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Post by whatagain on Jun 11, 2017 5:45:04 GMT
'because it was due to his personal intervention after the 5th rejection that I received that I got my mother into a municipal nursing home for which she was not officially eligible.'
So many socialists get elected that way... or for less, like a speedticket. At least here he gave proof of humanity.
The only tim I got somebody (socialist I mean) do something for me was when I was denied refund of the first experimental chemo treatement for Robin. I got the greenlight to do it with the letter specifying 'from july 1st'. He got his first injection on june 27th. THese a$$holes sent me a copy of my file with a handnote saying 'he should have waited'. I got refunded when I wrote to Mrs Onckelinx during election time and subtly writing that I was wearing thin after 2 years on the subject and that I would turn to the newspapers. I got paid. I didn't vote for her. But I didn't call in the newspaper.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 11, 2017 9:00:07 GMT
Macron played telephonist a couple of days ago. This is just an excerpt but the full video lasts 23 minutes. Macron au standard
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 11, 2017 19:43:21 GMT
It would probably be inappropriate to start making statements about today's election yet since very few final results have been reported yet, but I thought another problem about this election was sort of interesting. Over the years the principal right wing party (Sarkozy, Chirac, etc.) has been blue on the electoral maps, while the main Socialist opposition party has been pink, since the Communists have retained red as their colour, even though the red spots on the map have become very rare (but have never completely disappeared). So Emmanuel Macron needed a new colour. For the presidential election, most of the media decided to use orange as the colour, since he was the ally of a relatively small but not unimportant centrist party (MoDem) that had been assigned that colour in recent years. Tonight, however, Emmanuel Macron's colour has become purple since there will be an analysis about the strength of purple compared to the orange of the MoDem -- in other words, will the new majority of purple be sufficient without having to rely on "orange"? (British voters will understand the nuance.)
Still another week to go until the results are final...
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Post by patricklondon on Jun 11, 2017 20:34:27 GMT
Indeed, though to confuse the issue, in the UK, UKIP took on purple (but I think this weekend they're feeling a bit blue and looking rather grey). My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 12, 2017 5:57:39 GMT
I am now able to answer my own question about the representative of my constituency: he received 6.6% of the vote this time.
We have the Macron candidate on top with 30.99% followed by the Mélenchon candidate with 17%. So those are the two candidates for the runoff. The communist came in 3rd with 10.35% followed by the new socialist with 9.01% If I add up all of the votes for the various leftist candidates (including the Macron candidate because she came from the left), the percentages for the left come to 82.11% Strange to think that when I moved to this neighbourhood, it had been ruled by the right for at least 30 years!
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 12, 2017 8:17:00 GMT
Your neighborhood needs one of those wavy horizontal line graphs showing the changes of population parallel with the changes in political affiliation. The article I read says that voter abstention was at a record high, then says speculation had begun as to why. It followed that with: "France has faced a series of elections over the past 10 months, from the party primaries on the right and left, to the two-round presidential vote.", pretty much taking care of speculation. sourceI would just like to say how much I appreciate everyone who has explained things in this thread and in the one on UK politics. Political systems and attitudes in countries other than ones own are hard, but these two threads have me reading news stories with at least some understanding now. As a US citizen who lives in a country where corruption retards progress, the recent developments in both the UK and France give me some hope that things really can change.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 12, 2017 8:35:23 GMT
Your neighborhood needs one of those wavy horizontal line graphs showing the changes of population parallel with the changes in political affiliation. Besides gentrification by the "bobos" over the years, I would hazard a guess that one of the principal reasons is simply a change of generations. It has always been a heavily immigrant neighbourhood, but all of those foreign immigrants had kids here, and those kids are French citizens who are not going to vote for the Front National or the main right wing party which is always copying its negative attitude regarding "those people."
