23.1.02023

Post photo: Beads | © Image by Holger from Pixabay 

Dogs hit

Since I've been doing voluntary work myself since I was 14, I know the effort that has to be made for volunteering, whether as a pupil, student, young professional, employed or retired person. And as a husband and father, I also know the other challenges that voluntary work can entail.

Since I know quite a few municipal councilors personally and also appreciate some of them very much, I know how much effort and commitment this voluntary work entails, if you just want to do it. But I also know what damage local councils do to our city if they are not able or willing to actually exercise this office.

In my blog posts, I probably stepped on the toes of one or the other city councilor, at least that's what the most recent reactions suggest. But both my posts and the corresponding reactions are only opinions — on my part the opinion of a citizen, who have to pay for it, and on the other side by local councillors, who can live quite well from or with their office.

Some municipal councils believe that it is probably sufficient if they come to the relevant meetings or at least allow themselves to be represented there. These are probably also those who think that one could appear unprepared in meetings or even that work consists entirely of fancy meetings - which in turn would explain some of the problems of our time.

In any case, it would be very helpful for us citizens if a list was published at the end of each term of office, namely which municipal council was present how often, how it voted on which key decisions and also how much it cost us citizens during his term of office (e.g. expense allowances or funds for supervisory board mandates).

It would be even better if our parties didn't always just talk about more democracy and transparency, but also lived this out themselves, especially at the local level.

gratifying

If you no longer believe that the Franco-German engine is even remotely working, then you will be positively surprised once again. And so, in addition to the usual economic aid for France to keep this partner happy, there is also something positive for us European federalists.

Namely, if one can believe the announcements, there should at least be considerations to reform the organs of the EU and, listen and be amazed, to also consider a treaty change - probably unfortunately only in the interests of the superstate Europeans, at least that's how the target can be interpreted.

The good thing is that people have obviously recognized and are now officially announcing this with the announcement on September 22, 2023 in Paris that things can't stay the same - self-knowledge is the first way to improvement!

It is now a matter of us European federalists being able to convince our fellow citizens of the need for a European federal state and then urging our representatives to get there, because their constant mere statements — see current coalition agreement — after more than 70 years no one believes it anymore.

The alternatives to the state are very simple: a carry on, with all nation states continuing to try to take advantage of each other and democracy perishing in the process, or else an even worse, by giving all nationalists their super-national state, which is also ruining our democracy.

Handicraft

During my usual Monday tour through the northern part of our district, I had the idea of ​​once again de-stressing my weblog. And so I deleted one or the other application, some of which I grew fond of, and this in the spirit of less is usually more.

Probably none of my readers will notice this and so I did everything right. But I upgraded the comment function a bit, which was only possible because I parted with a few IndieWeb features. At first I tried to reconcile the two, but then I encountered challenges that really surprised me.

Since the IndieWeb features were not used even by professing supporters, at least on my blog, I finally chose the easier way and included these applications in my clean-up campaign. And no one will notice this either.

And, I could have imagined it, as soon as my comment function is "state of the art" the comments start to decrease. Again, it's probably true that less would have been more — which reminds me of my calendars, which were only asked for when I'd just removed them from my websites.

But there is a system to this, too, because most people find it very easy to express wishes and criticism, but it is more difficult to take the initiative and show how it can be done correctly, or at least better.

For me, the exciting thing is that although I've been working independently on a wide variety of websites for 22 years, I still don't know what the best way for one to look or function. And so I'll probably be able to continue tinkering with it for a while.

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