DAMN TRUMPET DO YOU BELIEVE EVERY OLD PIECE OF BOLLOCKS FOX TELLS YOU?
So ironic considering the 'fair and balanced' furore; people die in France of heat and Fox immediately say it's because the socialist bloody cheese-monkies have high taxes.
Dude, you should consider this a wake-up call about your chosen 'news' provider because this a PISS TAKE. You're having SHIT poured in your ears which has simply parted company with reality.
Come back to this thread dammit so I can laugh at you for thinking this was a serious piece of fair and balanced socio-political analysis. You muppet.
It's isn't like French people would all get air conditioning if they could but all the ones who died were too poor. It's the same in Britain: you get air conditioning in banks, in restaurants and in the lobbies of the nicer hotels. And that's it. People don't use air conditioning in France.
I'm going to reply to the multitude of others here and since I don't want to type 20 replies, you are going to have to just accept that I deal with some of all your assertions in a generalized manner.
First to anyone who maintained there was nothing wrong with these folks dying. You are callous bastards. It has nothing to do with Foxnews. You don't have inquiries being called for and officials resigning because things are going as they always do.
Here for all your folks who can't read the news... just the source.
There and BTW these reports place the deaths at levels up to 10,000 people. So now you can sit there and callously sneer, "Yes but who cares that they died because it's on Fox!"
Many of you have to be the biggest hypocrits I have ever read words from. You will contend in other threads that taxes affect people's behaviors. People smoke too much, tax it. People drive big cars and use too much gas, tax the car and the gas. Can't get gun control passed, tax the bullets.
Yet you will sit there and declare that people buying something like a window air conditioner is just "cultural" and not at all related to the tax rates on electricity.
For the "they would have died anyway crowd," these deaths were well above the norm. They were directly related to the heat. News reports like this one from the Washington Post call the number of deaths an epidemic.
But no, it couldn't actually be related to policy. It has to be that evil FoxNews making up stories about all those people dying.
You folks would have had to have been marched past the mass gravesites after World War II, in full denial of what had happened. You callousness towards the very groups you claim to have compassion for sickens me.
People declare that if you raised the American fuel tax to make gas $5.00 a gallon, American's would stop driving SUV's. They would start driving smaller cars. People understand this and it "makes sense."
I declare that when you make cheap electricity expensive via taxation and thus no one buys air conditioners, thus dying in conditions that are quite tolerable in other places, (hint it is because they have air conditioning) it is called bullshit.
No what it is called is your own thinking coming back to bite you in the ass.
Care for a second course now that the "epidemic" has been confirmed by a few "liberal" organizations as well?
Yet you will sit there and declare that people buying something like a window air conditioner is just "cultural" and not at all related to the tax rates on electricity.
Its not related to the tax rate on electricity. Sorry. AC is simply not something that is that common here and people would buy a lot of other electricity eating machines before they would get an AC. I know we may come out as backward but thats the truth.
Its not related to the tax rate on electricity. Sorry. AC is simply not something that is that common here and people would buy a lot of other electricity eating machines before they would get an AC. I know we may come out as backward but thats the truth.
Anders,
I cannot think of a single electricity eating machine that would come near what most air conditioners chew up. My RV has 30 amps of draw and the air conditioner is about 20 of it. My house has 125 amps of electrical capability. The largest fuse in my box is the air conditioner at 40 amps.
Not that it matter for my argument but: They would rather buy a new tv set each year than use it on an AC. AC is seen as an unnessesary luxury. It might safe lives but so would avoid smoking and still people smoke.
Note that old people in the UK are far more in danger of freezing to death in the winter and we have already implemented the most obvious solution: we reduced taxes.
Oh, wait, that's a mistake.
We actually gave cash handouts and subsidized energy to the poor and the old-aged pensioners, even going so far as to fit free central heating, double-glazed windows and cavity wall insulation in many of their homes. So if this was a problem, then we've already got our very own homebrew socialist solution waiting in the wings.
Now I know some of you don't agree with governments subsidising the poor, but I think you'll agree the human catastrophe of thousands dead in France calls for extreme measures. Just add a couple of percent to the tax rate, give free air-con to the poor and problem solved.
I think the better question is why 3000 dead in France when the rest of the southern European countries had the same temps and only had a handful of deaths. Belgium counted around a dozen I believe, Italy a few more, etc... What did France do wrong? How can they correct it for the future?
I cannot think of a single electricity eating machine that would come near what most air conditioners chew up. My RV has 30 amps of draw and the air conditioner is about 20 of it. My house has 125 amps of electrical capability. The largest fuse in my box is the air conditioner at 40 amps.
