Tuesday 20 November 2007

The Discontents

They're all having a wail: civil servants, train drivers, energy workers, students, teachers. You name it, they're cheesed off. The protagonists of French National Therapy week are making headlines for, er, something they do regularly. In terms of news, it's about as significant as those predicatable driver interviews on clogged motorways the first few days of the summer holidays. Why strikes in France are considered of any interest to anybody is beyond me; it's not as if society changes radically after a few days of transport chaos and blocked universities. What is incredible, though, is the ability of certain employees to continue defending rights which have no place in any country outside of Wonderland and students who rally around to keep a higher educational system which consistently fails its members. It's crap. OK, let's reform it. NO!! Anything but that! Solutions on a postcard, please. Or a postage stamp.

I sometimes wish the French could be foreigners in their own country for a while. Then they'd see how lucky they already are.

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