Peter Bills: French ructions not as dire as they might seem

PARIS - If you believe everything you read, the whole of France is going up in flames.

Pictures of cars on fire, police riot squads charging protesters who were throwing stones and torching buildings plus travel chaos have hallmarked the international media's coverage of the issue. As ever, the reality is a little different.

One car was burned, in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris and a few more were overturned and attacked in Lyon.

It is true, passengers heading for Orly airport in Paris had to wheel their cases the last few hundred metres to the terminal buildings because of protesters blocking the road. But unless you consider one old man, who was heard volubly complaining at the slow service in a Paris restaurant I sat in this week, as evidence of catastrophic violence and a serious threat to the Government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, this is no second French revolution.

For sure, there are difficulties and frustrations everywhere to be found. The garbage is piled up on street corners in Marseille after 10 days without collection by striking council workmen. There are piles of uncollected rubbish in some Paris streets, but by no means all.

Flights in and out of Paris's Charles de Gaulle international airport have suffered fuel shortages. Long-haul flights from Paris to destinations such as the United States have had to re-fuel at Manchester, in northern England. Certain trains have been cancelled or curtailed, yet my 5 hour journey from Nice in the south of France to Paris on Friday arrived just five minutes late.

About 2790 service stations across France were temporarily closed at one time this week and many of the oil refineries around the French coast have been blockaded.

But the motorway service stations are said to have petrol in most parts of France. It is only really around Paris where serious shortages have existed, especially in diesel.

Up to 1300 schools have been affected by the protests and in Le Mans, one school was burned to the ground.

Undeniably, several weeks of protests have cost French business and industry significant sums. The strike is said to have cost France €100 million ($186.9 million) a day. The arrival of the half term holidays may well puncture the strike. Students will drift away from the cities for 10 days, yet the unions have called two more days of national strike, on Thursday 28 October and on November 6.

But with the French Senate, like the lower house, having passed the controversial bill raising retirement age from 60 to 62, into law at the end of last week, sustained momentum by the protesters is difficult to see.