There's been a tendance lately in French politics to concern themselves only with local regional, or national (depending on the stature of the politician) issues. Even the presidential candidates avoided talking not only about international issues like terrorism, Iraq, and trade, but even the EU was avoided as a topic. While this is great as far as France is concerned, and in line with the ideals of participative democracy, it was heavily criticised overseas, and now the president Sarkozy, with no known international stance, is debating (drunk) about climate change and the european consitution. He generally supports the do-nothing, or the do-what-he-says aproach.
So there's nothing new being contributed to the debate, and no real French opinion being presented. This locally focused politic is only helping in one aspect of the issues affecting France. The local politicians don't let children from neighbouring council catchments to use their better facilities, because it costs more for the local population, even if one commune is better financed. That's not only unfair but detrimental for the community.
Why is it so hard to trust a party system, to listen to the public opinion and to debate it itself before presenting its image, rather than putting its own issues on a pedestal, ignoring the larger ones, and running the risk of bigotry?
One last question, if every council only thought of itself, where would the ugly necessary infrastructure go? Where would the power stations, highways, rubbish tips, and warehouses go?
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3 comments:
Totally, having that local opinion and only thinking of yourself is a selfish way to run a country, and detrimental to everyone.
The party system is a parallel to that attitude, in that they make the decisions based on what works for them and their supporters, and ignoring the larger issues that affect everyone.
In both cases, the people involved are thinking of themselves without listening to the concerns of the wider communit
heh, community maybe?
So, where would the "ugly" infrastructure go? well if no one is willing to be part of the whole community and not just themselves, then nowhere.
That leads to a very touchy feely response, but I'll put it into an economic frame. The result of having that infrastructure- say a power station is that that community isn't as desirable to live in- housing prices go down. However, if that community has ownership of that then they get the money that comes from selling the use of that infrastructure. What one result could be is that every community has their own infrastructure and it is the role of the government to co-ordinate the overall system- such as we do with the national highways.
The other option is that because the community is actually seeing a real result of having that infrastructure, that makes the community MORE desirable, neutralising the effect of having the "ugly".
oh, and thanks heaps for posting. awesome!
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