How it is here
I expect that a lot of you have been seeing pictures in the media of what’s been going on over here recently. Rob, Dom and Olivier have all taken part on protest marches, which have been peaceful on the whole. We have been asked to keep our children away from school two Tuesdays running by one of the PTAs, which is why Olivier joined in a march. Dom is exercising her right as a lycéenne to protest. Her lycée has also been barricaded this week so she hasn’t been able to go to all of her lessons. The problem is that the government has come up with the idea of making it easier for employers to sack younger employees. They were hoping to create more jobs after the troubles earlier in the year. It’s cheaper to employ younger people over here and most people predict that there will be sacking in order to bring in cheaper labour. A lot of the students that are protesting at the moment won’t be affected by this as they will be over the ages concerned when they finish their education. (Some of my marine biologists needed Doctorate plus two or three years to qualify for a job, which took them to over thirty). Our Prime Minister says that he won’t give in. He’ll be standing for election for president when that comes up, I don’t think somehow he will be successful.

I was reading an article the other day. At the moment there are approximately 118000 students studying languages for around 1800 jobs. It’s roughly the same kind of figures for other lines of work.