Friday, December 07, 2018

one very angry french farmer that isn't going to stand by while the prices of fuel go up with another tax


The spark for the movement came in mid-November, after Macron announced he would increase fuel taxes, in order to help finance his plan to transition France to renewable energy. The increase could add about 10 euros ($14) to a family’s monthy household expenses. And while that is a significant sum to many poor families, for many others, the pronouncement seemed simply to be the final straw — It was “la limite,” Valette says.

The fractured movement of yellow jackets exploded seemingly out of nowhere, gathering momentum over the past two weeks through Facebook pages that have organized local demonstrations across a country of 67 million people. It has no leader, and no affiliation to a political party or trade union. It resembles more the grassroots Arab Spring protests of 2011, which toppled governments, than the frequent French demonstrations that usually accompany mass strikes. The one commonality among these demonstrators are the high-vis jackets that give them their name, which can be found in every vehicle under French law.

A poll on Wednesday showed about 84% of French supported the yellow jacket movement

http://theory-0f-everything.tumblr.com/
http://time.com/5468025/emmanuel-macron-yellow-jackets-civil-war/

3 comments:

  1. They put the tax increase on hold and there are even info that they cancel it. Now different people/groups inside those demonstrations (there is no central planning or representatives) start to demand more things. This looks like "give a finger, they want the whole hand" now. Number of demonstrating is now much lower, those who demonstrate against tax increase go back home. Those who stay want more things. There also groups of simple bandits that wear green vests to blend in and steal shit from shops ect.

    But that is not something shocking, mass demonstrations and fight with police is somehow of French tradition from times of Revolution. You could be sure for some clashes every year in Labor Day.

    Macron administration want push things too fast and without any backup plan to ease such transition. This need to be a process that take time, the idea to move to more power efficient engines is good and all but you can't change that with one sign and expect that everybody just buy new better trucks. Give people huge tax cuts for buying new trucks, dotations, take a long road with some good program that will take a decade. Now I get that they afraid that next government will just fuck it up and cancel whole program but hey, this is the democracy, this is how things works. Next governments can and often do fuck things up no matter if they are good or bad, they do this just for pure malice against predecessors.

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  2. Don,t you wish Americans had this kind of fervor every time a new tax is slapped on us? There was the Tea Party. They're gone. I hope the French Parliament gets the message. Wonder if that was a pile of manure Valette dumped on their door step? :)

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  3. I smell russian interference.

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