Sunday - May 15, 2005
The Problem With France ….
.... is that it is full of Frenchmen. Frenchmen who will be defying their government tomorrow because the government is asking them to give up one of eleven federally-mandated holidays (Pentecost). The French government is doing this in order to raise additional taxes on the extra day of work and use it to improve health care for the elderly. Instead, the population of France is saying ”NON!” ....
PARIS (Reuters) - Millions of French workers are expected to stay at home on Monday, ignoring a government decision to scrap the traditional Pentecost public holiday to generate funds to improve healthcare for the elderly.
Mass defiance of the government will deal a new blow to the authority of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and President Jacques Chirac, two weeks before a referendum on the European Union constitution which polls show the government could lose.
The row over the holiday has served as a lightning rod for opposition to the constitution. The latest opinion poll by the Ifop research group showed the charter’s opponents are again ahead of its backers, by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent.
“The great day of solidarity foreseen for Monday, May 16 has become a social and political imbroglio (mess),” Le Monde newspaper said in an editorial in its Sunday edition.
France’s cash-strapped government hopes taxes on Monday’s production will generate an extra 2 billion euros to be spent on healthcare for the aged.
In 2003, the government was criticised for being unprepared and not acting fast enough to save lives when an August heatwave killed 15,000 people, most of them elderly.
By dumping what was one of 11 public holidays, Raffarin had hoped to avoid raising taxes on individuals, but now faces a backlash over what unions call a “day of free work”.
An Ifop poll published on Sunday showed 55 percent of employees plan not to work on Monday. Another poll last week found two-thirds of people oppose the government’s decision.
Posted by The Skipper
on 05/15/2005 at 01:07 PM
Filed Under: • EUro-peons •
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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
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