"Pentecôte"

The French government is probably one of the most prolific when it comes to creating new taxes. The last trick from those ENA boffins is to abolish a bank holiday (they picked a Catholic celebration called "lundi de Pentecôte" (aka Withmonday in English), make employees work for free (guess what, unions are not happy and will call strikes for a change) and allocate the taxes for that day to a fund aimed at providing benefits to poor pensioners. This is in fact a knee-jerk reaction to the 2003 "canicule", when 11.400 people, most of them pensioner were killed in a heat wave that scorched Europe. They just have won the the gold medal for stealth tax creativity! The greatest irony, is that in 2000 the socialist governement abolished the car tax that was initially first levied in 1956 tomeant to fund... the pensions! Check also this link on the subject: libres.org