Paris was complètement bouché today because of a big manif by the restaurateurs. There were about 6000 of them, dressed in their chef's hats and aprons, and they drove their 3000 cars in a snail operation for five hours across the city from the Bois de Vincennes in the east to Porte Maillot in the west. There were dozens of cars de CRS (riot police buses) on the Périphérique, and the whole city was clogged. Everyone I was supposed to meet arrived late and crabby, except the carpenter who was coming from Place de la République and never arrived at all. He would have had to cross the demonstration. The restaurateurs are demanding a change in the TVA (VAT), which costs their customers an additional 19.6% on each bill, while fast-food places, take-out places and cafeterias charge 5.5%. 
This tends to affect small restaurants where people would go for lunch. The restaurateurs view the VAT as deeply unfair and a threat to their existence, and Chirac promised to lower it when he was campaigning, but the European Union has to pass on it, and the Germans, the Scandinavians, and the new states of the EU are against any change: they are afraid it would be the thin end of the wedge for all kinds of other special exceptions to the VAT.
N and I went out to dinner. Appropriately, he had escargots.
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