Fuel prices rises in France have been put back for 6 months I've just heard....
So direct action does work maybe?
Are you expecting some sort protest from UK motorists too?
You’ll be dead before that happens.
No I'm not.
As above, the French love a protest, we suck at it
They tend to do it rather well I must say, as in very organised. But I don't condone the violence obviously.
Am i correct in thinking that in france it’s not illegal to block roads to protest about something?
I'm sure they'd protest about it if it was.
yeah we should all protest until we get cheaper fuel.
That climate change nonsense is all a big conspiracy, right?
Pretty clear indication of what politicians are likely to face when they try to reduce carbon emissions and pollution.
No easy answers to this.
That climate change nonsense is all a big conspiracy, right?
on a personal level, me spending less to use the same amount wouldn’t have any effect on climate change.
The French are bloody brilliant at protests and riots though aren’t they?
2 degrees climate change, nobody protests. 2 cents on fuel they're all in the street behaving like they think they're traffic police.
bunch of f-ing idiots. sick to the teeth of them
yeh! lets support an old dirty technology!
i like diesel engine as much as anyone else, but these protest have really given me the fear for the future.
the world is going to shit and a lot of people are too selfish to give a frick.
thanks granny ring for giving me the chance to vent. probably safer than shouting at them from my bike : )
This geezer seems to have more info on these yellow vests
http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com/2018/12/12-things-you-should-know-about-gilet.html
bunch of f-ing idiots. sick to the teeth of them
Yeah - better to bottle it all up, keep a stiff upper lip and then protest by voting for Brexit.
bunch of f-ing idiots. sick to the teeth of them
Do me a favour, the French govt don’t give a merde about the planet, this is all about squeezing mssr et madam Ordinaire whilst calling it an environmental tax and then wondering why they haven’t fallen for it! Yeah, I’m sick to the teeth of the f-ing idiots in power too.
I'm with JamieSilo on fear for the future. Watty just goes on to prove the point.
Yes, of course, it's all about screwing the little man isn't it?
From that linked piece "especially those in non-urban areas who rely on cars to survive". The same argument always comes up in the UK but the reality is people moaning that it's "taken them an hour to drive 1 mile to the station" ( https://twitter.com/bluebell_emma/status/1069534948867084288)
My in laws live in poor, rural, southern France. Everyone seems to drive everywhere by default - they're a half hour walk from the village but they always drive (which still takes 10 minutes, and you have to find somewhere to park so the actual time saving is small). Theres a local who drives to the bar and often ends up parking as far away from the bar as his home.
Everyone goes home for lunch - so they're all driving twice as far each day to work as they need to.
When you see the way people use their cars it's blindinginly obvious that fuel is far too cheap. Yet driving has become so ingrained as a right and a 'freedom' that any restriction on it is met with horror - my father had to stop driving due to Alzheimers and didn't stop ranting about it until he died. My mother is now exactly the same - she hasn't now driven for about 2 years but she still rants about not being able to drive.
It's the main reason I can't conceive of living in the country - I just don't want to be somewhere where i'm not able to walk or cycle to most of the places I want to go.
Fuel prices rises in France have been put back for 6 months I’ve just heard….
At the cost of 3 dead. Must be a win 🙁
Didn't know about the deaths, that's awful. I've been avoiding the news these last few months.... maybe something to do with this Brexit thing that I've heard is happening or not. 🙂
So, the planet is dying by choking on the crap humans continue to pump into it and the French are rioting about the price of... diesel.
Yeah, right on comrades.
Copied from another forum;
86,000 tweets in English from 49,000 accounts with hashtag #GiletsJaunes analysed. Vast majority (over 3/4) link news source to rt.com. So no chance everybody is being played.
That's a shame, I was mulling over getting a train to Paris to enjoy the brick hurling and car burning - as an observer of course.
@Kilo; Why am I not in the least surprised about that? It smells as bad as Brexit.
