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How is it that this didn't make UK news?  or If it did then I didn't see it.

A 1,000 cars torched ????  Ok I accept that more than a few would be owners getting rid of a wreck for the insurance but even so that can't be right.

In these days of heightened security due to terrorist attacks who can say that some of these were not hate crimes? 

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I can never read links to that newspaper because I use an adblocker, their instructions to disable it for that site dont work.

 

Always happens on le réveillon, its a present from the government to line the pockets of those with worthless scrap and uninsured cars including those where the cost of essential repairs is too much for the owners, also people who have stacked their vehicle and dont want to lose their bonus, in all cases the government pays out but only during declared national fêtes.

 

So that is why it went well for the government, they have less dishonest scrotes to weigh in [:(]

 

I used to go to Amiens Nord as it was better than bonfire night! Stayed at home this year but was woken by repetitive popping and banging at 1.30 not loud enough for a shotgun, it was very close and then I realised that it was fuel tanks and tyres exploding, it wasn't my car so I went back to sleep, lots of charred tarmac around when I went out yesterday.

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[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]Errr.....this happens every year....well as long as I can remember.

It is much as a French tradition as eating foie gras.

If you want rid of your car, go and park it in some dodgy Strasbourg suburb like everyone else does.

I once thought it was sponsored by PSA and Renault. Nice little earner for someone anyway.[/quote]

You do take the biscuit for posting dumb comments!

Did you actually read the article?

[quote]According to the French interior ministry, the total of 945, which

included cars that were either "totally destroyed" or "more lightly

affected", amounted to a 17 per cent rise compared to last year.

Despite this, New Year's Eve "went off without any major incident",

the interior ministry insisted in a statement, adding that there were

only "a few troubles with public order".

In fact, police arrested 454 people over the night, 301 of whom were taken into custody.[/quote]

This has only been "A French tradition" since circa 2012: and is purely, simply and only a sign of (i) Rapidly growing social unrest: (ii) Rapidly failing public law and order; and, (iii) The weak, failed and incompetent French government as the professional political class are bereft of what they must do.

In reality, frightening; since there were nearly 100,000 armed police and army personnel on duty throughout France and most were concentrated in known likely trouble spots.

Let us just hope Russia doesn't mount a sudden Blitzkrieg, huh? No doubt the shambles in Paris would run away again to Tours and find a muppetlike modern Maréchel Pétain to lead them into utter ignominy...

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[quote user="Chancer"]

I can never read links to that newspaper because I use an adblocker, their instructions to disable it for that site dont work.

 [/quote]

Chancer:

Try uBlock. I have been using this very effectively for some years now.

https://www.ublock.org/

The site was the Daily Telegraph, btw.

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You read to many UK articles about France Gluey. You need to be on the ground.

'This has only been "A French tradition" since circa 2012'

errr...no. My OH was at uni in Strasbourg in the 1990's and it was happening then. We used to go to Besancon for new year and always put the car in the garage.

"You do take the biscuit for posting dumb comments Gluey" LOL.
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A French tradition since 2012 mon cul!

 

It was happening big time when I arrived in 2005, people would ask me if they could park up their broken down cars on my land which is now my car park until the next fête nationale when they would dissapear but that I must keep my volets closed that night and ignore any sounds.

 

Its been happening since the stupid legislation was enacted, possibly after 1968, the insurers dont give a flying **** because they dont pay out and it reduces the fraudulent claims that they have to suffer, probably to zero and I suspect that they were the driving force behind the legislation and to maintain it.

 

Its pretty much hush hush apart from when they can report a drop in the numbers torched.

 

I have never ever heard of someone other than a dodgy lying scrote claiming that their vehicle was stolen and burnt out during les fêtes nationales, on the other hand in places like the HLM's in Amiens where there will be scores of epaves torched people remove their cars from the area in case the fire spreads but also to make place for people to bring in the wrecks to be torched, its the busiest time of the year for the dépanneurs both removing the burnt out wrecks and taking them there in the first place for cash, they would be the first to scream foul play if there was talk of repealing the law.

 

go into any caisse auto this weeks and most of the cars will be burnt out, in the weeks before le réveillon they start crushing cars like mad to make room, people wanting parts will try to get them before December because until the spring there will be little available but melted plastic and buckled metal.

