Hey ,It's interesting, I noticed my email open rates have been lower than usual, for some reason it seems more people are receiving the newsletter in their spam box, and myself included actually - even though believe it or not I always open my own newsletter to double check it after it's been sent (I realize there are typos on a regular basis, apologies). I'm not sure what's going on with my email address, I'll have to track that down.I admit I've been uncharacteristically demotivated this past week. I'm not too sure what it is, seems to be a mix of crappy humid and dreary grey Parisian fall to wintery weather, the strikes that make it difficult to travel with public transportation, my last work gig sud prolonged and then suddenly cut short, perhaps some sheer laziness, sprinkled with a little nostalgia looking at the year almost gone and thinking of what I want for next year. A mix of things.So on Friday I thought I should get on with things I've definitely been procrastinating and recorded for a new podcast episode. Something that had never happened before, most of the recording failed, a sudden huge bunch of dead bit of sound missing all over the file, so I have to start over and I haven't gone round to doing it just yet. All that to say my podcast is coming back soon, I'm working on it.Given the strikes are a big deal here I thought I'd share some news updates from those in the newsletter, you might not be familiar with what is happening. And I cleared some tabs and emails, so I have an interesting blog post from Byron Sharp (famous in marketing circles).Christmas is coming up too, I'm excited to go spend it with family and hang out with my nieces! I finished all my Christmas shopping, so that's certainly a positive. How are you celebrating for the holidays coming? Anything exciting planned? Give me some news, just hit reply!CheersWillem

 Weekly Combo Two or three flavours, interesting separately, fascinating together 

In short, there are a number of reasons for the strikes overall, but there was a change in vocabulary that is particularly interesting, and arguably vicious,  from a communication strategy standpoint. I needed the history lesson about it, and the NY Times piece covers that to an extent. After WWII several categories of French workers managed to negotiate better retirement pension conditions, and there was also a general regime that was created with a stated intention of improving to become as good as the conditions some other workers, such as railroad employees had jus negotiated. Instead, in 1995 and since the language changed into calling those 'special regimes' to make it look like those workers are specially privileged, and instead lower the level of pension for everyone rather than keep using the highest bar as a model.The new standard minimum the government talks about in the new system is already there, and it's really not particularly high. It is paving the way for stronger private pension funds, new laws that are generally going to make it easier for the rich to keep being richer, while targeting and talking about workers being privileged people abusing the system. I'm not entirely sure what would be right or the best possible retirement pension system, but I understand and support why they're striking. It is complicated and the government seems pretty set on maintaining their changes, so we'll see what happens.