Too Little, Too Much

The European Union works based on a few simple principles. One of them is, that they do what they do because they it makes sense to do it on a European scale rather than leave it to the national governments. The official term is subsidiarity.
Let us look at a current example: the European Union wants to give each child between the ages of 6 and 10 one piece of fruit every week. The hope is that the project will help combat obesity.

Tell me this: is this project too much, too little or both? Personally, I think it's both!

One piece of fruit per week doesn't change anything. From the perspective of general health, it is underfunded an unambitious to the point of being ridiculous.

One the issue of European necessity, I am still unable to see how doing this on a European scale serves a purpose. Each country should decide this sort of issue themselves.

So what are we left with? Well, as usual just another piece of bureaucracy without effect, without mandate and without a shred of common sense.

Next year, we'll be voting for new EU parliament members. With our luck, not a single candidate will see a flaw in this wonderfully pointless initiative.

Need… More…

The election has ended and I am going through a sort of withdrawal. I no longer get to watch election television at odd hours of the night. I can’t find page upon page of analysis by people who used to be spin doctors themselves. I… I simply can’t spend much more time on the election.
In the days right after the voting, we have the counting of the votes for individual candidates and the work of creating the basis for the next four years. But now it is all over. We still have «ordinary» politics but it doesn’t have the urgency of Elections.
I got to try something new this year: handing out flyers for a specific candidate. And even got to help with hanging up a few posters. Søren Toft, the candidate I was out promoting didn’t get in, but he did a fantastic job with the campaign. And it was interesting to sense how it works when an election is about more than just receiving information. And that is perhaps the single most exciting experience in this campaign: actually being one of the many people who actively try to participate in the process. I wasn’t as active as I would have liked, but it was a start. And in four years, I get to do it again.
I know: I am an election junkie.

Election Small Talk

Less than a week ago, the Prime Minister used his right to call for national elections. Those who know me can testify to me being an election news junkie. I stayed up half the night last year to follow the US midterm elections, and was an avid reader of articles regarding the election in France earlier this year.

This year, there is a small difference to the experience from earlier elections: this year, I am a member of a political party. On Saturday, I was walking around in central Copenhagen, getting a feel for the first parts of the campaigns. I ended up at city hall square where 60 or so young people were lying on the ground, while their friends walked around trying to get us outraged at what takes place in Iraq. It should be noted, these were youth activists from the unity list – an assortment of former communists, extreme socialists and the like. Like all other parties, some of them are nice people, other are less so.

When revealing my party membership, the young man immediately wanted me to see myself as personally responsible for the death of over 200,000 Iraqis. Failing to agree with him, we entered into a small discussion which started from a low point because he was unhappy that I in return wanted him to take personal responsibility for all the deaths under Stalin.

I then tried to seize the opportunity for agreement when he stated that the problem in Iraq wasn’t that we had freed the country from an evil dictator, but the management of the effort thereafter. I asked him if that meant that he in principle agreed with going into Iraq, to which he immediately agreed – and then looked perplexed. Obviously, he didn’t agree with me but had been caught up in a rather convoluted argument which suddenly left him unhappy.

I left him as he decided that he would rather discuss other issues which I suspected would be as fruitful as debating against handguns in the NRA.

I wish that politics could be about compromises rather than incriminations.

Legitimate?

Right now, the leaders of eight countries are sitting at Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm, Germany, behind a 12 kilometre long steel fence. Outside, thousands of protesters are demonstrating. I believe that it is democracy at its finest when people take to protesting against or for things that are important to them, but the current scenario is beginning to look like we are one ring short of «Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus». In the first ring, we have the politicians and in the second we have the protestors. Some may claim that this shows how politicians have become kings and queens, removed from reality. Others – like myself – see this as a sad necessity brought on by violent protestors.

But the first thing to annoy me is the claim that meetings like G8, WTO and the World Economic Forum are not legitimate.

Christoph Kleine, a spokesperson for the collective, said their protest is a «clear sign of our rejection of the G8 and our belief that the G8 is completely illegitimate.

«These are the governments of eight countries who think they can rule the world because they are the richest and most powerful. This is not democratic.

«We can see the result of domination by these countries - war, social injustice. They stand for the danger of climate change. They are the countries who are responsible for most of the emissions.»

-From the BBC

The claim is, that G8 (as an example) is illegitimate because they try to rule the world and they are not the elected officials of said world. True, they are not elected on behalf of the world. They are elected by majorities on eight countries (we’ll ignore Russia as an example of a non-democracy in action). The G8 does not have any formal power, and can therefore only work at all if the eight countries agree and try to enforce the agreements.

Tricia O'Rourke, spokesperson for Oxfam, said: «We are reminding them that they have to deliver.»

«In 2005 in Gleneagles they promised they would increase aid to $50bn (£25bn) by 2010, but we recently calculated following current trends they will be short by $30bn.»

-From the
BBC

It sounds like an organisation with the ability to make and keep promises, right?

The G8 – like the World Economic Forum – is a gathering of people with power and influence who talk – don’t rule, but talk. Last time I checked, it’s a good thing when people talk. But apparently, it is a bad thing when the people talking actually have power.

So who can talk without democracy suffering? Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran? Hugo Chavez of Venezuela? Or maybe the few thousand demonstrators who set cars on fire in Rostock this week as part of their protest?

I think I prefer a world where people with power talk instead of throwing bricks and molotov cocktails.