 

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For the benefit of Gluey it did start in Strasbourg in the 90's.......or possibly the 80's. To be fair, 1000 cars across the whole of France is not that many. Especially when I guess most are burnt to order like Chancer said. Many years ago I wanted to park our car in a suburb of Orleans to see if someone would kindly get rid of it for me.

So you can sleep well tonight knowing it is not social unrest in France.

If you want to worry about something, Germany has a few serious problems.
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Under Hollande, I suspect that fiddling the figures and lying about it has become such a habit that the minister did not even think twice about what he was doing. That is the real scandal, lying to the public as a matter of casual policy.

The forces de l'ordre were probably too busy protecting the public from bombers to bother about a few hundred cars more or less.
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Yes I dont believe the figures whatsoever given the number of smouldering vehicles dragged out of Amiens Nord, how many there are in caisse autos in January miles and miles from large towns, unless my area is the only hot spot in France the problem (except its not a problem to anyone but people who live in a bubble) is of a much greater magnitude than they let on.

 

I heard several loud explosions that were not firearms, started around 01.30, if I were to drive around the village I would find the wrecks or the melted tarmac, I could even confidently predict who the "unlucky" owners are, 2 of them used to be neighbours of mine, one even torched their house but luckily the HLM association that had bought it after they were going to be evicted said enough was enough and that they coud not return.

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Unless my memory is playing tricks, the French were already well into burning cars in the 70s when I was a student here. I'm pretty sure that's when I first learned about this particular tradition, and of course there's the annual reminder when it gets a mention in the news each year after Saint Sylvestre.
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So 1000 in one night is not that many ??? Are you sober ?

Just go ahead and list all the other countries in the world, Is-lamb-ic and otherwise where this is normal, year after burning year please.

“Many years ago I wanted to park our car in a suburb of Orleans to see if someone would kindly get rid of it for me.”

Oh, I see – right, so that might explain in part why motor insurance premiums have risen – again – this year ? What’s the phrase ? Constructive something or other ? Just asking, yer know worrI mean ? No-one, angry or not, can burn a car which is nor there.

“If you want to worry about something, Germany has a few serious problems.“

Well, I defo do not want to worry about “Germany’s serious problems”, inflicted deliberately and defiantly by their illustrious Leader, so I’ll pass that one, Thank you very kindly. Things are much, much worse in la Belle France, I’d say.

But, look, come on folks, some good people really do need to inform themselves. This noble tradition of openly burning (other) people’s cars on the street, is restricted, in the main, to a certain identifiable section of the community. It has been going on for years and years. Annual figures are horrific, at least to my mind, but then I park in places where I do not seek for my car to be set on fire so that I can make a dodgy insurance claim, I must be quite stupid Non ? The figures this year are typical, if slightly reduced below normal, possibly reflecting the incredible number of security forces on streets, poor things.

I am so desperately sorry to provide references (I know some do not like proof …) but take a look here :

From The Times , October 21, 2006 : Why 112 cars are burning every day.

A year after the Paris riots violence and despair continue to grip the immigrant suburbs

By Charles Bremner

FLAMES lick around a burning car on a tiny telephone screen. Omar, 17, a veteran of France’s suburban riots, replayed the sequence with pride. “It was great. We did lots of them and then we went out and torched more the next day.”

Omar, whose parents immigrated from Mali, was savouring memories of the revolt that erupted 12 months ago from his home, the Chêne Pointu estate in Clichy-sous-Bois, in the eastern outskirts of Paris. “We’re ready for it again. In fact it hasn’t stopped,” he added. Before next week’s anniversary of the Clichy riots, the violence and despair on the estates are again to the fore. Despite a promised renaissance, little has changed, and the lid could blow at any moment.

The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

“The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.”

Car-burning has become so routine on the estates that it has been eclipsed in news coverage by the violence against police. Sebastian Roche, a sociologist who has published a book on the riots, said that torching a vehicle had become a standard amusement. “There is an apprenticeship of destruction. Kids learn where the petrol tank is, how to make a petrol bomb,” he told The Times.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister who hopes to win the presidency next May, has once again taken the offensive, staging raids on the no-go areas and promising no mercy for the thugs who reign there.

With polls showing law and order as the top public concern, his presidential chances hang on his image as a tough cop.

