Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past. |
The European model is in danger if we obliterate the principle of personal responsibility. |
My problem is how to find the best way of being useful. |
The driving force behind the liberal counter-offensive in Europe has been a reaction against irresponsibility. |
The problem with a purely collective system is not only that it requires economic growth, and the right sort of demographic trends, but that it prevents people thinking about their futures in a responsible way. |
Any union that can't accept workers choosing their own representatives through universal franchise is finished. |
Therefore one should speak at the same time of national citizenship and wider European citizenship. |
The unions still have a job to do, representing their members' interests to governments and parliaments. And I think collective agreements still have a role, alongside markets and laws. |
I had to think whether, after 50 years of hard slog, I was still lucid and fresh enough for the job. |
This weakening is worsened by the widening distance between the governed and their governments. |
The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people. |
For me, socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility. |
These days there are not enough of such intermediary groups, between the state and the individual, with the result that political leaders are often unduly guided by opinion polls. |
If you don't have collective agreements between unions and employers, governments have to legislate more. |
Cinema explains American society. It's like a Western, with good guys and bad guys, where the weak don't have a place. |
We have to struggle against the conservatives from all sides, not only the right-wingers, but also the left-wing conservatives who don't want to change anything. |
I cannot resign myself to thi decline of Europe, and of France. |
Yes, the European model remains superior to that of America and Japan. |
The unions may continue to decline, but if they do, it'll be their fault. |
This desire for equity must not lead to an excess of welfare, where nobody is responsible for anything. |