[Politics] The French show the Brits how it is done

[Comrade Sam]

So join a picket line! I went over to Paris for the mass protests in 1995. It was phenomenal. Strangely wild cat strikes were known as the English disease on the continent, until the 1990s - inspired by the strikes in the 1970s that meant the gap between the rich and poor was at its narrowest at the peak of industrial unrest in this country.

 

[Comrade Sam]

If you don't like thuggery then I'm sure revelations about the behaviour of the British (and French) police will put you on the side of the protestors.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

So join a picket line! I went over to Paris for the mass protests in 1995. It was phenomenal. Strangely wild cat strikes were known as the English disease on the continent, until the 1990s - inspired by the strikes in the 1970s that meant the gap between the rich and poor was at its narrowest at the peak of industrial unrest in this country.

The gap between rich and poor is pretty narrow in Communist countries as well Sam. Only trouble is everyone is in the latter category.

 

[Crawley Dingo]

The French don’t let their government walk all over them, unlike the anesthetised public on this island.

King Charles's France visit postponed after pension protests

Emmanuel Macron says the trip could not go ahead because of pension protests during the trip.

www.bbc.co.uk

You are assuming that if rioting starts in the UK on this scale that the rioters are going to be on your side wanting the things you want right?

 

[Swansman]

The state of this thread. Would love to see these same pro-French protests saying the same if people were doing the same to the streets of Sussex.

Some people would like it and some wouldn't?

Personally I love a good riot, like the ones in Lund when we were 1200 people trying to occupy every single abandoned building in the city to make a stance on the citys unwillingness to provide affordable housing:



Or stopping nazis from marching through the city (honouring some old Swedish king) on November 30. We (well not me, I was too young) stopped them in 1991 through causing chaos on the streets and did the same when they came back in 2008.



When you're out on the streets fighting for what you know is right - and also win... incredible feeling. Surely there would be a bunch in Sussex having similar feelings.
Of course, anywhere - Paris, Lund or Sussex - there will also be a lot of people thinking "can't you just write an angry letter instead". But thats just another way of saying "can't you just accept every and any thing thrown at you?"

 

[WATFORD zero]

Bloody French need educating

 

[Crawley Dingo]

Our government essentially passed a bill to remove our human right to protest during covid and we did f*** all about it. Frightening how docile the UK public have become.

Wait till the idiots* shut down enough farms and people start getting hungry...........

* FTR Labour have the really crap policies in spades compared to the Tories who are just plain corrupt.

 

[Skuller]

I don’t want to be boring, and admire everyone who wants to man the barricades and burn sheep in the Champs Elysees, but Macron made his intentions very clear before the last elections, and was then democratically put in power.

 

[Swansman]

I don’t want to be boring, and admire everyone who wants to man the barricades and burn sheep in the Champs Elysees, but Macron made his intentions very clear before the last elections, and was then democratically put in power.

Plenty of the worst tyrants in history were democratically elected. Doesn't mean you can't protest against them and their politics.

Most often the middle class decides who wins the election... and the middle class is usually also the one who is too happy and too busy with their own stuff to vote for anything but the "safest" option. If the middle class picks a PM or president who tries to f*** with the working class, the fact that the bloke was elected won't stop the working class from revolting.

 

[Bakero]

Italy 67 years
U/K 67
Germany 66.5
Netherlands 66.5
Spain 65
France 62

Spain is 67

 

[Bakero]

This brilliant book, first published in 1987, explained how popular tabloid culture and trashy TV programmes were pacifying people and eroding their willingness or ability to think or act.

Of course, Aldous Huxley had also prophesied this much earlier in Brave New World: the population kept quiet and obedient not through surveillance by 'big brother' or direct State-suppression, but endless sources of entertainment, including cheap booze, soft drugs and casual sex. They'd be too pissed, stoned or shagged-out to want to rebel.

See also Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle.

 

[Lenny Rider]

Taking Mrs H to Paris the week after next for a belated 30th birthday present (she’s 53) if it’s still bad will I be able to claim on my travel insurance or do they class rioting as an ’act of God?’

 

[Skuller]

Plenty of the worst tyrants in history were democratically elected. Doesn't mean you can't protest against them and their politics.

Most often the middle class decides who wins the election... and the middle class is usually also the one who is too happy and too busy with their own stuff to vote for anything but the "safest" option. If the middle class picks a PM or president who tries to f*** with the working class, the fact that the bloke was elected won't stop the working class from revolting.

OK, so let’s give the middle classes only half a vote, that’ll bump up the lower class and give them more of a say. While we’re at it, we’ll give young people only half a vote because they don’t pay much tax, and old people half a vote because they shouldn’t be voting for the future when they’ll be dead then anyway (that’ll sort Brexit and Scottish independence “wrong” answers). Then let’s get even more decisive, and disenfranchise Jews, gypsies and homosexuals….. We’ll soon get this democracy thingy sorted.

 

[Pavilionaire]

I wonder how much people power and 'Vive La Revolution!' is ingrained in the French psyche?

I admire the way they really fight to protect their rights, although it can go too far the other way i.e. coming close to voting in the racist Le Pen, failing to see the economic necessity of uplifting the state pension age.

In this country there's too many people with the attitude that politicians "they're all the same", "they're all as bad as each other" but they do nothing about it and / or vote Tory.

 

[Mr deez]

Taking Mrs H to Paris the week after next for a belated 30th birthday present (she’s 53) if it’s still bad will I be able to claim on my travel insurance or do they class rioting as an ’act of God?’

Paris is a big place, I doubt you'd even know it was happening in the lanes of Le marais.

 

[Swansman]

OK, so let’s give the middle classes only half a vote, that’ll bump up the lower class and give them more of a say. While we’re at it, we’ll give young people only half a vote because they don’t pay much tax, and old people half a vote because they shouldn’t be voting for the future when they’ll be dead then anyway (that’ll sort Brexit and Scottish independence “wrong” answers). Then let’s get even more decisive, and disenfranchise Jews, gypsies and homosexuals….. We’ll soon get this democracy thingy sorted.

Nope, never. Democracy is a short-lived fad that can't function, and will be eradicated by the end of this century.

 

[ConfusedGloryHunter]

This brilliant book, first published in 1987, explained how popular tabloid culture and trashy TV programmes were pacifying people and eroding their willingness or ability to think or act.

Of course, Aldous Huxley had also prophesied this much earlier in Brave New World: the population kept quiet and obedient not through surveillance by 'big brother' or direct State-suppression, but endless sources of entertainment, including cheap booze, soft drugs and casual sex. They'd be too pissed, stoned or shagged-out to want to rebel.

Hardly a new idea though is it? The romans were pacified by bread and circuses 2000 years ago. There will be no revolution until we're starving or bored.

 

[Peteinblack]

Nope, never. Democracy is a short-lived fad that can't function, and will be eradicated by the end of this century.

Yup, and democracy will be eradicated with the enthusiastic support of millions of ordinary people who want to be ruled by a 'heroic' leader who'll tell what to think and do.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Universal condemnation on here when Croydon residents did the same. Funny old world. I prefer democracy to thuggery but each to their own.

Have the French been looting?
I condemn the arson in Bordeaux (said so before) but not the protests which have been going on for 16 days.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I don’t want to be boring, and admire everyone who wants to man the barricades and burn sheep in the Champs Elysees, but Macron made his intentions very clear before the last elections, and was then democratically put in power.

He got in because hardly anybody wanted Le Pen.

I’d love to see our farmers drive their tractors up Whitehall and dump the silage. Instead, they just go meekly out of business.