If all the world turned... Australian

Post Reply New Topic

There would no longer be any lions, tigers, or bears, to worry about.

But there would a lot more poisonous creatures to worry about.

Insects, toads and spiders,. And poisonous snakes would no longer be the minority (as in the world outside of Australia today), but would be the majority of snakes.

If all the world turned French; there would be even more American TV series being shown all the time. There would be countless political parties (France has around 20) and the leader of each party would always be in the news for bed hopping. The Amazon rain forest would have to be cut down to provide all the paper necessary to keep all the bureaucrats employed and international production of *everything* would grind to a halt as ever more paperwork had to be completed to do the most trivial thing. Wine production would rocket, but so would the number of Gendarmes doing breath tests all over the country. You would be required to decide what job you wanted before you left school and to stick with that job right up until you retire as changing careers in France is almost unheard of due to the bureaucratic regulations aforementioned. If you were lucky enough to have a job, you would spend half your life struggling to get to work due to the trains being on strike or the roads being blocked by striking farmers, lorry drivers, taxis etc. You would spend the other half of your working life on strike yourself because your union insists all workers should be entitled to a cigarette break every five minutes.

You will have a keen interest in food and wine and required to have a two hour midday lunch break and join the high speed road race at midday to go home for lunch then to drive back to work again by 2PM. Oh and did I mention all the bureaucracy and paperwork in France? You are not permitted to fart without getting consent from a bureaucrat in Paris who will loose your paperwork three times, send it to the wrong department, insist you resend the forms a fifth time countersigned by your pet dog and great great grandfather. You will finally receive a permit to fart but it will be in the wrong name so you will have to send it back again whereupon they will require more copies of your passport or other identity documents and you need to apply for a reapplication form from the French president to ask for the paperwork to be sent to you again via courier who won't find your address because it officially doesn't exist because you haven't sent in the relevant forms.

True story: To terminate any contract such as a telephone line you need to send a registered letter to the head office of the phone company (Orange). The phone company needs to sign for receipt of the letter and you will receive confirmation by return that the phone company did indeed receive the letter. Time will pass and the phone company will still continue to charge you for the unwanted phone line. You will write to your bank and tell them to terminate the direct debit but they will be unable to do so under French law. You will phone the phone company and ask why they are still billing you. They will confirm receiving your letter asking for termination of the contract but they hadn't got around to cancelling it. They promise to do so straight away and to reimburse the money taken. Instead you are billed for another months phone line so you contact their customer services again. They say they accidentally closed someone else's line instead and will refund the money taken in error so far. The following month they bill you yet again. This time you send a letter to both the head office and to the local Orange shop in town declaring that unless the money is reimbursed you are going to hold a demonstration outside their shop and hand out leaflets denouncing them as thieves. Finally the line is disconnected and the money taken is reimbursed but no apology received. That was my story and it is far from unusual.

A cruise liner starts to sink and there are people from all nationalities onboard. When the "abandon ship" order is given everyone heads for the lifeboats except for the French who all gather together and hold a meeting about the sinking. The French people organise a vote to form a committee to arrange for the evacuation of the French people. The committee then gathers all the names of the French people onboard and they need to provide their proof of identity along with their boarding pass. Elections are then held to form sub committees to (a) Determine the location and usage of the lifeboats and (b) To ensure the French passengers are all trained in how to leave a ship via lifeboats and how to wear a lifejacket. It is now midday, so the committees break for a two hour lunch and reconvene later after copious quantities of food and wine. The lifeboat committee returns and raises two points (1) the colour of the lifeboats is disagreeable and they propose a well known French designer is employed to paint them a colour that is more in keeping with this season's taste. (2) It turns out there is nobody left on board who knows how to lower the remaining lifeboats into the water, so volunteers are sought to undergo training in lifeboat usage. A satellite link is used to arrange for three of the young French people to be flown by helicopter to a naval training academy where they will undergo a rigorous three week course in lifeboat usage and be flown back to the sinking ship to lead the French evacuation. They will be required to hold a diploma in lifeboat usage before being allowed to lead the evacuation. Upon return, the lifeboat evacuation experts arrange for the production of some glossy brochures regarding "How to evacuate a sinking ship" and after several weeks, the brochures arrive onboard and are handed out to the French passengers. Everyone is now ready to leave the ship, however, the remaining lifeboats have been barricaded off by a group of French protesters saying the people organising the evacuation don't belong to the French maritime union. A sit in is quickly organised and all the French people sit around doing nothing and burning old car tyres on the deck of the ship in protest. The local strike is picked up nationally and all French ports are closed and air traffic contol comes out on a strike in sympathy too, grounding all flights to and from France. The ship finally sinks, with the loss of all the French people onboard. The French president announces that a committee will be set up to investigate the circumstances of the tragedy. The said committee of 100 bureaucrats then spends two years designing an 80 page long form; copies of which are mailed out and to be completed in triplicate by the deceased French passengers.

Do you know this classic?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKVg_mjtQNo[/youtube]