The French government, responding to the fact that two years ago French people let approximately 15,000 mainly elderly people die in their homes of heat exhaustion (many because they didn’t want to return home from holiday to take care of those annoying old people), has abolished a holiday, in the hope that more work on a “Day of Solidarity” wouuld generate more tax receipts, which would then be dedicated to paying for care for the elderly.
The response of the French trade unions? As the BBC put it,
Correspondents said many of those who stayed away were defying a centre-right government they accuse of abandoning social benefits for workers in favour of US-style free market policies.
TGP: “The French government, responding to the fact that two years ago French people let approximately 15,000 mainly elderly people die in their homes of heat exhaustion (many because they didn’t want to return home from holiday to take care of those annoying old people),…”
Who were these “French people [who] let approximately 15,000 mainly elderly people die in their homes of heat exhaustion”? The sons and daughters of all those who died? The doctors who would have looked after them but were on August leave? On the face of it, your statement reads like a group libel against thousands of French families and/or hundreds of doctors, or even the French people as a whole. The 1995 Chicago heatwave killed at least 700 but I doubt if you would write that “Chicagoans let 700 people die in their homes of heat exhaustion”? Please clarify.
Perhaps Mr. Brady did not read the accounts in the French newspapers of town officials who had to keep bodies cold until the children of the dead had decided to return from vacation, since they had prepaid for their accommodations. Mr. Brady could have read his beloved BBC, at least, such as this BBC report of 14 August, 2003:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3150097.stm
“Most of the victims are old people, prompting comments in the press to the effect that the real scandal was their loneliness and isolation – many families leave behind their elderly relatives as they go on holiday.”
So, the answer is: the sons and daughters of at least many of those who died.
Much of the French press was far more scathing in its discussion of the display of a lack of solidarity by many people for their own parents and grandparents. I was in France that summer and the discussion among French people was quite vigorous. Some insisted that it was the government’s responsibility to make sure that people didn’t get stuck in non-air-conditioned flats as their children and grand children went to the beaches and the mountains, others that it was the socialist mentality that contributed to an unwillingness of families to take responsibility for their own. This has nothing to do with libeling the French nation; it is a serious issue that French people have to face. The current strange position of the French unions — insisting that holidays for the working take precedence over welfare benefits for the retired — is merely evidence of the contradictions of the welfare-statist mentality that has become so prominent in France.
This has, by the way, nothing to do with French foreign policy, French imperialism in Africa, or French governmental opposition to the policies of the U.S. and the U.K. Mr. Brady is so accustomed to thinking with his knee that he seems to have forgotten how to evaluate issues on their own merits.
TGP: “Perhaps Mr. Brady did not read the accounts in the French newspapers of town officials who had to keep bodies cold until the children of the dead had decided to return from vacation, since they had prepaid for their accommodations. Mr. Brady could have read his beloved BBC, at least, such as this BBC report of 14 August, 2003:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3150097.stm
“Most of the victims are old people, prompting comments in the press to the effect that the real scandal was their loneliness and isolation – many families leave behind their elderly relatives as they go on holiday.”
“So, the answer is: the sons and daughters of at least many of those who died.
“Much of the French press was far more scathing in its discussion of the display of a lack of solidarity by many people for their own parents and grandparents. I was in France that summer and the discussion among French people was quite vigorous. Some insisted that it was the government’s responsibility to make sure that people didn’t get stuck in non-air-conditioned flats as their children and grand children went to the beaches and the mountains, others that it was the socialist mentality that contributed to an unwillingness of families to take responsibility for their own. This has nothing to do with libeling the French nation; it is a serious issue that French people have to face. The current strange position of the French unions — insisting that holidays for the working take precedence over welfare benefits for the retired — is merely evidence of the contradictions of the welfare-statist mentality that has become so prominent in France.”
Thanks for the clarification, Tom. Whatever the failings of particular French families, your quotation from the BBC story doesn’t justify your original statement that “French people let approximately 15,000 mainly elderly people die in their homes of heat exhaustion (many because they didn’t want to return home from holiday to take care of those annoying old people),…”
Indeed, in another BBC story, posted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3181941.stm , FranÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?§oise Forette, the president of the Society for Geriatrics and Gerontology, is quoted as saying that “We shouldn’t be criminalising the family, who in most cases have not abandoned their elderly. Those who are on their own are often widows or don’t have children.”
