Get ready for riots. Macron trying to increase pension age in France

[Sir John Johns]

As mentioned by Angus in this thread, Macron initially campaigned (in 2017) on an ambitious plan to institute a universal pension system but finally decided to renounce to it. Instead, he decided to rise the retirement age for 62 to 64, meaning that you would be able to retire at 64 and receive a pension at full value providing you have contributed to the public pension system for forty-three full years. Otherwise, you could still retire but receive a pension with important discounts. It’s only at 67 (age remained unchanged by the reform) that one without the forty-three full years would perceive a pension at full value but still calculated on the years you have contributed. Note that the supplementary pension system for private employees (co-managed by employers’ organizations and unions) is already enforcing a three-year-long 10% discount for people retiring before 63 making uninteresting to retire at 62 for certain categories of employees.

A few professions are enjoying some early retirement (before 60) because of arduous working conditions (policemen, sewer workers, fishermen) as well as disabled workers suffering from an at least 50% permanent incapacity providing they are meeting various conditions. Provisions to better take into account arduous working conditions in the calculation of retirement age have been passed under Hollande but largely dismantled by Macron.

Obviously, the number of workers who would have contributed for forty-three full years at 64 is going to dwindle as the entering on the labor market is now happening later and as extended periods of unemployment are more frequent than before. Also, employment rate among French workers over 55 is remaining low compared to other countries, a situation which is especially problematic for unqualified or sick workers who generally struggle to reenter labor market after losing their jobs, past 55.

I hope I haven’t made mistakes because the system is incredibly complicate but I’m not the only one having difficulties understanding it.

Macron has promised some vague measure to ensure a better employment of seniors but this is staunchly opposed by the MEDEF, the employers’ main organization, which otherwise is totally okay with the rest of the reform. On a side note, if you are going to rant about unions being ‘parasites’ caring only about ‘protecting their sweet little privileges’ wait before to see the French grand patronat: the MEDEF, which is only representing large companies not the middle and small businesses (which have their own organization you rarely heard of), is currently headed by Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, the scion of an aristocratic family whose nobility dated back at least from Louis XV. His predecessor, Pierre Gattaz, while a simple commoner, was the son of a president of the CNPF, the forerunner of the MEDEF. Yet, still an improvement since the days of the godawful Ernest-Antoine Seillère, a complete caricature of the nineteenth century robber baron (well, he actually has a title of baron!), who wasn’t actually a very good businessman and has since been sentenced for tax fraud.

[Sir John Johns]

Anyway, this is turning into a Waterloo for Macron for a variety of reasons having mostly to do with the decision of the president to rush the passage of the reform, his own supreme arrogance and the complete PR disaster that has surrounded the sale of the reform.

The reform has been decided without any semblance of consultation with the unions, not even the CFDT certainly not a hard-left union but on the contrary considered by other unions as too moderate if not sell-outs (their former president, Nicole Notat, endorsed Juppé’s 1995 failed reform that led to massive protests and later created her own social rating agency). It is contradicting previous statements made by Macron about how it would be hypocrite to rise retirement age when the question of full-employment of seniors hasn’t been resolved.

The reform is sponsored by the labor minister, Olivier Dussopt, a former socialist deputy who had previously advocated a retirement age at 60 and left the PS overnight to join the Macron government he publicly trashed just before. Of course, Dussopt is investigated in a corruption case like God how many ministers in this government.

The Macronist deputies and senators have been charged of selling the pension reform and they are truly doing a terrible job at it, maybe because they were advised about the full details of it. So, there have been a senator claiming that roofers are now equipped with exoskeletons, a deputy who said that tilesetter isn’t an as much exhausting job than before because of ‘kneepads’ and now another one who declared that the underpaid (€800 a month) persons hired to help disabled children in school have chose that job ‘to not having to work on Wednesdays and school holidays’ in response to opposition deputies demanding a better recognition of their occupation.

The Renaissance caucus also published on its Twitter account a series of pictures supposed to explain how the reform is actually a social progress that was mocked because it is full of inaccuracies or is taking very rare/non-existing cases because probably they themselves understand nothing to the byzantine rules of retirement system and are ignorant about the details of the reform. Also, the minister delegate to relations with parliament has been forced to admit that the pension reforms will penalize women employees.

