How annoying! Today the French parliament voted in that stupid tax on airline tickets. The money it raises, a pet project of Jacques Chirac, is going to help AIDS prevention in the third world (I'll believe that when I see it). It starts next July.
The assembly is not worried about getting in trouble for this vote because the French don't need to fly much: it's a little country (although I did once see in an British book the phrase, "The French, in their vast country...."). No skin off their backs-- it is we foreigners who will be paying it. This tax is going to cost my own family hundreds, maybe even thousands of euros a year. The airlines that fly into France are freaking out. They say they could lose 3000 jobs, and therefore the law was approved for two years only and will be reconsidered at that point to see if the airlines have been hurt. Well, what do you think?
A NOUS de vous faire préférer le train!
Another annoying thing that happened today is that when the CNRS recommended that for safety reasons cars in France should be required to have their lights on at all times, guess what! The motards objected! Only they are allowed to use this well-proven safety measure. (Driving like a law-abiding mortal creature instead of a foolhardy maniac weaving between cars is also a proven safety measure. There are whole countries where it works.) So you know what the next step will inevitably be. The motards will--guess what! have a big demonstration in Paris! And then-- guess what! the government will cave in again!
By the way, I hear that the truckers are en colère too and between now and the middle of January we can expect some action on that front. What fun!
Also en colère today: emergency room doctors.
A third annoying thing today is that I heard Dominique de Villepin on the radio talking about the parliament's recent vote to require that history classes in French public schools talk about the "benefits of colonialism." This has provoqué un tollé (caused an uproar) in the DOM-TOM (overseas departments of France, like Martinique), where most of the population is descended from former slaves. "It may be that colonialism did not leave a totally negative legacy," I heard one Martiniquais official say on the radio, "but no one can say that the French set out to make colonialism beneficial to us." Nicolas Sarkozy was forced to cancel his planned trip to the Caribbean for fear of an unpleasant reception.
Dominique de Villepin made the point that politicians should not be interfering in school subject matter (surely he was referring to the U.S. evolution vs creationism controversy). Even though I agree with him about this, he just sounds so smarmy and smug, I can't stand it. Does he stand for anything at all? Or is he just one of those sensitive types who likes to comment in an ethereal fashion from a great height?
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