Apparently tourists are voting with their feet, and they're traveling increasingly to places other than Paris. The stereotype at least is that Parisian service providers are crabby, so unpleasant the Paris Tourism Board had 35,000 pamphlets distributed explaining how to behave towards tourists.
"The British liked to be called by their first names. The Japanese like to be reassured. The Spanish just want people to be nice. Americans are glued to their electronic devices and like to eat as early at 6 pm."
Paul Kappe, an owner of the renowned Brasserie de I'lsle Saint-Louis, perched behind the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, gave a Gallic shrug when he saw the brochure.
"In the United States", Mr. Kappe observed, "waiters can be fired at any time and must work for tips, so they have to be nice. In France, you can't just fire somebody if they're not doing a good job. If you could, everyone would be friendly."
Ummm....
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And apparently HRH Queen Elizabeth II is having a tough time making ends meet, too. The headline in today's paper read:
England: Queen's Swan Is Barbecued and Eaten
(Maybe I should go back and read the accompanying article?)
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On a more serious note, I recently watched an episode of Top Gear (British car show) where the guys drove some exotic convertibles around sunny Spain. The striking thing that was pointed out was how economically depressed things are there. You can read about it, but until you see it you can't really comprehend it.
Spain had a building boom just like we did in America, their bankers throwing money at builders and developers and unworthy borrowers while raking off Mucho Euros for themselves in the process. (Apparently we don't have a monopoly on crooked Banksters.) In some areas, as far as you can see, tens of thousands of unoccupied high-rise condos sit abandoned.
There was even a billion-Euro airport built, complete with a 15,000' runway (wildly excessive), that sits unused, rotting. And long stretches of roads equal to our Interstate highways are totally empty. There is no traffic.
The Spanish economy is in ruins. Overall unemployment is 25%....youth unemployment (<24 yrs) is 56%. It will take them years to pull out of this self-inflicted disaster. Kinda makes our mess here seem tame, doesn't it?
Q: And what have governments / regulators done to see to it that this can't happen again in the future? A: Almost nothing, here or there. And don't bother writing your Congressman to complain. They're probably on a junket somewhere with their sponsoring Bankster. (They can probably get a helluva deal in Spain. Just sayin'.)
S
If you want to film a movie about the end of the world, Spain would apparently make a great location. They should probably use that as a selling point to Hollywood: we have all these empty buildings and no traffic or residents to disrupt filming!
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the economies of Spain and several other European countries are collapsing since they followed the Republican mantra of governments relying on business to correct the problem instead of government cash infusions. Had our government not bailed out the economy in 2008/9 we'd be in an equally desperate situation now.
ReplyDeleteActually European economies are collapsing because the welfare state can no longer pay for what the people have come to expect. Alas, the Piper has to be paid eventually... See Detroit.
ReplyDeleteThere's a real oversimplification of Detroit's issues.
DeleteEducate me.
DeleteEducate me.
DeleteI think people in both parties favor a BALANCE of business incentive to prosper and grow, and Government regulation to curb abuse.
ReplyDeleteTo blame our recent economic problem on one party is disingenuous. Business acted with disregard to appropriate risk, Government encouraged the practice. When the bubble burst everyone pointed fingers and blame when in reality everyone dropped the ball and everyone paid for it.
Our Government has done a pretty good job of enacting legislation and made economic decisions which have at least mitigated the problem. And both parties have been a part of that process.
Terms like "Republican mantra" are just so unproductive. If we could only eliminate simplification of issues in this country we would be much better off.
But I still love you CC!
Regarding Spain, you didn't even mention the 47-story building without an elevator past the 20th floor. Typical story of greed mixed with ignorance and incompetence... the building started out as a 20-story building, and the mortgage was sold from bank to bank to bank. At some point someone decided that maybe more tenants would bring in more profit...quick, get a project manager, quick, hire an architect, quick, sell the mortgage again to another bank, quick, we need more money, quick, just get it built cheaply...and then they forgot the elevator.
ReplyDeleteYep, skim all you can and then pass on the liability to someone else. Thieves everywhere.
Delete