No Newspapers, But the News Goes On the Streets

Today's Demonstrations Throughout France Widely Followed, Putting Yet More Pressure on Government

The shame is, that the purpose of the Paris Pages and these reports, is not to plunge the reader into internal French politics - what a mess ! - thank goodness we can keep out fingers out of it - but, you are really missing some good stuff here. These Le Monde writers know their way around French, and they are making liberal use of satire, irony, sarcasm, all of my favorite writerly things. The kind of stuff that makes you laugh out loud; in one of the most serious newspapers in the world.

It would impolitic of me to translate these articles here - but it is another good reason to come to France: to find out what the French think of each other - and how they express it ! It would be worth the trip in itself.

In contrast to Le Monde's elegance, there is the Thursday weekly, Le Canard Enchainee - which is pure boffo, but your knowledge of local argot has to up to scratch to get its drift - the 'Chained Duck' is celebrating its 80th anniversary, or maybe it is 800th, about now and if one was into conspiracy theories, one could easily imagine that this paper had engineered the present 'situation' simply as an extravagant birthday gesture.

Mme E changed her 'go-to-work-in-Paris' strategy yesterday, Monday, which allowed her to leave here at 7:30 and arrive at work by 10:30 and to take three hours to bet back. She went back to the earlier strategy of leaving at 6:30 this morning, with another chauffeur, who had yet another 'secret' route, and got to work at 8:00. Employers are docking non-strikers a day's pay for each day missed. Strikers too; but this usually gets 'arranged.'

According to the midday news, the 'manifs' have had huge turnouts by 'militants.' An estimated 100 to 120,000 in Marseille, for a 'biggest-ever;' 50,000 in Lille, 30-40,000 in Nantes, where authorities are watchful; 80,000 for Rouen, and an unknown number for Paris, which is still arriving at its destination. Bordeaux has contented itself with a garbage collector's strike. The Prime Minister, Mr Juppe, is also mayor of Bordeaux.

Union leaders talking to A2 television news, choke on red smoke in Paris today, from railway flares.

Although the strikes are widely followed, many public employees are still on the job. Only 44 percent of teachers are on strike, for example.

Another example is La Poste. There is a special sorting office, somewhere in France, where letters addressed to the 'Pere Noel' end up. About 70,000 have arrived so far. La Poste has a crew of sorters, under sub-contract to Santa Claus, replying to every letter that arrives with a return address, and although they are a bit short-handed this year, they have managed to process about 40 percent of the mail received.

And just how does La Poste reply? Well, they cross their fingers like everybody else, and toss the return mail into a nearby postbox. The management has said that they will keep it up into January, if necessary. It means, that if you get Christmas greetings from France this season, it may not arrive before next year. Telephones and Internet are still working fine so far.

As you can see right here.

Return to Richard Erickson's Paris Journal

Updated 12/95