France-tastic

Along with the cheese and wine and useless administration, another french institution is the strike. The rising up of the repressed people against the newly elected right-leaning Sarkozy and his dangerous reforms to the more than generous retirement scheme for public employees, and specifically this time, the train drivers. Which means of course, that the train drivers have gone on strike. Which means of course, that there is no (or very little) public transport. Which means that the city is just about paralysed. Last night it took me three and a half hours to get home from work. Others are wearing their shoes out walking to work but mine is just a bit too far away for that to be feasible (about 30 km)! So without the Velib bike scheme, the occasional Metro every half hour or so (when the usual peak hour frequency is every 2 minutes!), and a car-owning colleague, I'm stuffed. Actually even with that occasional metro I'm stuffed. Literally. Like a sardine. To the point where the police have been called in to block off some of the bigger stations because of the danger of over-crowded platforms.


This has been going on since Wednesday and is scheduled to continue until at least next Tuesday, with the unions claiming they are ready to continue 'till Christmas. If that does happen, pretty soon someone is going to call for a strike against the strike. It could be me.