Trump may not be the dumbest cunt in politics

[Svartalf]

Not posting the article here, as it's in French, but there's just been an announcement that the French civil service was going to unload 120 000 jobs over the end of the macron administration.

Given that most branches of the civil service, including finances, education, health and justice are already creaking under the workload that can"t be properly adressed due to lack of sufficient personnel, it's obvious that the perfect thing to do for the gummint is to unload still more civil service job, just to have that much less to pay up.

[Sean Hayden]

--sorry, no need to litter this thread with bad jokes about Trump.

[pErvinalia]

While it probably is dumb, it's not unique to Macron. It's straight from the neoliberal playbook. It's been done across the western world.

[Svartalf]

it's not like I ever accused macron of being anything but a technocrat with too much money and not enough of a sense of realities... the problem is that we are a semi socialist country where the state is supposed to do a lot of things, and to do these things you need a lot of people, worse than that, lots of trained people, to do the jobs. declaring that the civil service will lose a lot of jobs is not improving matters any, not in a country that is wracked by massive demonstrations and where what workforce there is is grumbling that we need more jobs because there"s too much work for what people there are.

It may lighten a certain financial burden on the state, and help us gain Brussels' approval, but if that moron had a decent attitude to taxation, that is, getting the money where it is until there is enough to pay for what has to be done, rather than just gifting the wealthy with ever more tax cuts, the country would be a lot calmer and not taking the way of yet another revolution, the first in about 150 years... there have been any number of regime changes since 1848, but all have been more or less peaceful on the internal front (1870 is a special case as a) the regime was torn down by a war with Prussia, and b) the embryo of a popular revolution that was the Commune was squashed down quite bloodily).

[pErvinalia]

Are the yellow vest protests still on-going?

[Svartalf]

yeah, every saturday, it's becoming a real hassle as the Police forces the metro to close stations that are likely to be too close to where the demonstrations will be, meaning that their right to demonstrate is apt to impact on my right to go to and fro.

[pErvinalia]

When are the guillotines going to be wheeled out?

[Svartalf]

hopefully, that won't be needed, but I'd love to see macron resigning, though that's about as likely as to see the pope coming out as an atheist.

[Rum]

France’s public sector is bloated, protected by powerful unions and frankly self serving. It needs trimming.

For those who crave evidence, at 56% of gdp it is the highest in the EU.

[Svartalf]

actually, I don't know where the bloat is, but many , many branches of the public sector are undermanned when it comes to the people who have to do public services, our schools' classes are clogged by excessive numbers of students because there are not enough teachers, hospitals are not performing well because of a lack of doctors and nurses, people who need to use the justice system face unconscionable delays because of a paucity of magistrates and support personnel etc etc ad nauseam... maybe there's a definite bloat at the highest levels, but not at the interface with the public.

[Rum]

I’m not being critical, though I did come across that way in that last post. I have however been struck on every trip I’ve had to France - and there have been many - how much the state clearly subsidises what amounts to a traditional way of life. In villages I’ve stayed in the boulangerie might only be open for an hour or two to sell the daily bread. Tiny bars and cafes in every village, often with hardly a customer all day..not to mention the huge numbers of unemployed kids hanging around. The pace of life is still slow in rural France - well in many parts anyway and I’m amazed your ‘productivity’ measures higher than the uk’s. The state clearly supports all those people in a way it doesn’t any more here. If that’s what you guys want that’s fine with me.

[Svartalf]

Yeah, subsidized shops and cafés are one of the few ways we know how to prevent some rural communities from becoming ghost towns altogether... then again, it's not purely a rural problem, the big cities, and medium towns where the people from the villages would go if their communities eventually died from utter lack of commerces and public services don't want the extra population, as there's a scarcity of available dwellings for them... so we patch up and keep the small rural hamlets alive artificially.

[Rum]

I figured it was something along those lines. Stopping in tiny hamlets in the middle of the Bordeaux forests or right across the south, with one sleepy bar with a couple of retired guys sipping a pastis is all very picturesque but I often wondered how they made ends meet.

As I’ve often said I love rural France but if the country ever goes through a Thatcher type revolution all of that sleepiness will be gone.

[Svartalf]

well; If we ever mistakenly elect a thatcher style of person, you can expect protests and riots that even the current wave, or those of 1995 and 2005 won't match, we'll break them and shove their thatcherism up their sorry arses, Edward II style

[Rum]

That’s what the unions said here. It was almost unthinkable that she would break them, but she did.

France of course is a different kettle of fish with no Tory style political movement equivalent. The ‘left’ sometimes still feels like a late arrival at the party here.