Thursday, October 21, 2010

French make toyi-toying look like child's play

I am not Sam. I don't eat eggs and ham. But here... I .... am.

No apologies this time. I've had complaints, I've ignored the cries and you all got over it. I don't know why I don't blog any more. I still rant. It's not like I've run out of material. There's plenty to get angry about. I just don't care to put it on the blog. Does this make me a bad person? Unarguably, yes. Do I care? Not even slightly.

Latest rant topic: The French.

I don't know many French citizens. Those I do know, I like. But as a nation, I hate the French. I do not understand their accent, and they don't understand mine. Once I've given up trying to communicate in broken basic French, I switch to the classic s-l-o-w and LOUD tourist English, well known to all western travellers. And invariably the French person I'm trying to speak to, asks me if I can speak English rather. This really, really annoys me.

I also don't like the French because they take striking and rioting to a whole new level. Please don't give me that shit about "it only happens in Africa". Things fall apart and people do stupid mob activities everywhere. But particularly well in France.

They are currently demonstrating (read: burning cars and generally looting with gay abandon) because they do not want the retirement age to go from 60 years up to 62, amongst other obstructive and uneducated demands. Never mind the fact that France has the lowest age of state pension (and therefore the longest burden of retirement on the state) than any other country IN THE WORLD; and, like every other European country, are currently staring down the barrels of a very large budget deficit. Never mind all that. They don't want to have to compromise to save their own flipping arses down the line. So unions are bringing the economy to a standstill, because they are too short-sighted to realise that if the amount of years worked is not extended across the population, there won't be any pension to claim anyway.

But I'm sure when they look back from their rotting and neglected rocking chairs at the age of 90, retired for 30 years and eating cat food out of the tin, they'll stutter to themselves, "hey, didn't we have fun blockading and burning and generally running amok back in 2010? We got our way and it was totally worth it."

It's never cool to know that you are going to be doing a shit job with shit pay for longer than you expected. Newsflash: every other country is going through similar reforms. It sucks but it's happening everywhere.. a little economic phenomenon called a recession. You might've heard about it? Pension ages are rising. State funding is being cut. Jobs are being lost. But the French are being a nation of whining, temper-tantrum throwing pre-teens about it, because apparently they don't deserve to have it happen to THEM.

Mostly the French irritate me because, due to their little frothy fit that they are currently throwing, I might not have a train to catch to visit my boyfriend in France next week. And then I'll be really upset with the whiny, whingy nation of nancy-pancy striking bastards.

See...? The rage is still there.