High productivity or low unemployment? You can't have both

Reports that the French energy company EDF is gearing up for a fight with its employees over an attempt to reduce their 10-week holiday entitlement were greeted on this side of the Channel by the usual tut-tutting about the French economy. We had a field day condemning the “feather-bedding” enjoyed by French workers and boasted for the umpteenth time of the UK’s obvious superiority in the matter of “the market” that explained why so many young French people come to London to seek thei