France's battle against cuts, viewed by Le Monde (cartoons)

Submitted by martin on 25 October, 2010 - 10:48


In fact no-one has been throwing Molotov cocktails in France - just striking, demonstrating, blockading high schools and some universities, and sometimes clashing with aggressive police.

The cartoon above, from The Independent was however used by the French daily Le Monde (rough equivalent of the Guardian) to illustrate a puzzled article on why social cuts in Britain seemed to be provoking no resistance. The English person responds to the announcement of cuts by saying "Time for a cup of tea"; the French person, by saying "Time for a Molotov cocktail".

Let's prove Le Monde wrong!


This cartoon, also from Le Monde, shows an elderly member of the Senate (upper house of the French parliament) jumping for joy as he votes to condemn workers to toil more before retirement.

The final parliamentary vote on the pension cuts is due on Wednesday 27th, and then president Nicolas Sarkozy plans to sign the cuts into law in mid-November.

Strikers are still holding firm. The unions have set two new days of action for Thursday 28 October and Saturday 6 November. A ten-day school holiday starting last weekend will deflate the movement slightly, but school students have set a national demonstration for Tuesday 26th to keep up momentum.

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