Updated: Never — Philip's Blog

I'm running a bit behind on the news again. One advantage of reading a week's worth of newspapers in a day however, is that stories develop much quicker than if you have to wait a whole day for the next episode. A disadvantage is that idiocy becomes much clearer and gets the blood boiling much quicker too.

Next month, like everyone else in Europe, we'll be voting for our representatives in the European parliament. In Belgium, we will also be voting for representatives in the superfluous "regional" parliaments.

Elections are compulsory in Belgium. This is a good thing as it allows politicians to campaign on facts (should they so choose) rather than having to expend a lot of energy on motivating the uninterested to vote. A parliament voted only by fanatics would be a very bad thing of course. A couple of weeks before the elections, every eligible voter gets a summons in the mail from their local council telling them where they need to go to vote.

Some towns in Belgium have very mixed populations. Much to the dismay of certain right-wing linguistic supremacists, there are people speaking Dutch, French, Arabic, English, Turkish and other languages all living together in the same town. How very untidy! One such town near Brussels decided to be practical and send out the elections summons in Dutch and French. This is much more efficient of course than writing it in Dutch and adding a footnote that anyone needing a French translation can request one specially.

"Gosh, it's a letter from the government, three weeks before elections, could this be my summons? I don't know, we should request a translation to be sure!".

Of course, this got the extremists very upset. And the newspapers have exploded again with cries about "wasting money" and such. Only in the fictional region of "Flanders" do we have politicians who seriously believe that forbidding efficiency can save them money.

What can possibly be gained by emphatically deciding not to write to your inhabitants in a language they understand? Do they think it will motivate people to "integrate" (nasty word) better? If anything, I think it would make people feel more left out.

Forbidding efficiency. What a stupid idea.

I think it's obvious that I'm not going to vote for anyone promoting such lunacy.

Grump.