Btw, got a link for source? I wouldn't mind being able to back it up if I shared it elsewhere
I read
it here
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/291108/?offset=7100#comment14529666
post number 7112
there's this attitude in france which i come accross fairly often. a lot of people i talk to , and i don't talk politics/economics by choice, say things like "yeh i mean l'europe, what has it given us? They said this and they said that and what have we got?"
to which i feel like saying " what, you didn't get the free money they promised you personally?"
i don't dispute there are huge inequalties in society, rich elite looking after their own interests etc, but a lot of folk seem to feel like the world owes them a living. social benefits are actually pretty generous in france if you've worked (ever) and are part of the system. health care isn't in the mess it's in in britain tho not free at point of delivery, or whatever the phrase is.
it's the righteousness of it all that gets me. Yeh, i've got a right to cheap shit poluting technology, it's all those rich folk who are f-ing everything up. not me, i just work, consume unthinkingly (ok, i do that too) and drive everywhere all the time (are you mental? cycling's for exercise when you're retired)
france is a lot less densly populated than britain, and public transport coverage is not great. a trip i do semi-regularly which takes 2 hours wuld take all day on 2 buses and 1 train if i'm lucky. so life would be hard without a car, and so it seems for folk who don't have much money and have shit cars or not at all. but in an area where the weather is fine for cycling probably at least 80% of the time, in a school of 200 kids, in an area which is less than suburan with quiet roads and easy cycling, i am the only parent who regulary takes their kid on a bike. people look at me like i'm crazy. or wow, really 'sporty'
Has everyone forgotten the UK fuel protests that happened and the relaxing of duty that followed?
Personally speaking. It's disgraceful but interesting and very worrying, and it's scary: driving around a roundabout at 4am in the morning that is basically on fire with people shouting and saying whether you can or can't go. No control. No police to be seen. And that is on the exists to the motorway near ventoux, not some inner banlieu of Paris.
The mess they are making is disgusting, the damage they have done and continue to do. Guys wobbling around drunk effectively holding people hostage in their cars. Roundabouts with huge fires and burning tyres. Motorway peage barriers ripped off. Speed cameras vandalised.
I've noted since July when the speed limit decreased from 90 to 80 that drivers increasingly seemed annoyed and didn't give a toss and were more confrontational than usual: I used to enjoy riding on the road in France compared to the uk. Now I am just as scared, but whether that is because it is status quo after having been here 10 years I don't know. Everyday man is angry, and always blames 'them'/ l'etat: thinking the state owes them a life.
The irony of watching a mum drive 400m to take her kids to school in a small village, in a car with a gilet jaune on the dashboard, then leaving the engine running so she can keep warm whilst waiting for the school bus.
The government seems to have caved in....but they will only be delaying the tax raise, not cancelling it. What they should have done is said. "ok ok, we hear you, we'll take the money from the increase and ring fence it, and spend it only on getting us out of the hydrocarbon dependent transport system".
However, there are a lot of poor people, people really struggling, I can't remember witnessing such quite poor and destitution in the UK. Most of my experience comes from rural France compared with rural and inner city UK.
I've been here 10 years, and mostly proud to be part of French society, but this has left a very bitter taste.
It’s the main reason I can’t conceive of living in the country – I just don’t want to be somewhere where i’m not able to walk or cycle to most of the places I want to go.
You sound like tj, ‘oh, I cycle everywhere, don’t own a car, everyone should be like me, and live in a city, lots of public transport, etc, etc, blah blah blah...”
But everyone can’t live in a city, and why should they?
I've being paying my taxes in France for 30 years and voted Macron. I'm comfortably off but have felt increasingly uncomfortable with the way the poor are being treated. The problem isn't really fuel prices it's mainly an increasing proportion of the poor who can't make ends meet for a host of reasons many of which are tax based:
Things Macron has done I disagree with (remember I voted for him).
