What is going on in the streets of Paris? Or should the question be: what is not going on?

Last week, unions held their first big dem­on­stration of the rentrée, when workers return from their holidays refreshed and ready for what doomsters always predict will be an autumn of heated social discontent. And this year’s rentrée was supposed to be hotter still, not just because of the damage wrought by the global economic crisis but because of questions over work pressures amid an unsettling wave of suicides at France Telecom.