Y en a marre!!

"Y en a marre" in french means "we are fed up!". And if ever there was mutual feeling going on in France right now, that it is: WE-ARE-FED-UP!

It's been over a week since the strikes began and it has gotten to the point that the situation is simply unbearable.

People in the suburbs are fed up with having to get up at 4:30am, drive for 3hrs in 300km long traffic jams and leave the office at 3pm in order to avoid "the worst part" of the the evening's rush hour (meaning the 400km long traffic jams!).

For those of us living in the city it doesn't get any better. All subway lines are completely down. 1 metro every 45 mins (if you're lucky!) and 1 bus every hour!! Needless to say, the hoards of people waiting at the platform during rush hour can get pretty scary. They are so jammed packed at the platform that when a train arrives there is no place left for the people getting off the train and no place left for people getting on the train!! I've walked past subway stations where the sea of people trying to grab a train actually poured out of the station!!!

It personally scares me to think of that many people all crushed in in a tiny underground station where anything can happen so for the most part I've shunned the metro and have been walking to an from the office everyday. It takes me 1,30h each way and after a little over a week of doing this (in the cold and sometimes even the rain) I can tell you I am also hasta la madre.

What pisses me off the most is that it has gotten out of control. The unions are no longer speaking for the strikers.... yesterday some of the unions called off the strike after a relatively good negotiation meeting with the companies and the government. But the strikers didn't agree and decided to continue the strike anyway..... and so here we are still!!!

It is also getting pretty dangerous. Reports of sabbotage have also surffaced with people stealing bits and pieces of the railroad so that even the few trains that are working are forced to stop. I don't know about you, but it just doesn't seem very safe to be in a jam packed train that's running late and going 400km p/hour that comes across a bit of railroad missing a bolt or two !!!

And lets not forget the general atmosphere. Everybody is tired, grumpy (not to say flat out pissed off) and nervous... so when you add that to a jammed metro wagon with people crammed up against each other it can easily turn into a "hostile" situation (a colleague of mine told me this morning how a bunch of uniformed-clad subway drivers on strike hoped on a train and started working up trouble by laughing at the already pissed-off passangers telling them how they didn't care how this was affecting them and that they weren't going to give up until the government backed down (talk about idiots!))

And the thing is.... the public opinion is with the government on this one! The strikers are protesting the government's decision that everyone both in the private and public sectors, should work the same amount of time, meaning until the age of 60, in order to be able to finance the retirment system to which we are all entitled to. However, this goes against the "special retirement regime" of a very few that dates back to when their particular profession was considered hazardous to their health and thus allowing them to retire at 55 and even in some cases at 50! With today's technologies for most this is no longer the case but they still don't want to agree that the retirement age should be the same for all.

The polls however show that the general public opinion feels this is a fair deal, in no way supports the strikers' revindications and considers the government should not give in....

.... so instead we have to put up with this crap while the strikers go out and have their berrinche and quite frankly, even if we are with Sarokzy on this one, Y EN A MARRE!!!

Fned (too tired to type).