them, great - we’re not too proud to sell. I doubt Michael Birch will be giving his hundreds of millions back to AOL any time soon. No matter how much they might need it.

But more important than any of that - the real reason why London is the best place to constantly hit refresh during the industry’s coming Fail Whale is because we’re really, really good at dealing with disaster. We bloody love it. Look how we responded to 7/7. Trains and buses blowing up all around us and we just shrug, sack off work for the day and go to the pub to joke about how it was probably the bloody French taking revenge for the Olympics.

Last night, Techcrunch UK hosted a series of panel discussions in the City, followed by a start-up pitch competition and (of course) a party with buckets of free booze. Between the pitches, I ran into Richard Moross from Moo.com and asked him what advice he’d give to employees laid off from UK startups. He thought for a second and said “I’d tell them to pool their severance money with other laid off entrepreneurs and launch another start up.” That’s the fucking spirit.

And then came the pitches - a group of early stage start-ups explaining their businesses to an audience of VCs, entrepreneurs and journalists. At the end, we were all invited to vote on our favourite by dropping a business card into a little plastic box marked with the company’s name. The start-up that had attracted the most cards by the end of the night would win a bottle of Champagne and the adulation of their peers. In America and France, this kind of competition is taken very seriously - at TechCrunch 50 in San Francisco, a company was very publicly thrown out of the start up competition for bribing people to vote for them. But not in London.

One of the first to pitch was a company from Germany called Jupidi. Their premise was as simple as it was hilarious: relationship advice by text message. Because God knows, if your relationship is in the toilet and you’re curled up at the bottom of a pit of depression, there’s only logical course of action, right? Text a German. When the pitch ended, I sidled over to Sophie and Charlie Cox from Worldeka, one of the other companies in the competition. “I need your business cards,” I whispered, “we’re all voting for Text A German”. Sophie raised a quizzical eyebrow - “You want us to vote against ourselves?” Yes! I mean, come on! Text A German! That’s brilliant. “Good point” said Sophie as she and Charlie handed over their cards. Same story with all of the other Brits I asked. Pretty soon the Jupidi box - previously totally empty - was half-full of cards, including those of three of the other companies in the competition.

In the end Jupidi came third and Worldeka didn’t even make the top three - but Sophie and Charlie didn’t care. Like most British entrepreneurs, they work hard enough all day - no two-hour lunches for them - to worry about sulking or petty rivalries. After hours, as long as there are beers to be drunk and laughs to be had, everything will be fine. And, whatever Arrington and Le Meur might say, right now that British ability to strike the perfect work-laugh balance is exactly what this industry needs.

Now - in that spirit - who wants TextAGerman.com? Free to anyone with the tech savvy, the effort and - most importantly - the sense of humour to build it.

Loic? Michael?

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