Allons les enfants...
So 3 million people marched the streets tonight in Paris.
"We have the government on the run," said Sébastien, 21, a history student from Paris 5 University. "But we must not give up in the final straight. Chirac may think that he can come back with a new law which is not much different than the first one. We are here to show him that he is wrong."
This is a history student speaking, mind you. Think about it ... what is this character going to do when he graduates? If he was in the States, I'd be thinking about "would you like fries with that, sir?" In France ... maybe he could teach (nice, strong union with tenure for the undeserving), maybe he could become a postman, whatever ... but a leader of industry? No. A physician? No. A lawyer, even? No. We are looking at the civil service, (an absurdly large segment of the working population in socialist France) or a position in which he will earn his 13 months salary, get his pension at 60 -- both irrespective of how incompetent he may be.
Sebastien will not get a job in higher civil administration, however, that is reserved to graduates of the Grandes Ecoles, the ones that actually lead France and its industries. Accordingly, he is already consigned to the slag heap of the mediocre and in THAT we see his true reason for marching: he knows that he is forever barred from true success and is desperate to ensure an easy life that his native wits and intelligence cannot provide. Better to extort it from those who are capable ... it becomes the ugly masses, or Lenin's useful idiots (hereinafter "Les Idiots."
The CGT (the trades union congress of France) may well be the puppeteers of this "uprising": the last thing on Earth they want to see is a retrenchment, however small, in the gains for the workers in France (35 hour week, paid vacations, 6 weeks of vacation, 13 months pay, guaranteed employement, impossibility of termination, even for malfeasance...). And imagine how sweet life must be for a trades union leader in France -- if they do any work at all: "you see, mes amis, all that I have provided for you? The Aristos cower under my thumb, alll for the glory of the workers! And don't forget those lovely little brown envelopes, keep them coming or labor unrest is in your future. Yes, my account number in Geneve is ....
France wants to turn Europe into a model of itself because they fear the dynamic, the aggressive, the forward thinking from a long nourished sense of paranoia, of a fear of being "used" by the Aristos. The irony is that they are the greatest users of the EU systems out there, courtesy of the graduates of the Grandes Ecoles and the people who run France -- and who see that they need to change to hope to stay competitive in a market they can no longer control. France has to change to enable the French Aristos to continue to manipulate the world to the advantage of the French. If France does not change, the people hurt the most will not be the Aristos, but Les Idiots marching on the streets. The Aristos are very capable of feathering their own nests and arranging things so that they are comfortable at the expense of Les Idiots.
Sort of reminds me of Londoners electing Ken Livingston or watching the succession dance that will lead to Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister. I can't wait to watch the Tories eat his lunch during debates. A frikkin troglodyte of the old school. Putin must be thanking his stars that they don't teach French in Russian schools -- or French ethics (oh, that is an oxymoron), and laughing his ass off at Chirac, the francophone. Connard.
"We have the government on the run," said Sébastien, 21, a history student from Paris 5 University. "But we must not give up in the final straight. Chirac may think that he can come back with a new law which is not much different than the first one. We are here to show him that he is wrong."
This is a history student speaking, mind you. Think about it ... what is this character going to do when he graduates? If he was in the States, I'd be thinking about "would you like fries with that, sir?" In France ... maybe he could teach (nice, strong union with tenure for the undeserving), maybe he could become a postman, whatever ... but a leader of industry? No. A physician? No. A lawyer, even? No. We are looking at the civil service, (an absurdly large segment of the working population in socialist France) or a position in which he will earn his 13 months salary, get his pension at 60 -- both irrespective of how incompetent he may be.
Sebastien will not get a job in higher civil administration, however, that is reserved to graduates of the Grandes Ecoles, the ones that actually lead France and its industries. Accordingly, he is already consigned to the slag heap of the mediocre and in THAT we see his true reason for marching: he knows that he is forever barred from true success and is desperate to ensure an easy life that his native wits and intelligence cannot provide. Better to extort it from those who are capable ... it becomes the ugly masses, or Lenin's useful idiots (hereinafter "Les Idiots."
The CGT (the trades union congress of France) may well be the puppeteers of this "uprising": the last thing on Earth they want to see is a retrenchment, however small, in the gains for the workers in France (35 hour week, paid vacations, 6 weeks of vacation, 13 months pay, guaranteed employement, impossibility of termination, even for malfeasance...). And imagine how sweet life must be for a trades union leader in France -- if they do any work at all: "you see, mes amis, all that I have provided for you? The Aristos cower under my thumb, alll for the glory of the workers! And don't forget those lovely little brown envelopes, keep them coming or labor unrest is in your future. Yes, my account number in Geneve is ....
France wants to turn Europe into a model of itself because they fear the dynamic, the aggressive, the forward thinking from a long nourished sense of paranoia, of a fear of being "used" by the Aristos. The irony is that they are the greatest users of the EU systems out there, courtesy of the graduates of the Grandes Ecoles and the people who run France -- and who see that they need to change to hope to stay competitive in a market they can no longer control. France has to change to enable the French Aristos to continue to manipulate the world to the advantage of the French. If France does not change, the people hurt the most will not be the Aristos, but Les Idiots marching on the streets. The Aristos are very capable of feathering their own nests and arranging things so that they are comfortable at the expense of Les Idiots.
Sort of reminds me of Londoners electing Ken Livingston or watching the succession dance that will lead to Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister. I can't wait to watch the Tories eat his lunch during debates. A frikkin troglodyte of the old school. Putin must be thanking his stars that they don't teach French in Russian schools -- or French ethics (oh, that is an oxymoron), and laughing his ass off at Chirac, the francophone. Connard.
posted by Zaphod at Tuesday, April 04, 2006
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