<< GLASS HALF EMPTY, ALL CHIPPED AND SUCH, PROBABLY LEAKING, ETC ~ MAIN ~ DEMOCRAT TRASHES REPUBLICANS >>
DESPAIRING SHRUG RECORDED
The SMH’s Adele Horin in 2002:
More than a year after France legislated a 35-hour week, the economy is flourishing, unemployment is falling, consumer confidence has hit a historic high and most French say their lifestyle has improved.
France in 2006:
French restaurateurs, hoteliers and waiters reacted furiously yesterday after the state imposed a 35-hour working week on the hospitality sector ...
At Le Rostand, a chic café opposite the Luxembourg gardens in Paris, its owner Jean-Pierre Berthe shrugged despairingly from behind the zinc counter yesterday. “Why do they fall over themselves to stop people working in this country?” he said.
Please, Jean-Pierre; rejoice in the flourishing economy.
UPDATE. Horin today:
On the two key issues of our time, the Iraq war and global warming, the Howard Government got it badly wrong.
An estimated 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, according to the online edition of the British medical journal The Lancet.
UPDATE II. Soon employment itself may be outlawed:
Britain’s hardest workers will be prevented from putting in more than 60 hours a week, even if they want to, under a new European Union plan being considered by Tony Blair.
Unfortunately stupidity is not against the law. However, the Adelotypes like the government to remove us from the results of our stupidity eg. bike helmets, gun laws, hate laws, etc.
BTW I heard that bike helmets were made compulsory in Oz. This can’t be true, Shirly?
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 10 20 at 03:05 PM • permalinkDon’t worry Adele, you can always point to the success of Airbus, uh, er Thompson…Alcatel? Um. Never mind.
Posted by Major John on 2006 10 20 at 03:16 PM • permalinkThere’s plenty of work in France. Replacing 14,000 torched cars, cleaning the streets post-riots, helping Jews emigrate, digging graves for the sick and elderly who gave their all for l’etat during heat waves.
Maybe that’s it. There’s so much work they have to cut working hours so everybody could have a job.
Posted by Gary from Jersey on 2006 10 20 at 03:20 PM • permalinkFind out how other Americans feel. Our foreign policy index is an amazing way to gage public opinion about American foreign policy and the current state of affairs, and from the way things look, the public may just be at a tipping point. Read on…
Here at Public Agenda, we’ve created a new tool to track Americans’ opinions on foreign policy issues, providing a basis for political commentary. Similar to the Consumer Confidence Index, the Foreign Policy Anxiety Indicator provides policy makers, journalists and ordinary citizens with the public’s overall comfort level with America’s place in the world and current foreign policy.
An essential tool updated twice a year, the Indicator will consistently provide much-needed information on the public’s perception of more than two dozen aspects of international relations.
In a world strewn with violence and highly-charged international issues, Americans are broadly uneasy about U.S. foreign policy. The September 2006 shows the Foreign Policy Anxiety Indicator at 130 on a scale of 0 to 200, where 0 is the most confident, 200 the most anxious and 100 neutral.
Eight in 10 Americans feel the world is becoming a more dangerous place for Americans, yet they’re also skeptical about most of the possible solutions, such as creating democracies or global development. Only improved intelligence gathering and energy independence have substantial support, with energy firmly established as a national security problem
for the public.In fact, the public lacks confidence in many of the measures being taken to ensure America’s security. Less than 33% of Americans give the U.S. government an “A” or a “B” grade for its execution of the following foreign policy issues: reaching goals in Iraq and Afghanistan, maintaining good relationships with Muslim countries and protecting U.S. borders from illegal immigration. And these are just a few of the findings of the survey.
These are some of the other startling findings:
- 83 percent say they are worried about the way things are going for the United States in world affairs (35 percent worry “a lot”, with an additional 48 percent saying they worry “somewhat.”)
- 79 percent say the world is becoming more dangerous for the United States and the American people
- 69 percent say the United States is doing a fair or poor job in creating a more peaceful and prosperous world
- 64 percent say the rest of the world sees the United States negatively
- 58 percent say U.S. relations with the rest of the world are on the wrong track
Want to learn more? Go to http://www.publicagenda.org/foreignpolicy/index.cfm to download the report.
Public Agenda is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group devoted to public opinion and public policy. The confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index is developed in cooperation with Foreign Affairs with support from the Hewlett and Ford foundations.
Posted by publicagenda on 2006 10 20 at 03:27 PM • permalinkA Frenh Army officer friend of mine told me a popular joke making the rounds with his peers:
Q: Why does the French civil service hate the new 35-hour work week?
A: They don’t see why they have to work those extra five hours.
Posted by JJM Ballantyne on 2006 10 20 at 03:44 PM • permalinkCo-founded by Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, so my BS meter just pegged.
Mine started rising on the first paragraph, and pegged at “Only improved intelligence gathering and energy independence have substantial support, with energy firmly established as a national security problem
for the public”. But thanks for the confirmation, Rob.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 10 20 at 04:01 PM • permalinkA: They don’t see why they have to work
those extra five hours.That looks much better, for some odd reason.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 10 20 at 04:02 PM • permalink#11 rebeccah: I don’t know what it is, but if it’s funded by the Hewlett and Ford foundations, I’d have to say it’s fundamentally unsound. Besides, PW’s right: why don’t the dudes buy a blog ad? Just like Paco Enterprises does (or would, if weren’t having this problem with the blocked deposit account in the Cayman Islands).
At Le Rostand, a chic cafe opposite the Luxembourg gardens in Paris, its owner Jean-Pierre Berthe shrugged despairingly from behind the zinc counter yesterday
What is it with these imaginary, but unimaginable, gestures she attributes to the Europeans? There is no dispairing shrug gesture.