Additionally, the chairman of the body in charge of evaluating the future financial situation of the pension system (Conseil d’orientation des retraites, COR), has somewhat tempered the government’s affirmations over the worrying future of the pensions system and was rewarded by criticisms from the prime minister because the government knows better than the COR.

The reform will still been rushed in the parliament as, while the government doesn’t want to negotiate with unions and just declared it will not negotiate on the 64 retirement age, it has still surrendered to the LR’s main demand to obtain a support of the right-wing party to the reform: an immediate increase of the minimum old-age pension to an amount corresponding to 85% of the minimum wage aka €1,200 (the amount of the RSA basic income for working age people over 25 is €598, disability pension for working-age people is €956), a measure apparently benefiting mostly retired retailers and farmers (aka the LR voters, what a surprise).

The suggestion that the wealthier pensioners could made a financial effort has been totally discarded by the government in spite of present-day pensioners (who for the most part have experienced full-employment, stable careers, have contributed less to the pension system, have retired early and have been able to buy a house thanks to the economic environment of that time) enjoying a median monthly revenue of €1,900, higher than the €1,840 median monthly revenue of the working-age population.

Anyway, LR (which promised before the election to increase retirement age to 65) is divided whether voting for the reform, the centrist/regionalist LIOT parliamentary group has said it will not vote for it while there is a beginning of internal revolt inside Macronism over the harshness and injustice of the reform. This is without mentioning that the whole reform could be anyway axed by the Constitutional Council because the barely regular proceedings to get it passed in the parliament.

In a last attempt to convince LR rebels to vote the reforms, the interior minister Gérald Darmanin (a particularly nasty individual) has gave an interview in in which he warns about Mélenchon wanting to put the country in a mess, rants about the ‘laziness and bobo leftism’ and claims that the presidential majority ‘is defending work, the values of efforts, of merit and emancipation’ (yet he had Marlène Schiappa as underminister) in line with the government’s usual ‘people are unemployed because they are lazy’ discourse.

One can also note the specious argument made by Macron himself (that many people will not forget): the reform has been ‘democratically presented, validated’ in the 2021 elections. Yes, the elections where he didn't get a parliamentary majority. Brigitte Macron also spoke in favor of the reform because apparently the opinion of the first lady is now mattering.

Thanks to the efforts of ‘pedagogy’ of the government, the opposition to the pension reform has... increased to over 70% of the population and has now even reached a majority (59%) among pensioners. Opposition is at 81% among ‘intermediate professions’ and 80% among workers and employees. What could possibly go wrong?

The broader context is anyway quite bad for Macron: the public hospital is collapsing, the mass transit system in Paris and its area is such a mess the joke is now that ‘there is no difference between normal days and strike days’, there has been a controversy about French pundits summoned by the president so he can explain them how to sell the pension reform (only in France) and various scandals hurting the government and the ruling party (a Renaissance deputy who acknowledged having do cocaine, the son of the justice minister being indicted over the accusation of having beat his wife). More worringly for the governement, since several months a series of social conflicts (blocking of refineries, strike of train ticket inspectors, strike of private medical practitioners, protests of bakers) have erupted, mostly organized by groups operating on the fringe or outside of unions. The consequence having been that the government has caught by total surprise by the suddenness, scale and radicalism of such conflicts and found itself without an identified and responsible leadership to dialogue with. Well, maybe unions aren’t that bad after all.

[angus]

bien dit, Sir John Johns.

But really, although there's no crisis now, the government of France estimates that there will be a huge deficit by 2027, so the choices are:  reduce the benefit (no one wants that), means testing (which to some degree they already do), operate at a huge deficit indefinitely (ça ne marche pas; it runs afoul of european union regulations), or raise the retirement age.  The latter seems like the most sensible approach.

[angus]

un compromis, peut-être ?

For those who do not read French, or who prefer not to read French, this article says that Elisabeth Borne announced that people having begun working at the age of 20 or 21 can seek full retirement at 63 instead of 64 years of age.  What is particularly interesting is that the article emphasizes that she is listening to the demands of the right.  I guess it makes sense because the votes of the legislators from Les Républicains are essential to pass this reform.