Nick
So what?
Europe is not like America. It is different. They do not use air conditioning in their homes in France like they do in America. Tax and energy consumption be damned, they simply do not use it.
Europe is not like America. It is different. They do not use air conditioning in their homes in France like they do in America. Tax and energy consumption be damned, they simply do not use it.
America and Europe are different.
Do you see now?
I do see now Hassan. Thanks. Americans care when their old people die alone suffering without air conditioning in their apartments and Europeans shrug their shoulders, and yell about who covered the story.
I do see now Hassan. Thanks. Americans care when their old people die alone suffering without air conditioning in their apartments and Europeans shrug their shoulders, and yell about who covered the story.
You've made yourself so clear.
Nick
... but they don't care when over 60% of Americans are clinically overweight and therefore die by the thousands of coronary disease and early-onset diabetes; nor do they care when Americans shoot each other by the thousand, a factor of maybe 1500% per capita then states in Europe with similar gun-ownership per capita.
(edit: the US has 800% the gun homicide rate of France; 900% of the UK. Young black Americans death rate due to guns is around 2350% of that in Europe.)
Americans have more AC in old folks home, so that's alright, and goes to show just how more compassionate the US system is to those cold-hearted Yurrupeens.
The US and EU are different; we had an incremental increase in mortality because we think AC is fairly pointless; you're feeding and shooting yourselves to death in far greater numbers then die because of the odd hot season. It's cultural.
Americans care when their old people die alone suffering without air conditioning in their apartments and Europeans shrug their shoulders, and yell about who covered the story.
I don't understand why the French elderly die because they don't have the electrical air conditioning, but the British, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Egyptian, Algerian, Moroccoan, Nigerian, Brazilian, Mexican etc elderly instead don't. Oh wait - Of course it must be a so much colder climate in Portugal, Algeria, Brazil etc that they have absolute no need for the conditioning. Or the elderly have enough income so they can run the air conditioning 24 7 all year round. Uh yea.
I do see now Hassan. Thanks. Americans care when their old people die alone suffering without air conditioning in their apartments and Europeans shrug their shoulders, and yell about who covered the story.
You've made yourself so clear.
Nick
Ah. I understand now.
-You are labouring under the misapprehension that every nation on earth is just like America bar the language
-You find it scandalous that the French didn't act on clairvoyant information available to everyone that the summer of 2003 would be the hottest on record and install air conditioning before the end of the spring in every rural cottage, gite, townhouse and apartment inhabited by those at risk of death due to heat. The French government chose to ignore this information sourced from a crack squad of metereological mediums and did not change the nation's material culture in time to save a single soul.
... but they don't care when over 60% of Americans are clinically overweight and therefore die by the thousands of coronary disease and early-onset diabetes; nor do they care when Americans shoot each other by the thousand, a factor of maybe 1500% per capita then states in Europe with similar gun-ownership per capita.
(edit: the US has 800% the gun homicide rate of France; 900% of the UK. Young black Americans death rate due to guns is around 2350% of that in Europe.)
Americans have more AC in old folks home, so that's alright, and goes to show just how more compassionate the US system is to those cold-hearted Yurrupeens.
The US and EU are different; we had an incremental increase in mortality because we think AC is fairly pointless; you're feeding and shooting yourselves to death in far greater numbers then die because of the odd hot season. It's cultural.
I'm not going to turn this into a gun control debate because the policies vary widely from country to country in Europe. I will say though that when you look at total crime. Likewise I would say look at the overall murder rates and not just the murder w/gun rates. The U.S. does just fine. If you want to start a thread on gun control, we can discuss that there. I have also spoken broadly agains "reforms" meant to encourage even more work out of Americans.
-You are labouring under the misapprehension that every nation on earth is just like America bar the language
-You find it scandalous that the French didn't act on clairvoyant information available to everyone that the summer of 2003 would be the hottest on record and install air conditioning before the end of the spring in every rural cottage, gite, townhouse and apartment inhabited by those at risk of death due to heat. The French government chose to ignore this information sourced from a crack squad of metereological mediums and did not change the nation's material culture in time to save a single soul.
'Scandal' isn't scathing enough.
The articles mentioned that Chirac was reluctant to call back health care workers from their holidays, nor come back from his own three week vacation as well. He basically acted when they were finally having to set up tents to store the dead in.
There is a big difference between knowing the effects of the weather and finally throwing your hands in to help when the dead are overflowing the hallways and have moved to the tents outside.