M Sarkozy’s muscular approach is being challenged not just by Socialist opponents. President Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, his Prime Minister, are waging their own, softer, campaign to undermine the colleague whom they do not want to be president. M de Villepin called in community leaders this week and promised to accelerate hundreds of millions of pounds of measures that were promised last autumn to relieve the plight of the immigrant-dominated suburbs.

National politics seem far from Clichy, a leafy town of hulking apartment buildings only ten miles but a universe away from the Elysée Palace. However, the Interior Minister is cited by the estate youths as the symbol of their anger. “Sarko wants to wipe us out, clear us off the map,” said Rachid, 19. “They said they would help us after last year, but we’ve got nothing.”

Rachid is to attend a march next Friday for Zyed and Bouna, the teenagers whose deaths in an electrical station sparked the rioting that engulfed the Seine-Saint-Denis département, known from its registration number, 93, as le Neuf-Trois. The boys, aged 17 and 15, who were hiding from police when they were electrocuted, are seen in Clichy as martyrs. Amor Benna, 61, the Tunisian father of Zyed, appealed this week to the young to refrain from violence and use their votes for change. “I don’t want to see cars burning again,” he said from his home on the Chêne Pointu estate. But the unhappiness was understandable, said M Benna, a street cleaner. “The young were born here and they are French. But they have nothing. The real problem is work. If they had any these riots would not have happened.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article607860.ece

“Many years ago I wanted to park our car in a suburb of Orleans to see if someone would kindly get rid of it for me.”

Oh, I see – right, so that might explain in part why motor insurance premiums have risen – again – this year ? What’s the phrase ? Constructive something or other ? Just asking, yer know worrI mean ?

“If you want to worry about something, Germany has a few serious problems.“

Well, I defo do not want to worry about “Germany’s serious problems”, inflicted deliberately and defiantly by their illustrious Leader, so I’ll pass that one, Thank you very kindly. Things are much, much worse in la Belle France, I’d say.

But, look, some good people really do need to inform themselves. This noble tradition of openly burning (other) people’s cars on the street, is restricted, in the main, to a certain identifiable section of the community. It has been going on for years and years. Annual figures are horrific, at least to my mind, but then I park in paces where I do not want my car to be set on fire so that I can make a dodgy insurance claim, I must be quite stupid Non ? The figures this year are typical, if slightly reduced below normal, possibly reflecting the incredible number of security forces on streets, poor things.

I am so desperately sorry to provide references (I know some do not like proof …) but take a look here :

From The Times , October 21, 2006 : Why 112 cars are burning every day.

A year after the Paris riots violence and despair continue to grip the immigrant suburbs

By Charles Bremner

FLAMES lick around a burning car on a tiny telephone screen. Omar, 17, a veteran of France’s suburban riots, replayed the sequence with pride. “It was great. We did lots of them and then we went out and torched more the next day.”

Omar, whose parents immigrated from Mali, was savouring memories of the revolt that erupted 12 months ago from his home, the Chêne Pointu estate in Clichy-sous-Bois, in the eastern outskirts of Paris. “We’re ready for it again. In fact it hasn’t stopped,” he added. Before next week’s anniversary of the Clichy riots, the violence and despair on the estates are again to the fore. Despite a promised renaissance, little has changed, and the lid could blow at any moment.

The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

“The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.”

Car-burning has become so routine on the estates that it has been eclipsed in news coverage by the violence against police. Sebastian Roche, a sociologist who has published a book on the riots, said that torching a vehicle had become a standard amusement. “There is an apprenticeship of destruction. Kids learn where the petrol tank is, how to make a petrol bomb,” he told The Times.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister who hopes to win the presidency next May, has once again taken the offensive, staging raids on the no-go areas and promising no mercy for the thugs who reign there.

With polls showing law and order as the top public concern, his presidential chances hang on his image as a tough cop.

M Sarkozy’s muscular approach is being challenged not just by Socialist opponents. President Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, his Prime Minister, are waging their own, softer, campaign to undermine the colleague whom they do not want to be president. M de Villepin called in community leaders this week and promised to accelerate hundreds of millions of pounds of measures that were promised last autumn to relieve the plight of the immigrant-dominated suburbs.