The article also states that Borne estimates that the compromise will cost at least 600 million euro per year, relative to the original proposed legislation, and that they will need to find a way to finance it.  Her attitude seems to be one of "You have spoken; we have listened."

We'll see if the workers are off the streets and back at work on Monday morning. 

[Antonio the Sixth]

Absolutely hilarious that it is LR, the party of shameless unreconstructed Thatcherism (to the point that Pécresse wanted the retirement age to be 65 and accused Macron of plagiarizing her economic program) now is the one pushing to soften this reform. Truly we are through the looking glass.

[Torie]

This contretemps is meaningless to me without context, so voila:

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/01/10/pension-reform-in-france-which-countries-have-the-lowest-and-highest-retirement-ages-in-eu

I am not sure why France is right up there with Luxembourg as the nation with the highest  expected number of years of pulling a pension, but it is. Is it because all that haute cuisine causes the French to live longer than the rest of us?

God bless Denmark. The happiest nation on earth always works the longest, perhaps because it is one of the highest taxed places on earth.

[angus]

This contretemps is meaningless to me without context,

I'm not sure that the context you provided is the right context.  The other countries are not likely to be important to the average French worker.  What if all the gas stations raised the price of fuel to $7 per gallon, and justified it on the basis that the average price is $7 per gallon in the OECD countries?  US consumers would be very upset.  Similarly, what Germans or Danes do is not going to be sufficient justification for the French.  

The French seem to have a different mindset than the anglophones regarding the worker's strike. They love their strike.  They don't even call it a strike (which is odd, because they use their word for strike, coup, for a million other things)  They say "faire la grève" (make the gravel; technically gravier is gravel but they are etymologically related).  According to Projet Voltaire, people arrived in boats with their wares and sold them on the quai of the Place de Grève (Gravel Plaza), so called because it was not paved, but covered in sand and gravel.  People started to say "faire grève" to mean set up shop.  Eventually, with time, the phrase came to mean collective cessation of work in order to complain.

Here is better context for you.  This chart shows the number of workdays lost per 1000 workers per year, by country.  Note that the happy Danes are not quite as happy as they think they are.  Canada is odd among anglophone countries, but remember that about 23% of the population of that country is native francophone, and that about 40% of the Belgian population is native francophone as well:



Albert Camus famously said "la dignité humaine consiste en la recherche permanente de l'amélioration de sa condition" (roughly, "human dignity consists of the permanent search of the improvement of one's condition").  I think the French have had this idea for several centuries with sporadic intense outbreaks of action (e.g., 1789) and it helps to explain countless social movements in their history.  

They genuinely believe that a lower government-specified retirement age is an improvement.  It may be.  It may not be.  I was speaking to a colleague a few years ago who has since retired.  My colleagues retire anywhere between the ages of 57 and 81.  My "nominal" retirement age by policy is 60 but that is a meaningless number.  I'll work as long as I'm healthy and I'm still enjoying it.  After all, taking home six figures every year is better than five, which is normally the adjustment one has to make when one retires.  It's probably a very gringo attitude.  At least not very French.  Look at Joe Biden.  You can't drag him away from his work.  Anyway, back to the point:  age discrimination is illegal, technically, but it happens.  No one can legally force us to retire but they do pressure us.  So my colleague was telling me, "There will come a day, probably when you are around 62, that people will start asking, 'So, angus, when are you going to retire' and you will be able to tell that what they are really saying is 'You old fart, when are you going to step down and let some younger guy with more recent training and fresh ideas have your job?  Because he'll surely be able to do it better' and that's when you will start to seriously think about retirement."

But bear in mind that he and I are both from the US.  Were we French we'd start seriously thinking about retirement at about the age of 21.  (Look at the faces of many of the grèvistes in the photos of the news articles.)

[Torie]

So Angus, the tl:dr is that there is something about the French language (the French look far too diverse for me to believe it is genetic - Normandy v. Marseilles), that causes people to sit on their ass and malinger, the better to  have more time to shop with other people's money at impromptu port markets where presumably the food fresh off the ship is the most savory. Got it. Thanks.

