Shoddy Journalism

The retirement system is in the news again here in France, the reforms of 2003 and 2012 having proved woefully inadequate. The various avenues open to the government were well explored yesterday in the always excellent current affairs programme on France 5 entitled C dans l'Air. It is becoming increasingly clear that pensioners themselves, hitherto spared, will be called upon to contribute more to the financing of the system. It is not my intention to explore the rights and wrongs of such a change - personally I am all in favour of increased taxation for pensioners - but rather to take issue with what I consider to be a particularly egregious report designed to bring out the "plight" of one aged couple. The husband explained how it was already very difficult to make ends meet on a pension of 3000 euros per month, and how any reduction of their pension would push them over the edge.

It could well be that there are elements explaining why this couple are living on a knife edge - a substantial rent, for example - but if so, none of this was made clear. The point is that on the face of it a monthly pension of 3000 euros would make a lot of people, myself included, green with envy, and unless and until journalists make the effort to give us all the details of a case, this kind of report is not only useless but counter-productive. The real problem, it seems to me, is that there is no culture of transparency in French society.