They waved their hands about, grasping for the right word. “Lap-dog?” I suggested.
Never happened either.
I refer her to the dictionary of French gestures , from which she should limit her selection
15: What is it with these imaginary, but unimaginable, gestures she attributes to the Europeans? There is no dispairing shrug gesture.
I dunno. The French and their shrugs are pretty famous in literature. I think “eloquent shrug” shows up a lot. Maybe it’s like some kind of Morse code: for example, two quick jerks of the left shoulder, followed by a long, slow hefting of the right, might indicate despair, three quick jerks of the right shoulder, with no left shoulder movement, might signal “I surrender” - that sort of thing.
Even the toilets attendants at the place Clichy metro have been replaced by ze fonctionaires d’etat!
When caught short on ze stool , i shouted “monsieur svp ! zer is no paper please help!”
“According to the new code civil section 1276 the state is no longer required to supply toilet paper monsieur. I am sorry. Paper has been declared haram, unhealthy and disrespectful to our islamic community and is now banned”
“I am a frenchman from Australia, i did not know this and i apologise for my lack of knowledge of French regulations. Please pass me over this section of the code so i can read it.”
” Of course monsieur, here it is -all six pages”
” thank you camarade, i can reach it. you have made a tourist very happy. Vive la loi!”So what. We’re supposed to take a poll now before we make any decisions? Rule by consensus?
Democracy. Tyranny of the mob, as our Founders warned us. That is why we are a constitutionally limited Republic and would do well to remember it. The use of the term Democracy was made popular by the FDR bunch. See where it has led? Chomsky notwithstanding, words have meaning—and consequences.
Bunch of damned collectivists. Don’t offer an argument, gives us a poll.
“publicagenda” is a spammer and has just been banned. You want attention but don’t want to go to the trouble of writing something on this blog other than boilerplate? Buy an ad. Links on the sidebar.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 20 at 06:31 PM • permalinkFind out how other Americans feel.
With their hands. Duh.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 10 20 at 06:38 PM • permalinkPaco:
I don’t know what it is, but if it’s funded by the Hewlett and Ford foundations, I’d have to say it’s fundamentally unsound.
Bull shit. I just came back from that link. The full name is Public Agenda Cooperation Organization. They’re hawking Che shirts, Lenin busts, Pilger and Fisk books, and—the pocket fisherman/mini-missile.
Paco!
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 20 at 07:40 PM • permalink#19 Dave
That’s really good. LOL’d.
So, how far is this ‘cultural respect’ shit going to go?
I watched Jamie wotsisface’s 15 in Aus on teev on Thursday night. One of the participants* was tossed off the course for flicking a tea towel at a female participant - there had been quite a bit of groping etc in the kitchen by the boys, and complaints had been made, but the lecturer hadn’t actually witnessed it, until then.
Later there was a gathering of the particpants and they talked about why this kid was tossed off the course. About how this kind of behaviour, in any job, is unacceptable, and a sackable offence.
One of the participants voiced the opinion that this was a cultural thing, that it was something that the group of drongoes that hung out together did all the time, so therefore it should be all right.
Where does this attitude come from? This bloke would be thinking that it’s OK to beat someone if your gang does it all the time?
He was corrected, but I think that he still thought that something you do in/with a group is cultural.*I can’t call him a no-hoper, druggie, self-opinionated bum, it’s not PC (and they, the participants, are turning around).
Adele should be concerning herself less with the French and their “chicness” and more with her future career as Womyn’s Events reporter with the Byron Bay Echo.
Can she not hear the measured tramp of the Packersaurus as it advances on the sheltered workshop called Fairfax, all the while breathing flames, drooling green spit and roaring for lefty blood?Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 10 20 at 09:37 PM • permalink26: Heh. Well, you see, our research indicated that there are 655,000 potential purchasers of these fine consumer items who can be reached through the comments sections of Australian blogs, but they have to be
reeled inapproached through an appeal to their intellects.Hey, don’t knock it! MentalFloss bought two of the pocket fisherman/mini-missiles.
So I did. I landed a brown trout AND knocked an annoying dirt-biker off his ear-piercing Gaia-gouger from 300 metres away in one cast!.
I unreservedly endorse this fine product.
By the way, paco, whatever did you do to Mr. Popeil? Exactly when did “RONCO” become “PACO”?
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 10 20 at 11:37 PM • permalinkEh MentalFloss, it was actually WRONCO. My company was doing just fine, not spectatular, but it was giving me a return on my investment of about 20% per annum selling fine reproductions of great artworks
brazenly stolencopied in a spirit of tribute. Paco swooped in, does a Harold Hill sweet talking my wife and me mother-in-law (pieces be upon her), promising to turn it into a billion dollar company employing Joooos in leadership positions and down trodden illegal immigrants in working slots.Paco, I haven’t received one dollar of dividend in two years!
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 21 at 03:27 AM • permalinkSubmission is a full time job.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 10 21 at 05:03 AM • permalinkPaco, take a leaf from the book of winemaker, the late Len Evans, and pay dividends in urns of Sumerian mead.
Shareholders either appreciate the singularity, or are too drunk to notice.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 10 21 at 10:12 AM • permalink#15 Mon dieu! Tabernacle!
I use these gestures when I speak French. Gulp.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 10 21 at 11:20 AM • permalinkYeah, things are so bad for the bloghead’s team that it must be all a big conspiracy.
Posted by Miranda Divide on 2006 10 21 at 03:22 PM • permalinkMiranda Deride has a new word fetish, I see.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 21 at 10:55 PM • permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
Isn’t it illegal, even in Australia, for anyone to be so publicly and repeatedly stupid as Adele Horin?