De l'hypocrisie des décisions politiques

[Mise à jour] Et voila le résultat, le premier ministre retire ce projet après avoir été ridiculisé par tout le monde

Pour ceux qui voulaient savoir jusqu'où ce gouvernement était capable d'aller pour ne pas gouverner, voici la nouvelle trouvaille des "autorités" françaises: si on baisse la limitation de vitesse sur autoroute de 130 à 115 km/h, le gain sur la consommation d'essence contre-balance la perte de pouvoir d'achat due à l'augmentation du prix de l'essence. Une fois l'annonce lancée, le gouvernement se justifie par le fait que les associations de sécurité routière voient cela d'un bon oeil.

Juste quelques remarques pêle-mêle, qui me viennent à l'esprit après cet effet d'annonce:

• Le président Chirac a fait de la sécurisation de la route un de ses objectifs de mandat : on pouvait difficilement faire plus ridicule comme objectif ^[1]. Est-ce là pour cacher une incapacité à trouver des solutions aux vrais problèmes?
• Le prix de l'essence est constitué à 74% de taxes. N'y aurait-il pas un effort direct faisable plus simple (et plus apprécié)? C'est une réponse tout aussi pathétique aux préoccupations des gens qu'une éventuelle redistribution (entendre: redistribuer à ceux qui crient le plus fort) du pactole pétrolier que l'état va récolter.
• Pour une augmentation que je gouvernement juge circonstancielle, ils iront jusqu'à changer tous les panneaux de toutes les autoroutes de France, ainsi que tous les manuels d'auto école, etc... Quel est le coût global de cette décision soudaine?
• Aujourd'hui le pétrole augmente alors on propose de baisser la vitesse. Personnellement, je pense que le prix de l'essence ne va faire qu'augmenter encore pendant un certain temps (note: après tout, cela fait bien le jeu des compagnies pétrolières) alors je propose de diminuer la vitesse limite sur autoroute à 50 km/h tout de suite, cela fera faire des économies d'échelle sur les achats de panneaux successifs (je savais que j'avais l'âme d'un politicien!)
• Une telle décision doit être prise pour une vraie raison (pour la sécurité routière justement), mais pas pour des raisons politiciennes!

^[1] Je ne juge pas le bienfondé de la cause, bien au contraire, mais l'effet poudre-aux-yeux: on aurait pu utiliser la sécurisation de la route par le cancer ou les suicides des jeunes dans la phrase précédente.

A Tale of Two Cities

The latest book in my series of English (and sometimes American) litterature classics, and my fourth or fifth Dickens (one of these days, I'll make a list..). I think I'm developping some sort of passion for Dickens'storytelling.
For this one, there was a difference though: since I began reading it just a week before Harry Potter HBP hit the shelves, I had to stop in the middle to read HBP and finish it afterwards. Well since I've been a little disappointed in HBP and went on vacation, I had a sort of reading hiatus.

I shouldn't have.

This book is just great, and as much as I love the way Dickens depicts characters and their miseries, I found the way the story intricates into the French revolution made it an even better read. My oh My! How he depicts the violence and cruelty of the events through the eyes of Lucie beholding the carmagnole dance, and how this violence is rationalized by Sydney Carton in the last scene...

I'm French and I was 14 when France celebrated the 200th anniversary of its revolution, singing "la carmagnole", and wearing these red hats and tricoloured cocards. At this time, the motto of the nation was, and still is "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" (which can easily translated ;)), but is was not "Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death!"! When you're at school, you learn about kings and serfs, about the dates and personnalities of the revolution, about the Bastille and the guillotine, but there is no teacher to explain the violence of the revolution, and the daily life in those troubled times, no one to make it interesting. To make history (or whatever subject) interesting to kids, you have to have it intertwined with real world facts, something that can easily be grasped and remembered; anyway, I wish I had it explained that way.
But this is what history is about: it is a rationalizing process, always keeping only the big picture and the big changes and sending the costs and experience of these changes into oblivion. Everybody knows Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette were closely shaved by the "great sharp female" but who remembers how many fell under the blade of "Little Sainte Guillotine" and the atrocities of the people against itself...

All in all, a great book, sometimes difficult to read (for a non native English reader, I thought it was harder than "Hard Times" but hey, still nowhere near "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"...) but very interesting. What is the next Dickens on my list? ;)

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Like lots of persons addicted to Harry's adventures, I received my copy of HBP in my inbox on Saturday morning, and then read it in two days (yes that's long but it's a week-end and someone's gotta take care of the kids).
So I've let the impressions sink and here are my conclusions:

- The introduction is great, Snape is definitely the best character of the series
- There's way too much snogging for me but since the teenager are the main target, I shouldn't complain about that
- The conclusion (understand: the last 5 chapters) are great and I couldn't put the book down
- I still think JKR didn't keep me as eager to read as in the previous one (which I re-read before reading HBP) and that the main plot is less breathtaking. In Order of the Phoenix, Harry was in the middle of a worldwide plot, the whole school was concerned with what was happening and Harry's mood was all the darker; in contrast, HBP is only concerned with a potions book, the whereabouts of Draco and its hard to have Harry's mood reflect on the whole with all the snogging happening (yes I know, shouldn't complain). I didn't say I was bored but simply a little disappointed.


So, with the great ending, I think I am like everyone who read the book: I do not know what to think about Snape; I wish he was a good guy but I think he really is a bad one. I guess I'll have to wait.