The French government Monday described the 35-hour working week as a financial disaster that was costing the state billions of dollars and promised to reform the system despite fierce union opposition.
The finance minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said that the 35-hour week had burdened the state with additional social charges and that it had demoralized millions of workers.
I’m stunned that a minister of the French government was willing to get his hands on some facts in public.
[source]
Russia’s top scientists tell Putin to kill Kyoto, reports Reuters. Note that this is an official report from the Russian Academy of Sciences to the President of the Russian Federation. The reports as yet are slim on the scientific details, but it is clear that the scientists do not believe that the Kyoto Protocol will acheive anything meaningful.
We can assume, therefore, that any talk of there being a scientific consensus that Kyoto is necessary for the planet is mere cant. The representative body of Russian science has rejected this energy suppression plan as a means of mitigating climate change.
Personally, I think we can assume it’s cant if it’s spoken by a self-proclaimed “environmentalist”.