Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
I was in Paris in 2018 last and it looked a LOT cleaner then. The current photos look like some city in the developing world. What a shame...
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2018 was the beginning of the slippery slope. Things started to decline around 2015, and like in Hemingway's famous quote, at first gradually, and then suddenly. Things accelerated around 2018-2019, and have been in free-fall since.
The most puzzling thing is the French government feeling totally unconcerned about it. I know no other European country where the central government would accept such decrepitude in their capital city. Margaret Thatcher did not hesitate to disband the Greater London Council back in 1986 when London underwent the same decline and decrepitude, and put the city under the direct control of the British state. In France, except for a timid threat 2 or 3 years ago when the government said they would place the city under direct central government control if the Paris city council did not manage its budget better (the city council has accumulated 10 billion euros of debt in a few years), you'd be hard pressed to find any real concern among French ministers. The president lives isolated in his palace and probably does not even realize the magnitude of things. The prime minister has no majority in parliament, but more than that, I think it's a new generation of politicians who simply don't care about the image the capital city projects on visitors and foreigners. It's baffling.
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