National politics seem far from Clichy, a leafy town of hulking apartment buildings only ten miles but a universe away from the Elysée Palace. However, the Interior Minister is cited by the estate youths as the symbol of their anger. “Sarko wants to wipe us out, clear us off the map,” said Rachid, 19. “They said they would help us after last year, but we’ve got nothing.”

Rachid is to attend a march next Friday for Zyed and Bouna, the teenagers whose deaths in an electrical station sparked the rioting that engulfed the Seine-Saint-Denis département, known from its registration number, 93, as le Neuf-Trois. The boys, aged 17 and 15, who were hiding from police when they were electrocuted, are seen in Clichy as martyrs. Amor Benna, 61, the Tunisian father of Zyed, appealed this week to the young to refrain from violence and use their votes for change. “I don’t want to see cars burning again,” he said from his home on the Chêne Pointu estate. But the unhappiness was understandable, said M Benna, a street cleaner. “The young were born here and they are French. But they have nothing. The real problem is work. If they had any these riots would not have happened.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article607860.ece

[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]For the benefit of Gluey it did start in Strasbourg in the 90's.......or possibly the 80's. To be fair, 1000 cars across the whole of France is not that many. Especially when I guess most are burnt to order like Chancer said. Many years ago I wanted to park our car in a suburb of Orleans to see if someone would kindly get rid of it for me.

So you can sleep well tonight knowing it is not social unrest in France.

If you want to worry about something, Germany has a few serious problems.[/quote]
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Indeed, Ernie.

I worry at times about the members of this forum: they are the first to flaunt their "Frenchness" and integration, yet, simultaneously take delight in excoriating those whose personal vision, perception and hopes for living in France, suffer from rose tinted lunettes!

Clearly, in any society which torches cars, regularly, for a variety of reasons, perhaps, suffers serious underlying problems...

From what has been said, previously, France is now a nation of insurance fraudsters, purposeful swindlers of increasingly scarce state funds and, despite its ostensible "Green" ambitions and credo, adores celebrating public holidays by poisoning the atmospheric environment with a toxic collection of pollutants, a large number of which are known and identified carcinogens. Yet I cannot even light a bonfire!

Apparently, the insurance fraud percentage is no more than 20% - if that.

No one, other than Ernie, dares mention the unmentionable realities: however, it is abundantly clear, a simple correlation between incidence and area is simple to adduce.

Some useful data and commentary here:

An excellent analysis here and by a French Frenchman no less! [Www]

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1869392,00.html

https://www.understandfrance.org/French/Issues.html

http://world.time.com/2013/01/03/in-france-nothing-says-happy-new-year-like-a-burning-car/

http://www.france24.com/en/20140102-france-car-burning-new-year-tradition-urban-violence-media

http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2017/01/02/nouvel-an-comment-bruno-le-roux-a-minimise-la-forte-hausse-du-nombre-de-voitures-brulees_5056261_4355770.html

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Terrible place France..it's a wonder that any British people choose to live there.

Point is, not that anyone thinks that burning cars is a good idea..but just that it isn't a new phenomenon in France.It used to happen in the remote part of Nova Scotia where I lived for a while in the 80s. You could go into a bar, leave the keys to your old wreck on the table and next day report it to the police as being stolen. They would find the burnt out wreck and you got the insurance money.

This way bonfires are permitted from November until the end of February.
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The only insurance fraud is in your outraged imaginations, all of the losses are paid out by the government, the insurers are not even consulted, if someone makes a claim it will be returned and they will be told to claim from the government, if you want to be outraged then take issue with the stupid law.

 

The number of cars that are stolen from an innocent victim and then set on fire, on a fête nationale when the G-men would be out in force is practically zero.

 

You can leave your car anywhere and it will be at no more risk of being stolen than at any other time, however park it up outside an HLM in one of the banlieus during a fête nationale and it will likely catch fire either directly or through heat from another wreck, people know this very well and choose to park their cars there on fête nationales, its like going to Cash Convertors [:D] except the government pays, its the only time of year that these car parks will be empty of résidents vehicles, as a regular visitor to Amiens Nord iIknow this well.

 

Actually you will also be weighed in by the government if you suffer losses during what was subsequently declared an émeute, trouble is you wont know beforehand, its the same M.O. for catastrophes naturelles, dont you think that is is odd that you insure your house against all risks, the roof blows off but the insurers dont want to know unless the storm was subsequently declared a catastrophe naturelle? If you want to talk about insurance fraud then start with how they take your money fraudulently.