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Post by whatagain on Jun 12, 2017 13:58:35 GMT
Whatever the absenteism, whatever ... one VERY GOOD thing is the score of the FN: about 13% of the votants. Marine can no longer say/dream that her party is the first of France. I am very thankful to Macron for this.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 12, 2017 15:44:08 GMT
Due to my rural roots, I know quite a few people -- who seem to be good people -- who have been supporting the Front National in recent years, so I have also seen how shallow their political views are. It's the same sort of thing that elected Trump in the United States: "Those professional politicians don't know anything about real life, they just want to take our money and not do anything for us." To get their attention, all anybody had to do was say "I hate those people, too, and I will support you!" So people like Le Pen (father and daughter) said that and just added on all of the most ignorant and xenophobic things that you can hear in an economically depressed rural setting -- "the immigrants are getting everything, they don't work and they're getting paid to have babies, French people are being discriminated against, all of our taxes are going to the fat cats in Brussels and we're getting nothing in return, nobody puts criminals in jail anymore, all of the rules and laws that are made are just to crush us..." etc. etc. etc. All Le Pen and others have to say is "I'll get rid of the immigrants, I'll get rid of Brussels, I'll put everybody you don't like in jail." They don't have to have any sort of feasible plan -- people have always grasped at straws and they always will. Mélenchon has just been a variation of this, replacing "immigrants" with "capitalists."
What Macron has done is to give a wildly alternate way of dealing with the problems that nobody had thought of for the last 30 years: "People are good, including immigrants, the EU is our salvation and not the other way around, your taxes will not disappear but they will go to the right places..." etc. Duh, what a surprise. And people have started to listen, and they realise that being positive about things is better than being negative all the time. You digest your meals better and you sleep better at night.
As to whether Macron will be able to deliver, that remains open to conjecture.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 15, 2017 17:06:47 GMT
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Post by patricklondon on Jun 16, 2017 13:58:09 GMT
I was surprised to read in Le Monde's cartoon summary of how the election works that the Assembly members are supposed to think of themselves as representing and acting for the national interest and not as representatives of the interests of their specific constituency and constituents. I assume that's a pious hope rather than an enforceable principle, because I can't see how they can possibly not respond to constituents' concerns. Certainly "casework" is a major part of most British MPs' workload - unless they can imagine themselves in a safe seat (an expectation that can be upset if they take their constituents too much for granted). My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 16, 2017 15:19:21 GMT
Daniel Vaillant intervened in this case as mayor of the 18th arrondissement, not as my MP.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 19, 2017 10:19:35 GMT
We can relax from the elections for a bit since they are behind us. Macron got the majority he wanted, but it was not as huge as predicted due to massive abstention. Too many people decided it wasn't worth voting in the second round because there was no suspense -- and therefore we got a few surprises. One of the bad surprises was that the Front National now has 8 members in the National Assembly, up from 2 last time. If just 1 or 2% more people had voted, they would still have only 2 representatives, because most of their victories yesterday were by the skin of their teeth. My own constituency awarded Jean-Luc Mélenchon his only victory in Paris, but Danièle Obono looks like a keeper. She was born in Gabon and is a librarian. pbs.twimg.com/media/DAaNIulXgAAcWAu.jpg
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 19, 2017 10:31:17 GMT
What Macron has done is to give a wildly alternate way of dealing with the problems that nobody had thought of for the last 30 years: "People are good, including immigrants, the EU is our salvation and not the other way around, your taxes will not disappear but they will go to the right places..." etc. The Washington Post devoted a long opinion piece to Macron's victoriousness in this second election. The overwhelming impression of Macron one gets from the article is summed up in this sentence from it: The coterie of center-right politicians and experts now guiding Macron's economic policy led my colleague James McAuley to suggest that his supposed “radical centrism” looks more like an unvarnished conservatism.Overall the piece echoes much of what informed anyporters have said in this thread, but I'd be interested in comments if anyone cares to read the article: www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/06/19/frances-macron-wins-even-greater-power/
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Post by lagatta on Jun 20, 2017 16:10:49 GMT
Yes, I will. Note that I do NOT claim to be an expert on current French politics, though I've studied quite a bit of earlier French social and political history, but I'm not a great fan of Macron. He reminds me of Trudeau (though with a stronger background). Better than Fillon and certainly infinitely better than Le Pen père ou fille, but while I agree with fostering start-ups and micro-enterprise, I don't think hollowing out workers' rights is the best way to achieve that. Sounds too much like Maggie T.
