The French are on strike... Again!

The French fuel crisis has hit the headlines in the UK - I know this because it's on the BBC news channels. 

The French have maintained the right to strike if they don't like something, in this case the new working rules that the government are trying to bring in. I think that sometimes they just strike because they fancy a long weekend too. There's no telling if there'll be any warning there's going to be a strike or a demonstration.

The week we came over to sign the Acte de Compromis, the Air traffic controllers decided to strike the day we were travelling, but they only decided late the afternoon before we were due to travel. We got a text message from the airline saying that our flight to Nantes was cancelled! After an initial lot of swearing and wringing of hands, hubby booked us a ferry crossing instead. When he rang the airline to find out what the problem was he was asked if we would still require our return flight two days later! What did they think! We were going to come back before we went? 

Anyway we arrived by ferry and car, signed the appropriate paperwork (both the Compromis and the bank papers) and on the morning we were returning to catch the ferry home the French farmers decided to blockade the motorways with large trailers full of s..t,, and burning large round bales of mouldy straw. We're not really sure why to be fair but this time it didn't affect us as we had left loads of time to get to the port.

So strikes and demonstrations are the accepted norm here, but they usually only last a day or two. They must be very unhappy about the new working rules because it looks like this time it will go on for a while, and, as is human nature, everyone has gone into panic buying mode and rushed out to fill up their cars with fuel, long queues at the petrol pumps and petrol stations running out of fuel. 

Will it both us? Not unless it goes on for months. The car has a nearly full tank in it anyway, and the only driving we HAVE to do is to get food, maybe once a week a journey of about 10 miles/15km each way and as the car does 50 miles to the gallon we'll be okay for a while yet!

I think that people should have the right to demonstrate/strike to air their views and even to push the "management" into discussions about things, but it would appear that here in France at the moment there is a degree of violence rearing it's ugly head and that I don't approve of. But I support their right to maintain what is their normal working week of 35 hours a week. The French have very strong family ties and values and put their family time above a lot of other things. Something that in my opinion the UK could learn from. It used to be that way in the UK too, but no more sadly in a large part of the population.