Your account of your own experience in France that summer is the more telling part of your response but your own story suggests that only some of the families of those who died were to blame and indeed that many “French people” deplored the actions of those families who had neglected their relatives.
A more careful reading of my post would have avoided Mr. Brady some trouble. I did not write “the French people,” but “French people.” The definite article was lacking for a reason, as the word “many” was present for a reason in “many because they didn’t want to return home from holiday to take care of those annoying old people.”
Further, Mr. Brady has cherry picked the quotation from FranÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?§oise Forette, who prefixed the remark quoted with the usual socialist collectivism: “‘I do not believe that society is not interested in what happens to the elderly. Quite simply, it is just not yet a priority for our elected representatives,’ FranÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?§oise Forette, the president of the Society for Geriatrics and Gerontology, told Le Figaro.” According to Forette, fault should not be assigned to the families, or even to “society,” but to the “elected representatives” for whom caring for the elderly was “not yet a priority.” Pointing out that “Those who are on their own are often widows or don’t have children,” was an evasion, an attempt to put the responsibility on a non-responsive state that should have been caring for people, and an unwillingness to acknowledge that many people died because their families had other priorities and thought that taking care of their parents and grandparents was the business of somebody else.
And now, the socialist trade unions in France, who are always so eager to insist that the state take care of everything, have made it clear that they’re opposed to “solidarity” to take care of the elderly if it means losing a single day out of their generous scheme of paid holidays.
TGP: Mr. Brady should have read my post more carefully. I did not write “the French people,” but “French people.” The definite article was there for a reason, as was the word “many” in “many because they didn’t want to return home from holiday to take care of those annoying old people.”
Contary to your assertion, I was well aware that you wrote “French people” and not “the French people.” Claiming that “French people let approximately 15,000 mainly elderly people die in their homes of heat exhaustion” does on the face of it read like a group libel in which you accuse French people of negligence in all of the 14,800 deaths that occurred. I doubt that you would write “Chicagoans let 700 people die in their homes of heat exhaustion” in reference to the 1995 Chicago heatwave.
I hate to be so personal, but is Mark Brady a former boyfriend or stalker or something? It seems everytime I look at an entry on this site, he’s there with a nitpicking criticism that avoids the central point but is always directed against Dr. Palmer. (That was really clear in the essay he wrote on Cato/Putin/Palmer/BBC/KGB blah blah.) It’s like he’s got some of grudge Who is he?
I’m neither a former boyfriend nor a stalker of Tom, but a former colleague who has known him since 1979. In fact, I don’t post in response to most of Tom’s stories and when I do it is to provide either an alternative perspective on what he has written or a correction to what I consider to be an error or falsehood. I suggest you read our (comparatively few) exchanges on the Iraq War to appreciate our substantive differences on this crucial issue.
Tom, you’re a hell of a smart guy…. I remember reading “Conscience of a Conservative” by Barry Goldwater when I was young (why my parents had it in the bookshelf I’ll never know, they weren’t political at all). Anyway, it left a strong impression on me. Later I was to supplement Goldwater with other political writers culminating with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Of course, I’ve mellowed on some parts, become vociferous on others.
Keep up the good work, Tom.
207guy
(non stalking, gay Randian)
Mr. Brady (who had an office down the hall from me for a brief time over a decade ago) is free to spend his time as he wishes. We seem to disagree on many things, but I don’t think that he’s yet found an error or a “falsehood” in my writings. Others have indeed corrected mistakes that I’ve made, for which I’m grateful, but Mr. Brady has devoted himself to picking nits. To each his own.
Oh, right…just to deal with one last nit left behind by Mr. Brady. Had Chicagoans in large numbers abandoned their elderly family members in the heat to go on vacation, with some refusing to come back to claim the bodies until after their vacations were over, I would write something like what Mr. Brady has written above. When there was a series of kidnappings and killings of children from housing projects in Atlanta some years ago, some people pointed out that the anomymity of the projects may have contributed to the ease with which the abductor(s) took the children. It tells us something about the baleful effects of the welfare state. Similarly, that so many French people blamed the state or “society,” rather than families that shrugged off their responsibilities, was telling about the state of French society. As a Francophile, I hope that the French people manage to do something about that.