Does anyone else rather admire the French?

[squashyhat]

They're not taking the proposed pension changes lying down are they? France riots

Well it feels like being back in the 1970s with all the public sector strikes so we are not far off really. Just haven't progressed to the vandalism and violence yet.

No ones is saying you have to come up with the answers, but neither are they stopping you from making suggestions. Voters have a moral responsibility to understand what the issues are so that they can challenge leadership and make informed voting choices, even when the selection on offer is poor. The pensions crisis has been a long time coming, with successive governments just kicking the can down the road. We have an aging population and a dwindling tax payer base. Its not rocket science that something has to give.

The Franch are nuts. The are idiots if they think they can continue with their ultra high pensions. Who is paying for it? Idiot 20 year olds protesting too ha ha ha.

No ones is saying you have to come up with the answers,

Good. Don't ask me for them then. Ask your politicians for answers. Answers that don't involve me and you working until age 70.

They are 'our' politicians not mine. You don't want to do any of the messy work of holding the government to account and pushing for a workable solution but you want to benefit from the labour of others who do. How very community minded of you.

You don't want to do any of the messy work of holding the government to account

That's exactly what I want to happen. I pay tax in the hope that it will.

You, on the other hand, appear to want me - ie a twat on a talkboard - to come up with the answers.

I suspect you are as fed up, exhausted and exasperated as the rest up us rather than being a twat. If you tell me you support what they are doing at the moment, I reserve the right to change my mind ;)

mmalinky

Too few people understand the economics of pension reform. Most people working today won't ever benefit from the pensions that older people have now - final salary pensions are gone and the pensions sone people have now will never ever be enjoyed by future generations. We need to ensure that the current working population have any hope of a decent standard of living when they retire. We cannot kill them with taxation. Otherwise they will never have anything like the older age pension life that older people have now.

Is the UK doing this?

Yes. Thats why our pension age has been moved to 67. Life expectancy has now stabilised or may be falling. But the ratio is the same as in France so realistically the only way the pension age will go is up. But that's also because the healthy living age is rising. Today a 63/65/67 yer old - wherever you set it - - has many more healthy years of living ahead of them than before.

Meanwhile post boomer the birth rate is falling. That means the taxable working population to pay for retirement continues to fall. So the cost of pensions falls on fewer and fewer people.

@Bouledeneige yes the demographics of Europe compared to the global south and in particular the resource rich pockets of it that Russia and China are busily aligning themselves with mean that we are a continent in decline particularly while we fail to realise the potential rewards of an immigrant workforce educated elsewhere.

But none of this would be as much of an issue if we hadn't spent the last fifteen years printing money. Fifteen years!

For a decade and a half, for a generation worth of time, our banks have devalued our wages, the money that we go to work to earn every day so that it is worth less and less with every passing week, and our politicians have enabled asset hoarding on a fantastical scale.

We were always going to be in the shit but we didn't need to wear it as a moustache, necessarily.

No

Everyone would be saying how embarrassing it would be if this sort of thing was happening in the UK let's admit it.

@Bouledeneige you think the gov moving out the state pension age is addressing the demographic switch?

Why are working pensioners now not paying NI? Why didn't they keep the H&S tax levy?

Healthy life expectancy hasn't changed in years, & there is huge inequality depending on where you live.

Many of our young workers particularly HCP are now going abroad so they can have a better QoL

You think the gov has got the situation sorted?

@WildShabby absolutely, we never recovered fully from 08 & all the QE has inflated assets & completely devalued salaries.

Apparently the country is roughly evenly divided over this.
I do think we are a bit of a walkover.
I was watching the Paul Whitehouse prog about water and sewage in rivers - I mean why does no one chuck a brick through the window of the head of Thames Water on 2 million a year -whilst they destroy the beaches and countryside.
Or let loose the millions of chickens whose waste is destroying the River ?Wye - we are so busy fighting amongst ourselves that people take the pxxx.

I've been in France for nearly 30 years. I admire thé way that people not on strike but affected by others striking never really complain about the strikes. And the French do love to whinge.

Demonstrations can be a bit scary. And riots obviously not great. Car burning is a bit of a sport during times of upheaval even in quite small towns.

Also the French particularly the young are angry about how Macron pushed it through & are protesting about democracy not just pensions.

I certainly admire that the French work less hours than us, have more holidays & are more productive.

This.

Car burning doesn’t sound good. Posters might say they admire it but I doubt they’d want it on their street.

Mn posters are probably the most likely to post they’d love a riot but least likely to do anything at all, not involving just typing.

Of course same posters would not be happy

I agree with you. You have worded this so much better than I could.

Violence is wrong but the French's ability to protest for the rights of their society is good. We are apathetic in this country, spineless complainers who allow our rich government and MPs to shit on us from their lives of luxury .

Nope not at all .

The French are better at protecting their rights. We let those in power sell off community assets, give away our companies and make us pay for things. This is why the services that we have are quite poor in comparison to other countries. We’ve become a weak minded country.

We live in a democracy. If you want a different government you can vote for it.

With our archaic first past the post electoral system, if you live in an area where more people vote for the party you despise then your vote counts for nothing. If we had a proportional voting system I might actually believe I could vote for a different government.

No. Retiring at 64 seems reasonable to me. Rioting doesn’t.