I'm voting my should out of some loyalty as a member of the French Socialist Party, but the entire country is screwed, there isn't really anything that any party is going to propose that will fix it - part of my hope is that Royal would at least provoke a crisis of expectations that would mean something more honest next time.
No shit, Sherlock... The City is recruiting the best and the brightest of the French graduates - the ones who don't want to work in the public sector - and a steady stream of very, very capable French men and women in their thirties. All of them maintain that London is creating more jobs for 18-25 year-old French people than Paris; I find that difficult to believe but, after throwing a pinch of salt over my shoulder, I suspect that there is a grain of truth in it; at the top end of the market, their univerities hve been creating longer and longer courses, and their corporations have been extending the subsidised stagier internships, so that a French 'Graduate' is often closer to 30 than to 20, and it all smacks of an effort to massage the graduate unempoyment figures.
Five years ago, before the Poles came over, I am certain that it was true that bright young non-graduates were better off seeking service sector work in London than in Paris. I suspect that this is less true now. However it was and still is true that their welfare system gives very few incentives - if they came here, they were the real self-starters and I'd like to think we've kept them. Certainly, they have unpleasant choices if they remain in Paris: to be 25 and never-employed - and by definition lacking the connections and the small-scale political skills to get into their public sector - is to be permanently unemployed and doomed to a lifetime of revolving-door training and education schemes that are placing people later and later in life, if at all.
Bluntly, the 'exit' or placement rate is lower than the 'entry' rate of new school-leavers at the low end, and of graduates at the top end; the French have fudged this for two decades and are now in the unacknowledged-but-ludicrous situation of having a substantial proportion of the 25-35 year-old cohort in 'youth' training schemes.
I'd like to know exactly how large that 'substantial' number really is, but the figures are very hard to come by. Be warned, you'll find it difficult too, and you'd need a native guide to detect all the fudges - like the 'stagier' internships that notionally replace military service - and the community volunteer schemes in the patriotic inner-city areas. And there's no way of knowing how many of the French public sector workforce are like the Japanese 'window-gazing-tribe' - effectively unemployed but off the books.
The level of public deficit is somewhat unsurprising when you consider that I need ongoing minor surgery that the NHS treats as effectively cosmetic, so I either have to pay or wait for longer than I should be allowed to wait if the targets were really targets. I had a double batch of this in England last year for £600, and a single one in France last month for 42 Euros. I'm pretty sure the doctor wasn't making a profit at that price...
France's circumstances don't really provide 'moderates' with any policy levers, so the only contenders on over 10% of the vote are a right-winger whose proposals probably wouldn't work and will never make it past the street, a left-winger who doesn't yet seem to have realised that France signed the Maastricht Treaty, an anti-politics candidate who has been a political insider for longer than the rest put together, and actively supports the status quo, and a fascist (who will get 16.5% I think).
Isn't Le Pen dead yet? Rather like Bob Dole or our own Ian Paisley he's one of those politicians who never seems to retire or go away. Bill Bryson mentioned Dole in The Lost Continent, which mostly featured events back in 1987 (Black Monday also gets a mention). According to Wikipedia Le Pen is nearly 80, so if he did win he wouldn't be around for too long. Just tell him he has to leave France once in a while.....
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-09 09:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-09 09:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-09 10:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-09 02:52 pm (UTC)I felt I had to share ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-09 10:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-09 11:51 am (UTC)the entire country is screwed
No shit, Sherlock... The City is recruiting the best and the brightest of the French graduates - the ones who don't want to work in the public sector - and a steady stream of very, very capable French men and women in their thirties. All of them maintain that London is creating more jobs for 18-25 year-old French people than Paris; I find that difficult to believe but, after throwing a pinch of salt over my shoulder, I suspect that there is a grain of truth in it; at the top end of the market, their univerities hve been creating longer and longer courses, and their corporations have been extending the subsidised stagier internships, so that a French 'Graduate' is often closer to 30 than to 20, and it all smacks of an effort to massage the graduate unempoyment figures.
Five years ago, before the Poles came over, I am certain that it was true that bright young non-graduates were better off seeking service sector work in London than in Paris. I suspect that this is less true now. However it was and still is true that their welfare system gives very few incentives - if they came here, they were the real self-starters and I'd like to think we've kept them. Certainly, they have unpleasant choices if they remain in Paris: to be 25 and never-employed - and by definition lacking the connections and the small-scale political skills to get into their public sector - is to be permanently unemployed and doomed to a lifetime of revolving-door training and education schemes that are placing people later and later in life, if at all.
Bluntly, the 'exit' or placement rate is lower than the 'entry' rate of new school-leavers at the low end, and of graduates at the top end; the French have fudged this for two decades and are now in the unacknowledged-but-ludicrous situation of having a substantial proportion of the 25-35 year-old cohort in 'youth' training schemes.
I'd like to know exactly how large that 'substantial' number really is, but the figures are very hard to come by. Be warned, you'll find it difficult too, and you'd need a native guide to detect all the fudges - like the 'stagier' internships that notionally replace military service - and the community volunteer schemes in the patriotic inner-city areas. And there's no way of knowing how many of the French public sector workforce are like the Japanese 'window-gazing-tribe' - effectively unemployed but off the books.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-10 12:35 pm (UTC)France's circumstances don't really provide 'moderates' with any policy levers, so the only contenders on over 10% of the vote are a right-winger whose proposals probably wouldn't work and will never make it past the street, a left-winger who doesn't yet seem to have realised that France signed the Maastricht Treaty, an anti-politics candidate who has been a political insider for longer than the rest put together, and actively supports the status quo, and a fascist (who will get 16.5% I think).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-10 03:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-10 08:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-10 10:12 pm (UTC)