Retirement, pensions et al ...

When I was a child the majority of boys, when asked what they would like to be said "An engine driver". It seemed so exciting that perhaps you could drive a huge, shiny monster engine like the famous Mallard. Sadly today the most common response to the same question is the ambition to be a celebrity or in common parlance 'a sleb' with a spaceman trailing a distant second. Presumably the overwhelming reason for the former choice is to lead what is seen as a glamourous and wealthy lifestyle.

Pose the same question here in France today and an overwhelming seventy nine per cent of youngsters want to be a civil servant - a fonctionaire. Why on earth would moat youngsters desire a civil service job? Simple answer really, retire at fifty five years of age with a superb indexed pension. That luxury not only includes the pen pushers but military and emergency services, health staff and professionals and local government employees as well. The number employed in these sectors is immense, currently just over twenty per cent of the working population.

There are rumblings of discontent in the UK, mainly from the trades unions, about possible proposed changes to the retirement age and the future value of pensions. It is obvious that change must happen and soon, given the usual apathetic attitudes of the population at large the proposals will be enforced with just a few minimal changes.

Here, over the channel, similar changes are being mooted by Sarkozy and company with the inevitable clamour from the trades unions and those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo. There is a fundamental difference however between the two countries, already there has been three separate days of national strikes bringing the country to a standstill. Allied with these strikes are demonstrations throughout the country with up to three million workers out on the streets each time. There are more to come, the next within a few days.

Historically concerted civil action has resulted in changes to the proposed new regimes whether mildly diluted or abandoned totally, sometimes in almost indecent haste as happened several years ago with proposed changes to under 25s employment policy.

Why does popular opinion often seem to carry the day? Maybe French politicians are more aware that re-election is not guaranteed if the electorate are displeased. There is another reason often quoted that there was major civil unrest many years ago in 1789 when the French Revolution toppled the then existing hierarchy of nobility, church and state. This fait accompli by the bourgoisie is thought to lurk in the inner recesses of the collective political mind which has little appetite for such another upheaval and thus propsed poitical excesses may be tempered.

Popular opinion seems to indicate the belief that the severest excesses of the new proposals on pensions and retirement age will at worst be more than somewhat amended, at best swept under the carpet never to be seen or heard of again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not openly advocating a people's revolution in Britain but perhaps a little less overall apathy and acceptance might not be such a bad thing ...