Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the driven-away dept.

Ride-sharing service Uber has exited the French market following taxi driver protests, a ban by the French interior minister, and the arrest of two managers:

Following a week of increasingly violent clashes with traditional taxi drivers, the San Francisco-based company announced that its popular Uberpop service would be suspended from 8pm tonight and would no longer appear on users' app lists.

'In recent weeks intimidation and violent aggression by an out-of-control minority, where drivers and users of Uberpop were ambushed, has increased in France. Uber does not want to put drivers or passengers at risk, so for the sake of peace has decided to suspend Uberpop,' said the company in a statement. However, the service is in fact illegal in France. Last week, Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, general manager for Western Europe, and Thibaud Simphal, general manager of Uber France, were arrested. They will have their day in court in September.

Uber said it hoped to be back up and running as soon as possible. It thanked the "thousands of men and women from Lille to Marseille, via Paris, Bordeaux or Lyon who participated with enthusiasm in the urban transport revolution".


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by tftp on Saturday July 04 2015, @07:01AM

    by tftp (806) on Saturday July 04 2015, @07:01AM (#204957) Homepage

    Every single one told me they were not permitted to speak Ukrainian in school

    Ukrainian was widely used in Soviet times. Many books were printed in Ukrainian. I had some, through my relatives. I did not speak Ukrainian, so I couldn't read them - and that was unfortunate, because the same books in Russian were harder to obtain. I do not know why your acquaintances claim that Ukrainian was outlawed in USSR because it wasn't. Some languages, like of Baltic republics, were used almost exclusively there, and you wouldn't get very far with mere Russian in Riga.

    They all tell me that while they speak, read and write Russian it is painful for them to do so.

    Your acquaintances don't even see an internal contradiction in this statement. Why would it be "painful" for them to speak Russian if that was the only language they were ever taught and permitted to speak? Did they all learn Ukrainian from Samizdat, overnight? Of course that's not the case - because the national language of each republic was a mandatory course in every republic. The communists made many mistakes, but there is no need to wrongly villify them. USSR's national policy was extremely liberal - more liberal, perhaps, that it was wise. The policy of supporting "national differences" resulted in quite a few wars after 1991, as local dictators quickly used those as a vehicle for separatism and worse things.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Offtopic=1, Informative=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday July 04 2015, @08:02AM

    by tftp (806) on Saturday July 04 2015, @08:02AM (#204966) Homepage

    I should have thought of something else - songs. Perhaps offtopic, but SN can't be possibly hurt by a small bit of foreign culture :-) Here are a few examples from Soviet times: in Moldavian (1978) [youtube.com], Moldavian (1982) [youtube.com], Moldavian (1984) [youtube.com], Ukrainian (1985) [youtube.com], Ukrainian (1985) [youtube.com], Ukrainian (1971) [youtube.com], Russian (1975) [youtube.com], Russian (1986) [youtube.com] ... I intentionally selected old records, well within the Soviet reign, and only one singer.

    Of course, none of that would be possible if the poor natives, denied their language by evil Communists, didn't know their language.