[angus]

So Angus, the tl:dr is that there is something about the French language (the French look far too diverse for me to believe it is genetic - Normandy v. Marseilles), that causes people to sit on their ass and malinger, the better to  have more time to shop with other people's money at impromptu port markets where presumably the food fresh off the ship is the most savory. Got it. Thanks.

Smartass.  

Not quite, but indeed language does affect us.  Japanese has 50 words for rain.  Danish has about 100 for snow/ice.  They need them. 

Consider this example:  English has many words for trash receptacle.  Rubbish bin, garbage can, trashcan, wastebin, dustbin, refuse bin, etc.  The French have one:  La Poubelle.  And they didn't have that one till around 1884.  (okay, to be fair they also have la boîte à ordures)  What conclusion could we draw from that?  I'll let you draw your own.

On the other hand, the French have about 10 common ways to say "let's get a drink".  Far more than English. 

[Torie]

So Angus, the tl:dr is that there is something about the French language (the French look far too diverse for me to believe it is genetic - Normandy v. Marseilles), that causes people to sit on their ass and malinger, the better to  have more time to shop with other people's money at impromptu port markets where presumably the food fresh off the ship is the most savory. Got it. Thanks.

Smartass.  

Not quite, but indeed language does affect us.  Japanese has 50 words for rain.  Danish has about 100 for snow/ice.  They need them. 

Consider this example:  English has many words for trash receptacle.  Rubbish bin, garbage can, trashcan, wastebin, dustbin, refuse bin, etc.  The French have one:  La Poubelle.  And they didn't have that one till around 1884.  (okay, to be fair they also have la boîte à ordures)  What conclusion could we draw from that?  I'll let you draw your own.

On the other hand, the French have about 10 common ways to say "let's get a drink".  Far more than English. 

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/french-people-do-not-like-to-shower-survey-shows

[angus]

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/french-people-do-not-like-to-shower-survey-shows

My favorite part of the confinement!  Not much good came from the coronavirus, but that was one thing I liked.  I sometimes went for weeks without showering, shaving, or wearing pants.  Lovin' it.

[Sir Mohamed]

Absolutely hilarious that it is LR, the party of shameless unreconstructed Thatcherism (to the point that Pécresse wanted the retirement age to be 65 and accused Macron of plagiarizing her economic program) now is the one pushing to soften this reform. Truly we are through the looking glass.

Seems like this is exactly what people hate about politics.

[angus]

I talked to a woman from Paris this morning on a Zoom call.  She has no car and relies on public transit.  She said that there have been days without métro service, or with severe disruptions, but her employers have been understanding so far.  She is really dreading March 7, when a renewable strike will begin.  Well, they are calling for "une grève reconductible" which I suppose means that it could last for a while.  

[angus]

Things seem to be calming down a bit.  Or at least there are fewer strikers, according to this article, but it also says that those who remain are more determined than ever.

On January 19, there were 2.5 million French workers on the streets according to the unions, 963 thousand according to the police.  

Today there were 1.3 million according to the unions and 440 thousand according to the police.

Also, there 26 arrests of strikers today, one for "exhibition sexuelle".  I couldn't find any details explaining what that meant, although I can envision a few possible interpretations.  If anyone learns, post it here because I'm mighty curious.

Edit:  Nevermind.  I found the following description in another newspaper - "Un homme se serait masturbé dans une rame du RER E sous le regard des autres passagers."

♪ If I had a chance I'd ask the world to dance and not be dancing with myself...

[John Dule]

If you think wages should be raised to account for inflation, you must also think that the retirement age must be raised to account for longer lifespans.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

If you think wages should be raised to account for inflation, you must also think that the retirement age must be raised to account for longer lifespans.

Wow what a great contribution to this thread, oh what a scholar!

[Blue3]

If you think wages should be raised to account for inflation, you must also think that the retirement age must be raised to account for longer lifespans.

Nope. Because automation is happening, longer lives doesn't mean healthy longer lives, and if we can afford to make it easier for people to save up for an earlier break from work then we should.

[John Dule]

If you think wages should be raised to account for inflation, you must also think that the retirement age must be raised to account for longer lifespans.

Nope. Because automation is happening, longer lives doesn't mean healthy longer lives, and if we can afford to make it easier for people to save up for an earlier break from work then we should.

Ah, but we can't afford it. What a shame!

