You would think the burning cars would keep them warm.
Ohhh Lordy....next thing you know..we'll have a flood of French immigrants coming across our borders...!
I think the homeless are on their own.
I'm willing to bet that most people in France have no idea what "cold" is. If it isn't cold enough to freeze the moisture in your eyes, it ain't cold!
Urban outdoorsmen die because France signed the Kyoto treaty, leading to massive global cooling.
Bush's Fault?
When are the French going to be critical of themselves and start solving their own problems? Ahhhh...methinks, never.
They're not feasting on all the car-b-q?
Even the French will admit France is miserable. Employment is down. Regulation is obscene. The riots were allowed to go on. And the Left would like America to be more French! Can you say, "No thanks!"
Well, if families can't bother to call elderly parents in un air-conditioned apartments back home while they vacation during searing heat in August, then I don't expect them to care for the homeless on their streets. Unless they stumble over them and need them out of the way.
In the pic, there's a gal walking around with short pants and no socks. Can't be that cold.
Put them up in the Louvre and give them some wine and cheese.
I blame global warming! ;)
Chronic Unemployment - my brother in law in Paris took two years off of work @ 80% pay, benefits run out next month. He sent out one resume and got a job immediately.
The homeless shouldn't be dying because of the cold. All those burning cars should keep them warm.
More media Katrinaesque hype. These are standard issue mental cases....the usual human debris seen in any major city....regardless of political system.
Where is Paul Krugman?
The homeless clochards on the streets of Paris and elsewhere all share something in common: they are all drug-addicted, alcoholics or lunatics.
It is not that there are no places for them to get help and shelter. It is that they are so mentally degraded that they stumble from injection to injection, or bottle to bottle, and then stagger into the streets to sleep. Of course the places where they might take shelter have rules, and they do not like those rules. Also, the shelters are full of crazy people, after all, and who would want to go and sleep in a place full of inebriated crazy people?
What, really, can be done about this problem?
Drugs are already illegal. Alcohol is not, of course, and it is not criminal to purchase it and become besotted. Once one is in the grip of the drugs or the alcohol, one is no longer capable of reasoning normally. And collapsing in the streets to sleep seems normal. That freezing to death results from this is occasionally inevitable in the winter. I believe that the former American Presidential candidate, Mr. George McGovern, had a daughter who was an alcoholic who became drunk one night, wandered off into the Minnesota snows, and died sleeping in a snowdrift beside her apartment building in the city of Minneapolis. What can one do about such things, really?
People are ultimately responsible for themselves, and the state cannot, and will not try to, monitor each and every person. Were surveillance so complete, there would not be the illegal drug use in the first place.