Two summers ago, French folk throughout the socialist paradise, packed up their water-wings and flip-flops and headed off for a month of fun in the sun. Abandoned French grannies and grandpas perished in the tens of thousands.
Everywhere grim Frenchies bravely finished out their vacations, all the fun spoiled by the cruel news of grandma's demise and her warehousing in some nice butcher's meat locker. It was at this dark moment in French vacation history -- well actually some months later -- that Jack and his slack crew of ministers offered the vactioning French public a solution that would not require taking granny along.
In a law passed last year, the administration of President Jacques Chirac changed Pentecost - which falls on May 16 this year - into a normal working day to produce €2 billion, or $2.6 billion, for a National Solidarity Fund.
How perfect! What French secular humanist or humane secularist would object to abolishing this public relic of France's ignominious Christian past?
Oh.
Apparently quite a few.
A survey on Friday by the CSA polling company for the Parisien newspaper showed that 66 percent of people opposed the plan to drop the holiday."Employees do not accept having to work an extra day," said Jean-Claude Mailly of the Force Ouvrière union, which has called for strikes and work stoppages that day. "Care for the elderly is a real problem, no one can deny it. But the government's method for tackling it is not acceptable."
Other unions are also calling for stoppages, and the French Confederation of Christian Workers has filed suit in a Paris court, charging that the abolition of the holiday is illegal.
[Fears that strikes would further weaken Jack's weak "OUI" initiative] were underscored when the state-owned SNCF rail company, whose union is traditionally very active, ruled that Pentecost would remain a holiday for its 160,000 employees.
The announcement, which was a reversal of an earlier decision, was made after two railroad unions threatened to go on strike on May 16, and followed a plea from the office of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to the SNCF president, Louis Gallois, Europe 1 radio said.
Another bright day in the French secular tradition.
The French aren't anti-religion, they are just anti-your religion.
What a relief to learn that the French are not Godless heathens.
The last secular "holy relic" residing in France is soon to be rendered obsolete.
For 115 years the "gold standard" of mass has been a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of platinum-iridium alloy, specially housed outside of Paris. Now a group of scientists is arguing that the artifact is archaic and the time has come to redefine this most basic measuring unit.
With the French being so unreliable, you have to wonder why this wasn't done a hundered years ago.
"Care for the elderly is a real problem, no one can deny it. But the government's method for tackling it is not acceptable."
I take it France does not have a government of the people and by the people? I remember the news out of France the summer of 2003. It is funny that rather than thinking, "could our government allow that to happen"; I instead began thinking, "could my neighbor die of heat exposure without me knowing about it?"
The point is that Granny was starting to become a pain in the butt anyway. Selfish doesn't even begin to describe the whole sad story. It does however demonstrate what can be expected in a society where government is responsible for everything.
