The protests continue and attitudes harden. While the railway workers appear to be gradually returning to work, the stoppages and blockades at petrol refineries and storage depots are causing more concern. Panic buying over the last couple of days have meant fuel stocks in some areas are running low, and the government was sufficiently concerned to send in the gendarmes to lift the blockade of several depots around the country this morning. And while they opened, others closed. Strike and counter-strike.
But it is school students who have been making most of the running and headlines over the last couple of days. Boycotts, blockades and demonstrations in 300+ schools yesterday and today; street confrontations with the police, often exacerbated by the presence of other jeunes, there to fight the police rather than the retirement reforms. I witnessed the fringes of the incidents in central Lyon this morning, on the way back from my weekly chores: twenty or thirty CRS in full battle gear marching down the road along the Rhône in the direction of the Hôtel de Ville, closely followed by half a dozen police vans. Apparently the vans were use to block rue de la République to stop a group of students heading in that direction, which of course led to some predictable stone throwing, bin burning, even one car being overturned, 20 odd arrests. As I crossed the river there were plenty of small groups of lads heading in the opposite direction, like moths to a flame…
