“Of course it was really sad, it’s a symbol of the republic, but what is more important: a town hall or people living in poverty?” asks Alexander, 24.<\/p>\n
It is student night at the Lord John pub, and Alexander is one of several wearing a faluche, a colourful, traditional French student beret. Many chatting under the mist from their vapes took part in the demonstrations last weekend.<\/p>\n
I ask Alexander whether the widespread looting and fires seen last weekend, with \u20ac500,000 (\u00a3420,000) of reported damage in Limoges, helped his argument?<\/p>\n
“For some people it’s a catastrophe and some things are not acceptable,” he admits.<\/p>\n
Jade, a 19-year-old, medical student, has a similar opinion: “I think burning the town hall is sad, but it’s not the saddest part of the protests.”<\/p>\n
She complains of having to live on \u20ac300 per month. <\/p>\n
“I feel we are not respected as young adults.”<\/p>\n
Their views on the town hall’s fate are not replicated in Limoges’ imposing market halls, where neat, narrow timbers sitting upon studded steel girders have been painted a duck-egg blue, using the same engineering approach as the Eiffel Tower.<\/p>\n
This has been a “week of chaos” that 63-year-old Jean Roger Faucher would like to forget.<\/p>\n
In a region renowned for producing beef, his family has run his fishmonger stool here for more than a century.<\/p>\n
“It left us stunned,” he says. “I got married in the town hall, so it had an unimaginable effect on us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Of course it was really sad, it’s a symbol of the republic, but what is more important: a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-812020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}