Lots of strange and weird things appears in this thread.
I won't answer specifically to any posters here, but i would like to make some points.
First point :
There is less air conditionning in private homes in France than in US
Second point :
This is the worst hot weather that France have face during the last centurie : for the first time of my life, i have see temperatures of more than 40 ° C in my town under shadow.
The night temperature was at 25 ° C, a record in Europe. Last year for example, the temperature was a much more cold : we have to warm our house.
Third point :
Old people are more sensitive to high temperatures than healthy ones, old peoples tend to drink less. When i was yound i used to work in a pension for old people and we "harrassed" them to make them drink. Most of these people died from deshydratation. If they had drinked sufficiently they will be still alive. Old people suffer less from thirsty than others and thus drink less.
People living in hot countries, know how to deal with this high temperatures, a lot of old french people do not. It's none of our culture.
Fourth point :
Many AC did not worked in France, because it was too hot, and they are not designed for such temperatures. As a result, the AC did not worked in my wife office, because at 50° C , the AC do not work (or you need a tropicalised version). So i am not even sure that AC conditionning will have save many lifes.
fifth point :
The tax argument is ridiculous, and it's the first time i read it, there where tons of polemic in France about this subject and none of it, mentionned taxes. France is not as rich as america, but sufficiently to buy AC. Most cars in France are now are selled with AC, because most of french people see a reason to buy one. It was not the case for AC in house, but i am ready to bet, that next year, more people will buy them.
Gazoline cost much more money in France (or in Europe) than in US, but most french people uses cars : this is a silly argument, especially if you consider that you need AC in french house only a couple of days per year ...I will said that it cost in electricity 30 ? per year for the average french guy.
Sixth point :
i hate this society where people love to find scapegoats for every natural disaster :
- tempest : it's the fault of the gov
- hot weather : the same
...
Seventh point :
this drama have showed also that many french families do not care enought of their old parents : hundreds of deads corpses where not recocnized by their families, it's means hundreds of family do not care of their olds parents. This is very bad, and a shame.
Side notes :
- i am for less taxes, but this has nothing to do with the subject
- the health minister did not resigned, but one of the public director of healt. The french system of health survey, did not take into account the meteorologia : it will be fixed.
- i was happy to spend my holidays in mountains at more than 6000 feets, way away this horrible temperatures.
Comments
So ironic considering the 'fair and balanced' furore; people die in France of heat and Fox immediately say it's because the socialist bloody cheese-monkies have high taxes.
Dude, you should consider this a wake-up call about your chosen 'news' provider because this a PISS TAKE. You're having SHIT poured in your ears which has simply parted company with reality.
Come back to this thread dammit so I can laugh at you for thinking this was a serious piece of fair and balanced socio-political analysis. You muppet.
It's isn't like French people would all get air conditioning if they could but all the ones who died were too poor. It's the same in Britain: you get air conditioning in banks, in restaurants and in the lobbies of the nicer hotels. And that's it. People don't use air conditioning in France.
First to anyone who maintained there was nothing wrong with these folks dying. You are callous bastards. It has nothing to do with Foxnews. You don't have inquiries being called for and officials resigning because things are going as they always do.
Here for all your folks who can't read the news... just the source.
CNN
Newsday
There and BTW these reports place the deaths at levels up to 10,000 people. So now you can sit there and callously sneer, "Yes but who cares that they died because it's on Fox!"
Many of you have to be the biggest hypocrits I have ever read words from. You will contend in other threads that taxes affect people's behaviors. People smoke too much, tax it. People drive big cars and use too much gas, tax the car and the gas. Can't get gun control passed, tax the bullets.
Yet you will sit there and declare that people buying something like a window air conditioner is just "cultural" and not at all related to the tax rates on electricity.
For the "they would have died anyway crowd," these deaths were well above the norm. They were directly related to the heat. News reports like this one from the Washington Post call the number of deaths an epidemic.
But no, it couldn't actually be related to policy. It has to be that evil FoxNews making up stories about all those people dying.
You folks would have had to have been marched past the mass gravesites after World War II, in full denial of what had happened. You callousness towards the very groups you claim to have compassion for sickens me.
People declare that if you raised the American fuel tax to make gas $5.00 a gallon, American's would stop driving SUV's. They would start driving smaller cars. People understand this and it "makes sense."
I declare that when you make cheap electricity expensive via taxation and thus no one buys air conditioners, thus dying in conditions that are quite tolerable in other places, (hint it is because they have air conditioning) it is called bullshit.
