troglodyte_mignon

Same thing in France with CB. I’ve only recently understood why I was asked to choose between “CB” and “Visa” when paying by card online, when both were written on my card. Actually, when I got my first card as a teenager, I was a bit nervous about that, I was scared of “making the wrong choice” when paying online; I rememberd asking adults around me what that was about and how to choose which one to select, and not one of them could give me an explanation, they told me that there was no difference and that I should just pick one at random. Now I feel kinda bad about all the times that I chose Visa, because from what I understand their fees are generally higher for the seller.

The article doesn’t say that they don’t care about wars and climate.

It’s not “instead of”, it’s “in addition to”. And it’s not “at least” 5 years of prison either, it could end up being less than what the prosecution asked for.

How is your comment related to the article? This trial isn’t about the National Rally’s ideas (which are indeed illiberal, fundamentally racist and plainly disgusting). It’s about them embezzling millions of euros from the European Parliament, during more than a decade, by having many of their members be “fake” MEP assistants who got paid for a job that they didn’t actually do. WTF does this have to do with religion or illiberalism.

Although not being French I do not know the extent of laicité.

Indeed you do not. Laïcité, among other things, guarantees the right to believe in (or not believe in) and practice (or not practice) a religion. What you’re proposing is religious discrimination, not laïcité.

France actually was in the same timezone as the UK before WWII and the German occupation. My grandma remembers switching to “German time”. Franco’s Spain similarly changed timezones in 1942 to match their German allies. So, yes, the change was made politically. :-) I’m guessing France is also responsible for Algeria and Morocco being in UTC+1, not sure if they’ve ever discussed changing zones.

Edit: I just checked and I was wrong about the Moroccan time zone. Algeria is in UTC+1 though (all year long, they don’t use DST), not sure why it’s in yellow on your map.

In France, normal time is UTC+1 (CET), and summer time is UTC+2 (CEST), when we actually belong in UTC+0 (and were, before being occupied by Germany). Permanently switching to the so-called “summer time” makes no sense if you’ve ever seen a map of time zones.

And by the way Spain is in the same situation. Spain, which is more western than Greenwich, is going to change time with us this night and we’re both going to spend six months in Egypt and Finland’s normal time zone. That is so wrong.

As a non-native speaker, I’d say that your summary of the upsides and downsides matches my experience.

maybe there should be a new EU-standard fonetik version.

Or maybe it’s finally time for Shavian alphabet to shine!