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July 05, 2005
General Strike, Bankers
Well, today we have something that has to strike any good Anglo Saxon as bordering on the surreal. A general strike declared by the bankers or rather the union that represents the bankers (this being a Code Civil country, we have unions for just about every possible profession, no matter how useless or surreal).
This on the pretext that the adoption of normal banking hours represents �slavery� � yes slavery. Indeed it is slavery to have one�s work hours changed from the highly theoretical 8 to 12:30 � 14:30 to 18:00 to the no doubt equally theoretical 8:30 to 12:30 1:15 to 5:00. A trivial change which merely reduces the Sacred and Inviolate Lunch hour, in theory, from 2 hours to 45 minutes, but lets one out earlier.
So, the Trade Unions have declared strikes to fend off this evil �Anglo Saxon� intrusion into the �social order� which represents a new form of �slavery� for the oppressed � yes oppressed! � bank wage labourers. These poor Financial Sweat Shop slaves will have a reduced opportunity to disappear for many hours during the day.
Speaking from experience, the real Sacred Lunch Pause runs from Noonish through to 15:00, as a bit of padding on either side is considered �established practice� � you know it would slavery, absolute slavery I say, to expect the poor oppressed Financial Sweat Shop labourers to say pick up their fat kids from the private schools ( a colleague informed me gravely � only her wearing the latest French fashion of rather transparent linen allowed me to not laugh as I was otherwise somewhat distracted by the Mediterranean region tendency to having frontal space � that �not everyone can afford a maid to pick up their children from school.�) and feed them the latest pastries and other plumpness inducing rot.
Now perhaps I am an evil purveyor of the vague conspiracy called �The Washington Consensus� but I think presently rebaptised, �the Neo Liberal Agenda� or some such rot, but I was unable to shake the sense of utter surrealism involved in this farcical revolt against what is in the end a fairly trivial adjustment of working hours. It does illustrate my utter contempt for the organised �labour movement� in the MENA region and its leftist twit moron allies in the West who eat up the posturing agitprop without a second thought.
Fine slogans, but in reality they represent nothing but cynical posturing.
Rather reminds me of the Academic Left�s howling when the CFA, the French backed African franc had to devalue (something like 50 percent as I recall). Much commentary was made at the time (early 1990s) about the evils of the Washington Consensus, how this was going to impoverish Africans, the evils of higher costs of pharma products, etc. Tear jerker stories.
A few points emerged from looking at this hysterical, ill-informed and largely wooley headed liberal arts student, graduate or otherwise, driven bleating.
First, it was largely driven by the largely westernised urban �intellectual� elites ( I mean that in the proper sense of current income elite) complaints, who such people (even if they pretend otherwise), largely speak to or are influenced by. This is not to accuse anyone of bad faith, quite the contrary. Being an economist or economically trained businessman, I rather prefer to leave aside morality in these conditions and look at interests.
What, then, would be the interests? An (artificially) overvalued currency is an implicit subsidy to those consuming foreign goods and services, as well as of course importers of capital. It is an implicit penalty to domestic producers of any kind (services, basic goods, whatever).
Well, enough on this.
Posted by The Lounsbury at July 5, 2005 10:30 AM
Filed Under:
Biz - Private in MENA
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Jan-July 2005
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North Africa
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