Demand your "right to housing!"

France is granting it.

But then, is that really a surprise?

PARIS (AFP) - The French government announced plans to create a "legal right" to housing in response to a snowballing campaign that has seen a tent city for the homeless spring up in the heart of Paris.
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[Prime Minister Dominique de] Villepin said the government wanted the right to become legally enforceable by 2008 for "people in the most difficult situations: the homeless, but also the working poor and single women with children."
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By 2012, the government wants the right to housing to be legally enforceable for all, with a guarantee provided by the state, or in some cases regional or local authorities.

From that point onwards, "every person or family housed in unworthy or unsanitary conditions" will able to take legal action to have their rights enforced, he said.

Don't worry, there is (sort of) opposition to this.

But a spokesman for Segolene Royal, the Socialist presidential frontrunner, warned the government against making "great announcements", saying what was needed was a massive commitment to build more public housing.

Pitiful.

The thing is, I already knew France was messed up. What irked me even more than the enforcement of a "right to housing" (I'm wondering what "legal action" you can take to have your "rights enforced" and how those "rights" are defined and what is considered to be a breach of those rights and...) was the fact that the journalist made a major blunder.

The law, if passed, would make France the second European country to guarantee the right to housing, after Scotland which adopted similar measures with its 2003 Homeless Act.

It's true that only a geography nerd like me would notice something like this, but Scotland is NOT a country!! Scotland, along with England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, are part of the United Kingdom, which IS a country.

Oh, forget it. This whole Scotland business deserves its own post.