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

This contretemps is meaningless to me without context,

Those idiots would probably be fine with Chinese companies taking over.

[Sir John Johns]

So Angus, the tl:dr is that there is something about the French language (the French look far too diverse for me to believe it is genetic - Normandy v. Marseilles), that causes people to sit on their ass and malinger, the better to  have more time to shop with other people's money at impromptu port markets where presumably the food fresh off the ship is the most savory. Got it. Thanks.

Smartass.  

Not quite, but indeed language does affect us.  Japanese has 50 words for rain.  Danish has about 100 for snow/ice.  They need them. 

Consider this example:  English has many words for trash receptacle.  Rubbish bin, garbage can, trashcan, wastebin, dustbin, refuse bin, etc.  The French have one:  La Poubelle.  And they didn't have that one till around 1884.  (okay, to be fair they also have la boîte à ordures)  What conclusion could we draw from that?  I'll let you draw your own.

On the other hand, the French have about 10 common ways to say "let's get a drink".  Far more than English. 

This kind of analysis reminds me when Shintaro Ishihara, a Japanese far-right politician, claimed that French was a failed language because it is ‘a language which cannot count numbers’ (tell that to Blaise Pascal, Henri Poincaré, Pierre de Fermat, Augustin-Louis Cauchy or Évariste Galois). Or when French intellectuals publicly guaranteed us that Putin would never invading Ukraine because of the ‘Russian soul’ or would better managing the pandemic than the decadent Western world because of ‘Dostoevsky’. This giving way too much importance to words, just words, as if it could be sufficient to interpret complex and deep political and social phenomenons (something that, ironically, a lot of people are guilty of among the French intelligentsia).

Especially because the examples you are providing are wrong to begin with. I personally don’t know 10 common ways to say ‘let’s get a drink’ and while poubelle has became the most widely used word to designate trash receptacle, there are also corbeille à papier, seau à ordures, bac à ordures, panier à ordures or conteneur à ordures or conteneur à déchets. We even have a word (poubelle de table) to specifically designate the little container where people having a meal dispose of the food waste. It seems there is no equivalent in English language. Should I then conclude that Americans are also eating pistachio shells, olive pits, cheese rinds, chicken skin or the shell and inedible parts of crab? (well this would be in line with the fact Americans have no word to designate what here we are calling terroir, they just don’t care about where their food is coming from). Or that they are just throwing that rubbish on the floor?

The word poubelle is named after Eugène Poubelle, the longtime prefect of Seine département (the official appointed by the government to administer the area covering Paris and its neighboring communes), who introduced at the beginning of his tenure, in December 1883, a system of mandatory and standardized boîtes à ordures. Such system was set up in order to improve garbage collection which had turned into a major problem due to rapid urbanization and development of collective housing. A broadly similar system had already been introduced in Paris in 1870, during the siege of the city by the Prussian army, but had quickly felt into disuse. Until Poubelle and his boîtes, wastes were simply deposited and piled up at the foot of the tenements, ragpickers grabbed what looked like valuable and what remained were collected by dustmen, using a shovel to put the garbage into a horse-drawn dumper (tombereau) touring the neighborhood on regular dates. Then it was discharged in the agricultural lands surrounding Paris, mostly to serve as fertilizer.

When introduced, the boîte à ordures of Prefect Poubelle was vituperated by the bourgeois press (the likes of Le Figaro) for constituting a threat against social hierarchy and as the creation of yet another burden for the landlords (required to supply tenants with the famous boîtes à ordures). Based on libertarian arguments, it was also attacked as an intolerable intrusion of the state in private life, in particular the new obligation to sort out waste and separate organic materials from papers and rags and to put earthenware, glass and oyster shells in a special receptacle (as this kind of debris could hurt the dustmen). Such measure was denounced as the first step towards a totalitarian society in which bureaucrats would have introduced ‘a regulation of mealtimes, of rest time and of the way to make love’.

Poubelle was also attacked in the press on his ‘provincial’ origins (i.e. not being a Parisian) and for not understanding what is the true essence of La Ville Lumière). The same press that had applauded to the bloody repress of the 1871 Paris Commune also suddenly cared about what would happened to the poor ragpickers as they were then suddenly prevented into doing their traditional business. Anyway, the controversy quickly died off and the bourgeois press totally forgot about the ragpickers but the name of Poubelle has remained attached to his boîtes à ordures (see that French academic article for the controversy, bordering media-fabricated moral panic, over the introduction of the poubelles).

