There are a lot of interesting reports about unrest in France. I personally have been travelling abroad this week so I can't comment directly on what is going on.but I think the situation is fascinating on a number of levels. The first point of interest is the relative silence of Sarko, noted well by Eursoc, who for one reason or another seems willing to sit this one out. Sarko is quite a good political strategist so I suspect he will survive this, but it is unclear whether the CPE will and its defeat seems highly likely to cause Sarko trouble either in his presidential election campaign or int he reforms that he promises to introduce when he is elected.
As I said before the French seem to have a gene that expreses itself in a total failure to comprehend things like cause and effect. The students who are protesting the CPE are precisely the individuals who should benefit from it. Their slogans about not being "disposable workers" would seem to condemn them to being even less useful non-workers. Quite how this can be seen as an improvement is beyond me.
I do however hope that l'Escroc and Vile Pin hold firm and that we see a lot of unrest because I believe that the French citizens need to understand the unsustainability of the current political system. As has been noted many times before, with the notable exception of Sarko, just about every single member of the French political elite is an Enarque and the Enarques have been notable for their tin-eared-ness, their inability to sell reform and their patronizing disdain for the rest of France. On the other hand the enarques appear to have an unofficial bargain with the loony union leaders that if they protest long enough the enarques will buckle and let the unions get their way. The union leaders seem to be people who have even less clue about basic things like economics than anyone else in France and hence their protests against any form of regulatory reform is about as misguided as it is possible to be. If they persist in holding the rest of the nation to ransom with their strikes and riots then I believe that this will encourage voters to choose someone like Sarko in 2007 and encourage Sarko or whoever to actually confront the unions à la Margaret T.
Somewhat related - Eursoc and the BBC both note l'Escroc's language problems in Brussels.
Mr Chirac told reporters on Friday he was "deeply shocked" that a Frenchman chose to address the summit in English.
to me though the key thought is the BBC's previous sentence explaining why:
He stormed out of a session when Ernest-Antoine Seilliere said he chose English "because that is the accepted business language of Europe today".
Once upon a time of course French was the "language of diplomacy" and clearly l'Escroc is unable to understand why such a 19th century idea should seem passé. Even more to the point, the strikes show that French is clearly now the language of "idlers" - the joke that the French have no word for "entrepreneur" would seem to be ever more accurate