366 staff * 30,000 Euros = € 10 980 000

Cost of the stored stock, 2million the machine 2 million and lets be generous the building, 2 million for a total of 6 million.

And before you look at me with horrified shocked expressions you must admit that at least half of you did START/RUN calc and did the math as well.

So, if Renault et al let them blow it up instead of paying out, they will be about six million euros better off *and* we can get a spectacular video too?

France... Paris... video... too obvious?

I did the calculation as well....BOOM!!!

So there's no redundancies for blown up workers?

revolting is right.

So before it was kidnap/imprisonment of your boss and demand money, now they are threatening to blow something up and demanding money..? Best case you could call it extortion but we have labeled people terrorists for less.

So when do we go back to the tradition of war with France? The travel costs for our armed forces will be less than they are now!

So if they pay, then they set the stage for other out of work frenchies to hold their place of former employment hostage. Sounds like terrorist tactics to me. I say, send in the french equivilent of SWAT and take em out. As for the value of the parts and the building and equipment, meh, thats what insurance is for.

And you be fairly sure that at least the 2M machine and the building are insured, and that any uninsured costs might reasonably be recouped via legal action. The only question is, have those threatening to blow the building up been arrested yet? I'm pretty certain that that would result in nighttime visit by armed police in this country. Are our friends over the Channel less likely to take that course of action for some reason?

... they still have factories in France? Does the Minister of Not Working know this?

Mine's the one with the 'Allo 'Allo DVD in the pocker

"Your only supposed to blow the bloody doors off..."

That is all...

Mines the one with a set of keys for a mini in the pocket!

I don't think the word "workers" was appropriate. Acturally, isn't the rest of it covered by "French"?

@Mike Bird 1

Also, if you're going for the "let it burn" plan you can also factor in the income from selling high res footage of a multi-million dollar facility exploding dramatically to Hollywood.

Burn Baby Burn!

"So if they pay, then they set the stage for other out of work frenchies to hold their place of former employment hostage. Sounds like terrorist tactics to me."

On the other hand, years of having not paid has encouraged workshy managerial types to terrorise everyone else:

(i) work for a pittance or starve;

(ii) do what we say or we'll take our business elsewhere.

"So when do we go back to the tradition of war with France?"

Dunno, but I'll be on the French side.

Mines the one with the DPM.

C'est un achievement grand du standing up pour les rights des travailleurs, nous should do trop more of that dans Angleterre and kickez our fat overpaid cochons of booses, politicians and coppers off les Cliffes du Blancs et dans le Manche.

I love the French. Why can't we be this Bolshie?

Starting with banks ...

So after failing to get money by producing things which were apparently not of sufficient worth, they're working on getting money by not destroying things which definitely have some worth.

I guess that's progress?

> noscript and adblock ... are killing web designers

Really? What are the mortality statistics? If we could deploy noscript and adblock against the Taliban would they experience the same death rate? Enquiring minds want to know. Please don't put Javascript in your answer, I won't be executing it. Executing, geddit?

It's not often that I catch myself wishing Pinochet could be reanimated by evil Nazi scientists sponsored by CIA for a bit of expeditious justice to move the "french entitlement" style of working back towards some necessary economic liberalism (yeah I know he wasn't exactly a liberal, but I'm easily angered)

Most of the above comments seem to be a bit sour grapes as the French workers still have rights, legal protection and actual industries to work in whilst the UK employees* just get fucked at every turn.

*I'd say workers, but with hardly any industry in the UK most people are just "employees", aren't they?

I'm not sure whether this is the smartest approach to their particular problem, but you've got to hand it to them: these French folks surely know how to kick up the shit they are not willing to take. Compare the complacent rest of the continent in its numb acquiescence.

Then sue each of them and have them thrown in prison for the rest of their life. Typical french tossers. They only work 35 hours ( ahem , are present is a better description ) and still all they do is whine.

MP's barricade themselves in the House of Commons and threaten to blow the place up if they aren't allowed to fiddle expenses any more. Instantly 55 million people in the UK make a PayPal donation of a tenner each to ensure they carry out their promise.

And Paris because I'd like to make a donation.

TBH if the stupid workers go ahead with their ultimatum and blow the gaff it would be about as wonderfully televisual an event as witnessing the entire French air-force crash into a fireworks factory.

[Can I open bidding on the pay-per-view TV rights at 500 Euros?]

the "Global Economy" continues to grow. Let's face it, anything that we produce in Western or Northern Europe or North America can be produced more cheaply in Eastern Europe or Asia. Sure working conditions, wages, and standard of living are much lower than here. The 400 or 500 million people populating Western and Northern Europe, and North America cannot afford, just not enough money here, to have all the manufacturing jobs and tech jobs that can be done remotely moved to other countries. For that matter, even having jobs like these centralized in a country can have devastating effects in the regions which the jobs have moved from. In fact, in some industries having high levels of centralization can have highly negative security implications.

I know you all know this but sometimes I have to vent. Thanks.

