As thousands prepare to make trips across the Channel for the bank holiday weekend, British motorists were advised to cancel trips to France today as fuel pumps ran dry and violent industrial action against employment reform spread across the country.

Up to half of the country’s 12,000-odd petrol stations are now empty, as riot police were sent in to try and lift blockades of fuel refineries.

By this afternoon, all but one of the blockades manned by union activists had been cleared away, a government spokesman said, adding that the situation is ‘improving everywhere, all over the country’.

It came as French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that ‘this country is dying from its inability to reform’.  Continue Reading…