Seen Better Days . . .

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As you know by now, during the last six months which lasted from mid October to early November of this year, France went through a major crisis, and as a result decided to change the government, consequently the former prime minister has become the new prime minister, and the old president is now the new president again. We can all rest assured that there will simply be more of the same for the next six months until Christmas, at least.

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One aspect of this latest crisis, which was crisis number 2742-2010 (the 2742nd crisis of 2010 here, there having been at least 1375 crises linked to the French national football, errr, soccer team earlier this year) was that a relatively small group of people who feel that the retirement age should be advanced to age 47, and who were upset that the old government (nothing to do with the new government) had pushed through a reform which would change the retirement age from 60 to 62, decided to hold the entire country hostage, which is what usually happens during every third or fourth crisis here, and shut down all the gasoline refineries, and blocade all gasoline depots such that no gasoline was available in gasoline stations.

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The end result was that for ordinary citizens who needed to drive to work, it became very quickly impossible to do so. This is normal. This is called "putting pressure on the government". But the new government has put that behind them. For small business people who needed to use their vehicles to make deliveries or go work at customers locations, many of them simply had to go out of business, and become retired early. This was part of what the protesters who wanted earlier retirements intended to achieve. They succeeded.

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For many others, who ran out of gasoline while trying to make one last futile search for the precious liquid at early hours in the morning, they simply had to abandon their cars by the roadside and walk back home. Many such cars were then torched by protesters. That is normal, burning cars has become the French national sport. They are very good at it. If I told you the number of cars burned in France last year, you wouldn't believe me. So I won't. But just imagine a very large number.

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The next few photographs were what could be seen along any French roadside over the past few weeks. This is normal. The new government says they are going to clean up the mess caused by the old government. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
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