The Limits of Search -- Adobe Buzzword

The other day I was trying to get some hard information about the special statute enjoyed by the SNCM (Société Nationale Maritime Corse Méditerranée), the transport company running ferries between the French mainland and Corsica. The company was in the news recently because it took advantage of the present unrest in France, caused by the government's decision to raise the retirement age, to exact a commitment from the government, mindful not to start too many fires at the same time, that its special statute (advantageous employment and retirement benefits) would not be changed.

Well, I spent the best part of two hours scouring the Internet for FACTS about this special statute and, do you know, I could not find any facts at all! Plenty of invective on all sides but precious little objective facts. You would have thought, with all the information now available on the Internet, not to mention the profusion of blogs, that you would be able to find out anything about anything. Not so!

When you get down to it, an awful lot of blogs are really rants. You may or may not agree with a particular rant but such blogs are not a very good port of call if you are looking for objective information.

Anyway, in the case of the SNCM we seem to be confronted with a particularly virulent outbreak of omerta!