Pirates

There were state elections in the Saarland this weekend.

The news from that ought to be on who won. The thing that you pick up though is that the Pirate party won 7% of the vote and have seats in the state assembly as a result.

OK. So what exactly do they stand for? Anyone who followed the Wikileaks (interesting to a point and a matter of concern - to a point) and the rather dubious Julian Assange saga will get an idea.

Governments are bad. They hide things. More transparency is needed.

Period.

This is worth 7% of the vote in the Saarland.

This is worth 7% of the vote in the Saarland?

So where do they stand on other things, like the economy, defence, education, health, debt usw usw?

In 2010 they sounded nothing more than a clone of the awful FDP on economic policy. The government takes too much by way of taxation, so cut it. Where they differed from the FDP is only on the reason. Government being bad, it is not worth giving them the money usw.

On the subject of transparency, there is nowhere which is more transparent than the government budget. It is published and open to analysis in dozens of places on the Internet if you care to check it out. My view on simply cutting taxes would be that services would be cut (if unnecessary OK, but ....) and government debt would rise (invariably happens - see the USA as a great example).

Back to my issues. How do you create full meaningful employment - real jobs for people who have worked hard to gain qualifications? Or real jobs for people who have been stupidly thrown on the scrap heap because they are "too old"? How do you end poverty (which is affecting 1 in 6 children in Germany now apparently)?

While walking round the supermarket with my wife yesterday I wandered over to the news stand and picked up a copy of the German weekly magazine "Focus", which had an item on the Pirate party. Given the time my wife takes to check out everything in the store, I managed to read three pages of this article.

I spent most of my time on this checking out the "It's the economy, stupid" bit of this article. Have the Pirates moved away from their 2010 position on the economy? Well, yes, well, no, well, mmmmmm.

There was some vague references to the need for everyone having a job (Good!), a worthwhile job (Even better!) .... but they hadn't exactly worked out how they were going to do this. They hadn't exactly worked out how they were going to do this?

They hadn't exactly worked out how they were going to do this????!!

You are putting candidates up for important offices, and yet on the most important issue affecting people's lives you have no clear policy on what to do or how to do it????

And this is worth 7% of the votes cast in the Saarland this weekend?

This is not even worth 7 seconds worth of my time! Although it is worth the 17 or so minutes required to write this item to expose this nonsense!

Apparently 85% of the votes cast for them (I don't know where that stat came from, but it was quoted on Yahoo Deutschland yesterday) were simply protest votes. Oh good! I don't like something, so I will protest.

As I have said enough times, it is easy to vote against something, it is another thing entirely to vote for something positive. Positive solutions are needed - to improve people's lives, to break the cycle of debt, to keep people from going under at an alarming rate, to ensure that the next generation have the prospects of a decent life, while the current one watches their problems start to recede.

Transparently!