Note that while Paris was quite belated into introducing a modern garbage collection system compared to other European main cities, the Americans have absolutely no reason to brag as, according to Wikipedia: ‘In 1895, New York City became the first U.S. city with public-sector garbage management’. This article is indeed painting a sorry situation of New York before 1895:

There are some photographs taken for Harper’s Weekly, before and after photos of street corners in New York in 1893 and then in 1895. And the before pictures are pretty astonishing, people were literally shin-high or knee-high in this muck that was a combination of street gunk, horse urine and manure, dead animals, food waste, and furniture crap.

So if you want to draw conclusion from the word poubelle, it may be rather that:

1/ it is deriving from the name of a state official.
2/ it was a word that initially designated a very Parisian thing before spreading out in the whole country, replacing local variations like the bedoucette in Toulouse, and even the rest of French-speaking world.


The reasons for the propensity of French to go on strike must be founded, not much into analysis of the vocabulary but on the political and social organization of France which has led to a situation that can be sum up by French citizens don’t trust their government and the French government don’t trust its citizens. France is organized in a way that political decisions are generally made by the central government in a top-down approach with a complete disregard for consultation and dialogue, a lack of anticipation on the practical arrangements of said decisions and in a spirit of complete disdain for the average French citizen who is considered as an idiot unaware of what is good for him.

Hence the periodic and sudden outburst of social protests in reaction of the (often ill-conceived or misunderstood) policies taken by the government: protests to defend private schools in 1984; protests in favor of public higher education system in 1986; big strikes against Juppé’s pension reform plan in 1995; youth protests against the introduction of a precarious labor contract specifically aiming at young workers in 2006; the Yellow Jackets movement in 2019 (and that is just in the latest decades).

And, at local level, there has been Notre-Dame-des-Landes (opposition to the construction of an airport) in the 2010s or, a bit older, the protests against plans to build a nuclear plant in Plogoff (Finistère) in 1980. This one led to an unbelievable of violence, especially on behalf of the French police (because France has one of the most violent police force among Western democracies), especially incredible because Plogoff was just a 2,500-inhabitant village of fishermen:

One of the women is explaining that Brittany was used as the poubelle of France (this was two years after the huge Amoco Cadiz oil spill and against a background of regional renewal after decades of economic and cultural marginalization) while another woman is saying that villagers started throwing stones at the police because ‘this was all they could do to defend themselves’.

And, just as for all the social movements I have previously mentioned, ultimately the government had to backtrack and drop its plans. Which is a lot of political defeats but maybe if the projects had been better prepared, didn’t have contradicted previous electoral promises and/or hadn’t been forced through...

You can surely found the roots of this brutal and hyper-centralized decision-making process in Louis XIV’s colbertisme and dirigisme (which some people are wrongly conflating with ‘socialism’) if not even before, and has persisted over centuries in spite of the change of regimes and constitutions.

But nothing has changed since the last century and this process has been actually further enhanced in the latest years with the hyper-presidentialism system, the weakening of political parties and social organizations in a broad sense (churches, unions, associations), the undermining of local authorities by the totally aberrant reorganization of the regions decided by Hollande (without voters having a say on this topic, of course) or the unilateral decision taken by Sarkozy and later Macron to suppress the most important sources of financial revenue for communes (professional tax under Sarkozy; housing tax under Macron), and finally the disorganization of the domestic intelligence services under Sarkozy (these ones were helpful for the government to detect potential social unrest and what were the policies that were causing problems at local level).

The map of the share of population having participated in the January and early February protests is also very revealing:

https://twitter.com/flr_louis/status/1626116802508881921

Protests are especially strong in the Northwestern part of France, in first place Brittany (in Finistère, 4.4% of the population went in the streets), in Occitanie and in predominantly rural départements (Ardèche, Hautes-Alpes, Corrèze, Hautes-Pyrénées, Orne). Conversely, there wasn’t proportionally that much protesters in the major urban centers (Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lille), except in Paris, the place where demonstrators usually converge because this is the center of power.

