Tag Archives: Political issues

Cracking the Code

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In a recent post I noted that, despite some improvements, good corporate governance isn’t something Germans have an easy time getting their heads round. The Financial Times Deutschland reports that there might be a good reason for this: in Germany, it doesn’t seem to matter much how well a corporation is governed.

As the FTD reports, a new study from the consultancy Ergo Kommunikation maintains that ‘investors do not reward German firms that abide by the Corporate Government Code…. Their share prices profit just as little from a high level of transparency or disclosure of managing directors’ compensation.’ [My translation.]

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On Predictability.

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While the entire world is admiring Londoners for their ability to not let the terror destroy their way of life, while London mayor Ken Livingston is taking the Tube each morning, because not doing so would prove the terrorists strategy right, the British government is reinforcing its ongoing quest to get hold of as much information about citizens as possible. I’d call it “opportunistic”, they’d call it “concerned”.
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WaPo gets it wrong

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Sunday’s Washington Post had an article by one Anne Dumas that’s been blogged here and there, provocatively titled What’s American and Envied by France?. It starts with a rather shocking assertion that has, unsurprisingly, been quoted in a lot of the bloggage:

[N]ot a single enterprise founded here in the past 40 years has managed to break into the ranks of the 25 biggest French companies. By comparison, 19 of today’s 25 largest U.S. companies didn’t exist four decades ago. That’s why France is looking to the United States for lessons.

Alas, this quotable assertion is completely false.
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?Enhorabuena!

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This morning Spain followed the example set by its one-time colonies in the Low Countries, legalising gay marriage.

Predictably, the post-Francoist Popular Party and the Roman Catholic hierarchy are not amused. One hopes they will take some comfort in the thought that the new law will not actually require anybody to marry a person of the same sex.

And perhaps they might reflect on this. There are many people who dislike cultural conservatism and Roman Catholic teachings, sometimes to the point of thinking these things morally wrong. And that, is, of course, their good right. It is not their good right, though, to marginalise cultural conservatives or Roman Catholics, still less to abridge their liberties. Well, then: sauce; goose; gander.

75m French People

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At 75 million, France is projected to have the largest population in the EU (of current members) by 2050, according to French government figures. France’s baby-friendly policies, plus reasonably large immigration seems behind the projected increase (the country’s population is now just over 60 million). By contrast Germany’s population is set to fall to 72m, around 8m less than at present.
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‘Those Politicians’

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Last Monday I had some ironing to do. Then I remembered that television still has one advantage over surfer-blogging: you can do the ironing at the same time. Of course the upcoming referendum was on several channels. I could not stand more than 20 minutes of it though (neither the ironing nor the tv). The various program presenters seemed to want to make it look like this was a political *debate as usual*, or so it seemed. National politicians dominated the guest lists. And most of them did what we expect from them nowadays: instead of seriously and conscientiously considering arguments, the majority of them seemed more intent on achieving a high score in something resembling a high-school debating-contest. Television comes in handy here.

In fact one of these *debates* was actually organized like a contest. Six politicians were invited. On every issue two of them went into a direct confrontation and the 6-minute sessions were immediately followed by a ‘flash vote’. And the winner is…
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The thing about referendums

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I’m quite fond of representative democracy, and don’t think replicating the Swiss or Californian system would be a particularly good idea. I do however think that referendums are an occasionally vital and necessary part of democracy, and to do away with them, like the German constitution does, would be a great mistake.

There are situations where referendums are the only acceptable alternative. As a supporter of representative democracy I disagree with people who say that this or that issue is too important to be dealt with by the normal electoral process. But I do think I think referendums are necessary when an issue is 1) divisive 2) vitally important and 3) the normal partisan system cannot properly deal with, because the fault lines are different. As a corollary, anytime sovereignty is involved, I think an issue has to be pretty minor for you not to hold a referendum.

Most of the referendums on EU memberships are textbook cases of this situation. In the case of Sweden, nearly half of voters opposed Swedish entry and for most of the campaign the no side led. Without a referendum they would have had to vote for the Green or Left parties if they wanted to stop our entry. Both quite radical non-mainstream parties who together held less than 10% of the vote. In some countries all parties were for membership. In these instances I feel not holding a referendum would be undemocratic, and would to some degree disenfranchise (to use an American term) the whole electorate.
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A Question of Identity

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“I can’t really say that I’m myself,” he thinks. “I don’t know who I am. . . . I am the late Mattia Pascal.” So speaks the anti-hero of one of Italian writer Luigi Pirandello’s better known novels “Il fu Mattia Pascal” (The Late Mattia Pascal).

Mattia Pascal endures a life of drudgery in a provincial town. Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead. Realizing he has a chance to start over, to do it right this time, he moves to a new city, adopts a new name, and a new course of life?only to find that this new existence is as insufferable as the old one. But when he returns to the world he left behind, it’s too late: his job is gone, his wife has remarried. Mattia Pascal’s fate is to live on as the ghost of the man he was.

Having long been an admirer of this story, you can imagine my surprise when yesterday I found myself watching a real life version of it on local TV. The man behind the case: Enric Marco, 84 year old head of Amical de Mauthausen. Amical de Mauthausen is a Spanish association dedicated to commemorating the victims of the notorious death campwith that name. What is really incredible about Marco’s case is that he passed himself off for over thirty years as a concentration camp victim, whilst the real life ‘Enric Marco’ never set foot inside any such camp till he entered as a victims representative sometime during the later years of the twentieth century.
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