No what it is called is your own thinking coming back to bite you in the ass.
Care for a second course now that the "epidemic" has been confirmed by a few "liberal" organizations as well?
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
Yet you will sit there and declare that people buying something like a window air conditioner is just "cultural" and not at all related to the tax rates on electricity.
Its not related to the tax rate on electricity. Sorry. AC is simply not something that is that common here and people would buy a lot of other electricity eating machines before they would get an AC. I know we may come out as backward but thats the truth.
Originally posted by Anders
Its not related to the tax rate on electricity. Sorry. AC is simply not something that is that common here and people would buy a lot of other electricity eating machines before they would get an AC. I know we may come out as backward but thats the truth.
Anders,
I cannot think of a single electricity eating machine that would come near what most air conditioners chew up. My RV has 30 amps of draw and the air conditioner is about 20 of it. My house has 125 amps of electrical capability. The largest fuse in my box is the air conditioner at 40 amps.
Nick
Not that it matter for my argument but: They would rather buy a new tv set each year than use it on an AC. AC is seen as an unnessesary luxury. It might safe lives but so would avoid smoking and still people smoke.
Its a cultural thing.
Oh, wait, that's a mistake.
We actually gave cash handouts and subsidized energy to the poor and the old-aged pensioners, even going so far as to fit free central heating, double-glazed windows and cavity wall insulation in many of their homes. So if this was a problem, then we've already got our very own homebrew socialist solution waiting in the wings.
Now I know some of you don't agree with governments subsidising the poor, but I think you'll agree the human catastrophe of thousands dead in France calls for extreme measures. Just add a couple of percent to the tax rate, give free air-con to the poor and problem solved.
Originally posted by trumptman
I cannot think of a single electricity eating machine that would come near what most air conditioners chew up. My RV has 30 amps of draw and the air conditioner is about 20 of it. My house has 125 amps of electrical capability. The largest fuse in my box is the air conditioner at 40 amps.
Nick
So what?
Europe is not like America. It is different. They do not use air conditioning in their homes in France like they do in America. Tax and energy consumption be damned, they simply do not use it.
America and Europe are different.
Do you see now?
Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
So what?
Europe is not like America. It is different. They do not use air conditioning in their homes in France like they do in America. Tax and energy consumption be damned, they simply do not use it.
America and Europe are different.
Do you see now?
I do see now Hassan. Thanks. Americans care when their old people die alone suffering without air conditioning in their apartments and Europeans shrug their shoulders, and yell about who covered the story.
You've made yourself so clear.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
I do see now Hassan. Thanks. Americans care when their old people die alone suffering without air conditioning in their apartments and Europeans shrug their shoulders, and yell about who covered the story.
You've made yourself so clear.
Nick
... but they don't care when over 60% of Americans are clinically overweight and therefore die by the thousands of coronary disease and early-onset diabetes; nor do they care when Americans shoot each other by the thousand, a factor of maybe 1500% per capita then states in Europe with similar gun-ownership per capita.
(edit: the US has 800% the gun homicide rate of France; 900% of the UK. Young black Americans death rate due to guns is around 2350% of that in Europe.)
Americans have more AC in old folks home, so that's alright, and goes to show just how more compassionate the US system is to those cold-hearted Yurrupeens.
The US and EU are different; we had an incremental increase in mortality because we think AC is fairly pointless; you're feeding and shooting yourselves to death in far greater numbers then die because of the odd hot season. It's cultural.
Originally posted by trumptman
Americans care when their old people die alone suffering without air conditioning in their apartments and Europeans shrug their shoulders, and yell about who covered the story.
I don't understand why the French elderly die because they don't have the electrical air conditioning, but the British, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Egyptian, Algerian, Moroccoan, Nigerian, Brazilian, Mexican etc elderly instead don't. Oh wait - Of course it must be a so much colder climate in Portugal, Algeria, Brazil etc that they have absolute no need for the conditioning. Or the elderly have enough income so they can run the air conditioning 24 7 all year round. Uh yea.
Originally posted by trumptman
I do see now Hassan. Thanks. Americans care when their old people die alone suffering without air conditioning in their apartments and Europeans shrug their shoulders, and yell about who covered the story.
You've made yourself so clear.
Nick
Ah. I understand now.
-You are labouring under the misapprehension that every nation on earth is just like America bar the language
-You find it scandalous that the French didn't act on clairvoyant information available to everyone that the summer of 2003 would be the hottest on record and install air conditioning before the end of the spring in every rural cottage, gite, townhouse and apartment inhabited by those at risk of death due to heat. The French government chose to ignore this information sourced from a crack squad of metereological mediums and did not change the nation's material culture in time to save a single soul.
