A Note About Logistics

A good article follows (yes, amazingly, it’s from the New York Times) about les gilets jaunes — the yellow vests/jackets — and their transport problems.
When I lived in France decades ago, the de Gaullian notion of travelling anywhere by some form of public transport (mostly train, but also, in or around town, by bus) was a given. I noticed upon returning for holiday 20 years ago — thinking it was my imagination — that a number of public transport links no longer existed.
I was not wrong.
This article actually mentions Charles de Gaulle’s transport vision and how it took shape. Now significant parts of that are all in the past, gradually eroded since the mid-1990s — especially over the past ten years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/world/europe/france-yellow-vests-social-mobility.html
‘ … Many of these protesters, predominantly white working poor and middle-class people who scrape by on their paychecks and pensions, live in what the author Christophe Guilluy has called “peripheral France.” The term is meant to imply both a state of being and the thousands of small, struggling cities, towns and rural districts beyond the inner-ring suburbs of places like Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon or Lille.
‘“As small businesses have been dying in these smaller cities and towns, people find themselves forced to seek jobs elsewhere and to shop even for basic goods in malls,” said Alexis Spire, a French sociologist. “They need cars to survive, because regional trains and buses have declined or no longer serve them. Once you begin to unpack the Yellow Vest phenomenon, the uprising is a lot about mobility.”
‘ … In 1947, the book “Paris and the French Desert,” by a young geographer named Jean-François Gravier, helped inspire Charles de Gaulle to reorganize the country — decentralizing resources, redistributing industry, promoting regional cities and creating new towns linked by a nationwide web of publicly funded rail lines.
‘Modern, decentralized France spread a promise of prosperity and mobility. For decades, the promise was kept. Until it wasn’t.
‘As a handful of big cities thrived with globalization, France’s regional governments, saddled with more financial burdens, became caught in a vicious cycle. Capital disappeared along with factories and jobs. Revenues shrank, debts mounted and infrastructure declined.
‘Among the hardest hit services were the regional railways, run by the French rail company, SNCF, which overwhelmingly invested in high-speed trains that served the big, prospering cities and is now $56 billion in debt. With service atrophying, people need their cars …’
—————————————-
Here in England, more rail lines have improved this year with more frequent services. The expansion — within the last six months — has not been without its headaches, but even my local route now extends beyond three counties for some ‘local’ trains. A blessing, to be sure! One I never expected to see (the 1965 Beeching report recommending station closures seemed to have been carved in stone), but, thanks to a Conservative government (i.e. Theresa May’s), I have.
Amazingly, the French access by public transport has shrunk considerably. And, everything French commentators said a few years ago has come to pass about high-speed rail links there: smaller towns and stations have been forgotten. One can understand why people are protesting — especially about privatised toll roads!!

Not saying I agree, but some animals are better than others.
There will always be an elite, according to this German sociologist from 100+ years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
‘The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory, first developed by the German sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties.[1] It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an “iron law” within any democratic organization as part of the “tactical and technical necessities” of organization.[1]
‘Michels’s theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise … ‘

Wolfie, a note about logistics: You do a really fine job with this from a user’s point of view. Thank you. God bless you. (And don’t let us stress you out).