You thought I was exaggerating?

Well, I totally wasn't. The French go on strike all the time for reasons that just don't make sense to me. I mean, our history and culture are very different, so it makes perfect sense to them, but not really to me. OK, the government is increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62 (that's TWO years, and we Americans are currently at 65, so why they're complaining so much? who knows. They have issues, as I told you on my Study Abroad blog in Spring of 2009). Big whoop. Look at the pictures of the riots on BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11576711. Is a difference of TWO YEARS really worth that? In my opinion, no. And I think most Americans would agree with me. SO it must just be their culture. I found an interesting article in the New York Times called "More than the Channel divides Britain and France" by Alan Cowell (Oct 22, 2010). Here are some interesting clips from it:

"Faced with the prospect of a longer working life until a minimum retirement age of 62 (up from the current 60), a million French citizens took to the streets, as strikers closed refineries and blockaded fuel depots, leaving motorists to fume in line for gasoline and diesel."

“French people tend to like to demonstrate,” the French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, said when asked to compare French and British national reflexes.

Taking to the streets, some argue, is a rite of passage for the young and, for the older, a right at the heart of the French way of democracy since the toppling of the aristocracy in 1789.

“What’s at stake here is not the retirement age, or jobs for students, but the very nature of power in this country,” said Lucy Wadham, a British novelist and blogger living in France."

“France’s problem is that, for too long, the economy has been run as a kind of job club for French workers,” said an editorial in The Spectator, a conservative British magazine. “Britain and France believe in liberty, but have different definitions of it.”

While the British believe in “liberty from government,” the editorial said, the French “still like the big state and squeal at the prospect of being removed from its teat.”

so true. so true.