Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

The French certainly don't mess around that is for sure.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Live feed of Protests:

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Nope, in general our politicians can do almost anything they want and people will passively accept it. However, if milk goes up by a penny, the French rise up against it!

Is this because we are too soft or because we behave in a more civilised fashion??

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

It's because we're too apathetic.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Many can't even be bothered to be apathetic :D

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Like it centurion, nice one, nice one.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

That will be nothing like what will happen should be stop brexit.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

And it's worked!

It's just been announced via a televised address in France that the minimum wage will be increased and some planned tax rises will not now go ahead.

It was also admitted by the Government that anger about this was "deep and justified".

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

The militant French usually get their way in the end.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

The French, bless ’em, they love their socialist country, they love all socialist stuff......

However, when it is proposed that to pay for all that good socialist stuff, they will have to pay more tax, all hell breaks loose.

This my learned friends is yet another example of why socialism doesn’t work. It’s great on paper, but when people realise that they have to pay for it, the concept of the haves and have nots all living together in harmony goes out the Effin window.

Suddenly it’s “ why am I paying for you?”

Politics can’t trump human nature.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Yup, whilst we just take whatever is thrown at us, though I think that Brexit could be an exception whichever way it goes.

---------- Post added at 23:09 ---------- Previous post was at 23:07 ----------

Yep, humans are very selfish creatures, until whatever they want to be cut to lower their taxes affects them personally. Then it's different all of a sudden. I've seen this happen so many times in life.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

France isn't socialist, not sure where you've got that idea from.
The Government tends to hold more strategic stakes in companies compared to the UK but that's been reducing under Macron.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

They tend to get up on their hind legs far more and complain while the British generally are far more reserved in their approach.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

It would be a foolish government that felt it could rely on that and railroad their policies through, despite being unpopular, and expect the population to remain supine. In this age of social media groundswell can become street demo's and riots in no time.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

There has been a long tradition of protesting in the streets in France. See the revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848. The right to do this was even in the French Constitution once!

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Ha! I just spat my beer out all over the dog, because of you.

Here.

This will help explain it for you.

https://www.seeker.com/how-socialism...904729547.html

That’s all you need to know.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

That’s a US medical reporter’s views, and remember, the American definition of ‘socialist’ is vastly different from the rest of the world.

A reasonable percentage of the US thought Obama was a socialist...

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

That's all that Pierre needs to know. It's a shame he didn't know it earlier as it sounds like he paid for his misunderstanding by sacrificing a mouthful of beer. ;)

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

You can find several papers/articles on French socialist policies,

This one

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/09...uropean-union/


Is also a good read in regards to to Brexit..........

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Anything from someone who is not an American Republican?

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Or failing that, anyone who's not writing for a non-American audience. For as Hugh explained, they possess a different definition of socialist to us, thereby making your references to such material irrelevant.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

There are different shades of socialists as there are different shades of capitalists but the trouble is Andrew some generalise too much because it does not fit their thinking.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

France isn't a socialist country but then no country currently is really. If there are it might be one of those South American ones like Cuba or Venezuela but I am not familiar enough with them to know.

If you accept that pretty much every country is a mixed economy with varying degrees of public and private ownership then France is more socialist than many but even then they have a lot of private enterprise, France is hardly a small economy, and they have private involvement in their public sector. Their healthcare system has more a mix of private/public/charity sectors than the NHS. They have private ambulances. You don't have healthcare 'free at the point of use' with a complicated system of public and private insurance which reimburses you for some things like GP visits for which you pay.

As Hugh said the Americans think everyone and everything in Europe is socialist. By any European meaning of the word then France is a socially democratic, but not socialist, country.

---------- Post added at 08:48 ---------- Previous post was at 08:45 ----------

I don't think it really matters to Pierre's broader point about people wanting things without paying for them though. It's just not something that uniquely applies to socialist countries.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Indeed, even their so-called left wing party, the Democrats is considerably to the right of a lot of our right-wing parties..

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

MACRON SHOCK: French president faces NO CONFIDENCE vote TOMORROW - France in chaos


Bloomberg reporter, Nikos Chrysoloras, tweeted: "O.K, this is an epidemic now: France’s government will face a no confidence vote in parliament on Thursday, AFP reports."

He said Mr Macron was planning to speak to Prime Minister Theresa May, who also faces a no confidence vote tonight, on the phone

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...-vest-protests

Wonder if he's taking may on holiday until the anger blows over.;)

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

The contagion is obviously spreading papa..

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Macron was worse choice ever for French President.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

Macron’s party has a big majority in Parliament and it’s the left wing parties tabling this so it’s just a bit of PR for them.

Re: Paris in Lockdown due to Protests
 

In a choice of two of which it was in a run off between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen there was only one choice for many..