General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
Macron’s gamble blows up French politics
The snap election call has spectacularly backfired, with the right and centre furiously backstabbing itself into oblivion, and the left, from the communists to social democrats, quickly uniting into a New Popular Front, writes NICK WRIGHT

THIEVES’ argot for a safecracker is “a Peterman.” The word’s origins are contested: one version has it that the term derives from Scotland’s Peterhead prison from which the notorious safecracker Johnny Ramensky, alias Johnny Ramsey, escaped five times.
Another has its origins in the term saltpetre (potassium nitrate), the key ingredient in gunpowder. A more likely origin is in the French verb “peter” — to blow up, or more crudely, to fart.
President Emmanuel Macron is today a Peterman par excellence. His reckless decision to call a general election in the impossibly short time of two weeks leaves just a few days before the French people get to pass judgment on their political class.
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