In health care, the 35 hour week is catastrophic.  Why?  Because the government has chosen not to hire adequate personnel to staff health care facilities.  There is clearly nothing wrong ab initio with the 35 hour week.  There is plenty wrong with the right's efforts to sabotage outside the democratic process by placing the sick and injured in jeopardy.

"...these dead shall not have died in vain...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Whilst I would agree, the truth is that the traditional media are so hostile to liberal or left policies that the only way to get sympathy is to be a part of that critical mainstream.

the best analysis of this is coming out of the USA where the situation has gone a lot further and for far longer. We only have to note the difference in reporting on Bush and Clinton to see this phenomenon in action.

Clinton was destroyed in the press and on TV merely for having extra-marital sex. However, Bush's offences against the USA are legion; he has broken the law 750 times and trashed the Constitution itself on numerous occasions, yet it is almost impossible to even infer a minor criticism of him in the mainstream press.

They simply apply a different criterion when reporting on the left or the right. And it happens here too. Quite why well-educated and informed people, who individually actually tend towards liberalism, behave as a group like a ravening right-wing horde is open to debate. But it is nevertheless a fact that they do and politicians respond to that reality. If they want the press to say nice things about them, they have to be horrible to the left.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Great points about Royal, but I'm not sure I can follow you about Bliarism = demonisation of the moderate left. In what way is criticising Villepin a demonisation of the moderate left?

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

According to the FT:

this ancillary flexibility was a side-effect of a law that was otherwise erroneously based on the "lump of labour" fallacy

Just as the Financial Times and the Economist have made it their mission to propagate the bogus lump-of-labour claim about the 35-hour law, the Sandwichman has made it his mission to answer the old canard about shorter work time being based on a fallacious belief that there is "only so much work to go round." See the lump of labor stops here for a compendium of counter thrusts.

Sandwichman

Two observations come to mind

1. Lets not forget how unpopular the 35-hour work week was in 98 among businesses and right-wing economists AND then how popular it became among workers by 02. I never saw global statistical data but lots of anecdotal evidence at the time of the 02 election that it was the primary reason that Jospin carried only 10% of working class votes. So from whatever direction you do it, its good politics to criticize the 35 hours.

2. The bigger point -- I am not sure "left" and "right" are very helpful in this context (or any). I don't mean by that any "end of ideology" nonsense but that in terms of both political culture and political sociology, western democracies -- and especially France, especially for the 07 Presidential election -- can't be divided neatly into left and right.

I see the anology clearly to Hilary Clinton's recent speeches, but while  Clinton  does have to, as Jerome puts it, hope the left comes along (in the sense of more liberal Democratic voters), but its not clear to me that Royal does. She may be banking on not picking up the "true left" (as the FT would have it) in the first round -- or much of it in the second.

Given how wide open Sarkozy (and for that matter Fabius) has left the center, one would be a fool not to run for it at full speed.

All that said, I simply am not close enough at the moment to sense how middle-class, middle of the road voters will react to the more hard-core condemnation of teenagers and parents with which Royale made news earlier in the week. I do know lots of teachers who in 02 turned surprisingly to the center or right because of "insecurity" in the form of what they called unruly, badly raised and dangerous students. I wonder if Royale here is trying to win back that constituency, which presumably remains an important one in any presidential election.

A final question -- at this point, is it clear that the "primaires" of the PS will take place in December? or is this speech a sign that Royale might be looking, as Fabius reportedly has been, at running outside the PS?

The bit about her criticism of de Villepin being 'Blairite'. The general convention is that you put scare-quotes around an adjective if you want to indicate that the use of the adjective is questionable in some way.

Often this is done when a (poor IMO) writer wants to use a word or phrase that they are worried is innappropriately slangy or informal for the intended audience; its a defensive move on the part of the author - 'Calling this argument "Blairite" is a bit trendy for you stodgy financial types, but bear with me.' This is the reading I think you are making based upon the conclusion you are drawing.

The other way however (and better technique IMO) is when the writer uses a word or phrase whose meaning they wish to challenge but which (they allege) is in common parlance - 'This criticism has been described as Blairite, but I have wisely deduced that this is not so because it is actually derived from a leftist analysis.'

This is the reading I think the writer intends - "Royale is presenting (or being spun) as a Blairite, but she's actually a wrong-headed lefty."

Regards
Luke

-- #include witty_sig.h