And in the Brittany map, the most shocking part are the protests in the tiny islands (Ouessant, Groix) and in very small towns like Pontivy or Ploërmel, which aren’t at all hotbeds of left-wing radicalism.

This is strongly suggesting that protests are going way beyond the rising of retirement age and are also connected to the decay of public services in rural areas and the perceived abandonment and disregard for the peripheral France.

Another divide to add to the pensioners/working population cleavage expressed during the last election (Macron over-performed among retirees compared to the rest of the population) and the generational gap: Macron is exclusively governing for the upper classes and the pensioners while having absolutely nothing to offer to younger generations. Just these last days, a proposal to extend lunches for one euro to all students in public universities (sponsored by the NUPES and endorsed by the RN) has been defeated in the National Assembly by a Renaissance-LR alliance which used incredibly moronic arguments (this would have benefited the sons of billionaires who, as we all know, are attending public universities) to oppose it while there are reports of Macron wanting to extend his lite version of military service (‘national universal service’, SNU) to all young aged 16 in spite of the experience having proven a waste of time and money and having already led to abuses against young participants from the supervising staff.

But, sure we are idiots to not trust a government which is refusing to provide an estimation of the number of people who will enjoyed the new €1,200 minimum pension, either because it is ridiculously low and would undermine the idea it is a social improvement, either because they have just no clue about the effects of their improvised reform.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Given the link between strength of protests and alienation in peripheral France, the low proportion of protestors in some of the more fash-friendly departements seems notable.

[angus]

Sir John Johns, that post has an impressive length.  I have only just noticed it and I haven't the time to read it all now, but I see a couple of question marks that I can easily address:

We call it a boneplate in my house, although I cannot vouch for other anglophones.  Primarily it is for bones, but we also use it for the shells of sunflower seeds, spent paper napkins, the crunchy parts of crabs and shrimps, etc.  Occasionally we also call it a hamtub.  It gets emptied into what I call the "garbage can" and washed immediately after dinner.  

Regarding terroir, as in "ensemble des terres d'une région, considérées du point de vue de leurs aptitudes agricoles et fournissant un ou plusieurs produits caractéristiques", we generally call that a region in English.  But serious oenophiles call it a terroir.  I can go either way.

It may be the case that some people put their rubbish on the floor.  I doubt that it is a common practice because I have not seen it (except by patrons in Texas Roadhouse restaurants and some fraternity houses where it is a time-honored tradition.)

[Torie]

Once upon, long, long ago, when I had both hair and hormones, the denizens of what became the lone superpower (still true but probably for not much more than the balance of my not adequately "investable" remaining lifetime time horizon), actually talked about France at restaurants (see how bi-lingual I am?) and the dinner table, and at the office water cooler, and the the Charles De Gualle road show (that drama queen in a drag military uniform), actually cared much about anything France did. Now they don't even care that much about their wines and food. But Dan and I still love the language, and while neither of us are any good at it, except to some extent in print, Dan has a wonderful French accent, while mine sounds like it is straight out of Los Angeles (listening to Spanish did not help much). Darn!

You know what is the saddest thing of all? Of course you do. The Brits are now more interesting than the French! Good God!

[LAKISYLVANIA]

The neoliberalism is strong with this thread (and of course now the fish will start telling me that "water" is a meaningless buzzword).

French trade unions have a reputation for neverending strikes, militancy, refusal to compromise and byzantine feuds (Britain has one trade union federation; France has eight). This makes them a darling of leftists, but they forget that only 8% of French workforce are members of a union: literally the lowest percentage anywhere in the EU and lower than even the US. Maybe there's a connection there.

Usually I'm not a fan of union busting, but most of the people who will be marching on the streets against this reform are parasites who don't care about representing workers, only about protecting their sweet little privileges.

Jesus F**king Christ.

You're usually better than this. Please take a second to think through what you're saying.

Thank you.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

This doesn't concern me but I am opposed to this reform. There are too many health issues that are going to arise.

If spending cuts have to be made, I would prefer to lower the pensions for the wealthiest people in retirement.

I also agree with this.

I don't think it's a coincidence i agree with the actual French users.