A taxi drivers’ strike has plunged Paris, Marseille, and other big cities into chaos. Approximately 5,000 taxi drivers have taken to the streets, blocking motorways, torching pallets, and clashing violently with police. On Boulevard Raspail in Paris, police repeatedly confronted protestors with clouds of tear gas. Airports and train stations have been blockaded by angry taxi drivers. At Marseille-Provence airport, thousands of tourists were stranded, including Brits forced to walk along motorways dragging their suitcases behind them just to get to or from the terminal. Convoys of taxis have been crawling along major roads to deliberately snarl up traffic and maximise disruption, in an operation dubbed by the unions as ‘operation snail’s pace’. The result has been hundreds of kilometres of gridlock and a lot of angry commuters.
Too many people are used to getting something from the state
At the heart of this mess is France’s exceptionally generous medical transport system.
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