You've gotta love the French sometimes. They sure know how to make a point!

Protesters from both public and private sectors marched in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg and around 200 other towns. Over a million angry French workers took to the streets today in a nationwide strike to force President Nicolas Sarkozy to boost wages and protect jobs as the economic crisis deepens.

Riot police used tear gas to disperse about 200 youths who threw stones and other objects and lit fires in the street as the Paris march came to an end at Place de la Nation. Around 20 people were detained.

In Toulouse, police used batons and flashballs to disperse around 200 protesters who threw bottles and set fire to rubbish bins in the southwestern city. One officer was slightly injured.

Protesters smashed windows at the MEDEF employers' federation in Rouen in the north.

But mostly the one-day strike, which polls say had the support of nearly 80 percent of the French, was peaceful.

Strike action sparked flight cancellations in Paris's Orly airport, but most flights out of the main Charles de Gaulle airport went ahead, officials said.

Rail operator SNCF cancelled 40 percent of high-speed TGV services and half of other regional trains. Paris commuters were spared major disruption due to a new law enforcing a minimum service during strikes.

Now, call me crazy but this sort of thing just doesn't happen in the UK. The French are apparently not as bad off as we are because of the global recession. They are still facing increasing numbers of home repossessions, rising cost of living and 2 million unemployed and rising though so I can understand why they're upset. They also have a more socialist pedigree than we do so perhaps big protests should be expected from them, after all the did have a revolution a couple of hundren years ago during another economic downturn in which they dispatched of their whole aristocracy. It even sounds as though they want to do it again. One protester, teacher Jean-Baptiste Voltuain said;

"Sarkozy has to take from the billionaires and give a bit back to the poor," echoing mounting calls for the right-wing government to boost social spending by hiking taxes on the rich. It will be interesting to see if they wheel out Madame Guillotine if SarKozy and his billionaire cronies don't cough up.

Joking aside, I don't understand why as a nation we're sitting about feeling sorry for ourselves. It occurs to me that if all the unemployed and the people in financial difficulties or who have been politically ignored or marginalised stood up and marched on Downing Street tomorrow, half the cabinet would be off like a shot to Turks & Caicos or somewhere similar quicker than you could say "Liberte, fraternite et egalite". The fact that we haven't mobilised is exactly the reason why this government continues to treat us like mugs. They don't know how bad things really are because nobody has told them in any significant numbers and believe me they need to be told!

Because the UK majority remains silent, polite and apathetic, this government will continue along the path it is going until it runs this country into the ground. As an electorate, we are standing by and just watching it happen...and that makes me mad!!! We used to be great once, lets be great again.