France brought to a halt by strike of more than 1million people

[toxic avenger]

Sure they'd have a national strike if the price of perfume went up!

[Lefronde]

Excellent post

I did say before that trouble would spread west and eventually hit paris.

http://www.politics.ie/foreign-affai...ml#post1365956

The fun and games have only started.

Athens, Sophia, Riga, Vilnius, Madrid, Paris....

[JollyRedGiant]

VIVA LA REVOLUCION! Or whatever. By the way the year is 2009 not 1969 and we have learned a lot about the odious ideology of socialism.

1969 will be like a tea party when the current crisis is finished - many countries around the world have seen the re-emergence of left-wing parties (and I am not talking about LP type parties either) and the development of widespread street protests and occupations - Ireland is not that far away from experiencing similar developments.

The politics of neo-liberalism has been dealt a mortal blow - as the demise of the PD's has demonstrated. Capitalism is in severe crisis and socialism is most definitely on the political agenda.

[Defeated Romanticist]

Something like 9% of French workers are unionised. They speak for themselves and no-one else. If France didn't have cities which seize up without public transport, no means of workforce expansion outside of public sector expansion, a massive reliance on nuclear energy and a completely ossified, 50 years out of date, real economy, it wouldn't have strikes.

[JollyRedGiant]

Something like 9% of French workers are unionised. They speak for themselves and no-one else. If France didn't have cities which seize up without public transport, no means of workforce expansion outside of public sector expansion, a massive reliance on nuclear energy and a completely ossified, 50 years out of date, real economy, it wouldn't have strikes.

Of course it wouldn't - of course France is the only country in the world that is currently subjected to protest - didn't people power just bring down the Icelandic government (a neo-liberal one if I'm not mistaken).

[goosebump]

many countries around the world have seen the re-emergence of left-wing parties

Name one.


....

[Twilight]

Vive La France! They know how rule their government. Unlike us, shufflng along, terrified of the next announcement from the Dead Museum. Where the workin class stick together, unlike us and the sick Clanrickards who are a deep embassassment to us.

[blacbloc]

Firstly look at the state of the French economy, the striking "take no ********************" attitude hasn't exactly paid them dividents thus far.



Oh yeah, blame IBEC, blame the Government, blame "big" employers but whatever you do don't lay a single strand of blame on the unions themselves. Beyond reproach they are! Give me a break, they're the victims of their own actions and good enough for them.


Yes, while at the same time be the final nail in the coffin of the Irish economy, vive the revolution indeed.

Where the hell have you been? Do you not know the first thing about what uckfed up the global economy? It was NOTHING to do with public sector workers or the unions and EVERYTHING to do with crazy speculating resulting in toxic debt which public sector workers are now, it seems, going to blamed for by the likes of you. The REAL economy, outside of all the hedgefund BS, has been stuffed BECAUSE of the same hedgefund etc BS - and it will bite people like you in the ass too sooner or later unless you cop on. Jesus. Where is your brain?!?! What sort of vicious arrogance are you talking here - there are millions of people who have no responsibility for the greed and irresponsibility of the financial markets who are, since you seem to have no appreciation of the fact, currently dominating more than 90% of the entire global economy with nothing more than purely speculative crap. The whole thing comes down to trillions of dollars of debt that has been created out of speculative notions! AND on top of that, the ucfers responsible for all this get bailed out with OUR money!!!!!!! You must be feeling pretty safe and comfortable to be able to consign so many entirely innocent people to poverty with such appalling contempt. But to lay the blame for all of this at their feet is outrageous.

So YES, blame IBEC, blame the government - blame those who are actually RESPONSIBLE - they encouraged it, let it happen, insisted it was the last word in economic sense.

[H.R. Haldeman]

The undertone in this thread is woefully misguided in my opinion. The suggestion seems to be that the honest, hard-working, ordinary folk should jolly well stand up to the Man and not take it any more!

Well, if that's the agenda you want to push, then I suggest you find a time-machine and head back to 1999 because that's when that fight was there to be fought. Sadly, in 2009, it's too late and now the only reality we need to internalise is that we are stone-cold broke. Striking in protest is like a child screaming for ice-cream on the drive home from the ice-cream parlour. The ice cream is in the rear-view mirror folks.

Also, let's not forget that a large number of these ordinary wurkin' folk we are discussing are the same people who voted FF in again and again and again. I didn't hear deckland man crying foul from his €400k duplex in Adamstown until about 6 months ago. Where was his outrage when the seditious desecration of our landscape (and society) was going on with the building of, say, places like Adamstown? Why wasn't he outraged about the (ALWAYS) obvious fiasco at Anglo? Where was he when Bertie was benchmarking? I'll tell you where he was - in his '06 5-Series paid for on his €30k salary on his way to Land of Leather via Coffee Society.

So no strikes, no moaning, no more acting like bloody children. Pay cuts, spending cuts, personnel cuts, quango cull, higher taxes on higher earners, property taxes, nationalisation of banks, a toxic bank - we need all of this now. Less pay, lower wages, lower house prices, lower prices on everything. Frigging normality (aka not bloody France).

[blacbloc]

The undertone in this thread is woefully misguided in my opinion. The suggestion seems to be that the honest, hard-working, ordinary folk should jolly well stand up to the Man and not take it any more!

Well, if that's the agenda you want to push, then I suggest you find a time-machine and head back to 1999 because that's when that fight was there to be fought. Sadly, in 2009, it's too late and now the only reality we need to internalise is that we are stone-cold broke. Striking in protest is like a child screaming for ice-cream on the drive home from the ice-cream parlour. The ice cream is in the rear-view mirror folks.

Also, let's not forget that a large number of these ordinary wurkin' folk we are discussing are the same people who voted FF in again and again and again. I didn't hear deckland man crying foul from his €400k duplex in Adamstown until about 6 months ago. Where was his outrage when the seditious desecration of our landscape (and society) was going on with the building of, say, places like Adamstown? Why wasn't he outraged about the (ALWAYS) obvious fiasco at Anglo? Where was he when Bertie was benchmarking? I'll tell you where he was - in his '06 5-Series paid for on his €30k salary on his way to Land of Leather via Coffee Society.

So no strikes, no moaning, no more acting like bloody children. Pay cuts, spending cuts, personnel cuts, quango cull, higher taxes on higher earners, property taxes, nationalisation of banks, a toxic bank - we need all of this now. Less pay, lower wages, lower house prices, lower prices on everything. Frigging normality (aka not bloody France).

UTTER BS! The people screaming for ice cream were the banks and they were sated in full - they have had second and third helpings besides - while thousands of us will scarcely be fed at all. How in the name of God can you seriously contend that people who merely want to keep their jobs, innocent of any responsibility for this situation, are the ones who are being unrealistic. You disgust me.