The French are once again stifling the animal spirits of the free market with the dead hand of l’etat:
Sales of petrol and other combustibles will be limited on New Year’s Eve in a bid to curb what has become an annual tradition of revellers (sic) torching hundreds of cars, police said.
Youths in the often depressed suburbs of French cities have been torching hundreds of vehicles on New Year’s Eve since the early 1990s in what police say has become a competition to see which area can cause the most damage.
Police last year said they would no longer release figures for the number of vehicles set on fire to put an end to the “competition and ranking” that had emerged, with more than 1,000 vehicles being torched every year.
Presumably the denizens of les zones sensibles will still be handing out participation trophies, however.
Every newspaper reporter/editor in the world must be double-jointed–only way they can so easily bend-over backwards to avoid accurately describing the obvious. “Youts” from “often depressed areas” indeed.. They’re “denizens” all right–just not of France–they may be “in” it, but are certainly not “of” it save in the most superficial ways…unless, of course, one defines modern-day France as fast on its way to becoming nothing more than Algeria writ large..which is probably as close to the truth as anything else a PC sociologist might argue..
In England we too like to re-name things and places that have bad connotations. Eg: What could sound less threatening than “Secure College of Learning”? Much better than what it actually is, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetherby_(HM_Prison)
I believe this also happens in the animal kingdom eg Ostriches.
Detroit used to have a similar problem on the eve of Halloween, called Devil’s night. It was a terrible problem with arson. As my Dad used to say (He was PNS at UMich at the time), they were burning old people out of their homes. Truly horrific. I think a community step up helped to alleviate it, but I think it is becoming more of an issue again. I know in it’s prime in the 80s and 90s, it was like 800 fires a night.
I think it is a litmus test of sorts for a society. When you get to that point, civility is gone and the animals are running the zoo. In my opinion, there is no hope.
There is always hope, Bou. Perhaps, when miscreants are burning old people out of their homes and the civil authorities are powerless, somebody might remember another saying from a more civil age (1995): “Ain’t many troubles that a man cain’t fix with six hundred dollars and a 30-06.”
Running around and torching homes with a penalty of a weekend in the lock-up is all fun and games. Up the ante to a sucking chest wound and I’m thinking a night at home with the parents and a nice game of scrabble might seem suddenly more appealing. Ought to double the literacy rate of most high-school seniors too.
I’ve listened to the best of the sociologists and psychologists, and I feel confident in claiming that for the best results for the children you should only shoot them in a *nurturing* manner when they’re assaulting you.
– Max
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Kingdom….teenager Seydou Diarrassouba (olde English name) is stabbed to death in Oxford Street. 24 suspects are rounded up and arrested for such minor matters as grievious bodily harm,robbery, affray, drugs, forgery, burglary and handling stolen goods. Elsewhere, it is now claimed that teenagers are getting STD’s and unwanted pregnancies because they can get booze by the litre cheaper than bottled water and, thus, are so drunk they fail to use condoms. To cap it all, there’s a long running BBC radio show called `The Archers` who are farmers and ordinary village folk who live their lives, have problems with the price of animal feed, sheep scab, foot and mouth disease and the occasional bit of domestic strife and infidelity – who are these weirdo’s??? An everyday story of country folk my arse! Happy New Year
Hoof and Mouth? James Herriot implied in one of his books that it had been eradicated in the UK. Things have changed in the last 30 years.
It still happens, albeit rarely, and we have an utterly ruthless regime to prevent it and deal with it if it breaks out – and I do mean ruthless.
Hogday … to paraphrase My Fair Lady, the French don’t care what you say, as long as you pronounce it correctly.
Marianne
…and you can do anything as long as you are fashionably dressed.
C’est la vie, beaux femme
“Youths”, um, ah, cough, wink. I swear I am trying not to be a Raciss!, specially seeing that I just got back from services in a church run from the Anglican Province of Rwanda, but I do believe that having different kinds of people living right next to each other tends to promote violence, we human monkeys being the way we mostly are. I betcha those “youths” are not ethnically French.
No, I lie. My church is no longer run out of Rwanda. Last year, the Archbishop retired, and all of the House of Bishops there resigned. They were mostly Tutsis. The new bunch in Rwanda (Hutus, maybe?) have tossed us out. I think it might have something to do with ethnic politics. See what I mean?
If they remove the ability of the youth to set cars afire, how will Renault meet their 2012 sales goals?
– Max