National orchestra goes on strike in France
mainThe Orchestre national de France has joined a walkout at Radio France in protest against 300 job cuts and other austerities.
Last night’s concert was called off.
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Macron. We warned you.
Unlikely. His party program is full of support for culture.
Surprising. In the financial crisis of 2008, the government, while cutting subsidies on state spending, increased the subsidies for culture.
French people just doing the only thing they know how to do, being sad, miserable, angry and being incapable of resolving their problems, just going on strike and making things worse for everyone. The musicians will get a head start on the rest of country who have called a nationwide rolling general strike to begin next Thursday, December 5th, when the entire nation will shut down, perhaps for weeks. Year after year, France reads from the same old script, repeating strike after strike after strike and sadly resolving little and only repeating their spectacle again, year after year. Boring, stupid and without an end. Others might take them more seriously, if we wouldn’t watch this same performance year after year. Either they are incapable of resolving their issues or they just want to live like this forever. Sad!
It is a local tradition since Louis XVI could not solve the financial crisis of 1783-88 which led to the French Revolution.
I think that they may actually “want to live like that forever.” After having worked over six years in France, I sincerely believe that the constant, unending, unresolved crisis after crisis is willful, but not for the reasons stated. Striking, demonstrating and violent rioting and destruction of public and private property gives many French people the excuse not to adapt to the world and compete within it, but subconsciously attempt to destroy its physical symbols, ie. wealth, commerce, multiculturalism, etc. The vast majority of French people are not prepared to deal with a globalised, multicultural, multilingual world. Even “highly educated” French people and most of their senior politicians can not even pronounce a sentence in correct spoken English and those who can are often mocked as being “unpatriotic”. By continually striking and rioting, destroying their country in the process, they can collectively escape from facing the reality that they are unable to compete in today’s world. I fear that it won’t end well for them.
A gloomy picture. But it has also to do with cultural identity: the new globalised world is not the happy, cosy, ‘village’ as it is often portrayed but a rücksichtlos destructive economic mince meat machine which produces ever growing divisions in all societies touched by it, because it stimulates cumulation of wealth in restricted strata of society, and increasing poverty at the bottom side, and equalizes characteristic cultures, forcing them to adapt to the bland, empty sameness of a very restricted idea of ‘modernity’. Europe cannot culturally survive without a characteristic France.
Were the 300 jobs artistic, from management?