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In fact “32.710 voitures brûlées in one year” suggests to me lots of people in France do, in fact, “think that burning cars is a good idea”. Up to 90 every day (this was in 2010).

Sarkozy did not agree, so he banned publication of the facts and figures. Quite often politicos ban the truth. It makes life less stressful, except for the car owners.

Interesting to get some first-hand info about modern versions of barratry in Nova Scotia, wherever that might be. Looks like police connivance to me.

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I think Gluey and Ernie need to chill a bit.

It has been pointed out that this has been going on for decades. What started off as probably a prank in Strasbourg has spread across France and is now happens every year.

But when you look at how big France is, all the number of villages, small towns, large towns, small cities, large cities a 1000 vehicles is not that large a figure. Whether it is bored teenagers or insurance fraud it is not a break down of French society. This happens in rural villages as much as in does in large cities.

Now, if you cross reference that with what happens in the UK on New Years Eve with people getting shît faced and ending up in a comotose state; or getting into violent brawls or whatever, the amount of pressure and cost that these selfish people are putting on stretched resources across the whole country is totally unacceptable. We have all seen the pictures I am sure:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3380899/Where-streets-no-shame-New-Year-revellers-spill-pubs-clubs-night-drunken-excess-Britain.html

These people then end up in hospital picking fights with nurses and doctors who are trying to help them and of course patients who have genuine medical conditions are affected. The police, paramedics, doctors and nurses are sick to the back teeth of them as well as others in society who can go out and have a good time without having the need to get into a fight or pass out half naked beside a half eaten kabab only to end up in hospital.

But this is not confined to year years eve, it happens every weekend of the year in the UK up and down the country.

Talk about a broken society, take a look at the UK.
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OK, so substitute contemporary for modern. Same deal. It is immoral and is the same as theft in my book yet I find no overt condemnation. But what the heck - everyone does it so that makes it OK, Non ?

Still I seek the missing link between insurance fraud in Nova Scotia (now I know where it is/was) and the continual burning of cars in France. That's a difficut one for me.

When I understand that, I will try and come up with the link to November bonfires, you got me beat fair and square there, but I am a simple soul au fond.
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You know, IMNSHO, something like +/- 80 cars torched EVERY DAY, mainly in certain easily identifiable areas in France has nothing whatsoever to do with vile, rampant public drunkenness in the UK, honestly, there is no link. Nothing, they are not connected in reality. They are separate. They belong in discrete paragraphs. But it sure is a great way to sidetrack a very embarrassing set of facts, is it not ? Look, it is an irrefutable arithmetical fact that even 10 cars torched every day is much worse than 1000 torched on NYE, whether in the process of insurance fraud or boredom, or politics or whatever else.

Who was it who said “breakdown” anyway ? Only one person I can find and it’s not that fellow Gluestick either. To make an irrelevant out-of-line statement, then to disprove it, then to make an issue out of a non-issue is an ancient technique which often works, but not always. Lol.

Here’s another beauty : “Started off as probably a prank in Strasbourg” - please tell us more about this theory. Where is it reported, I would like to know. Pretty please ?

“But this is not confined to year years eve, it happens every weekend of the year in the UK up and down the country”

Wow ! Really and truly ? A slight touch of embellishment there, methinks, tinged with the delicate overtones of hyperbole. But irrelevant once more.

Chancer did talk about broken down cars but only one person wrote about a broken society and it wasn’t the ultra-cool ernie, nor the even cooler Gluestick either.

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In France, they burn cars on New Year's Eve. It gets into the UK papers big time and a small mention in the French news.

In France, farmers bring traffic to a halt and burn tyres and sometimes smash supermarkets up. It makes headlines in the French papers, bizarrely I don't think the UK media makes much of it.

In France, there are demonstrations about this that or the other practically every weekend and on weekdays too. As long as they remain peaceful they don't get into the news.

In France, people kiss on the cheek as a greeting, and eat snails and frogs' legs. Those things certainly don't get into the French news, I suppose a UK newspaper might do a piece on it if they really had nothing else to write about.

Basically I think we can say that as far as the UK media is concerned, France is a nation of foreigners with a different temperament and a different sub-code of behaviour, and sometimes there is mileage in it for a few inches of column space.

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