A peek at France from an American

This was brilliant, i was chuckling away to myself. Some particularly good sentences quoted here:

In an interview, Lagarde says that more than two decades at a U.S.
corporation taught her: “The more hours you worked, the more hours you billed,
the more profit you could generate for yourself and your firm. That was the
mantra.”
The equivalent mantra in the French bureaucracy might be: the fewer
hours you work, the more vacation you take, the more time you have to grumble
about the state of the universe and the smarter you feel, especially compared to
workaholic dingbats across the Atlantic with no time for boules.

But all joking aside, France has to do something about it and between Sarko and Legarde, I hope France does wake up. We here in London have the largest population of very high earning French expatriates. Why are they here? because they are taxed out of their trousers in France and it is almost impossible to get good people to work in France.

Take the 35 hour week for example, yesterday, the FT reported some shocking news. I quote:

Introduced 10 years ago last week, the 35-hour week was a flagship
policy of the former Socialist-led government, which had hoped the policy would
generate more jobs. While the shorter work week has given many people more
time off, its effect on lowering the country’s rate of unemployment – which
still hovers at around the 9 per cent mark – has been less
obvious.
Instead, the bold social experiment has been blamed by its critics
for everything from throttling the country’s growth to destroying its work
ethic. Workers also complain of wage stagnation and a more stressful work
environment as they are asked to do more in less time for the same pay. The result, says Yves Riesel, founder and owner of the Paris-based company, is that white-collar workers, many of whom have the means to take advantage of the extra weeks of holiday, benefited from the 35-hour week. By contrast blue-collar workers who are paid by the hour found themselves odd
shifts with little opportunity to increase their earnings through overtime.

Typical!

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!