Comments on: Da ist wahrscheinlich ein gott (aber natürlich nur ein christliches gott)

By: Jo

Jo — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:16:04 +0000

Did you see the comment piece in yesterday’s Mail on this? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1232221/What-lesson-does-Swiss-ban-minarets-hold-Britain.html
The assumption throughout the article and in the comments below is that direct democracy is inherently better than representative democracy, which I suppose it is, it’s just that the Swiss experience throughtout the 1990s was that low turnout didn’t mean that the quality of the decision-making was good not even necessarily representative…
BTW did you notice the Mail managed to blame “left wing feminists” for the vote’s success – must’ve been hard to know whether to support or condemn the vote in DailyMailLand…

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:04:10 +0000

On the Austria vs Switzerland point – yes, it has had this edge to it for a long time. Thing is that as it’s outside the EU, it’s government executive is so unusual and it has so much direct democracy no-one seems to have noticed much.

By: robert

robert — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:58:55 +0000

BTW I always thought it was Austria that had this undercurrent of nasty right-wing feeling. Has Switzerland really been like this for some time and we just haven’t noticed (for whatever reason).

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:58:55 +0000

Hmmm, you could see it that way, and especially in the UK I think referendums are just used by politicians to kick tricky issues out of election campaigns.

But the Swiss case is complex, as theoretically it’s bottom-up – 100k signatures and a referendum can take place – so this shouldn’t be just to rubber stamp politicians’ prejudices.

By: robert

robert — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:56:57 +0000

Could this be considered an argument against referenda? Isn’t there the theory that referenda are only used by governments (or other political organisations) to validate a previously made decision rather than truely devolve that decision to the people?

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:26:40 +0000

I don’t post in German because it’s hard enough to find time to blog as it is anyway and, as this post has shown, I get into wrangles about the grammar. I’ve been told it should be “Es gibt wahrscheinlich einen Gott” rather than “Da ist wahrscheinlich ein Gott” which is an adaption of the Swiss posters… So it will always just be English for me here I’m afraid.

And I do tweet from time to time in German, French and even Swedish, but that just seems to confuse people.

By: Joe Litobarski

Joe Litobarski — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:22:18 +0000

* I think the ECHR is almost certainly going to overturn it in a couple of years anyway.

By: Joe Litobarski

Joe Litobarski — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:21:11 +0000

From your title I thought this was going to be a rare German language post! Out of interest, why don’t you ever post in German?

If I was a (cynical) Swiss politician, there is no way I would tackle this issue. It’s not going to win any votes, and I the ECHR is almost certainly going to overturn it in a couple of years anyway.