La France ou comment l’aimer en la châtiant bien

Du «non aux retraites!» aperçu sur les banderoles de certains manifestants lycéens, aux explications ésotériques des économistes  mal coiffés à lunettes, la réforme des retraites françaises de 2010 a déchaîné les passions.
Mais finalement, qu’a-t-on retenu de ce tapage médiatique? Que la retraite est passée de 60 à 62 ans. Merci. Mais si cette réforme ne comportait que cette unique mesure, ça se saurait. Alors essayons de nous concentrer deux minutes, et d’analyser la situation.

Retour en 2010 avec Harry (cliquez sur l’image):

Ca, c’est fait. Augmentation de l’âge légal de départ, augmentation de l’âge du taux plein, augmentation de la durée de cotisation. Beaucoup d’augmentations en gros, et elles ne concernent pas les salaires apparemment. Mais qu’en est-il des pays européens? C’est sans doute mon côté indécis qui ressort mais je vois mal comment l’on peut promulguer des réformes sans jeter ne serait-ce qu’un seul minuscule coup d’œil aux pays qui sont, finalement, dans la même mouise, restons polis: situation que nous. Typiquement français vous dîtes? Peut-être bien, oui. Mais il n’empêche que la France n’est pas le seul pays à faire face au problème des retraites, et, à regarder de plus près cette belle comparaison, il semblerait que les Froggies ne soient pas si mal logés que ça:

INFOGRAPHIE – Comparez le nouveau régime français du départ à la retraite avec les règles en vigueur dans cinq autres pays occidentaux.

 
Intéressant, non? Et ce n’est pas fini! Et oui, comme les Suisses le savent déjà, -et je reste persuadée que c’est en partie pour ça que la France est haïe dans ce pays-, le tableau ne fait aucune référence au système des retraites suisses. Parce que la Suisse, en France, on s’en fout! C’est cru me direz-vous mais c’est vrai. Et c’est bien triste d’ailleurs. Les Froggies auraient tellement de choses à apprendre des p’tits suisses. Ah, l’arrogance française! Mais il m’en faut plus pour me décourager et me jeter du Pont Bessières de Lausanne. En tant que journaliste pratiquante, j’ai fait appel au Dieu Internet et ai réussi à me procurer THE comparaison entre la France et la Suisse. Je suis sûre que vous êtes sciés là. Regardez un petit peu le travail:

Pour les curieux, allez faire un tour sur ce blog: travailler-en-suisse d’où j’ai tiré cette comparaison et où l’auteur a un regard très intéressant sur la situation, et pro-suisse!! Ou anti-français, ça dépend comment vous voyez les choses.
Avec en prime la glorification de la population suisse, comparé à la bêtise française: «En France, on bloque toute discussion, en Suisse, on aborde le sujet de manière démocratique, citoyenne et responsable.» Et il est français. Si, si je vous jure.

Enfin, revenons un peu à nos moutons (blancs et noirs, n’en déplaise à Oskar). Les Suisses partent donc plus tard à la retraite, travaillent plus, et ont moins de congés payés. Ce qui est étonnant et sans doute incompréhensible pour la plupart de Français, c’est qu’ils acceptent ces conditions et les encouragent. La preuve, ils ont refusé, en 2001, une initiative proposant un minimum de 5 semaines de congés payés pour les salariés de plus de 50 ans. Chapeau bas. A côté, les 35 heures françaises, les 5 semaines de vacances et la feu retraite à 60 ans, ça peut faire doucement rigoler.

Alors à 5 mois des élections présidentielles, qui s’annoncent une fois de plus amères, et dans un contexte économique et politique on ne peut plus morne, la France se voit offrir plusieurs possibilités:

1) s’entêtera-t-elle à vouloir suivre le modèle grec, «travaillez toujours moins pour gagner plus» et couler, doucement mais sûrement?

2) Acceptera-t-elle de mettre son orgueil de côté pour mettre la main à la pâte et reprendre le pays en main?

3) Parviendra-t-elle à garder ses acquis sociaux tout en relançant l’économie?

4) Autre?

A vous à la parole!

 

The Festival de Cannes: stars are also shining on the Internet!

Imagine. Imagine that on the 23th of May 2011, you have to write a whole report of the Festival de Cannes adventure of 2011. Easy you’ll say; Canal + allows to see the whole thing for free. But (because yes, there’s a but), here is the challenge: you have no TV, no radio, no newspaper. The only available sources are Facebook and Twitter, that’s it. What? Why are you in a sweat? Relax, that’s not that impossible. And when you think about it, you could even say that it’s easier than watching the TV every single day, trying to get THE moment when the actor you loooove walk (finally!) on the red carpet. Because everything you want is on Facebook and Twitter ! And this even before the festival starts!

On the 28th of March, you could already smell the heat of the spotlights, the flashes, and of the red carpet of this 64th Festival of Cannes. And of course, you get the chance to know the essential: the president of the jury for instance! Or the mistress of the ceremony. With a beautiful picture you can comment on! Fabulous huh?

But what is great with such a page is that you don’t only know what film will be presented and what star will show up but you also get to see what is going on in parallel of the main competition. TV channels and newspapers rarely talk about the Short film competition or the Un certain regard competition. I didn’t even know there were such competitions, apart from the main one. Did you? It gives the chance to take the time to know what these competitions are really about and this is good for the ones who present their films in the Festival de Cannes and who are often put in the shade.

So far so good, no? Even before the press conference and the release of the names of the films, I knew that Mélanie Laurent would be the mistress, that Robert De Niro would be the president of the jury, Emir Kusturica the president of the Un certain regard competition, and Michel Gondry the president of the Short film competition. Plus, I know that Robert De Niro will receive an Honory Palme d’or during the opening ceremony. And a lot more! That’s quite good.

