02 May 2005 Blog Home : May 2005 : Permalink
Mr Münterfering, who a fortnight ago said private equity investors were like "swarms of locusts" descending on Germany intent on sacking workers and making quick profits, suggested in a document leaked to the local media on Saturday that these "anti-social radicals" were preparing to destroy corporate Germany wholesale.
With less than three weeks to go until the North-Rhine Westphalia election, Mr Münterfering's tactics do not appear to be working. Sunday newspapers reported that three-quarters of the electorate agreed with his anti-capitalist rhetoric. But cynicism about his motives for stimulating the debate meant the SPD had made no ground in the polls. The conservative-led opposition still looks like unseating the SPD in its heartland seat.
The main butt of Mr Münterfering's leaked document was KKR, estimated to have pumped €8.5bn ($11bn, £5.7bn) of capital into German companies during the past decade, making it the country's biggest private-equity investor. In particular, the document attacked the way it and Goldman Sachs made €225m from buying out and floating Wincor Nixdorf, the cash machine maker.
But people close to that deal yesterday stressed 3,300 jobs had been created and the company's listed shares had risen 50 per cent since flotation a year ago.
Or in other words its a more blatent set of lies than anything attributed to Bush or Blair and the electorate isn't so stupid that it can't see through a politician's spin."The day of solidarity is a call to brotherhood among all French people. It's an act of generosity by French society for itself, for its future."
I doubt I am the only cynic to notice that Jean Pierre Sock Puppet is basically ordering the French to "voluntarily" be generous to the needy. Given that the majority of Frenchmen from l'Escroc down appear to put themselves first and last in their list of priorities being forced to be generous and show some fraternité is clearly not a popular message.After three weeks travelling by bus to 20 towns in north-east France, answering questions and handing out leaflets and CDs on Europe's new constitution, Mr Gaumé and his three co-workers have built up a unique view of how the French see Europe.
What he found will not make comfortable reading for President Jacques Chirac, less than a month before the country's referendum on the constitution on May 29.
"People feel European, but they do not recognise themselves in this constitution," says Mr Gaumé. "The more arguments there are, the more it just adds to their confusion."
He expects this mood of disenchantment to be confirmed by staff from two other double-decker buses returning from similar tours in the north-west and south of France.
His experiences on the bus, organised by a citizens' information group and funded by the European Commission and French government, exposed a gulf between the issues being debated by the Parisian intelligentsia and the worries of those in the provinces.
Before he left Paris, government officials briefed him on what to expect. They listed Turkey and laïcité, or the separation of church and state, as two likely questions. They could not have been more wrong. "No-one has talked about Turkey," he says. "Laïcité has hardly been mentioned."
Instead, people want to know how the treaty will affect their own lives: unemployment, social protection, and business moving abroad are the subjects he says people most frequently ask about.
Of course, as we evil Anglo-saxons have noticed, one of the ironies about French doubts on the constitution is that they think it is too capitalistic and free market whereas opponants in other countries think the constitution is going to impose a French-style socialist/statist model on Europe. The FT reports an absolute corker of a quote from Dijon:"Full employment is not possible in the liberal system," says François Courant, an unemployed agricultural technician who plans to vote No. "You can't be in favour of the constitution when you are part of the France d'en bas [common people]."
Apparently M Courant is unaware that the "liberal" economies of the Anglo-saxon world have roughly half the unemployment rate of non-liberal France and Germany. On the other hand this comment is something that I think every Eurosceptic would agree with:"The constitution is a blank cheque for our politicians," says Françoise William, a teacher and regional head of SOS Racisme, the anti-racism group. "We are fed up to the back teeth with the government."