Removing ISF
A penny pinching reduction in social security payments (1e dérisoire mais tout un symbole)
A reduction in Taxe d'habitation for everybody not just the poorest people. The communes still need money to pay the bin men so they've increased the local rate in many places so nobody wins. In places that have not increased the local rate the rich win most and the communes will have to find the money from somewhere - no doubt the poor self-employed through taxe foncière profesionnelle.
Most communes have increased taxe foncière. There's been a steady transfer from centralised government taxes on profits to this local taxe which hits the poor hardest as small surfaces areas pay proportionally more per m2 than rich people in big houses.
TVA increase - a tax on the poor as they spend the greatest proportion of their income on things with TVA on. It's a non-progressive tax with a regressive impact.
Tax increases on fuel without measures to protect the poorest commuters.
The complaints are legitimate, the methods questionable. If anyone has a better way of getting the message across to Macron I'll let my gilet Jaune mates know. My own gilet jaune is still in the glove box it would be a bit daft putting it on the dashboard of a new electric car. Almost as daft as the ones on the Range Rover Sports.
.........................................;
In answer to some of the above car use is similar in France to the UK in terms of average mileage despite France being bigger. People I know use their cars less than the Brits I know for futile journeys. Kids still walk and cycle to the secondary school Madame works in, many unaccompanied. Junior always walked to school and home at lunch time with another girl, a total of 8km a day. The long lunchbreak is a dying tradition in many businesses.
I could parody some of the the simplistic xenophobic crap above from a seller of German bicycles but will simply call him out for posting nonsense..
Former investment banker, voted in predominately by the middle and upper classes, in order to head off populists, in completely indifferent (couldn't give a flying ****) about the working classes lives shocker. Who knew?
So direct action does work maybe?
Of course it works, trouble is it's often only used on reactionary shite like fuel protests and anti-peado lynch mobs. What's most annoying is that if it's reactionaries wanting cheaper fuel they cave in, yet if it's a bunch of hippies sitting up trees or blocking the road to highlight climate change they get arrested and slagged off as rent-a-mob.
How come my earlier post got the delete treatment?
You sound like tj, ‘oh, I cycle everywhere, don’t own a car, everyone should be like me, and live in a city, lots of public transport, etc, etc, blah blah blah…”
But everyone can’t live in a city, and why should they?
not at all. It’s a choice I made - I grew up in the country, with a bus an hour to the nearest town. Once I was an adult i knew i didn’t want to live like that. I’ve considered it a few times since and always come to the conclusion that quality of life (based on what i think important) was better being in a city and commuting out at weekends than living in the country and commuting in. Looked at it again recently and still think the same. Other people’s values are different and I accept that.
Educator - i’m guessing the xenophobic comment was aimed at me. I dont think it’s deserved - I’m just saying what I see and I’ve no idea if its in any way representative. It’s one town in southern france where I spend a couple of weeks a year. My in laws are well integrated (my SIL was on the Mairee for a few years which I’m told is pretty unusual for a non-national).
In that area it seems the French have gone far further than the UK in becoming car dependent. Pretty much all the shops are sheds on the ring road (whereas most UK towns IME still have a semblance of a town centre). The pavements disappear even before you leave the village centre so the walking experience is poor. When I go road riding in the hills i see the lunchtime trips home. When the nephews were at the village school nearly all seemed to be picked up (by car) and taken home for lunch.
I’m sure not all parts of France are like that - Paris seems very progressive in reducing car use and reallocating space from cars but the rural south is very different IME.
Just like in the UK, there will always be a certain amount of parents who feel entitled to drive their kids to school and park up on the pavement right outside the entrance, then drive the 500m back home. The only difference now is that they do it with a reflective vest on display.
That's in a southern French village with decent public transport links and cycle lanes separate from the road. Simons is right that car culture rules here.
With the exception of Holland car culture rules everywhere I've been/lived in Europe. The most motor dominatied place I've been to is Birmingham UK and the least is Amsterdam.
