Why are Brits not like the French

[Worker29]

BBC News - France fuel protests: Tear gas fired in clashes in Paris
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46411699
There are riots. About fuel taxes.
Brexit has caused no such demonstrations.
Why?

Spending years arguing over Brexit is better than focusing on school funding, the NHS, universal credit, etc? In what way is it better to focus on Brexit?

We are going in circles here, Chica.

Thinking you have nothing to lose is not the same thing as having nothing to lose.

IvyKaty44 We pay council tax on property not a personal tax to the council nope, CTax is a hybrid of rates and Community Charge. You pay a 50% property element and a 50% personal element. The discount you get for single occupancy Severely mentally Impaired etc is applied to the personal element, not the property element.

Imo, if there had been a general domestic uprating (that is, rates had been revised and brought in line with costs in 1990), and people given a choice between community charge and Rates, then Community Charge would have been the winner as it would have costs household less.

Habit. That’s all it is. There’s always some political disturbance on the streets in some town or other in France.

Our riots tend to build in hot summers. If it rains everyone goes home. However ‘big’ the issue is said to be.

Generally - not to do with France or rioting - but I’m always surprised that people actually go on demos and protests. Nobody else takes the slightest notice. Politicians in power couldn’t care less about them. People who see demos on the news just regard them as jolly day trips for students and show-offs. If organisations want political or social change they should use the courts (along with voting of course).

I think the media has a role here in the UK as well. We are notorious for our lowbrow tabloid press that irresponsibly prints partisan crap about issues depending which political party the newspaper owner is trying to influence (or angle for a knighthood). The right wing press has printed lies blaming the EU for everything for decades so it's not surprising that people who don't have time in their lives to deeply analyze what they're told are influenced.

I had a taxi ride the other night and I asked the driver what he thought about Brexit (I don't normally do this but I happened to be visiting a university town with a highly diverse international population - in other words a large chunk of his business is dependent on foreign students/employees) and he was extremely pro-Brexit, "let's get out now and don't care about the economic damage." I asked him why and he said that his family came from the north and after the mines were closed things have been terrible up there. I was honestly "WTAF?" His family was screwed over by Thatcher 30 years ago and he'll be screwed over even more by Brexit, the result of neo-Thatcherite on steroids right-winger's lies and he's all for it.

If someone had told me a few years ago that there would be organised groups of people who believe the Earth is flat in 2018, and that they even hold annual conferences I wouldn't have believed it. Yet here we are with more and more people rejecting science, facts, experts...

stay calm and carry on

That’s what we do!

,

Bowchic I'm a remainer living up North, and I completely agree with you.

I work near the Royal Courts of Justice. There are protests of varying sizes near daily. We just don't feel the need to overturn cars and set them ablaze, as a rule, which I'm happy about, not least for the sake of my commute.

I think the UK government is watching the French protests closely as the ‘Jaune gilets’ correspond with the UK Leave voting demographic - poorer, provincial, older. This may be what’s to come in the UK if Brexit is circumvented by Theresa Mays government

the french police are more antagonistic.
there would never be a peaceful protest in france

I agree with this statement completely.

Especially more since last month, when my work colleague told me that a neighbour in her village had complained about a barking puppy in the apartments she lived in. One afternoon she heard a series of loud explosions - the police came round, and just shot the puppy in the garden.

The whole community in the apartment block came out to challenge the three officers (why didn't they call animal welfare, or contact the owner) but they just called out the Gendarmerie to quell the troublesome neighbours.

Riots tend not to do too much good. Peaceful protest is allowed of course

...and achieves nothing all, rioting/breaking the law; got us the vote, got rid of the Poll tax, the riots in France have already change the rate of change of the new fuel taxes and got them a meeting with Macron.

If the 700k anti brexit/anti Iraq war protesters had smashed up central London, the Government would be forced to listen.

However, we need a sense of perspective here, France has a population of 83million, a tiny tiny % are protesting, let alone rioting.

We'll get riots eventually. When people realise that Brexit didn't fix what they wanted it to fix and people have lost faith in any of the main political parties.

I think we just arrange marches. I am sure there has been one already this year.

In or out of the EU, we'll get rioting eventually.

Peaceful protest my arse. The first day of the protest a Muslim woman had her scarf pulled off her head, a black woman was told to go home and a gay couple were menaced. My friend’s boyfriend had his car damaged, my vet’s client had his car damaged trying to get a dog who had been shot to the clinic, my builders who are not French are too scared to go to the petrol station.

Try going through these blockades on a daily basis with a foreign accent and then tell me about peaceful people who are protesting for the rights of the poor. The declaration they are asking people to sign asks for France to close its borders.

I find it astonishing that even after the event people can’t grasp that Brexit was a protest vote exercised by a large section of society who had fuck all to lose.
I get that but if they thought things were shit preBrexit they ain’t seen nothing yet!
It’s a protest vote yes but it’s going to hit to hit the poorest hardest and is fundamentally against their best interests.

One afternoon she heard a series of loud explosions - the police came round, and just shot the puppy in the garden

I'm no fan of the French police but I find this very hard to believe.

got rid of the Poll tax

That’s said a lot but it’s not true. About a week before, the Tories had gone down badly in a by-election in Staffs. Very safe seat gone.

The Tories knew it was all about the poll tax and that Thatcher was by then a liability. So they both got ditched not long after. If anything the riot was helpful to an embattled government and PM.

The riots didn’t get rid of the poll tax. It’s universal unpopularity got rid of the poll tax. If the Tories hadn’t have thought they would lose votes at the next election over it they wouldn’t have given a shit about the riots.

True but the riots gave the Poll Tax issue very wide publicity, plus there was also a lot of non payment protests too.

Governments are always terrified of public and violent protest, jeez they even monitored the families of the PanAm Lockerbe bombing as they felt they could be subversives!

We are usually fed just enough crumbs to keep us quiet.

@LaDaronne

As reported, however another neighbour in the apartments saw them arrive and described the dog "coming at them" in a slightly different way to the police

But maybe you know better.

Well the hard left, ie momentum, corbyn, mcdonel etc all support brexit so what would they be protesting about?

And its the hard left and right who hijack all these protests so......

Also we did have poll tax riots...

That's the beauty of being able to vote people in and out though isn't it gamer!

They had a revolution and we did not.

A revolution which then was followed by the Terror, and emperor, a reinstitution of the monarchy, a reinstitution of the Bonapartes first as president then Emperor, a republic, the Vichy regime, the the Republics headed up by Charles de Gaulle.

I don't think people understand how centralised power is in the 5th Republic which was deliberately created to make a very strong central figure which can make quick binding decisions irrespective of how popular they are. This kind of strong central control would never be tolerated in the UK.