But that’s not it. On the 14^th of April (the first D-day), the official page of the Festival de Cannes on Facebook came up with this great idea, instead of posting every single film of the Festival, of telling us to sign up to Twitter to follow in live the annoucement of the Juries and the films;

one tweet = one film

Out of competition                                                           Un certain regard                                         

                    
Competition

The second D-day was the announcement of the jury members, with a picture, as always: Jude Law, Uma Thurman,  and many more, yummy!

Since then, the official page of the Festival on Facebook focused on the trailers of the different competitions. After the smell, the sight and the hearing. Just have a look!          

Hors competition film: “La conquête”

Un certain regard film: “The yellow sea”

Competition film: “Le gamin au vélo”

 Now, the third D-day! The opening. Waou! Ok; if you want to know every single detail, go see the Twitter page, you’ll see who are climbing the stairs, when did the ceremony begin and so on. One sentence, not more. So then again, it’s quite light and you don’t have any pictures right on Twitter, you need a link. However, on Facebook, what you get for information is pretty interesting and has got a real content. For instance, you can see the daily program, a good thing, isn’t it?

And of course, when the first stars are climbing the stairs and arriving in Cannes, unlike Twitter, Facebook offers you the pictures of the jury members which adds a touch of glamour. Look at this:

And there’s more. Because you have all the details of the opening film event, with the press conference, the pictures of the team of the film, “Midnight in Paris” and the stairs climbing. Do you think it’s too much if I add (again) another picture of it? Hmm, no, come on, let’s put only one more on this blog ok? And then I’ll stop, I promise.

Ok, right! I think I quite studied the official page of the Festival de Cannes on Facebook. Today is the second day of the Festival, so you’ll find on Facebook the daily programme, the pictures of the day. Don’t forget Twitter because you can find summary of the main events of the day, quotes of the celebrities and anecdotes about the atmosphere in Cannes.

Of course I only focused on the Facebook page which makes links with the Twitter one and with Youtube links. However, you have plenty of other pages from fans like you and me. The good thing with these pages and accounts is that you can find basic stuff about how to find a ticket, where you can we see Jude, Uma, Brad or Angie, find train tickets also, the best of the day, an accomodation and, and, and… The only thing to do is to write: “festival de cannes” on Facebook and Twitter to find all these precious information.

One more thing though. With all this you can write a full report as we were asked at the beginning; easy challenge! Nonetheless, if you really want to know more about this event, TV, newspapers and radio are useful media to give you critics of the films, interviews in live and some extra information. So don’t become a geek eating, sleeping, making love, running with your mobile to know the last tweet about it. You’ll be able to catch up by watching the news and reading an article in the “culture” category. So, relax and enjoy!

Can Facebook become more powerful, and thus more dangerous, in the future?

 

Six years ago, nobody had heard about Facebook. Today, we hear this word at least 10 times a day; try it you’ll see. Even though you belong to the anti-facebook community, you still cannot be indifferent to it.

Mark Zuckerberg can be proud of himself; 26 years old, more than 500,000,000 friends and a salary of 6,900,000,000 dollars a year, here are the figures that witnesses his business success.

Facebook is now competing with google, and Zuckerberg is compared to Bill Gates. The movie “The Social Network” allowed us to see how everything began, the speed to which the concept spread, the controversies, the betrayals, the doubts. But when you see that, you can just say: “Whaou !!!”

But I still wonder, after all those interviews, TV reports, films about this gifted geek, if his company is as innocent and immaculate as him. Tough question.

Different profiles

Some assert that this website is the most dangerous weapon in the world, as if they were talking about  the nuclear bomb. Others, on the contrary, are devoted to facebook, using it like a diary in which they can express their deepest feelings and expose it to the world. At last, you have more reasonnable people, arguing that you’re the one in charge of your life: try it to know what this is really about, but beware, keep it under control! I’m one of those.
Having the possibility to post pictures doesn’t mean you have to show the world that you know how to dance the tango on tables, drunk, with a teddy bear. And it’s not because you can say to the world that friday the 7^th of January, at 11.35 a.m you’re buying bread for lunch at the bakery around the corner with your sister in Engelberg, that you must update your whereabouts every minute. Some people paid the piper and were found jobless or single. Some even died.

The price to pay

However, nothing’s free, even facebook. If you want to enjoy it, you must pay. Not money, but something else, maybe more important; pieces of yourself: thoughts, moods, tastes, ambitions. That’s part of the game. Of course this brand new big family will always attract advertisers and unscrupulous people but how could it be otherwise ? Facebook is a goldmine, and it’s still up to us to keep this gold as unreachable and expensive as possible. But till when? Let’s not forget that Facebook, with some others, didn’t sign the charter of the right to be forgotten. Sure, Zuckerberg cannot complain about his revenues; but he perfectly knows that he can earn thousands billions and trillions of dollars if he decides to sell the biggest data base one can have in the world. What are his objectives? His future prospects?  Who are you Mark?
Even if he keeps repeating that he won’t sell the data base, even him cannot know how he will behave in a couple of years. As we said, Facebook is now as powerful as Google. Indeed, according to two people briefed on Facebook’s plans  the social network will soon has its own mail service. The 500 million users will be able to have their own @facebook.com address, whereas hotmail “only” has 360 million members… Why not, but what next?

Let’s just hope we won’t get that far… (sorry for the few bad words)

Being a facebook user means being constantly on the watch. Good luck…

Essai inintéressant

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second step : how to add a picture, suspense…