Les grèves

[ardcarp]

The French are strikingly good at them aren't they? If we'd been half as well-motivated we would not now have Waspi Women and, worst of all, students in debt. I have to add that students in my day were a great deal more militant. The only sign of hope is the Extinction Rebellion.
Good on yer, Greta!

And no, I haven't been at the Christmas brandy early.

[Serial_Apologist]

The French are strikingly good at them aren't they? If we'd been half as well-motivated we would not now have Waspi Women and, worst of all, students in debt. I have to add that students in my day were a great deal more militant. The only sign of hope is the Extinction Rebellion.
Good on yer, Greta!

And no, I haven't been at the Christmas brandy early.

[doversoul1]

The French are strikingly good at them aren't they? If we'd been half as well-motivated we would not now have Waspi Women and, worst of all, students in debt. I have to add that students in my day were a great deal more militant. The only sign of hope is the Extinction Rebellion.
Good on yer, Greta!

And no, I haven't been at the Christmas brandy early.

Sorry to be a cynic and spoilsport but they both increasingly looking like All right for some.

[Serial_Apologist]

Sorry to be a cynic and spoilsport but they both increasingly looking like All right for some.

Solidarity, dovers - the principle of "each for all, and all for each". Nothing cynical about that.

[ardcarp]

Indeed. When Macron talks of 'reforming' French pension schemes, what he really means is reducing the amount of money spent on them. We have French friends who are able to live reasonably on their state pensions. Could anyone in the UK do that? I think not. And the retirement age is 62 for all.

[gradus]

Indeed. When Macron talks of 'reforming' French pension schemes, what he really means is reducing the amount of money spent on them. We have French friends who are able to live reasonably on their state pensions. Could anyone in the UK do that? I think not. And the retirement age is 62 for all.

Not much doubt that even post the Macron-reforms, the French state oap is way better than ours, albeit fiercely expensive to maintain. Waspi Women problems seem inconceivable under the French approach.

[greenilex]

I recently read something about an academic topic “cliodynamics” which charts long-term trends in human history and indicates the likelihood of upheavals...apparently we are in for a rough ride?

[Richard Tarleton]

cliodynamics

Thanks - new to me. At a quick glance, this seems to be very much a social science - measuring things which lend themselves to being measured (quite French, really ). Historians have in the past tended to overlook or ignore long-term environmental, climatic, geomorphological trends which we've only learnt how to study relatively recently but which in hindsight turn out to have had a major influence on human history.... Perhaps we're on the verge of another 14th century, with a conjunction of wars, climate change, northward migration of peoples affected by it, famine and/or oppressive regimes, immunity of infections to antibiotics, viruses of the mind (fundamentalist belief systems of all stripes, east and west).....

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. etc......WB Yeats

[Bryn]

Thanks - new to me. At a quick glance, this seems to be very much a social science - measuring things which lend themselves to being measured (quite French, really ). Historians have in the past tended to overlook or ignore long-term environmental, climatic, geomorphological trends which we've only learnt how to study relatively recently but which in hindsight turn out to have had a major influence on human history.... Perhaps we're on the verge of another 14th century, with a conjunction of wars, climate change, northward migration of peoples affected by it, famine and/or oppressive regimes, immunity of infections to antibiotics, viruses of the mind (fundamentalist belief systems of all stripes, east and west).....

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. etc......WB Yeats

"At first sight" it looks to be a development of the Kondratiev Wave Theory of economic history.

[Richard Tarleton]

"At first sight" it looks to be a development of the Kondratiev Wave Theory of economic history.

Another thing I've learnt this morning, thank you

1815 - one of his turning points - coincides with the eruption of Mount Tambora, though he wouldn't have known that.

[Belgrove]

I’d have imagined all you folk with Guardian sensibilities would have seen this

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/12/history-as-a-giant-data-set-how-analysing-the-past-could-help-save-the-future

Hari Seldon’s Psychohistory (circa 1942) no less!

[ardcarp]

......and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

That's scary.

[Bella Kemp]

We have become so used to prosperity in the West that we tend to think that the dark days of a hundred years ago may never return. M. Macron is simply observing that retirement at 55 for many and 62 for some is not sustainable. The French system is so generous that many people seem to be getting in retirement far more than they actually paid in to national insurance during their working lives. If one factors in the cost of healthcare it is easy to see how the whole thing is absurd. If it continues, the French economy will collapse in much the same way as the economies of the East European socialist states collapsed in the last century. It's not only naive to imagine otherwise it is wickedly cruel because the ones who will suffer will be the most vulnerable.

[Serial_Apologist]

We have become so used to prosperity in the West that we tend to think that the dark days of a hundred years ago may never return. M. Macron is simply observing that retirement at 55 for many and 62 for some is not sustainable. The French system is so generous that many people seem to be getting in retirement far more than they actually paid in to national insurance during their working lives. If one factors in the cost of healthcare it is easy to see how the whole thing is absurd. If it continues, the French economy will collapse in much the same way as the economies of the East European socialist states collapsed in the last century. It's not only naive to imagine otherwise it is wickedly cruel because the ones who will suffer will be the most vulnerable.

There is a difference, however. In a capitalist economy such as France's the armaments industry makes money, whereas for the post-capitalist economy of the Soviet Union - which I will not dignify with the term "socialist" - such expenditure on armaments is a huge drain on resources which would have been otherwise spent on goods and services needed, rather than on outpacing the Americans. This was one of the purposes of Reagan's switch back to the arms race - to break the Soviet's economy - and it succeeded: foreign capital could once again make money out of an economically weakened workforce for the first time in 70 years. Why the French ecoinomy is unable to maintain pensions at existing levels or the shorter working week is down to the nature of capitalist economies being an intrinsically chaotic model for consistent sustainable growth, with periodic commodity gluts resulting, mass redundancies with resulting lower tax returns to fund pensions and the welfare safety net inflicting a downward spiral on employees, who are now made sitting ducks for stirring up division.