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Wednesday 12 June 2013

WordPress Daily Prompt: You've Got the Power

You have the power to enact a single law. What would it be?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us RULES.




Motorway Solothurn-Biel

Switzerland loves making laws; it is a pastime of every local government. We have a fantastic system of voting yes and no for every little thing. The official signature-collecting forms are available. Fill in your name, place of registration and when enough signatures are collected, just  bring them to the local authorities. Stand in a prominent place in town, or in your village and capture the attention of the people. They just have to sign and register the place where their papers are deposited. One fine Sunday morning  everyone in the area will be invited to vote yes or no. You can even vote by post. Not only on a local basis, but being a Federation, something like the states, it can also be done for national decisions. Of course the political parties can be against or for the issue, but every citizen has a write to say yes or no.

Did you know the Swiss have an army? Surprising, but it is true. Every ablebodied male has to serve the recruit school for about three months and afterwards an annual service of three weeks is required, sometimes four according to how important you are. Generally you have fulfilled your duty when approaching the age of 30 and you can forget it. There is naturally more to be explained, but I just wanted to mention this, because signatures were once collected to abolish the national service in Switzerland. It was a voting issue and to the surprise of the government, more than a third of the Swiss population decided it would be a good idea to accept the disposal of the Swiss army. So you see, what a hypothesis might be in WordPress, can even become reality in Switzerland. Naturally we still have our army, although a few changes have been made.

Now to the facts: what would my law be? If you look at the photo you will see two stickers on the window of our car on the right-hand side, as we drive along the motorway from Solothurn to Biel. The bottom symbol is the permission to drive on the private road in our village which surrounds our local castle. This is quite handy for us as it is a shortcut, avoiding a portion of the main road. The other sticker is the one I am talking about. Every person in Switzerland that wants to drive on our super expensive motorway system, known as “autobahn” must pay for this motorway sticker.

Since 1985 the Swiss motorway users  pay an annual amount. The first years the cost was CHF 30.00 per year and since it has increased to CHF 40.00 per year. Now our super government, who seem to be in dire straits with their financial situation, have decided enough is enough and it will now be increased to CHF100.00 per year. Being a democratic federation, signatures have already been collected against this “I had a dream” idea and all being well, the Swiss citizen will be able to vote pro or contra. What the outcome will be is anyone’s guess. That we actually have a motorway tax is the Swiss citizens to thank. Some bright spark decided it would be a good idea, it was put to the vote and guess what, we all said yes. It is the curse of every tourist entering Switzerland. At the border his car is examined. Does he already have the sticky label on his window? If not he is obliged to pay his CHF 40.00 at the border already before entering our land of banks and financial advantages.

The labels are made in such a way that if you want to remove it for sticking on a new car, it will fall into four neat pieces and it is not able to be re-used. OK, there are many garage owners that know with a little hot air and care. It can be removed in one piece (but do not tell anyone – this is a Swiss citizen secret).

So here it is, the law I will make is ABOLISH THE MOTORWAY LABELS.

Yes, I have said it at the risk of losing my Swiss nationality, having my personal car number taken away and perhaps even being penalised with a heavy fine.

2 comments:

  1. Completely the opposite to the UK, where we can't be allowed to vote for anything, except a new government every 5 years. We've been wanting a referendum vote on whether to remain in the EU for years, but successive governments have refused.

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    1. Funnily enough the reason why GB joined the EU was based on the results of the only referendum ever made in England. Now everyone is blaming Edward Heath amongst others. I blame it on the interesting offer on cheap booze in the EU countries at the time. I knew a lot of people that were suddenly off to Calais at the week-end and stocking up on wine etc. Now that has stopped and everyone is moaning about the EU. Switzerland is not in the EU. My son worked for three years in the Swiss Mission in Brussels and now and again was at the European parliment. The problem seems to be that it was never envisaged that a country would leave the EU, so in my lifetime GB will probably not leave. It just won't happen that quickly.

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