Dinner and de Funes

I hosted a de Funes soiree chez moi last night, inviting 2 friends from work: one from Troie and the other from Limoges. Being French and fussy, I couldn't just serve any old thing, besides it would hurt my pride to just order pizza. So I ran to the local cheesemonger and purchased a half dozen sausages (spicy Italian and chorizo), some manchego cheese and a slab of membrillo (a sort of very thick pear jam you spread on the manchego) and also ran to the fruit/veg stand and got a bagful of tomatoes, cucumber, bell peppers and potatoes. On the menu: gazpacho, sizzled sausages fried in white vermouth with mushroom and onion and a side order of saffron-and-bay leaf scented cachelos (peeled potatoes cooked whole), plus the manchego/membrillo for dessert plus fruit and Indian sesame cookies and gulab jamun. My friends brought an excellent wine. What a feast.

They told me that the political climate in France hasn't changed in the last 15 years. It's very depressing: they don't want to move back because the job situation there is terrible. Unemployment is high, economic growth low and people are getting fed up but no one wants to do anything about it. L'immobilisation francaise prevents any innovation in the system because anything that upsets the privileges in place for people generates waves of strikes.

So the young leave in search of better job prospects abroad. That's not going to help France in the long run if the French stick to out-moded political and socio-cultural principles. Also, the culture of the too-well protected employee has made it that employers are forced to accept mediocre levels of productivity. It's almost impossible to fire someone, so the employers fight back by making it almost impossible to hire someone and the end result? New graduates take off and never return.

In the last year that I have worked with the French, I've noticed that they tend to bitch and whine and complain a LOT but do nothing about the situation. More energy is spent on meetings but nothing comes as a result. It's like the country is a giant department in the civil service. Great and lofty ideals are argued about but nothing is done because of petty squabbling.