On this Lunchtime driving thing the average lunchbreak is about 22mins.
In places I've worked (Pau, Oloron ste Marie, Tarbes) very few people went home for lunch. However a lot of people were on the road around lunchtime because that's when the shifts changed. Chocolate factory, milk plant, cheese factory, aerospace manufacturing... all work on two or three shifts with a change around lunchtime. When office workers went out at lunchtime it was often to go shopping, a gym, the pool or a place other than home. The vast majority of school kids eat in the canteen. On Wednesday most kids go home for lunch but don't return to school.
The main point of my posting here seems to have been lost. The protest is not just about the price of fuel, it's about a rise in living costs and taxation that mean an increasing number of people can't make ends meet or simply feel poorer.
What Macron would like to do and has so far failed to achieve is to tax profits in the country where they are made. European fiscal dumping means multinationals centralise their profits where they pay the least (next to no) tax. Until he suceeds in fairly taxing Google, Starbucks etc. he doesn't have much scope for reducing taxes on the poor. Meetings with Merkel haven't advanced things and the abuses taking place in the Isle of Mann, Monaco, Luxembourg, Ireland... are depriving states of revenue needed to improve the lot of the poor and bring about a change in energy use without revolution inducing pain.
It's not like the French are suffering wildly different problems to other countries in Europe with regard to living costs. The only difference is, the French are not afraid to go out and show their government what they think.
Fuel prices here in Germany are currently at the highest I can remember. Living costs are increasing, but there is no way in my mind that the Germans would ever go out onto the street and make their feelings known..... you know, because rules.
With the increased fuel prices there is the initial hit on the wallet at the pump, but it also leads to increases in basic food stuffs that need to be transported.
It is no good jacking up prices and making the people pay more without offering an alternative. And with any price hikes those without much money are going to feel it more than those with a lot of money who are isolated.
I kind of respect the French for their direct action approach..... It seems to work.
In Germany and most other European countries, the rise in fuel taxation has been gradual, this allows people to adapt and plan, and hopefully nudge people into making more environmental decisions. In France the current policy seems to be a "shock and awe" taxation of the poor under the disguise of being environmental.
IMO in most of Europe direct fuel taxation has gone far enough, now more direct legislation is required, ie banning older cars from city centers, much higher taxation on new less economical car sales etc And of course this has to go hand in hand with offering alternatives, better train services, trams and buses, cycle paths and to big one is urban and social planning to allow people to easily not require frequent car usage.
The main point of my posting here seems to have been lost. The protest is not just about the price of fuel, it’s about a rise in living costs and taxation that mean an increasing number of people can’t make ends meet or simply feel poorer.
That much has been obvious from the news reports, in a similar way to how, for many people, voting to leave the EU had little to do with leaving the EU.
In the absence of any momentum to ditch the concept of the private car, maybe governments should be offering incentives to chop in all those filthy Renault Scenics in return for brand new electric cars.
What Macron would like to do and has so far failed to achieve is to tax profits in the country where they are made.
If that is what he is relying on, he is going to struggle, Trump's tax cut has significantly changed the priorities for US multinationals.
Is the French style of direct action/protest a legacy of the revolution?
Anyway
2 degrees climate change, nobody protests. 2 cents on fuel they’re all in the street behaving like they think they’re traffic police.
You can and should use the tools of government to promote good environmental behaviour, but you have to do it well. Slapping 2p a litre on everyone's fuel penalises those who can least afford it, and those who can afford it won't change their behaviour. People usually need more carrot than stick (to mangle a metaphor). You'd think someone brand new to politics would have considered this kind of thing carefully before jumping in...
In the absence of any momentum to ditch the concept of the private car, maybe governments should be offering incentives to chop in all those filthy Renault Scenics in return for brand new electric cars.
The problem with that is replacing operational cars that use fossil fuels with electric is not environmental good, the incentive has to be to replace cars at the end of their useful lifes with much more environmentally sound cars, otherwise we are just subsidising the motor industry and not helping the environment.