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Post by whatagain on Jun 20, 2017 16:16:46 GMT
Seems a lot of workers think the same - and didn't bother to vote.
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Post by lagatta on Jun 20, 2017 19:13:29 GMT
Well, a good thing in the legislatives is the decline in what was probably a vote by rural people and some sections of the working-class for Le Pen!
One thing that would help micro-enterprise and start-ups would be changes in the employment status regulations, but here I might be hopelessly out of date, as friends told me that they had to declare either as freelancers or as salariés; here in the "creative sector" cobbling the two together is the only way some of us can make a living. Someone in France or at the least in continental Europe might be able to bring me up to date on that.
One friend has applied for his Canadian pension though it won't be much as he's been in France for at least 25 years now, and he can't qualify for the income supplement as that is only available to people 65 and over who are domiciled in Canada, and can't spend more than half the year abroad. I believe that he has to work until at least 68 (as a freelancer) to get any pension from France.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 20, 2017 19:19:05 GMT
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Post by lagatta on Jun 20, 2017 19:30:11 GMT
What is the far right party to the right of the FN? Are they like Greek or Hungarian neo-Nazis?
FI is Mélenchon, la France insoumise. Who still votes for the PCF?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 20, 2017 20:08:05 GMT
The French Communist Party (PCF) is delighted with the results. It has risen to 11 members of parliament, up from just 7 in 2012.
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Post by lagatta on Jun 21, 2017 0:47:26 GMT
Yes, I was rather surprised to see that as well.
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Post by bjd on Jun 21, 2017 7:24:16 GMT
So was I. Hard to imagine that anyone would still vote Communist in 2017. They could read a history book to find out how well that works. Of course, the French were the last voluntary Stalinist holdouts in Europe.
I also wondered who was to the right of the FN.
Wanted to add that I don't see much in common between Macron and Trudeau. Macron is a lot smarter, for one thing. (Saw a great comment in the Guardian: "Justin has a lot of Margaret between the ears.") (for those of you who don't know who Margaret is, his mother was known for partying with the Rolling Stones and generally not considered the sharpest knife in the drawer.)
Anyway, give the new president and the parliament a chance. These knee-jerk reactions about the "workers" and Thatcherism are premature.
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Post by lagatta on Jun 21, 2017 12:42:52 GMT
Yes, it was a reference to Margaret (Sinclair-Trudeau), not to Thatcher. Macron is definitely sharper than Trudeau. But Trudeau is useful for Macron as a centrist voice in North America.
Indeed, the PCF were diehard Stalinists - the PCI were very different. In 1956, the Italian party's line was still officially pro-Moscow against Hungary, and many prominent party members and sympathisers, especially intellectuals who supported the CP because of their role in the Resistance, left the party while remaining on the left. The Italians were also very sympathetic to Tito and the "area comunista" (zone of influence) certainly favoured the Czech spring and later Solidarnosc. I don't think their fondness for the Soviet Union was the reason the PCF persisted for so long though.
What does seem interesting is to what extent the campaign against corruption and insider politics will actualy bear fruit.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 24, 2017 19:11:52 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 24, 2017 20:52:54 GMT
Ewwwwwww! Your brain is going to turn into tapioca and your eyeballs will boil in their sockets.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 28, 2017 15:52:49 GMT
President Macron has invited President Trump to the 14th of July celebrations in Paris, and President Trump has accepted. Should be interesting!
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Post by whatagain on Jun 28, 2017 16:20:35 GMT
The guy's agenda is so flexible as to accommodate a transatlantic journey less than 3 weeks away ?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 12, 2017 14:50:14 GMT
With Donald Trump about to arrive in Paris for the 14th of July celebrations honouring the 100th anniversary of the United States belatedly joining the Great War, the inimitable and incorrigible Charlie Hebdo proposes Macron's and Trump's severed heads on spikes to properly commemorate the event.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 12, 2017 23:45:06 GMT
The guy's agenda is so flexible as to accommodate a transatlantic journey less than 3 weeks away ? Really! Can you imagine the giant hassle of having to rearrange golf dates?!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 16, 2017 4:25:18 GMT
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