Table of Contents
Side Jobs | representative
Today a good friend — let's call her Matilda — asked me why politicians actually have to have “side jobs” and whether it wouldn't be better if they didn't do them at all?
But it's not that simple, because in a functioning democracy the citizens themselves repeatedly represent their fellow citizens ("representatives of the people") and are optimally considered to be active as members of parliament for a few years - one to three legislative periods.
That's why it's a good thing that the "temporary" MPs have their own job, but at least their own livelihood. This not only ensures good quality MPs, but also ensures that they are less for sale. And when they are not in top positions in their respective parliaments, their work keeps their finger on the pulse of their electorate.
That is why members of parliament do not "work" in this function, and accordingly do not receive any salary or wages, but are paid a diet for their work as members of parliament.
As soon as MPs decide to return to their jobs, or are forced to do so by voters, they can easily return to everyday life and enrich it with the experience they have acquired.
It is also nothing unusual if e.g. B. Lawyers remain in their law firms, in the best case as an excellent advertisement for the same and later fully resume their work there.
Democracy lives precisely because of this constant changeover of the representatives of the people between citizenship and politics and the resulting minimization of professional politicians. And as soon as a democracy mutates into purely professional politics, it abolishes itself in the long term by first declining the quality of the members of parliament, as a result of which the administrations are enlarged to the point of their own inactivity, and then their organizational incompetence leads to an advisory apparatus that ultimately serves the respective self-interests of all those involved prioritize the common good, neither represents nor understands the citizenry and thus transforms our democracy into a dirigiste system whose functioning is no longer understood even by the actors.
Favicon
Have a little with me today favicons played around, these are the small pictures that are displayed in the browsers and thus make every internet presence a little prettier, so now here too. The only question that remains is whether the necessary full garbage disposal of the head area and filing one picture in as many formats and sizes as possible justifies the effort. Now I'm excited to see when I'll purge this blog a bit again.
Forums
When I came around the corner a good year ago with the idea of promoting the discussion among us European federalists a little with our own web forum, the reactions were very cautious. Our fellow citizens preferred to jump into the video chats because the current providers could probably make them believe that it was the "latest shit" or simply because it's such a good way to put yourself in the limelight.
Nevertheless, we launched the forums of the European regulars’ table [the forums were switched off in March 2022], as four other participants agreed to work with us on a technical or content level. In the meantime, a good 500 articles that are definitely worth reading have accumulated there, and there are also regular readers, but the actual group of contributors or commentators has remained under half a dozen to date.
Now let's see how the forums continue to develop, and who knows, maybe the forums will soon be "in" again - after all, the fashion is supposed to repeat itself every 30 years. And in this case we can come up with a functioning forum, which can already offer content.
