Firemen.

November 21st there was a huge protest down my street. It looked like this:



The sounds were stunning. Constant overlapping sirens. Occasional puffs of whirring orange smoke. There were a couple of firemen in the apartment next door, so I did the polite thing - said hi and left the microphone on the windowsill.



I didn't know much about the whole situation before, but I found this handy montage which encapsulates most of the facts: Sarkozy se fache avec les pompiers And there's detailed english language account of the events from the Speigel online And more photos from the Nouvel Obs

Mooning in Bastille is apparently a no-no. People getting hurt obviously so. Sarkozy wasn't best pleased and used predictable words. The president of la Fédération nationale des sapeurs-pompiers wasn't so keen on the "radical climate" and called for a "calm and dignified" approach to protesting. Afterwards, Daniel Dremiere, president of le Syndicat national des sapeurs pompiers (SNPP) said that he'd forbidden his firemen to wear helmets and use fire in the protests.

Latest update: They're all meeting in Bordeaux on the 21st to get a better pension off Sarkozy. More precisely, they want "the possibility to retire at 55 with at least 75% of salary."