28 MAY 2005, Page 21

From Patrick Ussher Sir: Peter Oborne’s account of French bolshiness

about the Whit Monday holiday tells only part of the story. None of the pay for work done on that day was to go to the worker. All of it was to be snaffled for a fund in aid of the elderly. This admirable act of ‘social solidarity’, proposed to much acclaim after old people had fallen victim to the heatwave of 2003, would be unimaginable in Britain. It cannot fairly be described as a ‘feeble attempt to impose a tiny measure of control on Gallic working practices’.

Patrick Ussher

Dublin