'Scandal' isn't scathing enough.
Originally posted by Harald
... but they don't care when over 60% of Americans are clinically overweight and therefore die by the thousands of coronary disease and early-onset diabetes; nor do they care when Americans shoot each other by the thousand, a factor of maybe 1500% per capita then states in Europe with similar gun-ownership per capita.
(edit: the US has 800% the gun homicide rate of France; 900% of the UK. Young black Americans death rate due to guns is around 2350% of that in Europe.)
Americans have more AC in old folks home, so that's alright, and goes to show just how more compassionate the US system is to those cold-hearted Yurrupeens.
The US and EU are different; we had an incremental increase in mortality because we think AC is fairly pointless; you're feeding and shooting yourselves to death in far greater numbers then die because of the odd hot season. It's cultural.
I'm not going to turn this into a gun control debate because the policies vary widely from country to country in Europe. I will say though that when you look at total crime. Likewise I would say look at the overall murder rates and not just the murder w/gun rates. The U.S. does just fine. If you want to start a thread on gun control, we can discuss that there. I have also spoken broadly agains "reforms" meant to encourage even more work out of Americans.
Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
Ah. I understand now.
-You are labouring under the misapprehension that every nation on earth is just like America bar the language
-You find it scandalous that the French didn't act on clairvoyant information available to everyone that the summer of 2003 would be the hottest on record and install air conditioning before the end of the spring in every rural cottage, gite, townhouse and apartment inhabited by those at risk of death due to heat. The French government chose to ignore this information sourced from a crack squad of metereological mediums and did not change the nation's material culture in time to save a single soul.
'Scandal' isn't scathing enough.
The articles mentioned that Chirac was reluctant to call back health care workers from their holidays, nor come back from his own three week vacation as well. He basically acted when they were finally having to set up tents to store the dead in.
There is a big difference between knowing the effects of the weather and finally throwing your hands in to help when the dead are overflowing the hallways and have moved to the tents outside.
Nick
or you'll just waste your time here
-applenut
or you'll just waste your time here
-applenut
I won't answer specifically to any posters here, but i would like to make some points.
First point :
There is less air conditionning in private homes in France than in US
Second point :
This is the worst hot weather that France have face during the last centurie : for the first time of my life, i have see temperatures of more than 40 ° C in my town under shadow.
The night temperature was at 25 ° C, a record in Europe. Last year for example, the temperature was a much more cold : we have to warm our house.
Third point :
Old people are more sensitive to high temperatures than healthy ones, old peoples tend to drink less. When i was yound i used to work in a pension for old people and we "harrassed" them to make them drink. Most of these people died from deshydratation. If they had drinked sufficiently they will be still alive. Old people suffer less from thirsty than others and thus drink less.
People living in hot countries, know how to deal with this high temperatures, a lot of old french people do not. It's none of our culture.
Fourth point :
Many AC did not worked in France, because it was too hot, and they are not designed for such temperatures. As a result, the AC did not worked in my wife office, because at 50° C , the AC do not work (or you need a tropicalised version). So i am not even sure that AC conditionning will have save many lifes.
fifth point :
The tax argument is ridiculous, and it's the first time i read it, there where tons of polemic in France about this subject and none of it, mentionned taxes. France is not as rich as america, but sufficiently to buy AC. Most cars in France are now are selled with AC, because most of french people see a reason to buy one. It was not the case for AC in house, but i am ready to bet, that next year, more people will buy them.
Gazoline cost much more money in France (or in Europe) than in US, but most french people uses cars : this is a silly argument, especially if you consider that you need AC in french house only a couple of days per year ...I will said that it cost in electricity 30 ? per year for the average french guy.
Sixth point :
i hate this society where people love to find scapegoats for every natural disaster :
- tempest : it's the fault of the gov
- hot weather : the same
...
Seventh point :
this drama have showed also that many french families do not care enought of their old parents : hundreds of deads corpses where not recocnized by their families, it's means hundreds of family do not care of their olds parents. This is very bad, and a shame.
Side notes :
- i am for less taxes, but this has nothing to do with the subject
- the health minister did not resigned, but one of the public director of healt. The french system of health survey, did not take into account the meteorologia : it will be fixed.
- i was happy to spend my holidays in mountains at more than 6000 feets, way away this horrible temperatures.
needless personal attack removed.