News From Frogistan

Ernie sent me a link to this article about my favorite country, Frogistan. Too bad Dirtbag Dirtbag no longer reads me.

Unhappy at work, in revolt at school and openly divided over Europe, the French have suddenly lost that joie de vivre that British holidaymakers and expatriates alike identify as so Gallic a trait.

Huh? What's going on?

A demoralised nation whose citizens are disillusioned by politicians, have nothing much to believe in and feel dissatisfied with their lot - that was the portrait of France painted in a recent survey of the country's mood.

But Jerkweed Jerkweed said that France was such a great nation with their 35 hour work week and all those lavish benefits that the gummint has mandated.

The slump in national morale has coincided with - is perhaps driven by - an uncharacteristic fit of scepticism about the European Union and its new constitution.

The great European Union that is gonna be the United States of Europe and will overtake the United States in economic power. So what has the Frogs up in arms?

Only months ago, positive attitudes to Europe were acknowledged to be one of the few constants of French political life. France, after all, was a proud parent of the infant Common Market and has long seen the EU as its own private project.

Europe was just another arena in which France could perform its historic mission: spreading the values of liberté, egalité and fraternité to nations less civilised than itself.

Why do the French have long noses? So they can look down on the rest of Europe.

As for the referendum ratifying the constitution, President Jacques Chirac seemed to face only one serious obstacle to carrying his people with him: its timing.

What obstacle was that?

His courtiers began talking up the merits of an early poll - Mr Chirac had previously spoken of late summer - but their principal concern was that hostility to Turkey's eventual membership of the EU should not gather strength and pollute the high-minded debate over Europe's principles and values.

Principles? Values? WTF?

But having moved the vote forward to May 29, Mr Chirac watched in dismay as other issues conspired to threaten his European vision.

And those issues are?

Two recent opinions polls have put the No campaign ahead for the first time, confirming Mr Chirac's worst fears that the electorate may use the referendum to register its disgust with him, his government and its lot in life.

The French unhappy with their gummint? How can that be?

The national malaise extends far beyond the realm of politics. Despite the Frenchman's traditional delight in good food and wine, restaurateurs, especially in areas hardest hit by a slump in tourism, complained bitterly about empty tables last summer.

That's the downside of that high Euro. It plays havoc with that tourism thing.

People were eating out less. Prices were too high and service too poor.

And this is different from normal?

Not that most French people would blame the punitive cost of employing staff and the enforced shorter working week for their unsatisfactory experience dining out. But in their hearts, the French know that the 35-hour week has been a disaster. However noble the idea of giving working mothers more time with their children, the social and economic cost has been high.

But Scumbag Scumbag was bragging about the wonderful 35 hour work week.

Companies have flocked to relocate to the cheaper labour markets of eastern Europe and beyond. The service industry resorts increasingly to the black economy.

Globalization versus socialism. You make labor too expensive (35 hour work week, paid leave, long vacations) and companies will relocate where labor is cheaper. Hence the 10% unemployment rate in Frogistan.

The government itself seems motivated by a desire for the quiet life. And it is no coincidence that France's restless unions, aware of Mr Chirac's growing nervousness about the referendum, have sent their members into the streets in huge numbers.

Holy shit! Look at all them croaking frogs!

France notoriously caves in at the first signs of trouble from the workforce,

France surrenders to itself.

whether from the seamen, fishermen and hauliers who blockade motorways and ports, the transport workers who yesterday paralysed the rail network or schoolchildren protesting at reforms in the classroom.

And let's not forget the Germans.

Many French people are angered by the posturing and the strikes. But, according to the polls, even more are quicker to blame the government and employers for anything that goes wrong.

And it is with that majority - uncomfortable with cancelled trains or health service walk-outs but even more uncomfortable with any threat to their rights and customs - that attacks on the spread of "liberalism" in Europe strike such a chord.

Awww! It is sure bleak in Frogistan.

When surgeons threatened to stage a week-long exile in Britain, it was not because they wished to show their admiration for the NHS. Rather, it symbolised "the nightmare" that awaited medical care in France if it followed too closely the British model.

But Dipshit Dipshit said France had one of the best health care systems in the world. Socialized medicine is the way to go.

The French actually feel that if their country is made more disciplined and more responsive to market forces, their way of life, imperfect and anarchic as it often is, would be under threat.

Merde! Not the free market. How could the Frogs survive without socialism?

But for all the evidence of a country more and more ill at ease with itself, another powerful national characteristic should never be underestimated.

If the French rarely see themselves as bad drivers and arrogant or unfriendly towards foreigners, they cheerfully own up to being among the world's worst complainers.

Touche!

The contrariness helps to explain why a bureaucrat will turn down a perfectly fair request and why voters so readily refuse to grant governments a second term.

It also shows why the French now see Europe as too big for its boots and why Mr Chirac, determined to win the day on May 29, exploits the sentiment by "standing up" for national interests.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Brave ol' Jackoff Chirac.

Behind all this is a love of the one word "Non", even if it may later be softened to a "Oui, mais… ".

Asking France to abandon its instinct for saying "no" is like asking a lion to stop chasing wildebeest. Lions are lions.

Frogs are frogs.

The French, as one British expatriate put it yesterday with irritation but not malice, are "just so bloody French".

How true!

Posted by denny at March 28, 2005 09:05 PM  Category: French Bashing