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Those Crazy French!
On 21 Aug 2003 19:12:40 GMT, (Marc Phillips) wrote:
After as many as 10,000 people (or, as Arny would say, 10,000's of people) have
died in France due to the heat, Chirac has announced that they plan to have the
problem licked by October.
Yes, you read that right.
Boon
hello,
i'm french and i don't understand "licked".
Anyway, what Chirac was talking about was enquiries to find out what
went wrong and means to be more efficient next time.
We don't ask the government to control the weather, but the high
number of dead was the result of not being able to take care of old
people suffering from the heat. We have a good system but it's
expensive and every government tries to save money. So small unities
in the country are closing, and there are less and less people
(doctors, nurses,..) and beds. Now we have reached the point where the
results are dramatic, even in a normal situation emergency services
are near the breaking point.
Second point: there are emergency plans using the army, the red cross,
etc... and despite the calls of some doctors nothing was made until
the real figures came out, and the real numbers were always denied by
the government (saying 1500 when 3000 was circulating, 3000 when it
was 5000, and so on....)
Now there is a big controversy which goes beyond the number of dead of
the heat, but is about the way to manage the whole health system.
I suppose there is a also big controversy about irak in the US, it's
not the heat which is killing your soldiers.
I've heard that americans are beginning to realize that government
information about the mass destruction weapons of saddam were forged.
I must say that we knew that months before, we saw on tv an interview
of the student whose article was used and transformed by the british
services, ......etc.....
If you didn't knew that, there's something wrong with the way you are
informed.
Conclusion: chirac does not represent the french, he was elected with
82% just to avoid a worse candidate, he only got 19% at the first
vote; Bush does not represent the americans, he would not have been
elected if the counting was not stopped too soon (but maybe you got no
information about the real results), so i think we could stop making
fun at each other by using our presidents.
Best regards.
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