I've never owned a Scenic but I did get a 6000e bonus (or was it 4000e? I can't remember and can't be bothered to look ofor the bill) from the bonus/malus system when I bought the Zoé. Combined with a reduction from the dealer that made it 16 000e. Today it would be cheaper, maybe 15 500. But it still costs nearly double a Sandero to buy and as much as a petrol car to run, and is beyond the budget of most gilets jaune.
The car market needs attacking at source rather than trying to limit the use of vehicles people already have. The old vignette used to hammer drivers of big cars every year (I ran a petrol 605 at the time) and people drove smaller cars. As the taxes on new big cars have come down and the vignette has disappeared people have got into the habit of running bigger thirstier cars. When I'm dictator big thirsty cars will be eye-wateringly expensive to buy and the Zoé will be the cheapest car on the market at purchase.
Slapping 2p a litre on everyone’s fuel penalises those who can least afford it, and those who can afford it won’t change their behaviour.
Of course the poorest in society don’t own cars but suffer all the consequences of pollution congestion and road danger. In real terms motoring has fallen while public transport has risen - yet again this year fuel duty is frozen while rail fares go up above inflation. When I was a kid my dad car-shared his trip to work with a few other people. I’ve cant remember the last time i heard about anyone car sharing (the odd school run parent, but even that seems much rarer than it used to be)
Rural public transport is starved of funding but also of customers since motoring is effectively subsidised (with motoring taxes not covering the externalities)
There needs to be whole load of stick as well as carrot. Most people treat an individual journey as “free” - the car is already paid for, theres fuel in the tank. Every trip needs to have a marginal cost so that “rational” decisions are made.
Parking has a cost whether it’s opportunity cost on the street (where it could provide safe space for cycling) or a maintenance cost of car park space. Workplace parking levy to encourage sharing and use of public transport. City wide controlled parking zones with spaces at commercial rate (see Japanese approach - you have to have a parking space to own a car - you make the choice about whether you buy a space on your own property or in a public car park. Theres no overnight parking so any car left on the street overnight gets towed). Minimum charge for all supermarket parking (nothing is free - the cost of the land and maintenance of the car park at my local supermarket is subsidised by all those who walk or cycle and dont use it. If you’re someone who has some bizarre belief that parking should be free then turn it round - give a £5 discount to everyone who does their shop without a car).
Smart road user pricing - the tech is there now to track vehicles and charge by the mile. Cost partly offset by reducing motoring “fixed” costs like VED and fuel tax. Large, or polluting, cars charged more.
Every trip needs to have a marginal cost so that “rational” decisions are made
So how do you do that, without it looking remarkably like fuel tax?
I car share. Using Bla Bla Car - we did our Summer holiday using Bla bla Car and buses. I also car share for X-C skiing and Madame will be car sharing this Friday to pick up some horsey bits. Junior Bla Bla Cars lots as do many French of his generation.
"There needs to be whole load of stick as well as carrot".
The stick means you won't get elected again, the carrot works quite well and wins you voters when combined with suitable propaganda. The solar panels on the roof came with a tax credit that made them a viable proposition, the subsidy on the Zoé was enough to get my cheque book out. The governement still makes money as the total tax take on sales of durable goods and services is of the order of 50% so offering a 30% tax credit on solar panels or 20% off an electric car they are still raking in tax.
As for the poorer gilets jaunes, many don't have the cash to advance for solar panels, and electric car, insulation (even if they own their home) or even an SNCF ticket which is more expensive than the same journey with just one person in a car - the SNCF is significantly cheaper than any of the British networks per km. Make it economically advantageous and people will follow you. Beat them with a stick and they'll revolt.
Edit: jeeeez this forum is clunky
^^^^^Exactly
As long as politicians keep hijacking environmental issues for higher tax takes, whilst doing back room deals with the industries at the root, they can get teh ****.