Stop icon because corporations need to be STOPPED from moving to less expensive areas and forced to produce where they sell.

They are all communists who are always on strike.

Surprised these guys haven't surrendered yet. But then, the other side is also French so that might be it.

And I'm easily angered by arseholes who call for economic liberalism. At least the French still have protection for their standard of living while the rest of us watch jobs disappear to wherever the workers can be paid the least, as mandated by the processes of economic fucking liberalism.

France is so great even if the communist workers are a bit thick, similar to ours working really, at BMW/Mini for an agency for 10 years - so NO redundancy money - Durr !

Wished they'd blown the factory, I could have made a million in Hollywood and be outta here !

Communists never were creative thinkers.

The building can be refurbed and let out to crazy English tourists visiting during August, when everything there is shut for their holidays. It's closer to the Cote d' Azur than Brighton and close by the Central Massif, good for walking, pets, good beer (duck!), etc.

The machinery can produce fake Renault gear for floggin' on MyBay.co.uk, and again I have my escape package !

Need I go on ?

ALF

.. and they always have smashing feux d'artifices this evening.

Allez for it!

paris, cos I luv to be in Paris in the summer....

@ jake:

so, what do you do for a living? you are coming to a free site and blocking the site's way of making money.... you think this is acceptable? im an in-house developer so its no skin of my nose if you use adblock/noscript but remember that noscript will seriously hamper many web apps (you know the clever stuff people do on the web with ajax etc) and adblock will stop people creating free sites, meaning all of us will be forced to pay to use sites due to scroungers like you. remember some people make their living from adverts... you are stealing from them. personally i would look for adblock and noscript and block access to the site. remember, you are stealing from el reg.

@"Web designers should get real jobs...", wow another brave anonymous eh? well tell you what, if web designers dont do a proper job fuck off and stop using the internet then eh? and can i ask what you do for a living?

I use NoScript and also block pop-ups, but never block ordinary adverts. I recon that it's reasonable and fair that I should see the adverts given that they are a source of revenue for the sites that I visit. Also, on rare occasions the ads might even be of interest.

"And I'm easily angered by arseholes who call for economic liberalism."

I'm sure you never go buying products made or developed by those evil capitalists either. Best stay off The Reg in future then, I've heard that the owners set up the site to make a *DUN DUN DUN.. PROFIT* and the writers are in it to get paid as well.

Of course company owners don't deserve to make money, after all they've only risked everything to bring $PRODUCT to the market.

The world owes YOU a living after all.

Calm down dear, it's only an advert...

Stealing, eh? Let me just get this big bag of bits that I have here (they were megabits but I broke them up so you can have more of them) and put them in an email to you. There, my conscience is salved.

Personally I find Adblock (and occasionally NoScript) particularly useful for switching off those nauseatingly CPU-consuming JSON heavy Flash widgets (sometimes described as adverts) which nail my CPU to the floor and render my PC all but useless. Maybe, just maybe, if the people who wrote them (who I believe are called "programmers", but often refer to themselves as "web designers" because it sounds less dull) got the bloody code right more often and didn't screw the pooch in terms of browser performance then they wouldn't be as damned intrusive.

Do you describe people who ignore adverts in paper magazines, or fast-forward (or use autoskip) the ones on recorded TV, as thieves also?

And remember, there is rather more to The Internet than The World Wide Web.

Before you ask, I'm a specialist in Internet infrastructure. You know, the sort of stuff that moves drivel, sorry, content, from place to place. The sort of kit you really, really rely on.

Now, before you post another diatribe, please go and polish that last JSON call you wrote and make it really efficient, rather than preloading mountains of content into my browser just so I don't have to wait 10 more milliseconds for a div to display, there's a good lad.

Mine's the one with "Juniper" across the back. Yes, the one next to the Cisco bodywarmer.

PS I happen to think that the workers referred to ITFA are on a hiding to nothing - blow up factory, lose jobs, no money. Don't blow up factory, lose jobs, no money. Not a prticularly tasty choice, is it?

build a couple of extra cars each and sell them to make up the difference?

"im an in-house developer so its no skin of my nose if you use adblock/noscript but remember that noscript will seriously hamper many web apps (you know the clever stuff people do on the web with ajax etc)"

If you turn JavaScript off and the clever stuff stops working then it isn't very clever, is it?

"remember, you are stealing from el reg."

No they aren't. It's actually quite possible to serve adverts without resorting to pop-ups and Flashturbation, but whether and how The Register serves adverts is purely a calculated business decision taken according to how the audience behaves and how much money they need to pull in.

Such talk of "stealing" is intellectually inadequate propaganda, inaccurate for the topic under discussion and reminiscent of the "crying wolf" strategy employed by the entertainment industry to justify their intimidation of the general Internet-using public through legal and legislative instruments.

Next, you'll be claiming that people with impaired sight using accessible browsers (which don't show pop-ups or Flashturbation) are ruining the Internet for everyone, or some other nonsense.